Fox News, Cyber Culture, and Fear

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:58:00 -0500

On July 26^th of 2007, Fox 11’s 10:30PM broadcast contained reports of a “gang of computer hackers” called “Anonymous” (Fox11). Showing irrelevant clips of exploding vans, Fox 11’s Phil Shuman reports that Anonymous meets at a “secret website” that requires its users to remain anonymous. Their key example is one MySpace user, David (no last name given), whose MySpace page was hacked and plastered with gay pornography. Showing images of EPROM Memory, Shuman goes into further detail explaining how Anonymous “crashed” David’s computer and then used his email account to infect all of his friend’s computers. In an example of what gives Anonymous “Lulz”, which Shuman explains as a corruption of L.O.L. (which, in turn, stands for laugh out loud), Shuman shows how Anonymous invades an online children’s game called Habbo Hotel. Shuman then tells us of how this faceless legion threatened to bomb seven football stadiums and sends a message to the audience that there may not be anything anyone can do to stop this “Group of domestic terrorists”.

The Fox 11’s report on this “Anonymous” is an excellent example of how the news media uses manufactured fears to prey on the public’s ignorance and mistrust of technology. The fact is that there is no “Anonymous”. Fox News is speaking of an online image board called 4Chan.org, more specifically, the “Random” section, known simply as “/b/”. Anyone who simply visits the 4Chan website can see that it is not an organized site for a gang of any kind. 4Chan is an online Image Board, free to the public in which there are no User Names or Passwords. In the event that the user does not provide a desired posting handle, 4Chan defaults the user to the name “Anonymous”. There are several sections that make up 4Chan in which anyone is free to jump in to the never ending discussions which range from topics of anime to movies to origami to food. By Fox’s logic, anyone who simply makes a post on this free website is a member of this media invented “gang of computer hackers”. The internet allows lightning speed connections to people of all walks of life from all over the globe and some of these people have a keen understanding of computers (not to mention a lot of time on their hands). By browsing the internet for their interests, they find themselves forwarded to /b/. /b/ has very few rules, which makes it an excellent ground base for hackers as well as filth ridden mongoloids. Using 4Chan, Fox News has given this cancer a name – something that its audience can identify. For example, this bombing of stadiums threat Shuman speaks of was done by one individual, not by this “Anonymous” or by 4Chan. The individual was even identified as one Jake Brahm. (New York Times, 2006) Shuman also leaves out that the threat was not sent to the stadiums, or the police, or any official channels of any kind. It was posted in a “Scariest Threat” thread on 4Chan’s /b/ section challenging people to think of the scariest threat. As for Habbo Hotel, it is not specifically a children’s game; it is a free to join chat room with computer generated avatars and anyone who bothers to at least visit the site can see that.

In Jason R. Young’s study of fear in the media, he explains how the news media plays off of our basic Darwinian instincts to fuel ratings. In Young’s article “The Role of Fear in Agenda Setting by Television News” (2003), he brings up an interesting psychological study by Hansen and Hansen (1988). Their study found that when participants were shown a photograph of a crowd of people, participants were more likely to spot out those with an angry facial expression to those with a happy facial expression first. Young predicted that the participants in his test would show that the most fearful television news media broadcasts would be received to have the highest level of importance. Young’s study included eight men and twenty eight women from Hunter College ranging from 18 to 47 years old with varying race. Young discovered that increased unpleasantness and fear begot increased attention, as well as an increased perception of importance.

In an excellent article by David S. Wall titled “Cybercrime and the culture of fear” (2008), Wall plays on the topic of social science fictions and the production of knowledge on cyber crime. Wall argues that science fiction novels, movies, comics, etc, are responsible (at least partly) for creating our ideas and perceptions of what cyber culture and cyber crime actually are. Wall quotes Furedi in Wall 2007 saying “contemporary movie and media imagery subconsciously orders the line between fact and fiction.” (2007) Wall explains the endless cycle of how news reporting tends to simultaneously feed the public’s lust for shocking information while feeding off of it.

In this paper, I have used content analysis to show how the news media often uses the fear discourse to promote ratings, mainly by using a manufactured fear to prey on the public’s ignorance of technology. Even more specifically, I intend to show in what light technology is shown on the “Fair & Balanced” Fox News verses BBC America. During this research, I have found vast differences between the two news sources. The Fox News website, for example, actually has a section devoted to Cyber Security which states “Phishing, identity theft, denial-of-service attacks, viruses, computer worms. The Internet can be a scary place”.(2008, Foxnews.com) In David S. Wall’s article “Cybercrime and the Culture of Fear” (2008), Wall teaches that science fiction and society’s technological binary (knowing and not knowing) has made science fiction into a manufactured reality. To reiterate, the dystopic conceptual link between crime and cyberspace is created when movies portray the “hacker” as something to be feared. for example when movies such as The Italian Job (1969), Superman III (1983), The Net (1995), and Hackers (1995), are combined with those who are ignorant to the world of technology/cyberspace, the quick to judge, and/or technophobes. Fox News is blatantly fueling this surreal Die Hard-esque fantasy with this stunningly direct statement. Fox’s Cyber Security section also includes a link to Fox’s Tech Tuesday, which evidently is a self proclaimed IT Professional Help Desk for its viewers. This in itself is a very direct beam into the subconscious mind saying “Come to Fox for all your tech needs” which in turn helps the viewer to choose and believe everything Fox News feeds the computer illiterate public. The BBC America Science and Technology section however, seems to almost always speak positively of technology, with headlines such as “US shuts down ‘scareware’ sellers”, “The mouse hits 40-year milestone”, “Compulsive gamers’ not addicts’”, “Closing the UK’s digital divide”, and “Don’t be 404, know the tech slang”. (news.bbc.co.uk) Like two complete opposites, BBC America seems to promotecyberspace and the computer world, even containing headlines addressed to “the know” only, using terms such as “404” and speaking of the “UK’s Digital Divide”. This behavior presents the potential for readers who are not “in the know” to want to learn more for themselves.

Anyone who visits the Fox News website will see that the articles are usually only a paragraph long without any citations of sources, most of which even ending with a link for “more information” from another news source. On the opposite side of the spectrum, BBC America’s articles are sometimes pages long and though not specific, they at least give names and cite sources. Many of the reports on the Fox News Cyber Security section seem to be opinion pieces, written by PC Magazine (which, in this reader’s opinion, is the worst magazine on the subject and tends to be filled with shockingly brazen misinformation and overt lobbying) or compiled sources from the Associated Press whose authors are surprisingly not defined. As such, BBC America does not have their own version of many of Fox News’ articles. For example, the closest analogue for Fox’s “Parents Need to Know What Kids Are Doing Online” found on BBC America dates back to September of 2003, entitled “Parents ‘oblivious’ to children’s surfing”. When results are arranged by date, we are still set back three months with the article titled “Computer terror teenager jailed” which actually, unlike Fox News, shows how internet regulations are enforced and how officials handle Cyber-Crime just as any other crime. Even articles that do not follow Fox’s opinion piece trend are not found on the BBC website, such as the article entitled “Chinese Hackers Penetrate White House Computers”. I did however find an article on the BBC News site entitled “Chinese hackers are suspected of attacking the White House website”….from 2001. Fox News makes no reference to the fact that this kind of incident has happened before, intentionally denying their audience a window into the full story.

Ever since Governor Sarah Palin was picked by Senator John McCain to be his running mate in the 2008 presidential election, there have been rumors and speculation of Palin using private E-mail accounts to communicate with her aides. On September 18th, 2008, Fox’s overt support for the Republican Party, unashamed willingness to stoop for ratings, and their fear-mongering stance on cyberspace came clashing together in one single story when Sarah Palin’s E-mail account was hacked. After learning of Palin’s known clandestine email address, Gov.Sarah@yahoo.com, one David C. Kernell was able to recover Palin’s password using Yahoo!’s forgotten password feature. “Hacking” the governor’s Yahoo! account was as easy as providing her birth date, ZIP code, and where she first met her spouse, which was all provided by Wikipedia. David then posted his findings on 4Chan’s /b/ section and retreated to enjoy the ensuing chaotic storm of pranks and data acquisition. EncyclopediaDramatica.com, a website with a section devoted to 4Chan history and memes, states “Now the world has an opportunity to send pictures of genitals and bodily movements to Alaska’s power elite.”

After the attack on Palin’s Yahoo! account, several websites make mention of proof that Palin was indeed violating Chapter 552 law. Unfortunately, to protect Palin’s privacy, much of this content has been removed and we are only left with illegitimate sources and hinting statements such as “Because the hacker helped establish something important: Sarah Palin has been systematically violating the Open Records Act” (www.crooksandliars.com/). Being that this was both during election time and the victim was a governor, both BBC America and Fox News covered the story, but due to the lack of information at hand, Fox starts to fill in the blanks on its own. On September 18, 2008, Bill O’Reilly with attorney and Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly present a report on the attack. Kelly states that “As you know, the person who hacked the account is calling himself Anonymous. He hasn’t revealed his identity”. It seems that Fox news cannot take the time to actually go to 4Chan.org. If they had, they would know by now that the name “Anonymous” is a default name issued by the website in the event that the user does not provide a name. As such, the “hacker” is not calling himself “Anonymous”, in fact, we can see in screen shots of the thread that was posted on 4Chan that he refers to himself as “rubico”. On Monday, September 22, 2008, Bill O’Reilly comes back, this time with Fox News analyst and radio talk show star Laura Ingraham. The interview is posted on the Fox News website and does not forward you to http://www.billoreilly.com/. Ingraham states “imagine if a Republican…had hacked into, let’s say Michelle Obama’s personal account or any other prominent Democrat. …The same people (ACLU) who are so quick to protect pornographers are suddenly silent”. (www.foxnews.com) In actuality, the ACLU had already posted an article on the 19^th entitled “Privacy is Not Partisan” which spoke of how the hacking of Gov. Sarah Palin’s email accounts shows how urgently the US needs better privacy protections. (blog.aclu.org) The Electronic Frontier Foundation, another popular privacy advocate, also posted an article on the 18^th stating that a court would likely consider this crime a violation of the Stored Communications Act. (www.eff.org) After O’Reilly says “I haven’t heard the ACLU rallying to Sarah Palin’s cause here.” Ingraham responds with “I mean, they go, “Oh, well, maybe she did some professional government business on her private accounts”, which is ridiculous. Of course, it showed that she didn’t”. Ingraham probably shouldn’t say that so defiantly when there have been several investigations on this matter. Texas Government Code, Chapter 552, gives you the right to access government records; and an officer for public information and the officer’s agent may not ask why you want them. All government information is presumed to be available to the public (www.txstate.edu). A number of news organizations, including Mother Jones (www.motherjones.com) had filed Open Records Act requests for copies of emails Palin had received or sent. Sarah Palin has two known email accounts (other than her government issued address) making it very hard to keep track of her movements. In a September 25 email to Motherjones.com, the administrative director of the office of the governor noted: “We are unable to access records from the non-state email accounts as we are not the account owner or customer of the providers. My access to copies of emails sent from (or received by) private accounts would be through the state email accounts that sent or received emails to or from the private accounts.” (www.motherjones.com)

While Fox News spent several days on this matter, BBC America made one article on the 18th. BBC America’s article “Hackers infiltrate Palin’s e-mail” also was not very accurate, and it too made reference to anonymous as a group and stated “It is not clear yet what methods the hacking group used to access to the e-mail account” (news.bbc.co.uk) even though several sources, including Fox, had already known the process. They did however go into detail on the possible skirting of the law, stating how all e-mails relating to the official business of government must be archived and not destroyed, which Fox News didn’t.

The age old problem of adult supervision has been brought up in many of Fox News’ broadcasts. On December 27, 2007, when Fox decided to report on the 4Channer’s attacks on MySpace (and it should be noted that Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News among other news sources, owns MySpace.com), Shuman interviews an unnamed “computer security consultant” who informs us that the people who are hacking these MySpace pages are “likely youths without proper adult supervision” and are “likely influenced by people” (WTVT, 2007). In today’s day and age, the personal information posted on MySpace is used as viable evidence, and Fox doesn’t hesitate to use it like a public library. When Kelly Layne Lau and Michael Schumacher were booked on charges of torture, kidnapping and child abuse on December 1^st, 2008, Fox news goes to Lau’s MySpace page, saying that she describes herself as a stay-at-home mom and says her husband worked as a contractor. They then go into detail on Lau’s many photos of her family, friends and pets. After Fabian Nunez is accused of being among the four men accused for stabbing a college student to death, Fox News says he listed himself as a business student at California State University, Los Angeles on his online profiles for social networks Facebook and MySpace. Fox News Health correspondent Jessica Mulvihill asks on March 19th, 2008 “Do you spend endless hours online? Are you one of millions who can’t get enough of MySpace or Facebook?” proposing that you could be suffering from internet addiction. When Lori Drew was arrested for posing as a boy and driving 13 year old Megan Meier to suicide just to find out if Megan was talking about Lori’s daughter, Fox News spent weeks covering the progress of the trials. Fox news wrote over 10 articles on the matter, where BBC wrote three. This trend acts almost as subliminal advertising, mind washing Fox viewers into making connections between crime and MySpace.com and the continuing Fox News trend; “The Internet is a Scary Place, and You Need Us to Hold Your Hand.”

Another activity out of touch parents may find their kids participating in is video games. Most parents may find similar scenarios of their angst-filled 14 year old not talking to them and blasting Fall Out Boy or My Chemical Romance, and in response, the parent may manifest reasons to hate this form of technology. But don’t fret – The news is there to fill you in. On May 3, 1999, Fox News’ Alan Colmes says “Can the make-believe killing in video games make it easier for a kid to kill in real life?” in reference to the Columbine shooting. In the same debate, Ellis Henican says “what we could do is we could outlaw some video games and then kids wouldn’t take guns to school and shoot each other.” I’m not kidding, look it up – this is exactly what she said. On December 18th, 2003, Fox News’ Liza Porteus reports that “Experts who monitor the industry say that before parents rush to the mall to pick up that hot new video game for Junior, they should be aware of how much sex and violence the games contain.” and instructs the parents to check the ratings on the box, thus giving the parents the illusion of control and that usual message of “Fox is here to help – go to them for information”. On December 5^th of 2005, an article on the Fox News website written by the associated press warns that today’s games are “more extreme” and more easily available to underage kids than ever before. On Febuary 16^th of that same year, Fox News boasted the article “’Grand Theft Auto’ Led Teen to Kill”. It seems, however, that the news, rather than being an unbiased source of information without any opinions of its own, changes views with the times. Today, FoxNews.com has a “Gamers Weekly” which on October 29^th, 2008, presented a clip featuring the new Fallout 3 – a game in which you can blow up heads of slaves and kill Super-Mutants who have taken over irradiated Washington DC. The clip states “DC metro lines writes in to the Washington Post saying quote: ‘The people of our city do not needed daily reminder that Washington is a prime target for an attack’ Our take - relax! it’s just a game!”

This research helped me to reinforce an organize my belief that the news in general simply gives the public what they want. It should come as no surprise that when the press has to compete with reality TV and sitcoms, the television news is bound to have to display the news in a less than authentic, rational tone. The news has to compete for ratings to fund themselves through commercial investment, just like any other show. The other stations don’t broadcast true stories, however. Keep in mind that America’s news tends to be much more commercial, and in turn, fear based than other countries, and the internet winds up being an excellent scapegoat to blame for most of society’s problems. When an out of touch parent can’t get his/her kid to talk to them, they blame something they don’t understand. They see their child on that darn computer 24/7 and jump to the conclusion that this is the problem instead of either talking to the child or realizing that they went through a similar phase. Fox News helps to fuel this manufactured reality by harping on cases that involve technology. When I saw Fox 11’s broadcast on “Anonymous”, I was astounded at the amount of misleading, and just plain incorrect information, not to mention the random exploding van clip. I have visited and posted on 4chan for over five years. What didn’t make the news is that about a week before Fox 11’s story, an individual found that there was a hole in Fox’s FTP Server. Though I have no sources to back up my claims, you will have to trust me – because I was there. That individual posted the username and password to Fox’s database on /b/. It is my belief that these ad nauseum reports on the insidious masterminds of 4Chan’s devious activities is merely a petty response directed at 4Chan users to that violation of privacy. When we see these broadcasts blaming technology, one can’t help but wonder; at the end of the day, how often do you find the links to the internet to be circumstantial rather than causal?

Bibliography

Young, J. R. (2003). The role of fear in agenda setting by television news. American Behavioral Scientist, 46, 1673-1695.

Wall, David S.,Cybercrime and the Culture of Fear: Social Science Fiction(s) and the Production of Knowledge about Cybercrime(July 3, 2008). Information, Communication & Society, Vol. 11, No.6, pp. 861-884, 2008.

FOX 11. KTTV, Los Angeles. July 26^th, 2007. Retrieved from LexisNexis.com on 12/10/08

BBC America News, “US shuts down scareware sellers

The New York Times, October 21, 2006 Saturday, Section A; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 14, By RONALD SMOTHERS

(n.d.) Gov.palin@yahoo.com. Encyclopedia Dramatica 12/11/08 retrieved from http://encyclopediadramatica.com/

Jamie (no last name given) Oct 11, 2008. Sarah Palin’s Email: A Crime Used To Expose A Crime? 12/11/08 retrieved from http://crooksandliars.com

Bill O’Reilly and Sarah Ingraham. September 22, 2008. LAURA INGRAHAM ON SARAH PALIN’S PRIVATE E-MAIL BEING HACKED. 12/11/08 retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/

Noam Biale. September 19th, 2008. Privacy is Not Partisan. 12/11/08 retrieved from blog.aclu.org/

Kurt Opsahl. September 17th, 2008. Gov. Palin’s Yahoo Email Account Hacked. 12/12/08 retrieved from www.eff.org

Sarah Palin’s email hacked, Protestors Target Casey Anthony, Paul McCartney’s Life Threatened. (September 18, 2008) Fox News Network, THE O’REILLY FACTOR. Accessed 12/12/08 from LexisNexis.com

(n.d.) Hackers infiltrate Palin’s e-mail. 18 September 2008. Accessed 12/12/08 from news.bbc.co.uk

November 30, 2007, Fox News, Fox News at 5:00. Transcript. Lexis-Nexis. 12/12/08

December 12, 2008. Neighbor accused of abuse in case of shackled teen. 12/12/08 accessed from www.foxnews.com

ELLIOT SPAGAT. December 03, 2008. Calif. ex-Assembly speaker’s son a murder suspect. 12/12/08 accessed from www.foxnews.com

Jessica Mulvihill. March 19th, 2008. Internet Addiction? 12/12/08 accessed from www.foxnews.com

GREG RISLING. November 26, 2008. Jury convicts mom of lesser charges in online hoax. Accessed on 12/13/08 from www.foxnews.com

FOX HANNITY & COLMES, Fox News, May 3, 1999. Colorado School Shootings. Accessed transcript from Lexis-Nexis

Liza Porteus. December 18, 2003. Ratings Detail Sex and Violence in Video Games. Accessed from Foxnews.com on 12/13/08

(n.d..) December 01, 2005. Video Game Violence Outrages Watchdog Group. Accessed from foxnews.com on 12/13/08

(n.d.) 29 Oct 2008. Fallout 3 Review. Accessed from foxnews.com on 12/13/08

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