Fox News, Fan Service and Faithfulness

The conservative cable news channel lost its test. What about us?

Photo by Lucrezia Carnelos on Unsplash

I’ve really been enjoying the third season of Picard, a Star Trek series that is sort of a sequel to Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Set some 30 years after the original series, Jean Luc Picard, the captain of the USS Enterprise in the Next Generation.  The first two seasons had few characters from the old series.  While the first season was good, the second season wasn’t great.  The third season is different in that it brought back the entire original cast.  This is an example of what is called fan service, which is doing something that pleases (and sometimes placates) the fans.  Picard is an example of fan service done right.  It brought back these characters but placed them in an exciting storyline that so far is paying off the for the series.  

But fan service can also be done poorly and that is the case more often than not in science fiction and fantasy genres.  The desire to give the fans what they want can come off poorly.  The most recent example I can think of is the most recent Star Wars trilogy.  Many fans (or at least the most vocal) hated the second of the series, the Last Jedi.  So, the plan for the third film was junked to give a bone to fans.  The result was the Rise of Skywalker which was a poor rehash of Return of the Jedi.  In trying to atone for its sins, the management at Disney ended up creating something that pleased no one.

But fan service isn’t relegated to geeks like myself who love science fiction, fantasy, comic book films, and television shows.  That’s because fan service in the end is really about trying to please people- which isn’t a bad thing necessarily, but it can be.  It can be downright dangerous when we end up doing fan service even when we know it isn’t good for the people in the long run.

  I’m not a big fan of cable news these days.  It doesn’t matter if it’s Fox News or MSNBC, I just find these networks that tend to give people what they want to hear.  Everyone on Fox wants to hear that Democrats are bad people.  People listening to MSNBC want to hear that Republicans are going to bring down the republic.  

Fox News especially is in a bit of trouble these days. Fox News has been a more conservative news channel, since its inception.  I think for many years it’s been unfairly viewed as a dangerous network because it leaned conservative.  But while it might have had conservative opinion talking heads, its news division was as good as any other out there.  However, something changed during the time President Trump was in office.  For one, commentators like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson had more and more sway in the network than its reporters.  Things came to a head in the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential election.  A recent filing in a lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems reveals that opinion journalists knew that Donald Trump and his acolytes were not telling the truth that Trump had the elections stolen from him.  But they never shared that information with the public.  In fact, these same commentators They went as a far as to threaten and in some cases remove the actual journalists at FOX who were doing their jobs by reporting the facts.  The management and the commentators wanted to “protect” the brand, which meant they wanted to retain cred among the many Fox viewers that were diehard supporters of the then President. FOX management and the opinion leaders were afraid of telling the truth because they feared losing market share. 

What’s surprising is in some way how much the commentators believed that Trump had lost the election and was repulsed by the lie.  Tucker Carlson went as far as calling Trump a “demonic force.”   And yet Carlson, Hannity, and Laura Ingraham were also calling for journalists who did their jobs by reporting the facts to lose their jobs. Fox News is guilty of fan service in the worst way.

The point of sharing this is not to shame Fox news or Trump. In fact on the left, MSNBC tends to engage in fan service though not to the extent that Fox has. The point, especially in this season of Lent is to examine ourselves and ask when have we not spoken up, but instead went with the crowd?  When have we told people what they wanted to hear and not the truth?  

What are our values?  What matters to people?  Are we willing to hold on to those values at some cost? 

In Matthew 4, the Spirit sends Jesus out to the desert.  After 40 days, the devil shows up and tempts him three times.  The first two times the devil tempts by offering things that seem to make sense.  Hey, turn these stones into bread.  You’re hungry, right? It’s in your power to do this, so why hold back?  Over and over again, Jesus tells Satan that he won’t give in.  When the devil tells him to turn stones into bread, Jesus responds by saying that he values more than mere wants, he values God’s word.  When the devil tells him to throw himself down from a high tower so that the angels will protect him, Jesus responds by saying he values God’s holiness and will not rely on cheap grace.  And when finally the devil shows him all of the kingdoms of the world, he reveals himself by saying all of this can be yours if Jesus would worship him.  Jesus tells Satan to beat it, Jesus knows there is only one God and the tempter isn’t it.

Cable news networks like Fox and MSNBC might want to people please, but what about us?  Do we want to please others at the expense of our values? I don’t know about you, but there have been times that I haven’t done the right thing because I didn’t want to ruffle feathers and get people mad at me.  We are always tempted to conform to not speak up in order to fit in or be popular.

I’m reminded of the song by the Canadian rock group Rush, called “Subdivisions.”  The chorus keeps reminding us of the rule guiding life: “conform or be cast out.”

The temptation is to fit in, but God is calling us to be faithful and what I’ve learned more often than not is that being faithful can be very unpopular.  Jesus was called to be faithful and that placed him on the cross.

Faithfulness is not as sexy as fan service, but in the case of Fox News, it is a whole lot cheaper on the pocketbook.

Life is one where we are always facing tests. Do we trust in God?  Do we believe in values like caring for others and loving God?  Or do we believe in being popular at any cost?

Fox News failed its test.  It wanted to do fan service instead of journalism.  But what about you?  How are we doing fan service instead of being called to our values?  

Fan service works if we are talking about television shows.  When it comes to journalism? Not so much.