Fair and Balanced: Behind the Scenes

(in a smoke-filled room in 1776)

“Our mission here is to deliver the news with a strong conservative slant.  But we need a motto.  Any suggestions?”

“Fair and balanced, sir?”

“Perfect.  Let’s go with it.”

(flash forward to the “talking points” meeting at Fox News prior to the Democratic National Convention)

“This could be tricky.  Our viewers are not interested in optimism, sir.”

“That’s a good point,  Meredith.  We should attempt to spare them anything that might conflict with the opinions we’ve instilled in them.”

“I mean, when the RNC needed to fill time with Willie Robertson from Duck Dynasty, we aired it in full…”

“What’s your point?  I have no idea where you’re going with this. Let’s get down to specifics.”

“Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.”
~Mark Twain

“Let’s see, Gabrielle Giffords is going to address gun violence.  That might be a little too explicit for our audience.”

“We’ve got a piece on a squirrel that looks like Elvis.”

“Roll with it.  Now, all that Black Lives Matters stuff.  I don’t think we want to spend any time on issues so focused on a specific minority.”

“How about the piece on the prisoners dancing to Thriller?”

“Perfect.  Now, some cute 11 year old Mexican girl named Karla is going to speak about deportation, and I’ll hazard a guess that she’s not for it.”

“Ha, ha, ha, good one, sir.”

“What can we run instead?”

“We’ve got a clip of a fat cat swimming.  I’ve heard the Internet loves cats.  This might really reach out to our younger viewers.”

“Sounds relevant and I like the audience-building component.  Make it so.  OK, finally we’ve got that obnoxious Muslim father whose son was killed and decorated ya-dah-ya-dah-ya-dah.”

“Well, sir, I think it’s safe to say our viewers don’t want to hear needlessly about death.  I mean unless of course it’s a black mugger threatening them, of course (nervous giggles). I think it would be a perfect time to cut to our breaking coverage of the salmon swimming upstream using their unique individual resourcefulness and strength.”

“Perfect.  OK, that’s a wrap.  Oh, and Meredith… that skirt is not what we talked about.  Fix it, OK?”

“Right away, sir.”

*Sadly the items not covered are real.  The fluff pieces substituted are made up.

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