Andrew Sullivan has a video clip on his site of a Fox reporter interviewing Obama.
It's really bizarre.
Here's the link
The journalist had 1minute and 52 seconds with the senator and she did 3 things:
- She asked him to play a word association game.
- She asked him who Chicago's first round draft pick will be.
- She made him commit to playing basket ball with her.
I don't think many people on this site would have made those choices if they had been given that interview but, nevertheless...
The word association game was an interesting choice. For example, she said, "Iran," he said, "threat" etc..
It appeared like a formalized game of fencing and gotcha mixed together. He agreed to play (apparently trying to be a good sport) and then bowed out when she said, "OPEC." He answered with a sentence which made him look like he lost, but he also didn't get "caught." Fox did not get it's "gotcha moment."
Yesterday, mindgeek wrote an excellent diary he called The Neuroscience of false beliefs.
Here he described how 2 things, repeatedly presented closely together, get linked in the brain as related, even if they have been repeatedly linked only in the context of how they are not related.
Ok, so with that in mind, Fox seems to have cut journalism down to that basic synaptic point. Forget about asking for a reasoned argument, apparently sound bites are too long now, it is just word association. Wall Street =money, Exxon=profitable - these were Obama's associations not mine. (Maybe he was trying to move towards the center as he was on Fox.)
Anyway, the reporter believed she could do her job this way because a one word association would define a candidate's position well enough on a given issue. Apparently, that was as much detail as Fox felt was needed.
Having an informed electorate is becoming much harder.
Basically, the whole campaign and its coverage is a war of subliminal advertising.
I realize we all know this; and, I realize this is what Obama has been saying he is fighting (despite a very well crafted image) and that he says he gives people more credit than that.
Now, we have the first example of intentionally, overtly, subliminal reporting.
(This was formerly an oxymoron - not anymore.)