In a world full of embarrassing 24-hour news coverage, Fox News never fails to separate themselves from their competition with consistently idiotic commentary on a number of topics.
This week, the network may have even outdone themselves. On their show “The Five,” co-host Bob Beckel, a token pseudo-liberal voice on the conservatively biased network, said arguably the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a long time.
“When was the last time you heard about a rape on a college campus?,” Beckel said during a segment on whether or not women should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus to prevent sexual assaults.
As members of a college community, and reality in general, you should be offended by the statement. It is quite literally the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
According to the Centers of Disease Control, 20 to 25 percent of women reported to experiencing either attempted or completed sexual assault while in college. Given that the overwhelming vast majority of sexual assaults go unreported for a variety of reasons, Beckel’s comments are nothing short of completely moronic.
This isn’t little know information either. It’s certainly knowledge people getting paid lot of money to intelligently discuss the topic on TV should have Googled before the show.
The cynical side of me tells me Beckel was just saying nonsense because that’s what the entertainment side of Fox News wants him to do. The network has always valued entertainment over journalism, that’s why they have the likes of Bill O’Reilly shouting at us about how the world is going to end on a nightly basis.
Many media critics agree that the network brings in little known and/or more timid liberals to debate their aggressive conservative hosts, so that the conservative argument is more apparent.
Beckel is apparently filling the network’s infamous technique of adding seemingly incompetent “liberal” personnel into the rotation to dumb down any leftist point of view that might sneak its way into their “fair and balanced” coverage.
Because that comment was just too stupid to believe. If it wasn’t a network attempting to weaken a liberal point of view, then it was a network that hired a moron to discuss issues. Actually, it was probably both.
Will DeShong is a senior Communication major and the Editor-in Chief of the Rocket.
