"Fox News isn't an open society, because there is in principle no way to convince its foamers that they are wrong. Rupertland, and its allied kingdoms in print and radio, are closed societies, no less so than the authoritarian states on left and right that Orwell and Popper took pains to lay bare. There is simply no way to persuade O'Reilly or the other bullies that they're wrong. No conceivable kind of evidence can be adduced which might bring them to modify or abandon their position. No fact can penetrate their bubble; anything inconsistent with their totalitarian mindsets is dismissed a...

"Fox News isn't an open society, because there is in principle no way to convince its foamers that they are wrong. Rupertland, and its allied kingdoms in print and radio, are closed societies, no less so than the authoritarian states on left and right that Orwell and Popper took pains to lay bare. There is simply no way to persuade O'Reilly or the other bullies that they're wrong. No conceivable kind of evidence can be adduced which might bring them to modify or abandon their position. No fact can penetrate their bubble; anything inconsistent with their totalitarian mindsets is dismissed as left-wing spin and propaganda. The test of an open society is whether an argument, whether an empirical finding, has -- at least in theory -- the ability to lead that society to change its mind. By that test, the Fox narrative of America is as impenetrable to fact or reason as any Soviet or jihadist fairy tale."