Last week I was browsing in a large magazine store at a commuter train station. It occupies a large semi-open air space where commuters naturally pass through. I had grabbed several magazines from the shelves and was standing in the checkout line, when I looked up. Overhead there were several television all set to Faux News.
I asked to speak to the manager on duty. I politely registered a complaint that the store was in effect making a political choice by setting the channels of the televisions they controlled in their store to the rabidly one-sided biased Faux News. He smiled and said he had heard this before, but had been told by his boss to keep it on Fox. I told him, this time in a loud but polite voice that everybody else could hear, that every other store and newsstand had the same magazines. There was nothing unique about what his bosses' store carried, and that I would take my business elsewhere BECAUSE of their choice to play Fox News. I made a big deal of putting the magazines down and left. There were a few cheers as I left!
The next day, I wandered back in. They were playing CNN Headline News.
It could be a coincidence. Maybe they have a rotation policy, although the manager on duty had not mentioned it. I have no idea if there has been a real policy change. But perhaps it is worth emulating.
My gestalt is that Fox is still played, but less often than it used to be, in Airline Terminals. That is tougher nut to crack since larger forces and contracts may be in play there.
But still it is worth campaigning against.
Meanwhile smaller businesses are of course easier to influence. In any case... if everybody complained, maybe they would change the channel.
P.S.: Meanwhile MySpace has been in a relative decline against the rise of Facebook. Facebook is now bigger worldwide, as well as leading among adults; MySpace still has the overall lead in the United States but is in decline. No doubt this has more to do with other factors, but wouldn't a "it's Fox and Murdoch" based boycott also be the cool Kids thing to do?
Updated:
- To those arguing that it makes no differnce whether it is Fox, or something like CNN Headline News. Are you kidding?!? One is mostly bland corporate pablum, conventional wisdom and hackery. The other is highly partisan, deliberately scripted false propoganda, right-wing corporate demagaugery. In the real world it really makes a difference. Neither is good, but there is a real difference.
- The point is to make a public stand against that which is false. Both the partisan and right-wing corporate lies in content. And the partisan lie in the explicit claim to being "fair and balanced."