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The fox has come back to guard the hen house. But if history is any guide, the hens and the chickens will not be too welcoming.
The arrival of the Fox Business News channel is to its backers comparable to the cavalry coming over the hill to save the business world, if not the capitalist system, from detractors if not from itself. Whereas Jesus sought to drive the moneychangers from the temple, Fox's Roger Ailes has his sights on those subversive "liberals" who have wormed their way into posing as friends of the business world on CNBC. He has vowed to blow them away.
CNBC's owner, General Electric, a company known for its corporate conservatism and its past patronage of Ronald Reagan, has to be amused to find itself on Rupert Murdoch's enemies list. Regarding CNBC, Murdoch sounded like the Grinch of Christmas Past in hinting but never really spelling out his agenda to a British outlet last week: "They dwell too much on failures or scandals."
"We don't get up every morning thinking business is bad," said Ailes. "Many times I've seen things on CNBC where they are not as friendly to corporations and profits as they should be."
Roger Ailes, a right-wing Republican street fighter, has been repositioned for this task. He is downplaying his hardcore GOP Bushevik ideology to recast himself as a self-styled populist, the champion of the little people, fueled by a $300 million war chest from the evil empire run by the shadowy, Orwellian-named News Corp.
Ironically, on the same day that Fox aired, one of the institutions Murdoch seems to admire, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), opened its congress in Beijing with its own plan for politically correct capitalism. They, too, are purging their liberals. What symmetry! (Hu may be on first, but Rupert is pitching.)
Back in New York, on Wall Street, the credit crisis just won't go away with a new wave of major defaults on loans, banks reporting billions in write downs and losses and fresh warnings from the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank that the economic slowdown is here. An economist at Goldman Sachs dismissed a new plan by three big banks and the Treasury Department to "calm debts in housing" as a "P.R. move." P.R. for business is at the heart of the Fox Biz mission.
On top of that, some of the people whom Ailes hopes to champion and convert into viewers are out protesting against predatory lenders and boycotting Countrywide Financial, the nation's largest lender and mortgage servicer. In some parts of the country, the partisan war is giving way to a new type of debt-driven class war between borrowers and lenders.
In other words, the business arena is a lot messier and more complex than the political arena that Fox News was able to polarize with simplistic pro-war slogans, personality baiting and an "us versus them" patriotically correct deception. A mechanistic pro-business versus anti-business frame is not the same and is not going to work.
That's why Roger has paid more attention to sizzle than steak with a new stable of foxy presenters aimed more at the eye than the head. Snazzy graphics, hot colors and special music, complemented by "conversational" anchors, round out the carefully thought-out packaging. At least one show will come from a bar. After all, he is competing against sexy "money honeys" like CNBC's Maria Bartiromo.
TV can't be all slogans and flag waving -- a reality than many Fox critics miss by just focusing on what is said and not on the attitudes and look that drive Fox's audience-friendly media environment.
See more stories tagged with: business, corporations, murdoch, cnbc, fox business news, fox
Danny Schechter writes a blog for MediaChannel.org. He directed the film In Debt We Trust about the credit crunch. Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org.
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