This is Round 32 in our Worst Company in America contest, News Corp vs Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company, marking the end of tier 1 voting (phew!). Vote which sucks more, inside…
Here’s what our readers said when they nominated these two companies:
News Corp:
“The company that brings us Faux News, crappy reality series on Fox and the hive of scum (idiot self-centered teens) and villainy (sexual predators) that is MySpace. Oh yeah, and the Post too! Not only they want the WSJ, they want a piece of Yahoo! as well.”
“Allah/God/SpaceInvaders have mercy on you morons that don’t know why.”
Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company:
No readers specified why, but we suspect it has to do with them putting cows they knew were sick into the food supply for little kiddies to eat for their school lunch. Just look up “downer cows.”
This is a post in our Worst Company In America 2008 series. The companies nominated for this honor were chosen by you, the readers. Keep track of all the goings on at consumerist.com/tag/worst-company-in-america/
STILL OPEN FOR VOTING:
Chase vs United Healthcare
Clear Channel vs Toyota
Countrywide Home Loans vs Dish Network
Sprint vs Hewlett Packard
Blue Cross Blue Shield vs CNN
Gamestop vs Monster Cable
Bank Of America vs Toys R’ Us
Toshiba vs Microsoft
US Airways vs Washington Mutual
American Airlines vs Blockbuster
Time Warner Cable vs Radioshack
Wellpoint vs Charter Cable
Dell vs Home Depot
Sears vs Citibank
Wal-Mart vs TJMaxx
Mattel vs ATT
Capital One vs Video Professor
eBay/Paypal vs COX
Apple vs SallieMae
Diebold Vs Pfizer
MTV vs TransUnion
CompUSA vs DirecTV
Target vs Best Buy
Allstate vs Verizon
DeBeers vs 1800 flowers
Starbucks vs United Airlines
Exxon vs Crocs
Google Vs Sony
Ticketmaster vs Wachovia
Facebook vs The American Arbitration Association
Comcast vs Menu Foods
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Hey, at least Fox brings us the Simpsons (and House, I suppose). And you can always change the channel, etc., etc. It’s awfully hard to tell which packer your meat came from.
They should put every News Corp product separately in the competition. Myspace and FOX News have their individual reserved spots in hell.
@bohemian:
Fox news, like the Ionic Breeze, is an idiot bacon: If I see either at someone’s place, either 1) Last time I’m there or 2) I’ll gladly help them with computers/electronics/whatever but add a HUGE markup to stuff I buy on Newegg..
@chrylis: Wow. Yup, The Simpsons totally makes up for 4,000 US service-members unnecessarily, wastefully slaughtered, and >60,000 of them maimed beyond all recognition or functionality. For. Sure.
USA! USA! USA!
News Corp is an agent of propaganda that brings us closer to fascism everyday. No contest.
@Trai_Dep: Um, Fox did not start the war, your president and Congress did that by themselves. I’m hard-pressed to find any instance where Bush has listened to the general public whatsoever either before or after starting the war in Iraq. He does whatever he wants and could care less about you or me. Fox might “champion” it, but that’s an opinion and certainly NOT the same as Congress passing the law authorizing it (or Bush signing the orders to implementing it)…
@Trai_Dep: Mmmm… idiot bacon…
@Bladefist: Every comment I see you put on this site makes me hate republicans more and more… and my parents are republican. Why must you make me hate my parents?
I voted News Corp. They control much more than the food you may/may not put on your plate. Any corporation with that much control has to be evil.
It’s highly amusing to see the revisionism of how their efforts were so minor, their effects so miniscule. If you think propaganda has no role in effecting public opinion, and thus votes, you’re simply ignorant of history.
Fox was the GOP-friendly megaphone of first choice when the neocon cabal wanted to spread their lies. The White House considered them their “friendly” news outlet.
ALL of the falsehoods (except Judith Miller – nice work, White House!) used to hype the public into a baying mob originated and were promulgated the longest, by Fox.
Fox also led the charge of tarring anyone raising reasonable skepticism a McCarthyesque brush.
Fox viewers still form the largest US segment that thinks Iraq was responsible for the Twin Towers. If their role has no impact, why is that?
It’s only after Fiasco has been exposed for what it is that the Fox minions are scurrying to cover up their vast, coordinated efforts with the Republicans to get us mired in a neutralized country instead of avenging 9/11.
At least they’re consistent: they’re trying to hype a non-existent Iran threat and they’re doing their damnedest to ensure that McCain wins, to keep the US in Iraq for another hundred years. But hardly a change of heart, no?
@LUV2CattleCall: @Verdigris: Doh, That was meant for someone else. Joke wasted…
@Verdigris: You should talk to your parents, may you would learn something
@LUV2CattleCall: oh yer so coolz!
@Munsoned: The Bush blows never stop here. But congress is never mentioned, why? Well you know why. Before 2006, Congress would be taking as many blows as Bush does.
There is nothing wrong with being upset with the direction of this country. Feel free to do your part in November to change it. However, when you attack Bush for policies your congress could change, you sound like an idiot. Congress approval rating is worse then Bush’s, you ever hear about that? No. Wake. Up.
It’s great that the people here are so passionate about their feelings, but can you take a second away from the boob tube to look something up? So much of the stuff on here is just regurgitated slime.
As far as Fox news, their ratings are through the charts. I’m not saying what is popular is always right, however, have you ever thought maybe you’re wrong? Or did that never occur to you? I read so many sites, left wing, right wing, everything. I endure people I don’t agree with to be sure I’m getting all the facts. Try it.
@Bladefist: You should talk to your parents, may you would learn something
Like correct grammar? lolz
Anyways, as much as I’d like to follow in the footsteps of my hypocritical, conservative, christian parents… I find that thinking for myself and believing in what I want to believe in has done just fine for me. I don’t like either side of any argument to dictate what I think the outcome should be.
I think for myself, by myself… not blindly following some social agenda.
As much as I dislike Murdoch, and the cretinous “journalism” of The Sun, Fox did bring us House, Family Guy, King of the Hill and the first 8 seasons of the Simpsons.
Sick cows in food supply takes it for me.
Newscorp is bigger, and as we all know, the bigger the company, the worse it inevitably is. So sayeth the Internet!
But no, dangerous meat trumps me changing the channel or not buying WSJ, people.
@Verdigris: ah yes the grammar police. A sign of a losing argument.
You say Christian like its a bad thing.
I think for myself also. I’m generally more conservative then most public conservatives.
NewsCorp might want to make me kill myself out of anger and frustration but at least they aren’t selling stuff that can actually kill me (yet). Screwing with the food supply gets my vote
@Bladefist: I was simply making a joke. No hard feelings.
Being a Christian (sorry for the improper use of a captial C) is not a bad thing, in theory. Being a member of any religion is not a bad thing. However, being a member of one religion is basically saying that being a member of another religion is a bad thing. I’m pretty sure that just created a paradox.
I’m just open to all sorts of things… some thing Fox News isn’t.
@Steaming Pile: *points* What he said. I despise the news, reporters, newspapers because they take scientific reports and mash them down with their tiny brains into little nuggets of untruth, and pass it off to the public as the original truth. And the public believes it because when they were kids, they were watching tv instead of learning how to respect professional scholarship.
I’ve voted for companies that cause harm to living things over financial or idealogical harm so far, but in this case, I think news agencies have proliferated so much stupidity in our culture, so that our first world, modern advances are completely pointless. How do you take down a world superpower? You make its people as ignorant, fear-mongering, and reactive as a pack of neanderthals squatting in the dirt.
I hate to violate Godwin’s Law, but it’s hard not to compare FOX News with the war propaganda machine of that party ran by a guy named Adolph in the 1930s and 40s.
@ekasbury: You — and the rest of the country — could have learned about those raped little girls’ plight sooner if the conservative media wasn’t cowed by the christian right.
We hear about a few downed cows; how many other hideous abuses don’t we hear about because Newscorp is profiting from it?
@Verdigris: Ok. I fully agree. Most religions say that though. In some form or another. Some are radical, like the radicals in Iraq/Iran who want to kill infidels (people not like them). Some religions say if you aren’t them, you’ll go to hell. Some are less specific, but I think generally everyone thinks their religion is the best, and correct, otherwise they wouldn’t be there.
And Fox news has Bill Oreilly. You can argue if he is an asshole or not. Thats fine. But if you ever watch him, truely watch, not listen to out of context clips on youtube, you’ll see, he is very open minded. He is an independent, he is not registered republican or democrat. His guests are always from both sides. It is his show, so it’s not fair and balanced, but he is very moderate, and he will attack conservatives on the issues.
So anyone waying Bill Oreilly is a conservative, republican, or anything of the sort, is uninformed. A prick, maybe. He is nowhere near my hero, that spot is taken by Mark Levin.
Oh, hey, Consumerist people -
I hope that, this being the last of the first round, you’ll do a recap of the results. You’ve got the whole weekend, after all.
Plus comparisons (most lopsided, closest, most/least ttl votes, comments, best accompanying graphic, most expletives by commentators, etc). With pretty charts and graphs.
And kittens.
@Trai_Dep: I second the kittens
@Bladefist: All news media slants things to their own way of thinking. That is why you read and watch multiple sources. So as much as everyone bitches and moans about Fox news and those who watch it (and it is alot of people), I say the same thing about people who get all their info from The Daily Kos and CNN. Pot meet kettle.
I am an independent…not left, not right. I take issues that I care about, become well informed about them and decide from there. Unlike most people, I don’t let a party or others dictate what I think.
Apparently postnocomments is one of those individuals who I tend to rip apart in a debate. Get off The Daily Kos and step away from the library computer. To compare Fox News to anything The Third Reich put out is absolutely stupid. In fact, I think that is one of the stupidest things I have heard in a long time. And I walk around a college campus so I hear some pretty asinine things.
And I voted for the Westland Meat Packing Company. What they did was pathetic.
@thelushie: Obviously I fully agree. As a recent college graduate, I know exactly how you feel.
Colleges are worse then news channel, because some people trust their teachers are teaching them facts not opinions
Oh, Consumeratti – the “You’ve got the whole weekend, after all”, was snarky, not serious. Rereading it, I realized I needed to point this out. After all, you have livers to bathe in alcohol, bedbugs to feed and many, many meaningless sexual encounters to engage in. And the clock’s already ticking.
Gawd, I love New York!
@Bladefist: Well, good colleges – especially those teaching Liberal Arts – teach you to think rather than cataloging facts. Or, “facts”, if you will.
If you think that there’s only one truth, you’ve missed out on a good education. Shame, that.
While I think Fox news is certainly evil, I think it’s more evil to feed kids downer cows.
This was a tough one… Murdoch, the scum of the Earth, or those trying to feed us scum.
@wildness:
Actually, both try to “feed” us scum. =)
Murdoch is def. worse, people get the impression you get to choose what you eat, for those of us without internet resources, it’s hard to get the truth when the only thing available is Murdoch’s rubbish. =P
@Bladefist: Are you insulting conservatives?
@Feba: no
@Trai_Dep: It would be pretty hard to teach that, and pretty easy to let your own opinions influence your lectures. I am a CS major, so, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the Poly Sci division, just 1 or 2 gen eds, and my teacher was a flaming liberal. It was disgusting. Teaching to hate corporations, against the war, socialism is the way to go.
However, I did skip a lot of days, maybe I missed the days he was teaching free thought. You don’t need to go to class when your teacher is a liberal. You know all the answers.
Why is our economy in a recession?
a) Bush is corrupt
b) Bush is dumb
c) Both A & B
Why is this country so great?
A) Because of the Clintons
B) Because of the Kennedys
C) Because of Bush
D) both A & B
Global warming is real and we’re killing our unborn children:
a) true
b) False
Yep, I was a top notch student lol
@WannaBblonde: There’s just absolutely no excuse for doing things like mess with the food supply. People die from that sort of thing. Stupid TV shows? Just turn the thing off and walk away.
You think that global warming is fiction and a clump of cells is a human being. Wow. Sort of proves my point, does it not?
Everyone’s biased – we’re not the Borg. Liberal Arts classes (good ones) at schools (good ones) embrace this certainty and give you tools to reason, to source, to verify, then to communicate these findings in a way that finds an amicable meeting of minds. Well, and the shagging. Lots of shagging!
Computer Science majors’ thinking is funny, in that sometimes they mistake the pristine, binary world of their studies with a much richer one they inhabit. Prone to seeing the world as if constructed of nails, simply because all they know how to use is a hammer.
Shame, that. Your world must be very… Flat.
@Trai_Dep:
“You think that global warming is fiction and a clump of cells is a human being. Wow. Sort of proves my point, does it not?”
No it doesn’t.
As for the last part of your argument, not worth responding too. Actually none of it was.
So, 15% of pregnancies result in miscarriages, of which 50% are cause-unknown of over 4m US births/year. Since over 400,000 “people” are “murdered” in this fashion, with half “suspicious”, why aren’t you clamoring for trails for second degree murder, manslaughter & reckless endangerment? Since little humans are being wantonly executed by their mothers?
Imagine the outcry if this came to be.
Can’t have it both ways: either you jail 15% of expecting mothers for their miscarriages or you admit these clumps of cells fall short of humanity.
This is one – of the many – of the reasons why thoughtful people separate the two.
Regards your skipping the other stuff, I expected as much. People of your ilk are unused to talking about ideas. You’re not learned to think but rather to repeat bullet-points. Wanted to point this out to other readers, however.
man i’m pissed i missed this debate. that’s what i get for going outside & planting some flowers over the weekend. =(
anyone who might still be reading this early monday morning post,
[www.thedailyshow.com]
there is a link to a daily show segment highlighting the fox news channel. sure, its from a biased source, but you cant argue with the hypocrisy shown over and over by fox.