Eric Boehlert ties together nicely what every one of us already knows:
Fox News has exited the journalism community this year. It’s a purely political player, and journalists ought to start covering it that way.
[ . . . ]
A few years ago, the dumbed-down debate surrounding Fox News was whether it truly was fair and balanced. (It wasn’t.) Today, it’s whether Fox News is truly a news organization. (It’s not.) Yet journalists remain way too timid in spelling out the truth. Spooked by right-wing attacks about the so-called liberal media, Beltway media insiders, who certainly understand Fox News’ brazen political maneuver in 2009, continue to play dumb on a massive scale and cover Fox News as a news media organization.
Why does this matter?
It’s important that this trend now stop. The self-evident truth needs to be told, and news consumers need to understand the extraordinary forces that have been unleashed — forces that dramatically altered the media landscape. News consumers also need to understand why it’s becoming increasingly impossible to maintain any kind of public discourse regarding the issues of the day, especially health care reform, when a major so-called news organization is devoted to spreading as much misinformation as possible.
It’s doing real damage to this country, and once again, most of the press is unwilling to cover it honestly.
LFS
How is it doing any more real damage to this country than MSNBC or the New York Times? Or is it that they just report on news that is inconvenient to your political construction?
MB
Well, I suppose that depends on what you mean by “damage”, LFS. If you mean the intrusion of facts and opinions that are at variance with the world you’ve constructed for yourself, I suppose that the NYT and MSNBC pose a threat. However, if you mean “damage” in the way that the article (and most of the rest of us) does – well, there’s just no comparison between Fox and NYT/MSNBC. NYT and MSNBC are different in a couple of ways. First, they separate opinion and news programming. Second, they do that “balance” thing in the opinion programming (with a thumb firmly on the scale of the right, but hey, I’ll take what I can get). Now, both of those institutions are incredibly lacking – esp. in the way Jon Stewart just illustrated so well. But there’s simply no equivalence between Fox (which has nearly abandoned journalism for political activism) and the rest of the sorry mainstream of American media.
LFS
MB, either your ignorant or dishonest. To say that MSNBC and NYT don’t mix opinion with news and that they are balanced is laughable. This illustrates your willingness to set aside any critical thinking and take every spoonful that MediaMatters, a partisan organization if ever there was one, feeds you.
To say that Fox News does more damage to our country than other media outlets and then to narrow your definition of “damage” to some meandering post over at MediaMatters is either an attempt to avoid an honest discussion or an inability to grasp the foolishness of what you have written.
But let’s dive into some real issues of news outlets doing real damage to the credibility of American journalism and any hope of healing the rifts that divide this country:
1. Why just this past week both CNN and MSNBC ran racially-inflammable quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh… except if they had done one ounce of fact-checking they would have found the attribution to be a fraud. Instead, CNN had its fact checkers busy fact-checking a Saturday Night Live skit that was critical of Obama.
2. The New York Times refused to run a single story about Van Jones until he resigned. To many NYT readers, the issue just popped out of thin air, though the controversy brewed for over a week. Its as if the NYT was hoping the whole thing would just go away.
3. And the NYT’s coverage of ACORN… well, let’s just say they published ACORN press releases as news, which ended up blowing up in their face when the allegations turned out to be widespread instead of just localized as they reported (and as ACORN had said). And remember, it is the NYT that had a exclusive on an ACORN whistle-blower a year ago but decided to deep-six the story. They could have been way out in front of the ACORN scandals, but they decided otherwise. Why is that, don’t they report and investigate, even when a Democrat is in the Whitehouse?
4. And, of course, let’s not forget one of the most egregious attempts to sway a presidential election in the history of this nation, CBS and Dan Rather’s amateurish attempt to unseat GWB with “fake, but accurate” TNG memos.
So if you want to talk about “damage” being done to this country by media outlets, let’s talk. I don’t care to defend Fox News but you’re a damn partisan hack if you think what they are doing is somehow worse than what is being done elsewhere.
MB
You know, LFS, I thought about taking this seriously, setting out the various sins of each org, the fact that Fox’s viewers are demonstrably more ignorant than the viewers of other channels, etc. But I just can’t. If you genuinely believe that ACORNs fucked up management is a matter of critical importance to the nation? You’re not going to hear a thing I say. If you think Van Jones’ signature on a ridiculous truther petition is a news priority? You’re not interested in actual news.
So really, it’s a waste of both our times. All I’ll leave you with this an admission that yes, I am ignorant about many things. For instance, I really don’t know what kind of scared and sad life one must be leading to arrive at the aggressively defensive worldview you appear to have. I can speculate, of course, but I don’t know. Ignorance, I have it.
But honesty? I’m pretty comfortable in asserting that. I (unlike you) attach my name to the things I say. I’m okay with taking the risk of being wrong. I’d never risk being dishonest.
LFS
Ah, the old attack-the-messenger tactic. What’s wrong MB, you can’t back up your assertions? You seem to have a lot of views that don’t withstand much scrutiny.
MB
Fixed that for you. Which is pretty much how I’d approach a challenge from any other kindergartner. It’s understandable, but it’s not my problem. I don’t mind going for a few intellectually honest and challenging rounds. Just not going to get that with you.