(Don’t fret because of the comicsy inside joke in the subject–this is a political blog entry! Remember those?)
Yesterday morning, as the Missus and I enjoyed our complimentary continental breakfast at a Days Inn in western Pennsylvania, the Fox News morning show Fox and Friends was doing a story on the bias of the New York Times. Despite the fact that I agreed with virtually every word they said about The Old Grey Propagandist, after a couple of minutes I wanted to put my fist through the screen.
First of all, have you ever seen Fox & Friends? If there exists, anywhere on Earth, a more annoying group of airheaded blow-dried anchorzombies, please, Donald Rumsfeld, call in a couple of MOABs and blow that place to motherloving Kingdom Come.
Second, where in hell does Fox News get off calling ANYTHING biased? The painfully, transparently phony incredulity of the show’s host as they discussed the issue–“So you’re saying that it’s not just the opinion page, but that the regular stories are slanted? Might there be rules of journalistic ethics that this violates?”–was so patronizing that I nearly choked on my donut.
I’m not one of those people who sits around decrying Fox News as the end of journalism as we know it. All news is biased, and thanks to outlets like the NYT and BBC, this is true, ahem, now more than ever. Moreover, despite how annoying their protestations of innocence may be, Fox is pretty nudge-nudge wink-wink about the whole “fair and balanced” routine–as most of their viewers could tell you, they watch it because it’s conservative. Finally, Fox News is something I’ll occasionally watch (or watched, back when I got it on my cable package) for entertainment value, and certainly not for news–in other words, I know the deal, and won’t get bamboozled. But this segment was so egregiously phony and condescending that, to me, it called into question the entire enterprise. Conservativism–even the poorly thought out inconsistent big-government cultural-conservative mishmash advocated by FNC–shouldn’t have to equal stupid.
Which brings me to Fox News Channel’s decision to sue Al Franken over his use of the phrase “Fair and Balanced” in his next book, an anti-FNC screed. Apparently they’re worried that someone might mistakenly conclude that Franken works for Fox.
Bullshit.
This is a big corporation bullying someone into not criticizing them any longer, and is as egregious a violation of the First Amendment as you’re likely to see (unless, of course, you’re Jesus Castillo). In protest (at the behest of Neal Pollack; link courtesy of Tegan Gjovaag), I’m going to be using the phrase “Fair and Balanced” as often as is humanly possible.
And I assure you, I don’t work for Fox News.