The Hollywood Reporter
Fairleigh Dickinson University’s recent study about how people’s media diets affects their knowledge of current events didn’t cast a positive light on Fox News: People who watched only that channel scored lower than those who watched no news at all, the study said.
An unnamed Fox spokesperson lowered the boom on the school:
“Considering FDU’s undergraduate school is ranked as one of the worst in the country,” said the FNC spokesperson, “we suggest the school invest in improving its weak academic program instead of spending money on frivolous polling – their student body does not deserve to be so ill-informed.”
Anonymous spokespersoning is SOP at many networks, but it’s especially lame in this case: an ad-schoolinem attack (or whatever you call insulting a university) rather than a response to the survey findings. But as apropos-of-nothing insults go, it’s pretty good!
Fox should be trumpeting the smack-talk mastery of this unnamed flack rather than forcing him or her to hide in the shadows. (Also, reporters: When spokespeople ask to be unnamed, you know you can say no, right?)
Still, we’re talking about a news organization where anonymity is wielded with uncommon agility: Earlier this week Howard Kurtz wrote that a “senior Fox News executive” told him that Fox News chairman Roger Ailes regretted calling New York Times reporters “a bunch of lying scum.” (Note to Kurtz: See above.)
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