Fox News Throws a Hissy Fit

Via Crooks and Liars, here's a Youtube video of the rest of Roger Ailes' "comedy" schtick which I mentioned previously, if you can stand watching it:



He gurgles on about candidates making a "terrible" mistake if they blacklist any "news organization". Oh, cry me a river.

Of course, Ailes doesn't address the point that his network bastardizes the term. Here is just a small sampling of the daily right wing propaganda spewed forth by Fox News. Memo to Ailes: we don't have a problem with legitimate news organizations. Your network however, isn't one of them, which is why we have a problem with you.

As is typical of Fox News, it responds with a cheap shot that the Democratic Party of Nevada is bowing to "fringe groups". One of its hosts, Morton Kondracke, attacks "left-wing liberals as junior-grade Stalinists". Bill O'Reilly compares the debate opponents to Nazis. And in reporting the debate cancellation, its web site links to a critical editorial instead of dozens of other objective news reports on the issue.

That's as partisan a response as you can get; is there any professional news organization you can think of that approaches Fox News's hysterics just because a debate was cancelled? I agree with Atrios:

Do actual respectable "balanced" news networks issue press releases telling candidates and political parties what they are and aren't supposed to do?

Also, how can any professional news organization call the 3.3 million member-strong Moveon.org a "fringe" group? That's a larger membership than most Christian churches I know, and Fox News wouldn't dare call those "fringe".

And exactly what does Moveon.org stand for? Among other issues, they're fighting against the escalation in Iraq and against global warming, things which a majority of the American public agrees with. If the organization is "fringe" then the majority is the new "fringe".

Of course, the reason Fox is frothing at the mouth is obvious: it's harder to maintain that "fair and balanced" farce when the other side refuses to play in your sandbox.

Wingnuts have always charged that the mainstream news media is liberal. What they actually mean is that mainstream news media doesn't pander to them enough like Fox News.

If the news media is liberal, we wouldn't be stuck in a quagmire in Iraq. Our constitutional rights won't be in tatters and habeas corpus wouldn't be a bad word. If the news media is liberal, the Bush administration wouldn't be running amok with our national security, our economy and our individual rights.

The news media is supposed to be the fourth estate, for pete's sake. Instead, they get cozy with the D.C. establishment, socializing and mingling with the very people they should objectively be reporting on. Whereas wingnuts want to destroy the news media and turn them into Fox progeny/clones, we liberals just want the them to do their damn job.



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