Opinion

Time to bring FOX News to UMaine

UMaine says that it's always in favor of 'diversity'

By Luke Denatale

Posted on Dec. 15, 2005, at 12:00 a.m.

Fox News strikes fear into the heart of Student Auxiliary Services, SAS, the entity that controls television programming at the University of Maine.

I’ve noticed since day one that crappy food wasn’t the only problem on campus. The news networks that we receive are fairly biased; CNN, CBS, NBC and MSNBC all qualify as fairly liberal stations. Now, ideologies aside, wouldn’t anyone appreciate the full spectrum of newscasts? For example, if all this campus received was conservative newscasts, this article would probably be asking ‘why aren’t there any liberal biased newscasts?’ I enjoy “fair and balanced” news. As much as it sounds like a slogan for healthy cereal, it’s true.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching the sessions of the British parliament late night on C-SPAN as much as the next chap, but our television lineup could use some “diversification.” I personally know that the UMaine College Republicans are mounting an offense on this front, although still on the hush-hush, I can tell you that there is a fair amount of strong support behind getting Fox News on campus.

SAS has been especially hostile to the establishment of Fox News. To those of you who didn’t know, there was a campus e-mail survey sent to every resident on how the television lineup could be improved. Unfortunatly, the SAS refused to release such information. So far any attempt to make a change in the television lineup the SAS has stonewalled by not returning e-mail and phone messages. The official message received was foggy to say the least, as far as details go. The basic idea was that you have to wait till spring 06′ to request a change in the television stations.

Their argument is basically this: “Fox News does not come with our current cable package.” Sounds like a ducking statement; everyone knows that Fox News is pretty much standard in every cable package. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the cable company provides the Fox News Channel but SAS removed it from the lineup. It would be interesting to see what the results of the survey were, but alas, bureaucracy rears its ugly head once again, or perhaps this is considered “confidential” information. Most of my liberal friends enjoy watching Fox News for the humor of it, or just to watch O’Reilly “make a fool of himself.” As much as some people hate Fox News, one cannot deny that it has a really good format and is fairly easy and fun to watch. I want to ask SAS personally to do this, not just for everyone who likes to watch Fox News on campus, but because Christmas is right around the corner, and all I want for Christmas is a Fair and Balanced news cast.

Luke Denatale is third-year political science major and a member of the UMaine College Republicans.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.