Posted by Damozel | Michael Tomasky of The Guardian thinks that Fox News---which, he'd like his fellow
Brits to know, isn't really all that "fair and balanced"---is about to be exposed as "a lock,
stock and barrel servant of the Republican party, devoted first and
foremost to electing Republicans and defeating Democrats." (Guardian via Memeorandum) It's so sweet that he thinks this will matter. He also says---this is so precious---"Fox News's status as a politically impartial channel is at last being exposed as a fiction." At last? I love that, don't you? Because, seriously, what "status as a politically impartial channel"?
Tomasky seems to believe that some Americans haven't really noticed Fox's, erm, right-wing propensities. He wants a "Toto" to rip back the curtain and expose the little white men at the controls, once and for all.
And he thinks that former Fox host/current litigant Judith Regan might be just the Toto to do it. In a complaint she filed in her lawsuit against her former employees, she has alleged that two executives of Fox News "instructed her to "lie to, and withhold information from" the investigators about [Bernard] Kerik" (Guardian) Regan says that they did this because they feared the current investigation of Kerik might damage Giuliani, "whose presidential ambitions, her complaint charges, Fox has long been intent on "protecting."" (Guardian) Tomasky says:
It's a stunning charge. If proven someday, Fox will no longer be able to hide behind the fiction that it's a neutral news outfit.(Guardian)
Hahahahahahahahahaha! But Fox doesn't pretend that its a neutral news outfit. That's sort of the point. Nobody in America, reading that Fox network executives allegedly want to shield Giuliani, is going to be the least bit surprised. And this is exactly why I---a Democrat---love Fox so.
But Tomasky, who hasn't had as much time as Americans to get used to Fox, is astonished that it gets away with being Fox. He can't believe it would get away with it if people only realized it's not really proper journalism.
Journalism with a point of view is a fine thing. It's what I do. The difference is that I say I'm a liberal journalist while Fox executives and "reporters" insist they play it straight. But everyone in the US knows that my description is true. This is precisely why its fans watch it...(Guardian).
In short, nobody, most especially its admirers and enablers, thinks it is really impartial.
Fox can't admit that it's a Republican outfit. It would have no credibility with politicians if it did and would be too easily dismissed as "ideological media".
It has no credibility with (non-GOP) politicians. It is routinely dismissed as "ideological media."
To get around this problem, its marketers devised what must be the most deviously ingenious pair of advertising slogans of all time: "We report, you decide" and "Fair and balanced".
And so, for a decade and more, Fox has got away with an amazing thing: it can call itself a "straight" news channel even while everyone knows it's not. It's a great little racket. (Guardian)
He also has a really good suggestion for Democrats, which he made the mistake of presenting to Nancy Pelosi:
In the meantime, Democrats should ratchet up their refusal to pretend that Fox bears any relationship to news. I've always felt they should just boycott the network en bloc. One can be pretty confident that if the situation were reversed - imagine a cable channel that was known as a Democratic house organ and run by, say, Bill Clinton adviser James Carville - Republicans would have done something like that long ago. I asked Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic speaker, about this last Friday, and she just replied wanly: "I think we have to reach out to all the viewers out there."(Guardian)
I'll bet she was wan. It must be exhausting maintaining a firm stance against immense public pressure to do something Democrats actually want the party leadership to do.
Anyway, you have to admit it's pretty adorable that Tomasky is so agog over what Fox is and does, and believes that any "unmasking" will unmake anything, especially Fox's credibility with viewers and politicians. As he himself says, Fox viewers know exactly why they are watching Fox.
As for the rest of us, there's always News Hounds.
*NOTE: use of a photograph pursuant to a Creative Commons license does NOT indicate that its creator endorses any views expressed in this or any BN-Politics article.
Memeorandum buzz here, including (but not necessarily limited to) BitsBlog, Bark Bark Woof Woof, The Van Der Galiën Gazette, Liberal Values, Cliff Schecter and Truthdig
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