After watching Fox & Friends this morning, I decided to do a follow up to my "Reason Gal Prices Top $3.00 per Gallon" post, as buyers & sellers are definitely being affected!
As I watched the TV screen, across the bottom in large text was "GAS $5.00 GAL."(or something very similar) with no explanation until later in the show. Now, isn't dealing with all the suffering of "back to back" hurricanes enough without being given misleading information to read? Surely there was "shock value" in that banner text content. But, I believe that Fox News was SENSATIONALIZING some incompletely presented information. They should have said, in slightly smaller text: "Gas Possibly Going To $5.00 Gal."
I'm not picking on them alone for this, as most of the traditional broadcast media use sensationalism to get our attention and build ratings. It is very effective in the short term until the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth comes out. Then they risk the viewer feeling tricked by being initially misled with incomplete information!
Now, what "GAS $5.00 GAL." really meant was that some "experts" are speculating that this could happen in the near future. But, instead of being totally "Fair & Balanced", I believe that Fox News, in this case, is contributing to the "normalization" of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt ("FUD") by not emphasizing enough that this is, in fact, speculation based on a worse case scenario! They are also contributing to the normalization of the acceptance of $3.00 per gallon gas prices by consumers long after the hurricanes are gone, in my opinion.
Rather than contribute to the normalization of "FUD", why not contribute to the normalization of "FLIP" (Faith, Love, Inspiration, and Positivism)? You might even say that broadcast news should "FLIP" us all off (the right way, of course!), instead of "FUDing" their viewers about the future, like I was, temporarily, this morning. What do you think?
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