Fox News certainly made sure to hit all of the “important” talking points and keywords in a short five-minute segment: illegitimate African-American families, heterosexuals, how America is no longer the great nation it once was (expressed through the filter of marriage and family values), President Barack Obama not caring, Obama coupled with drone strikes, Obama talked about in relation to Russia and Iran, abortion, birth control, and food stamps. This video and transcript was just a litany of verbal rambling, going from one Fox News viewer-appeasing subject to the next. The segment started with the research conducted by the Pew Research Center on how the traditional Nuclear Family is fading from view and then ended in talking about former President Obama and drone strikes. Certainly in the context of a half hour or hour-long television news program this transition is warranted, but when curating segments of the show for the internet, a more isolated topic focus should be taken. Nonetheless, Fox News decided to offer a full-spectrum five-minute clip to its internet users.
The most interesting part of this news clip was the moment when Charles Krauthammer began to mention that the rising percentage of out of wedlock birthrate was also effecting the white working class and Bill O’reilly immediately interrupted him, knowing that any likening of white people to black people would not go over well with Fox News viewers. O’Rielly was perfectly comfortable pointing out himself a statistic that degraded African-Americans, but when Krauthammer countered by saying that same statistic was applicable to the white working class, O’Reilly immediately cut him off, asking a question about birth control to redirect the subject of conversation away from white people. This is very interesting because it highlights the mindless interview tactics Bill O’Reilly’s used when his show was on air.