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News :: Media : Political-Economy : Protest Activity |
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Man Sells Device That Blocks Fox News |
Current rating: 0 |
by AP
(No verified email address) |
25 Mar 2005
|
He's taking this message to the network's advertisers. After buying the $8.95 device online, would-be blockers are shown a letter that they can send to advertisers via the Fox Blocker site.
``The point is not to block the channel or block free speech but to raise awareness,'' said Kimery, who works in the tech industry. |
It's not that Sam Kimery objects to the views expressed on Fox News. The creator of the ``Fox Blocker'' contends the channel is not news at all. Kimery figures he's sold about 100 of the little silver bits of metal that screw into the back of most televisions, allowing people to filter Fox News from their sets, since its August debut.
The Tulsa, Okla., resident also has received thousands of e-mails, both angry and complimentary -- as well as a few death threats.
``Apparently the making of terroristic threats against those who don't share your views is a high art form among a certain core audience,'' said Kimery, 45.
Formerly a registered Republican, even a precinct captain, Kimery became an independent in the 1990s when he said the state party stopped taking input from its everyday members.
Kimery now contends Fox News' top-level management dictates a conservative journalistic bias, that inaccuracies are never retracted, and what winds up on the air is more opinion than news. ``I might as well be reading tabloids out of the grocery store,'' he says. ``Anything to get a rise out of the viewer and to reinforce certain retrograde notions.''
A Fox spokeswoman at the station's New York headquarters said the channel's ratings speak for themselves. For the first three months of this year, Fox has been averaging 1.62 million viewers in prime-time, compared with CNN's 805,000, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Kimery's motives go deeper than preventing people from watching the channel, which he acknowledges can be done without the Blocker. But he likens his device to burning a draft card, a tangible example of disagreement.
And he's taking this message to the network's advertisers. After buying the $8.95 device online, would-be blockers are shown a letter that they can send to advertisers via the Fox Blocker site.
``The point is not to block the channel or block free speech but to raise awareness,'' said Kimery, who works in the tech industry.
Kimery doesn't use the device himself; his remote is programmed to only a half-dozen channels. Plus he occasionally feels the need to tune into Fox News for something ``especially heinous.''
Business could pick up since the blocker was alluded to in a recent episode of the ABC drama ``Boston Legal.'' The show's original script mentioned Fox News, but ABC had the references removed.
The boisterous conversations on Fox News may be why the station is so popular, said Matthew Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media watchdog group. And despite a perception that Fox leans to the right, Felling said, that doesn't mean people who lean left should tune out.
``It's tough to engage in an argument when you're not participating in it,'' Felling said. ``It's just one more layer in the wall that the right and the left are building in between each other.''
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On the Net:
Fox Blocker: http://www.foxblocker.com
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press
http://www.ap.org/ |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
|
Greatly Hilarious Rendering of Hate Mail |
by Dose of Reality
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
25 Mar 2005
|
Be sure and check out the Hate Mail section of the website of the FoxBlocker -- it's a real laffer, where the site owner answers the hate mail, paragraph by parapraph, in paranthesis. See example below.
I don't know about having a FoxBlocker on my TV, but I think it'd make a great practical joke for your know-nothing relative who insists on turning Fox back on after that big Easter dinner -- and finds that all of the sudden Fox just ain't there!?!?
giggle...giggle
Meanwhile, the example hate mail for your entertainment:
A clouded mind- with keyboard
Monday, 14 March 2005
From: Beverly Dickson
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 6:58 AM
To: support (at) foxblocker.com
Subject: re:Foxblocker
Hi Josh,
It is such a shame that you are so twisted and demented that you have to resort to low and underhanded things like a Foxblocker.
(The writer finds it "low and underhanded" to control what comes into your house via cable... Fascinating.)
I know it may seem hard to imagine that the Republicans have had it with the Dems and are NOT going to put up with the way they are trying to run this country, but it's true!
(Hmmm, lesseee: Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Reps, yet the Dems are still to blame for the way the country is being run? Hello? The Dems left power with no deficits. It took Bush about 20 minutes to turn that around, and still it's the Dems fault? Silly bunny!)
We have risen and are cutting back on BIG GOVERNMENT.
(Check the federal payroll figures, honey-pie. It goes up under every republican administration. You have been lied to and used, and appear to like the way it feels.)
It's about time that people stand on their own 2 feet instead of leaning on the government to spoon feed them.
(This would be the way the upper 2% are soaking the rest of us, per the current neocon plan of operations?).
Our government was established on the principle that WE elect them and they do what WE pay them to do...NOT to do what they THINK is best for us.
(Agreed, so do you support killing, lies and a handover of power to the corporations that want to own you?).
I don't want anyone else raising my children...unlike you who think "it takes a village" crap!!
(Again, a fascinating non sequitur. Maybe she's confused the GOP lies about Dems wanting to confiscate her bible with the Dems wanting to confiscate her babies? Maybe she's just plain confused.)
I'm tired of being told it our fault that kids run wild...we don't want to make them feel bad.
(Umm, lady, if you raise rotten kids, who else do you blame? Well in your case it seems to be Democrats, but what makes sense to Bev doesn't always make sense to those that can take responsability for their actions.)
Not knowing your age it is hard to tell if you were just left to your own upbringing or if you hard misguided parents that were led by their nose and told what tot (sis) do all their lives by the Dems...you know they think their (sic) Gods (sic) when in reality they are only people.
(As if knowing a person's age tells you anything more than that. We could make inferences about Bev's the critical thinking skills and willingness to accept propaganda as fact, but good manners prohibits stating these fully, lest we be thought unkind to the feeble- minded.)
I do have pity of you and all your fellow Dems...as you all are looking to these leaders for your answers to you problems instead of using the brain that God gave you to figure and solve your own problems.
(We question Fox News. This gives us a mighty leg-up on those that don't).
May God have mercy of all of you! Look how scared you have become, that you fear a TV station will "spread the news", in this case, the truth about the Dems.
Regards,
Beverly Dickson
(May whatever deities that exist not give you too much pain, Bev.
But land sakes girl, you best be pulling your head out of the clouds of neocon propaganda and take a look at what they are really up to, instead of accepting the mindless and contradictory crap you appear to have overdosed on.) |
