One of the perks cable TV offers is Fox News, America's favourite news channel. They see themselves as "Fair and balanced", emphasising at every oppurtunity that "We report, you decide", just in case we were getting, you know, the wrong idea. According to its sloganeers, Fox News tells it how it is. Avoiding any CNN-style lefty bullshit, this is a home-grown, unashamedly patriotic slice of Americana. Obviously I've never respected Fox in the slightest, but it was easier to write it off as a joke when it was yet to wield such power over the way Americans see themselves and the world. But lately, things have been getting pretty crazy. Their aim seems increasingly to be this: make news as entertaining as possible through the provision of visceral excitement as one would find in a summer blockbuster... assuming the said blockbuster had lots and lots of guns. Accordingly the Fox news viewer is bombarded with "News Alerts", "Terror Warnings", American flags, weird graphics that seem to always incorporate stylised gun sights (NRA affiliation?), all complimented by blonde newsreaders who seem to have emerged from a very small and specific genetic pool. New heights of ridiculousness were reached over the last few months when their latest innovation was rolled out: with every news headline that appears on the screen, there comes with it a gunshot sound, as if the graphic is being shot into the frame. The sound hack who dreamed that up totally deserves a promotion, cause that is gold: "Even if the story doesn't have any guns, we can still have guns!" Whether or not it aids the dissemination of news and information is irrelevant, cause what it does do is unwittingly capture perfectly the tone of a newly uber-patriotic and increasingly militaristic America. But Fox news does have its finger on the pulse. It was the first to proudly hoist the ubiquitous American flag in the top left-hand corner of the screen; it was first to feature constant "Terror alert" updates in the news ticker, and... it was first to slot in a news ticker. More insidiously, Fox led the pack in the race to shift the tone of news reporting from level-headed objectivity to patriotic flag-waving, with CNN (always somewhat suspect itself) soon kicking up its heals to follow suit. With its "pro-America at all costs" mentality, lack of any real international news, or more importantly, any sense of plural perspective, it's not at all surprising really that Fox is currently America's news carrier of choice, which leaves me amused and terrified.