Critics Weaponize ‘Loudest Voice’ Against Fox News
There’s little doubt the new Showtime miniseries “The Loudest Voice” will take an unflattering look at Fox News.
Many in the entertainment field loathe the only right-leaning network in a sea of liberal media. What else motivates a look at its founder? Russell Crowe stars as Roger Ailes, the mind behind the “Fair and Balanced” network.
TV critics are doing more than analyze the series, which debuts at 10 p.m. June 30 on Showtime. They’re using it to hammer the network Ailes started.
Hard.
It’s as if MSNBC, a channel dedicated to promoting progressives 24/7, didn’t exist.
Most critics, to date, seem underwhelmed by the production. It’s too on-the-nose, too over the top to fully explore Ailes and his media creation. Where are the surprises, the insights that would make a miniseries like this pop?
The liberal IndieWire.com took that angle. Then, it bared its fangs toward the review’s true target.
“Greatest” is probably the wrong word, given Showtime’s miniseries highlights the most dangerous innovations and salacious sins of the Fox News titan.
The miniseries doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, says the site’s critic. Then he blames all of modern news’ woes at Fox News’ feet.
But at times, at least, the Showtime limited series produced by Blumhouse Television is a compelling, even artful, historical horror show out to remind viewers how “news” and politics were manipulated into the sorry state they’re in today.
Mind you, MSNBC just spent two-plus years insisting President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election. Did someone at Fox News turn CNN into a clown show where major news stories are hidden far, far away and the most outrageous rhetoric is the norm?
But Fox News bad!
It gets worse.
Turning it around, I can’t imagine “The Loudest Voice” being so much as a fly on Fox News’ radar. It’s got bigger fish to fry, more fake news to create, and probably doesn’t see a good reason to revisit their founder’s rise and fall at this particular moment, even to take a swat at a besmirching nuisance. As much as I hate to agree with Ailes’ brainchild on anything, I might have to there.
Deadline.com reviews the film as if whatever happens on Fox News today is reflected in America tomorrow, if not earlier.
Pretty much designed for the coastal media audience that has written about Ailes, FNC and the Murdochs over the decades, the discovered drama of The Loudest Voice is the muted screaming matches between the once NBC News executive and the New Corp kingpin over who really rules Fox News and therefore America’s political agenda.
Methinks the one network that leans right is living in this critic’s head.
Rolling Stone follows suit, clutching its journalistic pearls over a single news network’s clout.
[Ailes] wants to give conservatives their own platform and the public a constant stream of fear and loathing.
Forbes.com served up its own clumsy attack on the network.
The show does nothing to enhance the understanding of Ailes. People will continue to view him as reprehensible as they did going into the series. They will not find understanding for him or clarity in what he did over his two decades at the helm of what has become a very damaging network to political discourse.
CNN regularly compares President Trump to “Hitler.” Think that hurts political discourse?
RELATED: “Loudest Voice” Star Tells Colbert the Hard Truth About Media Bias
Variety starts its review by calling Fox News “toxically watchable” before this unintentionally funny aside.
…we see him, in an early conference, indicating that which a 2019 viewer will already know well, that Fox’s success will depend on its deep appeal to a narrow slice of the viewership.
Who knew half the country represented a “narrow slice?”
Later, the Variety critic ties “The Loudest Voice” together with “Spotlight,” the Oscar winning film about the sex abuse scandal in the Boston diocese. Both projects share a writer – Oscar winner Tom McCarthy.
…that film was a portrait of complicated heroes crusading against a rotten institution; “The Loudest Voice” has at its center such an institution, led by an uncomplicated villain.
These hard-left reviews do us all one hefty favor. They remind us why Fox News exists in the first place.