Sunday 1 October 2017

I can watch Fox News on my TV again, thanks to the Amazon Firestick!

I had a tough choice to make earlier this week: would I watch Jeremy Corbyn's "keynote" Labour Party Conference speech - or set up the Amazon Firestick that had been delivered to our door that same morning? It was a tough call, especially as Corbyn is such a compelling orator, and I just knew his speech would be full of exciting new deeply compassionate policy ideas that had never been heard before (wholesale nationalisation, rent controls, increasing taxes, tons of free stuff etc.). But entertainment eventually won out over politics, and I slotted the Amazon dongle into our Samsung TV, connected it to our broadband network... and away we went. My sole reason for buying it was so I could watch YouTube videos on a TV screen: I can't watch anything longer than five minutes on a computer without getting antsy. A YouTube app used...

  ...to be available as part of the so-called Samsung SmartHub, but the videos froze all the time, the picture quality was decidedly manky, and fastforwarding and rewinding were well-nigh impossible. I stopped using it two years ago, and Samsung and/or YouTube disabled it a few months back. So, when I saw high-quality YouTube videos on a relative's TV set via a Firestick during our recent visit to Cornwall, I decided to pay £40 and take the plunge.

Rather than search for programmes via the TV app (you have to use a virtual onscreen keyboard), I go to YouTube on my computer or the iPad, find what I want, add it to "Watch later" - and the next time I open the YouTube TV app, there it is! What I really wanted was to be able to watch old films on my TV (before they're all removed for copyright reasons) - as well as documentaries and the occasional obscure political lecture.

Yesterday, I was sitting in front of the TV feeling a trifle disconsolate because, now that Sky has removed Fox News from its menu (bastards!), there isn't a single European or American news channel which doesn't cover events from an entirely left-liberal perspective. Since ten minutes exposure to the world as seen through the eyes of, for instance, the BBC, Sky New or CNN these days leaves me feeling distinctly depressed and/or genuinely angry, I've pretty much given up watching television news - which, for someone who was a TV news journalist for over a decade, and who enjoys watching events unfold as they happen, is a bit sad. I don't necessarily want a constant diet of right-wing or conservative propaganda - I'd prefer balanced reporting of events, which I'm perfectly capable of interpreting in my own slanted, partisan, biased way. But there's now nothing remotely like that on offer on terrestrial or satellite television here in the UK - business is BAD (unless it's Green or supports left-liberal social-engineering projects or it's anti-Brexit), capitalism is EVIL, white people are RACIST, everyone is a VICTIM or an OPPRESSOR, all Muslims are CUDDLY, the EU is NICE, Brexit is a DISASTER, Trump is a CLOWN (and, of course, he's LITERALLY HITLER), Climate Change is OUR FAULT, Israel is WICKED, Tories are MEAN, UKIP is FASCIST, the NHS is UNDERFUNDED... etc, etc.

Why not just give me the unalloyed facts and let me decide? Feature political opinion by all means - but, unless it results in guests libelling someone or blatantly lying about objectively verifiable facts or supporting criminal acts (terrorism, rape, physical intimidation etc.), always balance that opinion by featuring someone of equal authority with an alternative or directly contrary view. You should be doing that already, of course - but I know how difficult fairness is for lefties, because you just know you're morally superior to those of us who disagree with you.

Anyway, having to listen to Donald Trump far too often is a small price to pay for being able to retreat at the click of a button to the relatively safe space that Fox provides for right-wingers of a nervous disposition. I know many American rightists feel Fox has tacked too far to the centre recently - but it still hits the spot for those of us seeking sanctuary from the outrageous bias of Question Time, Newsnight, Dateline London, the Andrew Marr Show, Peston on Sunday and all the rest of them

4 comments:

  1. Glad to hear it. The left has had an armlock on the media for decades. Now it's a complete submission-Gosteleradio (USSR) eat your heart out.
    Fortunately over here common sense and Fox News still prevails.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Common sense? That went out of fashion in the '90s here, and shows no sign of making a comeback any time soon.

      Delete
  2. Sadly, even the Internet has fallen largely under the Left's control. Google, Facebook and Twitter are in the hands of that strange new breed - raging capitalist SJWs.

    It strikes me as wonderfully ironic that the Internet, which has done more to give individuals intellectual freedom than any has any contemporary politician, sprang from that ultimate hate object of the Left, the US military.

    The way things are heading, I'm starting to wish it would take it back again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You mean ARPANET was funded by the US defence department? So it's kind of like a weapon or something? Ban Trump's racist, imperialist internet NOW!

      Ah yes, the super-rich Silicon Valley SJW - spouting left-wing nonsense to appease their sense of guilt at being a damn sight richer than Croesus, safe in the knowledge that their wealth will protect them from the results of the goofy policies they support.

      Delete