Jessica Tarlov of Fox News’ “The Five” admitted cable news can enrage viewers. John Lamparski/Getty
Dear Commons Community,
Jessica Tarlov, one of Fox News’ few (maybe only) credible news personalities, acknowledged how toxic cable news has become—and admitted she’s part of the problem.
Tarlov, the progresive panelist on Fox’s top show, The Five, asked Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics founder and director, what issue enraged him the most.
“I watch more TV news than I ever have before,” he said on the Prof G podcast, which Tarlov co-hosts. “TV funnels what’s selling on social media, I think, more than the reverse. That makes me rage.”
Tarlov said she is part of the problem.
“It does,” she said. “As someone who’s on cable news, I apologize to the entire world for what we export.”
Sabato laughed at Tarlov’s remark, saying during the Friday interview that the main issue is social media’s dominance of political discourse. “There’s nothing we can do about social media,” he said.
“The one thing I’ve been waiting for that I was promised as a young person was a time machine,” he added. “We still don’t have one, cause I’d love to go back and make it impossible to create social media. I don’t know how I do it, but I would try to do that.”
Sabato told the Daily Beast in further remarks that he was disappointed by the “sane-washing” of Trump from multiple media outlets, who he said underestimated Trump’s penchant for retribution.
“I’ve personally seen the effects of Trump’s intimidation of media companies, law firms, and yes, universities,” he said in an email. “The solution they’ve adopted seems to be, ‘Let’s keep our heads down, stick to a lot of both-sides coverage, and then Trump will target others.’ It hasn’t dawned on some that Trump will eventually get around to slamming them too, as well as misusing the power of government to exact revenge.”
Several other cable news hosts have rebuked the sector in recent years.
Chuck Todd, the former NBC News anchor who hosted Meet the Press before leaving the network earlier this year, told Mediaite last month that he had grown demoralized by cable news’ content.
“I had it on in my office all the time,” Todd said. “But most cable news felt like a whole bunch of people trying to game an algorithm. It stopped being informational.”
Former Fox News and NBC star Megyn Kelly said on podcast The Megyn Kelly Show last year that, after watching cable news during the election, she was sad to see that “nothing’s changed.”
“The people don’t look as good—that’s changed,” she said. “But they’ve changed nothing. They’re having the same stilted, guarded, fake conversations that last four minutes long with, like, the stupid panels. It’s amazing how out of date they are.”
The three major cable news channels Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC have become embarrassments to the news profession. They are indeed “toxic” with Fox News being the worst.
Tony
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