Last week, Fox News made the controversial decision to release the full, unedited video of the Islamic State (ISIS) burning a Jordanian hostage alive, prompting the rest of the media and the world to ask, “Why?”
According to the Guardian, Fox News defended its decision in a release stating, “After careful consideration, we decided that giving readers of ?FoxNews.com the option to see for themselves the barbarity of ISIS outweighed legitimate concerns about the graphic nature of the video.”
This well-constructed excuse makes sense at first glance, but upon further examination of the issue and context, the Editorial Board is inclined to believe Fox News is acting with ulterior motives. The evidence surrounding the release of the video, along with the not-so-subtle political agenda of the organization, lead us to believe this was a misguided attempt to influence the American electorate.
Firstly, this is the only video from ISIS released by Fox News, or any news organization, and it was the only American news outlet who chose to show the video. If the news value of the graphic violence was, in fact, too great to hide from the American people, why didn’t Fox show any of the previous killings by ISIS? Were those executions not equally barbaric, or was Fox simply trying to provoke a certain response?
It is hard to believe, had there been any true news value to these videos, Fox News of all places would have been leading the charge to release them. The truth is, viewing these brutal executions does not enlighten the public — it simply strikes fear in the viewer.
Additionally, while there may be a few true journalists at the organization, and some programming is reluctantly honest, the vast majority of content Fox produces has an undeniably conservative agenda. Part of this agenda includes inciting fear in the conservative base that President Obama is coming for them. They regularly say, under the guise of a news organization, that the president and his liberal allies plan on taking your guns, taking your money, taking your freedoms and opening up our borders for terrorists to come for you. So, how is this any different?
Fox News didn’t release this video for its virtue as news. They released this video to dehumanize our enemies and scare people into believing President Obama was failing us. The problem: it is exactly what ISIS wants.
ISIS doesn’t create these videos and hope they aren’t shown by the media — it wants people to see them. It wants people to be afraid of their barbarism. That’s why ISIS Twitter accounts plastered the Fox link all across the Internet.
Fox has always been loose with facts, but now it’s so caught up in its own politics that an agenda, and not reality, decides what it releases to ?viewers.
