As a college student, my guilty pleasure/addiction/procrastination tool is most often the website facebook.com. It is a social networking site where uses can create profiles on a network (in this case the college), and share them with other users. The site was originally restricted to colleges and universities, but has since expanded to include other networks such as employers and cities. Many would argue that this expansion is a bad thing, but that is not the point of this discussion. The conservative war on academia is. More on the flip.
As facebook.com expanded it began to allow outside sponsors to create groups on the network for members to join. One group I recentely stumbled upon is the FOX news group.
http://bowdoin.facebook.com/...
(note: because facebook is a user-login based site, this link may not work. If you have a facebook acct, search for the FOX News--we report. you decide. group. If you don't have an account, you'll have to make due with my descriptions, sorry)
What bothers me isn't so much the existance of the group; I don't have a problem with corporate sponsorship, and if facebook wants to allow sponsors to have groups, thats their decision to make. I do, however, have a problem with the group fox has created. First and foremost, it advertises itself as "The news your professors don't want you to watch" It saddens me that they have chosen their facebook site as a method of attacking academics. Then again, what should I be expecting from faux news? Other features on the site (apart from professor bashing) include the discussion of "If you were president" what would you do? The topic when I visited the site was public education. Not surprisingly, most of the responses posted advocated eliminating public education, firing any teachers in unions, and the use of vouchers. The site also featured a mock instant message conversation between two students where one student laments that their professor lashes out at them for "telling both sides." I couldn't help but notice that the fictional professors name was Reid. Coincidence, anyone?
I realize this post is rather rambling and that I am, in all likelyhood, preaching to the choir. I just wanted to call attention to yet another FOX move to undermine academics and indocrinate young people with flashy graphics, interactive features, and propoganda.