Behind the Fox News Facade

Sheep are the smartest animals in the farmyard, Fox News is … a propaganda machine, and Julian Assange may have four love children.These discoveries and more after the jump.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

The links below open in a new window. Newer ones are on top.

Fox News: If You Only Knew Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”

The sharpest mind in the farmyard Over the past few decades, evidence has quietly built up that sheep are anything but stupid. It now turns out that the humble domestic sheep can pass a psychological test that monkeys struggle with, and which is so sensitive it is used to look for neurological decline in human patients.

Assange Has 4 Love Children, Former WikiLeaks Employee Says From his bombastic OKCupid profile to his creepy love letters to a 19-year-old girl, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has some strange romantic proclivities. Strangest of all is his apparent obsession with littering the world with offspring. He’s fathered at least four children with mistresses, and he boasts about it.

Indian Court Strikes Down Suit Against Astrology The Bombay high court dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking action against bogus astrologers, tantriks, vaastu shastra practitioners and the like on Thursday.

Wikipedia’s Editing Process Still a Mystery to Students Although many students understand that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, some remain blissfully unaware of how articles in the encyclopedia are created and revised, a study has found.

Is Twitter Worth $10 Billion? As Internet valuations climb and bankers and would-be buyers circle Silicon Valley in an increasingly frothy tech market, many eyes are on one particularly desirable, if still enigmatic, target: Twitter. Discussions … have produced an estimated valuation of $8 billion to $10 billion.

Class and Gender in Egypt What social forces are behind the protest movement in Egypt? The old guard (represented, first, by the Mubaraks and the “crony globalizers,” and, then, by the torturer Omar Suleiman and the rich men in the “Council of the Wise”) seems to have lost control of the process. Who, then, is pushing the movement forward?

Scapegoating public sector workers Across the United States, there’s a concerted campaign to demonize public sector workers and to balance state budgets by cutting workers’ pensions and social services.