Slamming and blasting: The perfect Fox page

Could there be a more perfect illustration of the Fair 'n' Balanced issue agenda? Here it is the morning after the State of the Union address, and the three top stories are all about the awfulness of Nancy Pelosi. (As of afternoon, by the way, it's officially a "tantrum," no quotes.) The No. 5 story is another pearl-clutcher; no matter how scary Nancy Pelosi gets, it's a core element of the Fox agenda that AOC is the real power in the enemy camp. And in the No. 4 position is some clickbait about somebody in another country (Canada) doing something weird (telling a judge he withdrew a bunch of money from the bank and burned it because he didn't want to pay child support). 

The reefers under the stories are almost as much fun. Sure, we have stars and Christian leaders and a panel reacting, but Hannity slams Pelosi, Franklin Graham slams Pelosi,  and some Fox talking heads, along with "slay victim's brother," do the blasting.

To revisit (yet again) the Bernard Cohen line* that McCombs and Shaw made famous: Why should Fox have to tell you what to think when it gets to tell you what to think about?


* Cohen, B. (1963). The press and foreign policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.