Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog are not those of the Shaker Writing Center. They are solely the opinions of the author, Rafael Bonilha Van’t Hof.

For most of my life I have had the great misfortune of having to watch Fox News every day. For some ungodly reason my mom watches this crap daily. I used to think she was a closeted Republican, but I think the truth is far worse. I think that she finds it funny how bad this “news station” is and enjoys watching everybody else in the house die a little inside. I am so glad that we have finally convinced her to watch other news channels. If I have to listen to Fox “News” any longer I am going to become the joker.

Fox is such a bad “news station”  that for every hour they spend on air, they spend 20 minutes on news and the rest of the time attacking liberals and woke culture. It is so aggravating to listen to because they are bullying people. I swear whenever I have the displeasure of hearing it it’s “liberals this”, “liberals that”, liberate me from this hell! If there is a problem that they can even remotely blame on liberals, Democrats, or President Biden, they are going to do it. I turn on the TV and I am greeted with people foaming at the mouth talking about liberals.

They also have a major problem with woke culture. They cherry-pick the stupidest things from woke culture and then make fun of it instead of doing any actual reporting. Things like Velma being gay are some of the great time wastes that are the headlines on Fox news. They really have a headline that reads “New House ‘Anti-Woke Caucus’ will push back on ‘wokeness tyranny’ in schools, military, govt, GOP rep says” and “Jordan Peterson issues dire warning: ‘woke’ totalitarian social credit system is ‘highly probable'”. I don’t know how anybody can take any of this seriously.

Seeing all this hatred and anger you might be wondering if they ever feel good about anything. They do, but it is only when the Republicans are doing something. I can count on one hand the amount of times I have heard Fox News say anything bad about them. They treat Republicans so well that Republicans running for positions use Fox interviews as Facebook ads. I remember after a big incident of gun violence (I don’t remember the exact incident but it was around 2020-2021) they had brought on a Republican congressman and asked him if banding guns would stop gun violence. He said no. The presenter then asked him if he was sure and he said yes and moved on. Now this might be a technically correct answer but I think it might be interesting to talk about how evidence shows that preventing people from having guns is proven to reduce their harm (Gun Policies That Save Lives by Brennen Jensen).

But I know somebody out there is saying “They bring Democrats on,” and I can safely say that they bring moderates on. The reason why “moderates” is the key word is because they are usually there to disagree with decisions made by the party. They usually say something to the effect of “I don’t think that (decision made by Democrats) was good and here’s why” or “I think that we should be working together and not so divided by party lines” which is so ironic for Fox.

This treatment also applies to Trump. During the Trump presidency they almost never said anything bad about anything he did. When he was running for reelection they listed “a successful trip to Asia” as one of the things that was great about his presidency. While the January 6th hearing was going on they would not stop talking about how Democrats were horrible and wasting time with it. Now I don’t know about how you feel, reader, but I feel like a president leading an angry mob of his supporters to the capital building and intruding on official processes might need to be looked into a bit.

Now I have done a lot of hating on Fox but I have to be a little fair. I don’t have much to compare it to. The only news stations that play in my house have been Fox, BBC, and Newsy so I don’t have much frame of reference for what a better American news channel would look like, and I might be brain washed by Big GOP but I don’t think that CNN would be much better. I mean a News station that is heavily biased towards one side of the political spectrum might want to present the best image they can for themselves and present everything that the other party is doing wrong. I might be able to watch it without going crazy, but I don’t want my ideas to go unchallenged. Also whenever I hear news going on with Americans speaking somebody starts shouting “LIBERALS” in my head and I blame Fox for this.

To end this off, I would like to reflect about a statement made at the end of  every “Special Report with Brett Baier”, my mom’s favorite Fox segment. At the end of each segment Mr. Baier says “more news is on the way – fair, balanced and unafraid.” I have said my piece about the fair and balanced part of this statement but I would like to draw your attention to the last word. Being “unafraid” implies that they have something to fear at Fox news. I would just like to ask, what does Fox News have to be afraid of? They are backed by DISNEY money. Are they afraid of 13 year olds on Twitter with pride flag profile pics perpetuating woke culture? Are they afraid of the liberals and young people that are rising to important positions in government? What do they have to fear?