My gym suddenly tuned several of the TVs to Fox 'news' - could use DUer help in getting it changed

[JudyM]

I'm going to write to the gym chain's management office to ask them to set a policy of 'no Fox' at all their clubs. Worth a try to prevent the innocents from swallowing that poison. Just need a few really good tight key articles proving Fox is not a valid news outlet, if anyone has happened to bookmark anything particularly persuasive. From objective sources, since there's new management and I'm suspicious of their leanings -- may have to be convincing.

Thanks!

[BlueJazz]

1. There's an article/post on DU about how people that watch Fox News are 20% lowere in IQ...

...than the average bird (or something like that)

Show them that.

[AldoLeopold]

3. Might have been a pre-existing condition though

[JudyM]

13. Right, I just saw that one last night. Doesn't say much for the managers

who decided to tune to FOX! LOL

[rainin]

2. What about a call-in campaign?

I'm new here, so I don't know if this is discouraged, but could you ask people on DU to call the office to suggest that they change the channel because it is offensive? Just a thought. Let me know if that sort of request is frowned upon. I'm just learning the ropes.

[JudyM]

16. Clever idea. I never heard of that being frowned on on DU. Will think about it! nt

[Walk away]

4. Consider investing $30 in a Njnja Remote!

Just slip it into your pocket at the gym and flip channels, turn off or anything else you feel like. A lot of these places get their cable feed free from FOX. They play all fox all the time.

http://guyism.com/tech/gadgets/ninja-remote-lets-you-switch-channels-on-any-tv.html

You may need to go Ninja! I did it at a local eatery and they dropped the service and got regular cable.

[JudyM]

17. Interesting. Never heard of this gadget.

Don't want to invest any $ in this, though good to know for the future. Thanks!

[Cleita]

5. In my gym the management puts on ESPN, The Travel Channel and Fox and some really bad rock.

station on the radio. During the day patrons tune to CNN or MSNBC. The management goes back to Fox or the Travel Channel. It goes on back and forth all day long. The trainers and instructors complain about the Travel Channel because it's 90% about food and most people are on diets. Still the management puts on Fox and the Travel Channel no matter what when no one is looking. I load my MP3 player with audio books and drown them all out.

[still_one]

6. Tell them you will take your business elsewhere

[Cleita]

7. For some of us there is no elsewhere when they are the only gym in town. n/t

[GeorgiaDemGuy]

8. My gym is a chain

Many of their franchises in my city.
Each one has different tv networks on at different times of days/weekends.
Weekends more sports put on.
Weekdays different news channels.
It may depend on the demographics of your area.....I live in metro atlanta area and those gyms "outside of the perimeter/more repub area" almost all have at least one on fox news and maybe one on cnn....those "inside the perimeter/more dem area" usually do not have fox and have cnn and/or msnbc.
Usually the manager of the club decides these things.
I've "encouraged" them to change the fox news channels before and sometimes it works and sometimes not.
Usually these guys are apolitical and don't care what's on....they just don't want to be bothered to change it.

Good luck in your efforts.....ridding the world of FAUX noise is a fantasy of mine....lol.

[JudyM]

18. I'm in No VA -- Key swing area nationally, so it's important to curb public viewing of Fox. nt

[SheilaT]

9. I have a really novel suggestion.

No TV in the gym.

I find it disturbing that no one seems able to spend any time whatsoever away from a TV screen. How about you just do the workout? If you really need to occupy some other part of your brain, bring an ipod or something like that.

No matter what station or network the TVs are tuned to, lots of people aren't going to want to watch whatever it is. But more to the point, why in the world is it considered necessary to have the TVs there in the first place?

I really, really hate it that TVs are too often on in waiting rooms, as if no one is capable of just waiting quietly. Or reading a book. Or doing math homework. Or knitting. Something, anything other than just mindless watching.

[sigmasix]

10. with hold you membership dues

Explain to them that you do not feel comfortable being forced to be exposed to the pornography of hate that F*X "news" broadcasts, and if they value your continued business they should refrain from showing pornography of this type on the business property. You could explain that the presence of morally offensive media destroys the comfortable atmosphere that you require to be able to acheive your physical fitness goals.
Many hospital and clinic waiting areas are tuned to F*X "news"- I always inform the employee at the desk that I came to the clinic to fight cancer, not to be insulted by partisan politically-motivated bloviations and hyperbole. If I think the restaurant or medical facility employee is going to ignore my request to change the channel, I generally manually turn the whole TV off- I get lot's of dirty looks but I dont care: F*X "news" is destroying our country and our future by attempting to disentegrate common American cohesion. It's easier to attack large demographic groups if they can be divided into smaller parts or groups. I'm sure that your service contract includes language garaunteeing a comfortable and non-harrassing work-out atmosphere. Breaking the contract shouldnt be that hard if they refuse to supply a comfortable, non harrassing environment that makes it possible to acheive you fitness goals- that the gym claims to be interested in helping you to acheive. Fuck any business that has F*X "news" tuned in to customer TVs. Mostly, I give them one warning, then they lose my business if they act put-out or just plain shitty about it. I love going into restaurants with F*x "News" on the tv, ordering a big, expensive meal and waiting until the food is being brought out to the table before I leave- I always make sure to inform them that their choice for F*X "news" in the dining area cost the resaurant all the food and money- and any future business they could have earned from me is gone- and I always get the most expensive menu items too.
Fuck Rupert Murdoch and the monster that gave birth to him.

[no_hypocrisy]

11. My gym is a democracy.

Three screens and a universal whammy box.

If you show up and nobody's in front of a screen, you get first choice of channels. But if someone shows up later and wants another channel, they ask you if you would mind if they changed it. You can either agree or ask for more time on your channel. Likewise if you show up and someone's already watching a channel and you'd like another one. All you do is ask everyone (usually 1 or 2 people) if they'd mind if you changed the channel. Nobody gets an attitude and generally accommodates their neighbor.

[JudyM]

14. You're lucky. That'd be nice but members don't have access to the remote. nt

[Curmudgeoness]

12. That sucks....I would hate to be forced to listen to Faux "News".

Here are a lot of videos showing bias, although I am not sure the management will find this site to be reputable.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA3BD2524FE99BD4D

And if you seriously want to research and dig deep (I don't want to), Wikipedia has "Fox News Channel controversies" with a lot of links to studies or facts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel_controversies#Studies_of_reporting_bias

Good luck.

[JudyM]

15. Great! Thanks for that last link. nt

[progree]

19. Turn Off Fox News Campaign

From an email list I got a couple years ago.

================================================
1. Turn Off FOX in public places!!!
Posted by: (deleted)
Date: Fri Aug 27, 2010 4:44 pm ((PDT))

Dear friends,

Many of us already know that Fox News is biased -- but it's actually much worse than that. For years they have used lies, distortions, and race-baiting to divide this country. Recently, it's gotten downright dangerous. Earlier this summer, a heavily armed man got into a gun fight with police after he was pulled over on his way to kill people at the Tides Foundation^{1} -- an obscure non-profit that Glenn Beck regularly demonizes on his Fox News TV show.^{2}

Fox News is bad news for America -- and it spreads, and is legitimized, partly through TVs in public places.

That's why I've joined the TurnOffFox campaign -- the first part of a larger campaign to diminish the influence of Fox. It's about educating people about Fox and getting it turned off in stores, restaurants, and other public places.

Will you join me? It takes just a moment to declare your own household "Fox free", and at the same time appeal to public establishments in your community to stop playing Fox. And you'll get a FREE Turn Off Fox sticker when you do. Click here:

http://colorofchange.org/turnofffox/?id=2162-1286706

No other news organization that's considered legitimate consistently wages smear campaigns based on lies and race-baiting. But for years Fox News has done exactly that, and the pattern has only gotten worse since Barack Obama entered national politics.

Here are just a few examples:

-- A frequent Fox guest, Jesse Lee Peterson, said that the majority of Black people have poor moral character, and cited "what they did to the dome" after Hurricane Katrina as evidence.^{3} Peterson has also used his platform on Fox to claim that 90% of Black people are racists -- against Whites.^{4}

-- In a case of naked race-baiting, Fox host Glenn Beck called President Obama a "racist" who had a "deep-seated hatred for White people or the White culture."^{5} Earlier that week, Beck claimed that the President's health insurance reform proposals were a form of "reparations" designed to "settle old racial scores."^{6}

-- Fox host John Stossel argued that the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act -- which prevents businesses from discriminating based on race, sex, and other factors -- should be repealed.^{7}

-- Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity were the first to air deceptively edited and incomplete video of Shirley Sherrod's remarks to the NAACP.^{8} The video made it seem like Sherrod was confessing to using her position at the USDA to discriminate against White farmers, when she was really talking about the importance of overcoming prejudice. Sherrod lost her job over this misrepresentation, which Fox enthusiastically repeated without seeking the facts. Fox has since tried to pretend it had nothing to do with this smear -- but Fox is the number one reason these kinds of distortions and smears have any part in our national dialogue.

The examples above aren't even a tenth of Fox's vicious lies and smears, and over the years they've just gotten more brazen.

The goal of Turn Off Fox is to reduce the number of public TVs showing Fox News, while spreading the word about Fox's poison (and how it works) to those who don't know.

Signing up for the campaign is just the first step. We make it easy for you to tell us about businesses playing Fox. If you're willing to talk with them, we'll provide you with straightforward materials that explain why they shouldn't be a party to what Fox is doing. And if there are businesses you know that want to tell the world they would never play Fox, you can help them declare themselves a "Fox-free zone."

As businesses Turn off Fox and stand up as Fox Free, and as we encourage our friends and family to do the same, we'll help make clear, to people across the country, what Fox is about. And we'll reduce their ability to do harm.

Please join me in signing up for the TurnOffFox campaign:

http://colorofchange.org/turnofffox/?id=2162-1286706

Thanks.

References

1. http://bit.ly/a5F7kW
2. http://mediamatters.org/research/201007290032
3. http://mediamatters.org/research/200510030005
4. http://bit.ly/c060C0
5. http://mediamatters.org/research/200907300019
6. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907230040
7. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201005200033
8. http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007200060