Comm455/History of Journalism

Revised 7.7.2011 7:17pm

My original idea for this blog entry was to discuss the inaccuracy of certain news providers.  Specifically, I wanted to call out Fox News.  Mentioning Fox News in many classroom discussions typically results in laughter.  Students and professors alike appear to reject Fox News as a credible news source.

As I YouTube searched phrases like, “Fox News fail” I came across a video that I thought was a fantastic commentary on how both news providers and viewers are responsible for upholding a high standard of credibility.

The student was given an assignment to create a “viral video.”  The student created a video entitled, “Biggest Fox News Error in History!” and tagged key words that were associated with cable news and current hot topics.  In reality, the video was simply a Fox News clip that was spliced with a clip of the student commenting, “I’m on TV?”

In the description of the video the student said, “I figured it didn’t have to be funny, it didn’t have to be clever, it just had to say ‘Fox News Mistake’ and have a Bill O’Reilly thumbnail for people to want to click on it.”  The video currently has 12,432,560 hits, my click being one of them

This viral video project ties into Aram Zucker-Scharff’s class presentation.  Zucker-Scharff noted how using tags could greatly increase the number of hits a web article or video receives.  News consumers must have a balanced media diet and a working background knowledge of the topic at hand in order to effectively absorb the news.