IT WAS GEORGE ORWELL'S NOVEL NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR AS INTRODUCED THE NEWSPEAK WORD "PROLEFEED" INTO THE LANGUAGE, referring to such news and information as was, by design, false, inaccurate or otherwise misleading for deliberate dissemiation to the Lower Classes.

In other words, serving no value than pacifying the poor, undereducated and easily-influenced as a cheap opiate to distract attention from The Bigger Issues affecting their socioeconomic situation.

Think Progress has an interesting item about just how far gone into prolefeed Fox News Channel is:

[On Monday, 17th inst.], the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) put out its annual report on the "State of the News Media." While the 2008 presidential campaign and the debate over Iraq were overwhelmingly the top subjects of cable news, the networks still devoted a substantial amount of coverage to celebrity affairs. For example, the death of Anna Nicole Smith received more coverage than the Valerie Plame scandal, the U.S. attorney purge, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Fox News led the cable networks in the most amount of celebrity coverage and the least amount of Iraq war coverage. PEJ notes:

MSNBC, at least in terms of time spent, was indeed the place for politics in 2007 — by nearly double over its rivals in the percentage of time studied (28% vs. 12% on CNN and 15% on Fox News). Fox, in turn, spent less time on the war in Iraq than the others (10% vs. 18% on MSNBC and 16% on CNN). And it was more oriented to crime, celebrity and the media than its rivals (28% vs. 19% on MSNBC and 16% on CNN).

A look at the Iraq coverage of CNN, Fox, and MSNBC:

As ThinkProgress reported in March 2007, three weeks after Anna Nicole's death, Fox News and MSNBC still devoted more time to the late celebrity than to the Walter Reed scandal. Fox gave Anna Nicole roughly 12 times more coverage.

Fox may not be ashamed of PEJ's latest findings. Last year, Fox News's John Gibson defended his celebrity coverage by accusing reporters—such as CNN's Anderson Cooper—of "news-guy snobbery." Gibson claimed that people were "a little weary" of war coverage" and wanted "a little something else."

(In other words, what the Lower Classes really want in their news coverage is sugar-coated distractionary having little, if any, realistic news or informational value, as if implying where the audiences in Podunk Centre and Doo Wah Diddy "can't handle the truth." Which, come to think of it, could be further used to justify the dumping of infomercials by certain FreeVee outlets without access to sports programmes or "good"--er, trashy--movies.)

Reinforcing this lack of disregard for "real" news on Fox Prolefeed's part, as above summarised, is this item from the ConWebWatch blog:

A March 17 MRC "Media Reality Check" by Rich Noyes declares:

Analysts at the Media Research Center have studied TV news coverage of the Iraq war from the beginning, even before the first bombs fell on Baghdad in March 2003. The record shows the networks have trumpeted bad news—setbacks for the U.S. coalition and allegations of misdeeds by American troops—while minimizing good news such as the success of the 2007 troop surge and acts of heroism by U.S. soldiers.

But nearly all of the 11 studies Noyes cites are focused only on the broadcast networks or a specific network--two focus only on ABC (one of those solely on ABC anchor Peter Jennings), two focus only on NBC (one solely on then-NBC reporter Peter Arnett). One study focused only on cable news coverage. None offer a comprehensive look at all "TV news coverage of the Iraq war."

Why so little focus on cable news? Perhaps because it doesn't want to be put in the position of having to criticize conservative-friendly (not to mention MRC-friendly) Fox News. MRC, after all, has a history of running to Fox News' defense.

The lone cable news-focused MRC study of Iraq war coverage, in December 2006, made Fox News look good: It claimed that, unlike MSNBC and CNN, Fox News "was better able to balance the bad news with more optimistic news of U.S. achievements in Iraq," unashamedly rehashing Fox News' "fair and balanced" slogan. The study does not state whether news events in Iraq from the period of time studied warranted the "balance" that Fox News provided and the MRC lauded.

One MRC study, issued Feb. 28, claimed that "[w]hen U.S. casualties began to steadily decline, TV coverage of Iraq dramatically decreased" on the TV networks. That study, like nearly all of the others, excluded cable news coverage, and it uncritically repeats Bush administration talking points claiming that "the President's surge strategy is well on its way to succeeding."

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism's State of the News Media 2008 report, however, showed this trend of declining coverage was not limited to the purportedly liberal news networks: It found that Fox News "spent less time on the war in Iraq" than CNN and MSNBC, and it was "more oriented to crime, celebrity and the media than its rivals." (h/t Think Progress.)

The MRC does not mention this, nor does it note Fox News' previous hostility toward airing negative Iraq war coverage:

• John Gibson claimed that those who criticized news channels for obsessive coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death while minimizing Iraq war coverage (like Fox News) were suffering from "news-guy snobbery."
• Bill O'Reilly, responding to a previous PEJ study with similar findings for Fox News, defended the lack of coverage of negative Iraq war news by asserting that it does not "highlight every terrorist attack because we learn nothing from that. And that's exactly what the terrorists want us to do." O'Reilly also asserted, without evidence, that "CNN and MSNBC are actually helping the terrorists by reporting useless explosions. ... I'm not gonna cover every bomb that goes off in Tikrit, because it's meaningless."

These studies are not unlike a lot of other MRC studies--they are driven too much by the MRC's conservative bias to be trusted without question.

Which just goes to show that Fox Prolefeed's theme music should more correctly be "It's Good News Week!" by Hedgehoppers Anonymous, vintage 1965, what with its inherent lyrical irony:

It's Good News Week!
Someone's dropped a bomb somewhere,
Contaminating atmosphere
And blackening the sky....

It's Good News Week!
Someone's found a way to give
The Rotting Dead a will to live,
Go on and never die....

Have you heard the news?
What did it say?
Who won that race?
What's the weather like today?

It's Good News Week!
Families shake their need for gold
By stimulating birth control,
We're wanting less to eat....*

It's Good News Week!
Doctors finding many ways
Of wrapping brains in metal trays
To keep us from the heat....

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*An alternate version of this verse hath it:

It's Good News Week!
Lots of blood in Asia now;
They've butchered off the sacred cow,
They've got a lot to eat....