Fox hosts do go overboard in their savaging of Obama and the Democrats — sometimes ridiculously so. But their assaults on the president are gentle when compared with the battering that Benjamin Franklin Bache’s Philadelphia Aurora administered to John Adams (appropriately) or the trashing that Colonel McCormick’s Chicago Tribune gave Franklin Roosevelt (inappropriately).
To suggest that Fox is not a news network simply because Sean Hannity echoes RNC talking points would be like suggesting that the Aurora was not a newspaper because it took cues from Tom Jefferson or that the Tribune was not a legitimate member of the fourth estate because it was sweet on Alf Landon.
And to compare Sean Hannity to the Chicago Tribune is ridiculous. He’s admitted publicly that he’s not a journalist, he’s a talk show host — an entertainer. And while newspapers were partisan in the age of Jefferson — just like McCormick’s Tribune or Chandler’s Los Angeles Times — they were unabashedly so. They didn’t brand themselves “Fair and Balanced” — everyone knew they had a specific political agenda. They didn’t pretend to be objective and they didn’t engage in faux outrage when this was pointed out. They were honest about their advocacy — and proud of it.
In light of this, I doubt FDR did too many favors for the Tribune by granting them exclusive interviews (as Nichols suggests Obama should do for Fox–again) and I doubt pundits were concern-trolling FDR over his perfectly rational refusal to do so. Roosevelt’s hostility towards the Tribune was notorious: he once considered sending in the Marines to occupy the Tribune Tower and charging McCormick with treason.
Simply acknowledging the fact that Fox is a propaganda arm of the GOP isn’t “going to war” with Fox, as Nichols writes. As Anita Dunn said,
…let’s not pretend they’re [Fox] a news network the way CNN is.
They’re not. As David Frum noted,
Fox News was created as America’s first self-consciously partisan television network.
Whiner.
If Nichols is going to argue that Obama should go out of his way to boost Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, he needs to make a better argument for it than this.
Related posts:
- The Most Boring Name in News
- Early Morning Swim: Lawrence O’Donnell and Eric Burns of Media Matters Discuss Fox News’ Agenda
- Goon show
- Von Spakovsky Accuses Obama Civil Rights Team of “Nakedly Political” Acts; NYT Fails to Note HvS’s Own Partisan Work
- AP Defines “Unbiased Source of News”: Don’t Criticize the Clients
Spotlight
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About Firedoglake
Advanced search
At least we know that Jon Stewart is a comedian.
Maybe its the lies he tells that make him not a news source? Its about time the Des step up on this the blogs have been taking point on this well since there have been blogs.
If Fox wants to be partisan, that’s fine. It’s the out and out lies that I object to. I am a partisan Democrat but I don’t lie about what the Rs do.
Well, to be fair, it isn’t really necessary to lie to make the Rs look bad… :)
Maybe Media Matters has a count of all the lies Fox News, Rush, Drudge etc has told and who told them all the Lefty blogs could have a lie counter you could link to for research?
College and Highschool kids doing papers would find this one stop shopping!
John Nichols is normally on point, but he’s waaaaaaaaaaaay off base on this one.
Screw Faux news !!
It isn’t necessary to lie to make the Democrats look bad either. Lots of room for objective criticism of both parties without making things up.
To overstate the obvious, the goal of Fox News is not to foster rational debate but instead to provoke an emotional response by making their conservative viewers feel as if they have been marginalized and persecuted.
That’s not his point.
His point is that since the beginning of America there has been partisan politics liek this. there has always been the left wing news and the right wing news.
Let’s just admit that and be up front about it. Fox is the right, NBC is the left. We all know it, they should just say so.
I’m not saying Obama should be helping fox, far from it. But he’s a spineless centrist who wants to appease the right, so they kowtow to em.
I didn’t know NBC was left. Am surprised :)
I just watched a “fair and balanced” interview at Faux ‘news’ that was a segment grilling Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and thrashing each point he made, followed by a segment shining smiles at Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) and giving him extended airtime to twist the facts uninterrupted.
The funny thing is, Weiner beat the real moron of Faux ‘news’ in the debate and slipped in a website that he launched called countdowntohealthcare.com.
Check out Congressman Weiner’s website and sign the petition “Stand up for the Public Option!” that appears on the front page!
That darned Joe Scarborough, always pushing his extremist left-wing gay agenda.
NBC is the left? Yep, Gregory et al and I all see eye to eye on both domestic and foreign policy. Whatever you’re smokin’ I’ll take a kilo. What a crock-a-shit.
I find it interesting and possibly healthy as well to see the era of so-called neutral journalism coming to an end. The public and the country have often not been well served by it (Watergate being an exception). The MSM was late in condemning Vietnam, did little to uncover Iran-Contra, enabled the rise of Newt Gingrich and the Republican attack on the Republic through the impeachment of President Clinton (acknowledging that his dalliances gave them an opening), and became cheerleaders for the Bush Administration’s bellicosity and repudiation of the Geneva Convention predicated by the excuse of 9/11 (I’m not minimizing the horror or injustice of that event, but believe an opportunity for real cooperation and a real united effort to apprehend the perpetrators was squandered). Maybe it is time for the reporters, pundits, editors and publishers to come out and report the biases they will use in their analysis up front before reporting their interpretation of the facts.
Sorry dummy there are no left of center networks…try again.
In Pinocchio, the Fox (faking lameness) and its companion, the Cat (faking blindness)attempt to dupe the wooden boy into trusting them. They tell him: “We do not work for vile interest! We work only to enrich others!” That about sums up the rule of engagement on FOX News.
Maybe, but I can see comparing him to Col. McCormick. They were and are obnoxious reactionary loudmouths. The difference is, McCormick owned the paper and could slant everything in it.
Back to the cesspool. At least I’m not subjected to the idiocy of trolls at work.
Namaste
Seconded. I’d much rather know exactly what I’m consuming so I can evaluate its credibility.
Lets not forget the hate mongering and thinly veiled incitements to violence against the President and Immigrants with all the Tea Bagger support Fox does why don’t they just endorse the Klan?
It’d be really easy. Just use the RNC logo as a backdrop for every show.
Bache was overtly partisan “Anti-Federalist” and every reader knew that. He accused George Washington of collaborating with the British in the Revolution, and attacked Adams of his anti-French turn “and shift to America’s colonial masters”, during the French Revolution. There was a reason he was charged with “seditious libel” with an emphasis on the “libel” after his statements about Washington.
Bache’s Francophilia was also well known, this grandson and heir of Benjamin Franklin was educated in France. Most regarded it as one of many broadsheets that existed at the time. The reality was that THEN there was no claim of “journalistic balance”, “just the news”, or of separating editorial from news reports. Those ethical practices came later. Fox has thoroughly reverted to the Pre-Cambrian of writing. Lower than oooga-oopa.
In comparison Fox, for making much the same fraudulent assertions, would never be held up under the Alien and Sedition Acts. In fact, they might not even be required to broadcast a disclaimer, or even a notice that “we fought in court for the right to legally lie” or merely “this is an editorial, buyer beware”.
They can’t find a sheet big enough for Roger Ailes.
Kinda like German Media just before Hitler took power? Any German pups out there who can bring up examples?
That’d work for me.
I would concede that in primetime (7-11 o’clock each evening), Faux ‘news’ has Bill-O and the unbalanced Hannity to the right and that MSNBC has Olbermann and Maddow to the left.
But otherwise, MSNBC daytime viewing is news, while Faux ‘news’ daytime viewing is something that looks like news in format, though it is not. Faux ‘news’ daytime viewing is a deliberately crafted, reality-twisting, manipulation fest designed to condition viewers for the primetime crazies. I’ll not waste a moment more than it takes me to write these words on Beck and his Beckerheads.
As David Frum noted,…
oops – had to stop reading right there.
ABC CNN etc lie any where near as much as Fox does? Heck they repeat many of the same lies Fox does.
Yeah, and Mika, and Uncle Pat Buchanan. Left wingers all.
(Jeebus!)
Fairness Doctrine, where art thou?
OT re the Baucus vote:
Am I recalling correctly that last time that two different bills came out of committee, (FISA, I think), didn’t Harry Reid decide that the first bill to report out would be the one that the entire Senate voted on?
The Fairness Doctrine may or may not be useful. In trying to be balanced it can fall into the trap of creating false equivalencies and masking the true parameters of the issue being debated.
I think the difference is that CNN and other networks try to do the work of serious journalism and to avoid bias, however imperfectly at times, while the people at Faux ‘news’ go out of their way to say that they’re doing the work of serious journalism, though in reality all they do is act as a partisan propaganda machine.
When MSNBC has Olbermann or Maddow, they don’t hide the bias. They do everything but display a disclaimer on the screen saying where they stand.
But, just for one example, Bill Hemmer has turned into a truth-twisting hack who masquerades as a journalist.
Yeah, it would force a “fairness” between what is perceived as progressive v. conservative, not what is actually true (truth having a liberal bias, of course). However…the last 8 years have proven that all conservative christian corporate friendly propaganda all that time nearly destroyed everything that the USA stands for.
Here’s what network news used to look like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYymnxoQnf8
It’s one thing to be partisan in your reporting , it’s something altogether different when any media resorts to lies and deliberate distortions .
There are many people out there that listen to this crap and believe it to be fact. Where do teabaggers and birthers get there most support.?
To call what Fox does, reporting, is a joke.
Fox is just the propaganda arm of the Republican Party
are we back?
FauxNews is also the only on air network that regularly edits its transcripts so as to intentionally alter the record of what aired on their programs. In this way they can expunge inconvenient facts, correct errant blunders of their imbecilic on air clowns, and try and impart a different political spin on the “news.” These are the Orwellian tactics of Stalin, not of journalists.
Add the above to their use of ambush interview tactics, coordinated implementation of Republican talking points across the spectrum of their programs, the outright marketing of conservative political memes, and their general unfamiliarity with the truth or journalistic ethics, there is no way in hell that you can maintain that FauxNews is in any stretch of the imagination a legitimate news organization.
The “since the beginning of america ” argument is complete nonsense. There’s no comparison to the media outreach today and its ability to influence and infiltrate mainstream american opinion to what happened to Ben Franklin of FDR. There is no comparison to the corporate enablers of the right that feed the same distortions that make any progress in this country extremely hard. In this environment, you fight back, you have to delegitimize these people. You don’t accept the terms of the debate they set and then be shocked when the american people start believing stuff like death panels.
AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Blue Texan:
I don’t know who John Nichols is nor do I really care, but why are his opinions on this important enough to show up in “The Nation” or ANY other reality based journal of politics and art? And why would ANYone think that ANY President, especially a very popular one, would go on an openly opposition propaganda outlet to boost their ratings with people who would not ordinarily watch? My God, why is this even under discussion…well, because ObamaRahma and the Clintonista corporate Democratic Party are only interested in the appearance of noblesse obliege and creating the image of a viable opposition when none exists.
Stupidity in its highest form from its highest office holder.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, WE KNOW WHO THE FUCKIN’ ENEMY IS EVEN IF THEY DON’T!!
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, unlike Fox, Hannity, Limbaugh and Beck, admit they are entertainers and that the news is their fodder and punchline.
Fox pretends it’s just selling news. The first clue that that was bullshit ought to have been Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to trademark “fair and balanced” as a description of his network’s product. It is anything but, and the attempt to corner the market on that phrase indicates that it was all an expensive game from the start.
No argument about the last 8 years. I’m just thinking about how the Fairness Doctrine did not advance the arguments against Vietnam or speed up the discovery of the extent of Nixon’s wrongdoing. It also did nothing to reveal the evil of the Latin American and other dictatorships that the U.S. propped up blindly as a counterweight to the perceived evil of Communism.
Oh Yes! This bunch of pompous ignorant asses, has just passed something. WoW! Boy we all should be so happy. It’s like trying to be happy while pulling the twelve inch knife out of Your chest, you were just stabbed with.
What would fix healthcare is if they Nationalized the health Insurance Industry.
The retards we elected and sent there, don’t have the smarts, the guts, or the bxxxs to do whats right for ou and the Country.
This is just another confermation that we need to throw these bums out, both parties, all not some, and start over to ever get a Governemnt that works.
you know it
I know it
there are millions out there that believe their shit !
Wow, a double dose of anti-Fox paranoia today! Better get some more tin foil.
Nichols’ analogy is actually fairly apt. But Bache never claimed to be unbiased or fair – no paper of the time really did. Additionally, as memory serves, at the time when the Aurora was published there were some 15 competing papers coming out of Philadelphia, Now, if Fox wants to divest itself of all of its other media assets I may have as must sympathy for them, as I have for Bache — who, btw, was imprisoned under Adams’ anti-sedition laws.
Put me down for a wee brick or so. Medicinal uses only, ya know.
EDIT: To SD.