Name one!

Tonight on Hardball with Chris Matthews former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan admitted that the White House would feed talking points directly to Fox News - Fox commentators, not journalists. When Matthews displayed outrage, McClellan again stressed that the White House didn't feed this kind of propaganda to the journalists at Fox.

Really?

There are real journalists at Fox?

Name one.

Fox-Fair, Balanced and Hypocritical?

Watching Fox News [sic] Sunday today generated a couple of thoughts.

The panel talked about the significant news coverage that the major networks are giving Senator Obama's current foreign trip. While the "liberal media" whining was not as pronounced as I expected, their was consternation that even since the end of the Democratic presidential campaign the coverage of Senator Obama on the major networks has been significantly more extensive than the coverage of Senator McCain. This was from a panel that itself seemed to me was talking a lot more about Senator Obama than Senator McCain.

The untimely death of Tony Snow gave Vice-President Cheney a chance to laud his many accomplishments. Among those was this quote, "...he was a major player in the conservative movement." Tony Snow was the founding anchor of Fox News [sic] Sunday. I guess bias in the media, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Were Senator Clinton's Answers Delayed?

Was it just me, or was there a delay between the end of a Chris Wallace question from the viewer's perspective and the start of Senator Clinton's response (Fox Views Sunday, 09/23/2007)? It looked like it might have been a small satellite transmission delay. It was not as long as a delay as we see on interviews from Iraq, but it was long enough to make it look, at times, like Senator Clinton was pausing before each answer. A couple of times I thought it made her look like she was being tentative with an answer.

I didn't notice the delay when Senator Clinton was being interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC News' 'This Week' even though I believe Senator Clinton was interviewed from the same location. It is quite possible the ABC interview was prerecorded and they had the delay edited out.

For all their proclamations of Fair and Balanced, I don't trust FOX.

Hillary Out-foxed FOX!

Senator Hillary Clinton was a guest on FOX Views Sunday this morning. Chris Wallace served up a knuckle-ball question to lead off the interview and sprinkled in a couple of screwballs and curves, but Senator Clinton didn't take a swing at any of the junk pitches thrown at her. In a hostile stadium and without the home field advantage, she hit a home run and took home a victory.

For those of you who don't like sports analogies, she refused to be goaded into confirming stereotypes and kept her message clear and focused. She consistently made the point that she was more interested in solutions than partisan distractions. She handled all the questions, serious and right-wing red meat, with ease. She looked prepared, intelligent, serious, reasonable and presidential. Even worse, for the Republicans, she looked like a winner.

By the way, as always, Chris Wallace told her at the end of the interview that she was always welcome on FOX Views Sunday. I doubt that she will be invited back for another one on one interview with Chris Wallace. She out-foxed FOX!

Fox Views

Having watched Fox News Sunday again today, I suggest the program's name be changed to Fox Views Sunday.

Actually, I like Fox Views for the network name also and have a suggestion for a new slogan. Clearly "Fair and Balanced" is just part of a ruse. How about (with apologies to Admiral Farragut)

"Damn the facts! Full speed to the right!".

Main Stream Media vs Fox

This morning I watched Meet the Press on MSNBC, This Week on ABC and Fox News Sunday. All three had segments on Imus.

I offer these segments as examples of why the "main stream media" is main stream and Fox is a pretender.

Meet the Press and This Week had discussions with differences of opinion that added insight and thought into the debate that is much larger than the comment by Don Imus. Chis Wallace on Fox tried to play "gotcha" journalism with Reverend Al Sharpton and then Bill Kristol gushed over how the incident skewered liberals.

I'm afraid that Don Imus and Fox prove if you pander to people's prejudices you'll always have an audience.

News Or Opinion?

On the January 4 Scarborough Country show on NBC, Joe did a segment on Bill O'Reilly's ranting about bias at NBC. Bill claimed everybody at NBC hates President Bush. I don't think that's fair and balanced. I wonder what Bill would say about a claim that everybody at Fox loves President Bush.

Joe Scarborough had a guest, author Bob Kohn. Mr. Kohn claimed as proof of NBC's bias a statement by NBC's respected, veteran journalist and on-air reporter Richard Engel that Saddam Hussein's execution was a "PR disaster". Mr. Kohn asserted that this was clearly biased reporting.

According to Mr. Kohn, Richard Engel could have removed the bias by adding a phrase like "some people said the execution was a" in front of "PR disaster".

Now that would have really convinced me I was listening to objective reporting. Mr. Kohn clearly didn't convince me I should buy his book.

He inadvertently gave a better example of bias when he made the case that Saddam Hussein was a very bad person and history will remember how many people he killed, not how he died. Kohn's point was that the important story was the execution of a terrible dictator who killed many people. That statement clearly shows how Mr. Kohn would have added his bias to the story. I think news reports over many years have established that Saddam Hussein was a very bad person who killed many people and who deserved to die. That is no longer news. His execution and reactions to it was news.

Bias is always present in reporting. It is sometimes overt, but more often it is subtle. Which stories get covered? What angle and aspects of a story are covered? When you show a picture of a person, do you show one that is flattering or one that makes the person look malevolent? As an example, note which pictures of Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi are shown. Ask yourself if that picture might show a bias.

True news organizations and journalists work very hard to report accurately and objectively.

A respectable news paper clearly differentiates news from opinion. There is an opinion section and there are news sections. The cable news shows mix news and opinion into a witches brew that only the dedicated viewer can separate. I suggest that all media find ways to clearly identify which segments are news and should be held to high standards of objectivity and which are opinion.

It is current practice to clutter the edges of the screen with all kinds of "information". How about the word "Opinion" in big letters on the screen?

Today on Fox there was a segment where a guest commentator lambasted Nancy Pelosi for hypocrisy. She objected to Nancy Pelosi surrounding herself with children at the swearing in ceremony last week. How could Nancy Pelosi, a strong proponent of abortion rights, dare to act like she really cared about children? Obviously, people who support a woman's right to choose must hate all children. Only Fox would give such a lunatic air time.

As bad as that was, just prior to the segment was a full screen shot of the word "NEWS". You can only laugh when anyone at Fox complains about news media bias. I suggest that Fox indicate an objective news segment by replacing that annoying, rotating FOX News icon on the lower left of the screen with a yellow non-rotating icon that indicates that this segment is objective news.

Never mind. Now that I think about it I realize they've already done that. You've seen that yellow box haven't you?

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