Fox hounded
How the Democrats are turning on Fox News.
By Ronald Brownstein
LA Times
March 16, 2007
In the history of capitalism has any company had more success with just a wink and a nod than the Fox News Channel? And can Democrats be successful in the 2008 campaign by refusing to wink or nod back?
Last week's decision by Nevada Democrats, under pressure from liberal activists, to drop Fox as the co-sponsor of a party presidential debate has the virtue of crystallizing the questions about the network's nature and its unique role in the modern media ecosystem.
Fox cloaks itself in the mantle of objectivity with the nudge-nudge insistence that it—and it alone—provides "fair and balanced" coverage of the news. Then it advances its financial and ideological interests by promoting lurid accusations from conservatives against Democrats, accusations that are routinely debunked later by the mainstream media. Many Fox reporters are fair. But overall the network—through its language, its news decisions and its hosts—generally functions more like a cog in the Republican message machine than as a conventional news organization that attempts to abide, however imperfectly, by the traditional standards of (yes) fairness and balance.
(The rest is here.)
By Ronald Brownstein
LA Times
March 16, 2007
In the history of capitalism has any company had more success with just a wink and a nod than the Fox News Channel? And can Democrats be successful in the 2008 campaign by refusing to wink or nod back?
Last week's decision by Nevada Democrats, under pressure from liberal activists, to drop Fox as the co-sponsor of a party presidential debate has the virtue of crystallizing the questions about the network's nature and its unique role in the modern media ecosystem.
Fox cloaks itself in the mantle of objectivity with the nudge-nudge insistence that it—and it alone—provides "fair and balanced" coverage of the news. Then it advances its financial and ideological interests by promoting lurid accusations from conservatives against Democrats, accusations that are routinely debunked later by the mainstream media. Many Fox reporters are fair. But overall the network—through its language, its news decisions and its hosts—generally functions more like a cog in the Republican message machine than as a conventional news organization that attempts to abide, however imperfectly, by the traditional standards of (yes) fairness and balance.
(The rest is here.)
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