Politics: Foxy

Roger Alpert in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz discusses the unique combination of Fox News and Israeli audiences. The item, titled Foxa Americana, makes a strong argument about Fox News' position as America's unofficial propaganda organ, and how this threatens the Israeli marketplace of ideas:

Fox looks like the media arm of the superpower mentality, indifferent to any perspective that is not American and alienating vast portions of the world. Its war coverage is as governmental as that of Iraqi TV. This is American TV.

For some reason, ever since Fox showed up on Israeli cable, the other foreign networks have become unnecessary. CNN was nearly removed, BBC World has been thrown out of the cable package, and both are suspected of hostility to Israel. Fox, for whom Israel's enemies are "the bad guys," is the perfect alibi for the new fashion of censorship. Who needs BBC when there's Fox? That has dangerously narrowed the horizon of thinking available to the viewers of foreign news stations in Israel.