Many Americans might not be familiar with Agence France-Presse, but it's a huge outfit, oftentimes carrying some really interesting stuff.
Cable Gamers might be particularly interested in an insightful piece written by James Hossack, in which AFP does a much better job than, say, AP. As noted by Aaron Barnhart and quoted earlier here, AP seems content--maybe "eager" is a better word-choice--to simply repackage MSNBC and MSM spin points about FNC.
But AFP, by contrast, gets right to the real point in its lede: "One decade on, the network that prides itself on its "fair and balanced" reporting easily leads its rivals in audience ratings as it continues to shake up the cable news industry."
And that's the way it is, despite the best efforts of the sophisters at MSNBC and the sophistry-swallowers elsewhere in the MSM.
Meanwhile, the enterprising AFP reporter, Hossack, got an interesting angle from Mike Conway, a former television news reporter and now professor in journalism at Indiana University, who argues, in Hossack's words, "The genius of Fox's strategy was to carve out a niche for itself in the cable market and rise to the top within a decade." Now Conway directly: "Fox news, I think has done a few different things that has caused people to think about it."
Hossack adds: "Unafraid to tackle controversial issues head-on, the channel has won praise and criticism in equal measure." And now Hossack quotes Conway again: "One of the things is definitely the attitude that it shows. It definitely has gone for an audience with the idea that the mainstream media has a liberal bias. That's one of the cornerstones of what they do."
That's FNC's strength--it positions itself, unapologetically, gleefully--against the MSM-osauruses.
Attitude. As Bryan Anderson has argued, too, that attitude matters a lot.
