Skewed News

Faux News is famous for its bias but not all of the local Fox stations have news departments that mirror the national brand.  That depends on the local ownership.

Unfortunately for Baltimore, Fox 45 is owned by Sinclair Broadcasting.  They're one of the most loyal of right wing lapdogs.  This is amusing at times because the entertainment shows of Fox are far from right wing and often contradict the message of the rightist news that follows.

But whatever.  They can skew their new however they want.  It's the disingenuousness of it that was getting on my nerves yesterday.  They bought a lot of air time on the radio station I had on at work, so I heard their teaser for their 10:00 broadcast repeatedly.  Of course, that's because its sweeps month now.  I hate sweeps.  All the locals trot out their most sensational stories and plug them incessantly.

For Fox 45 that meant a broad attack on taxes with a story that had little to nothing to do with taxes.  The opening tease is your tax money being wasted.  It goes into government misspending.  But then it turns out their story is about a Baltimore City agency, unnamed, whose expense sheets show spending for fun of some kind.  It's not actually a story about whether a tax or taxes are warranted for whatever intended purpose.  It's no examination of whether a tax credit for mortgages is sound policy.  No, it's just red meat to their usual audience of former Marylanders living in south central Pennsylvania (aka Pennsyltucky).

Nearly none of the viewers they're tossing this bait are having a dime of their tax money wasted, assuming there's actually some waste being exposed, which is not certain.  These fools live in a whole other state.  Sure, they live most of their lives in Maryland, what with working and shopping here, not to mention having their kids in activities here, but their income and property taxes are paid in Pennsylvania.  They don't pay a dime to Baltimore City taxes, unless they're buying sodas or something in the city and paying the bottle tax.  Hell, they're not even paying indirectly to the city the way I am with my state taxes.

It would be one thing if they touted the story as an expose of a city department wasting money.  But they use that small story to make a broadside against taxes as a whole.  That's simply a tie that's not there and is entirely disingenuous.