Typically, when Americans arrive in a foreign country, they don’t rush to turn on the TV, do they? They’re in a new, interesting, stimulating place, and you’d think they’d be off seeing the sights and exploring the area. At least, that’s what I do.
Not our uncurious president, though. First thing he does on his trip to the UK is look for Fox News, and get distressed when he can’t find it.
Just arrived in the United Kingdom,Trump tweeted.The only problem is that @CNN is the primary source of news available from the U.S. After watching it for a short while, I turned it off. All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop. Why doesn’t owner @ATT do something?
He’s in a privileged position of responsibility — he’s going to meet various political leaders and the queen, he’s got formal dinners to attend, and here he is, bitter that he can’t watch his idiot sycophants on Fox & Friends, and worse, is shouting it out on the internet to the world.
Old man, there’s a reason Fox News died in the UK: it’s the Republican Party Propaganda Channel. It’s a narrow niche, and people outside the USA and outside of your partisan worldview find it repellent and ugly. It would do you some good to acquire a different perspective, which is one of the benefits of travel. Unfortunately, you won’t get that perspective if you hide in your hotel room watching the TV and get all your meals from the local McDonalds.
Given what Farage is campaigning for, I very much doubt that Fox News is not available in the UK because of people finding it ugly and repellent
Baby needs his woobie. I hope someone changed his nappy after this tantrum.
Actually, in my experience, even CNN is not really all that big in the UK as a source of news about the USA. I would estimate that, if you were to rank the various TV news programmes that report news about the USA by viewers (though it’s because they report on news throughout the world, and the USA is part of that), number one would probably actually be the BBC. In no particular order, that would be followed by ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky, and only after all of those, CNN would come. It is probably the biggest that is an actual American news outlet, though.
Fox News isn’t on-air in the UK. But that’s not because it’s white supremacist; there are plenty of British people that that would appeal to. It’s because it’s American imperialist, and British racists don’t want to be told that they are second-class in the American Empire.
Imagine if there was a TV channel that kept going on about how great the British Empire was and how much better the USA would be if it had never left. American racists wouldn’t watch it, however keen it was on crushing black and brown people.
Someone should have tuned his TV to RT and let him watch Putin’s propaganda channel. They manage to come up with a version of the fascist international worldview that isn’t specific to any one nation (not even Russia) and so works as an international TV channel.
Should have watched sky news. It’s full of right wing reactionary dick-wits.
How is 45 supposed to know what to say if he doesn’t have Faux Noos to prompt him and fill his empty head? How will he survive without Hannity puckering up and kissing his ass constantly? He is just going to wither away without someone gratuitously pumping up his ego. So sad!
Honestly, what a moron. Firstly, he would have been watching the international version of CNN. Sure, there is a lot of cross over and shared content with domestic (US) CNN, but what he was watching is targeted for an international audience. I’m sure he had no idea of the difference. Which leads to the second point. There is no international FOX news because FOX news is only about promoting the Republican Party; a pointless endeavor outside the US. I guess you have to not understand that to find FOX News content worthy.
Also, does he honestly think the UK people want to hear news all about the US, 24/7? Is he not aware there is plenty of Murdoch media in the UK that he can consume? The sad thing is, even though it has a right wing bent, he might just discover it is not catered specifically for him and his lot and will contain content he might find shocking. There is no hope he would learn anything, though.
We have a president who can’t think beyond the concerns of himself and his TV room.
On the whole, British racists still prefer their racism served up with a light coating of deniability. Farage is bright enough to do that – you have to dig a bit to discover just how vile he is – while the (just resigned) leader of his former party, Gerald Batten, and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, humiliated with 2% of the vote in the North-West region, are not.
Worse, in a follow-up tweet he quite literally called for a boycott of the mother company AT&T.
Imagine one of the last POTUSes using their power of office to attack an (American) corporation like that. And if I remember correctly, it was not even legal for him to do so, but I am not an expert on this.
You know, he can’t even get that right.
Nobody in the UK watches American news channels for news on America. Nobody. When we watch TV news we almost always watch the BBC. A few will watch Channel 4 News too, and even fewer will watch ITV or Sky News, or the reflections in the side of a battered kettle to supplement it.
It’s unfair, I suppose, but we British have a tendency not to trust or believe anything a foreigner has to say – even about matters related to foreign climes where you might think they have some kind of useful perspective on things. We’d far rather hear about the affairs of foreign countries from a proper, RP-speaking English person we’ve sent out to have a look than from the people on the ground (who probably don’t understand how disagreeably foreign they are in any case, and may even break into speaking a foreign language, which instantly disqualifies anyone from being taken seriously). When the foreigners in question do speak English as a native language, it is invariably one of those inferior foreign types of English that are only one step up from French, and makes you sound like an idiot. It takes a lot of effort to convince an English person that you can be trusted to tell the truth if you are not also English yourself.
Mind you, given the quality of visitors we tend to get from your part of the world these days, I don’t think our attitude can be entirely condemned.
Personally, I get most of my news from reading the BBC website, some from listening to BBC Radio 4, and the rest from reading the occasional newspaper (Guardian or Telegraph – it’s fun to compare biases).
Who’d watch TV to get the news? :)
I do miss Alistair Cooke, the (only) man who could explain the USA to us Brits. Sadly, we lost him 15 years ago. Jon Sopel’s not bad, but it’s not the same.
The BBC keeps reporting that the British public is “divided” about Trump. IMHO the vast majority of us are united in loathing.
I wonder whether Alistair Cooke would have been able to make any sense of Trump for us. I suspect not.
Just more evidence that conservatism, as an ideology, is a cult. Conservatives absolutely need their fix, validating all their contemptuous and ignorant thoughts and prejudices. They just can’t go without.
I also miss Spitting Image, their thorougly vulgar humor would have been perfect for these times.
There is a time for subtle stuff like “Yes, Minister” and there is a time for Cartman getting prodded by aliens.
I am not familiar with British media laws, but in Canada the law does not permit a TV station to deliberately lie. This killed off the bid for a Canadian clone of Fox News.
Perhaps not apropos of much of anything, whilst not actually in teh NKofE (N.Korea of Europe, formerly known as the “U”K) — I’m in France — I tend to get most of my (general English language) news from the Grauniad, the Irish Times, France24, Al Jazeera, the dead tree edition of the International New York Times (formerly known as the IHT), the BBC, and a smattering of USian sites. Heavily N.American / Eurocentric, I know… albeit except for the INYT / IHT, and other USAian sites (spot the pattern there!), the coverage of non N.American / non-European events and situations is at least interesting, if perhaps a bit too sparse.
Given how many Americans are obsessed with what royal offspring is popping out of which royal vagina, he probably thinks the Brits are as obsessed with American matters as well.
This bloke in The Guardian has a piss take on the snatch snatcher and his twitter habit.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/03/president-trump-visit-queen-buckingham-palace-london-england
@18
that was brilliant I could read his wit all day thanks
uncle frogy
davidc1@18/unclefrogy@19, John Crace’s (almost-)daily politics sketch in the Grauniad has been on fire (in a good way) for many months now, trolling brexit and other shenanigans. Today’s column, Trump tolerates May with his mind focused on sycophantic colonic irrigation, is also a fairly good one. I myself particularly liked this line, “[hair furor] barely made it through his script, time and again stumbling over words. English is the president’s second language. Bollocks being the first.”
UF@19 Glad you enjoyed it .BLF@20 The snatch snatcher had problems with the word liberation today.
birgerjohansson @15 the Canadian attempt at creating a Fox News clone, Sun News Network, failed because it couldn’t get enough viewers. One report claimed at least one prime time segment had zero viewers amongst the advertiser coveted 25-54 age demographic. In 2013 CBC reported the average viewership per hour for SNN was 8000 viewers. SNN did run afoul of the industry run Canadian Broadcast Standards Council a couple of times, but that didn’t put the network at risk of closure.
As for Fox News it is in fact available on the major Canadian cable and satellite TV providers such as Rogers and Shaw.
vole@12:
Well, he wasn’t entirely lost, at least not all at one go.
The reason that Sky removed the Fox News channel in the UK after 15 years was not because it was “no longer commercially viable” but because Vile Uncle Rupe was afraid it would spoil his bid to take over the reaming part of sky that wasn’t already in the grasp of his tentacles. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/29/sky-to-stop-broadcasting-rightwing-us-channel-fox-news-in-uk
In the event, the bid failed. Sky is now owned by Comcast.
Aargh! I should have used the preview. ReMAINing.