Why don't honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News?
By Howell Raines
WashPost
Sunday, March 14, 2010
One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?
Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: "The American people do not want health-care reform."
Fox repeats this as gospel. But as a matter of historical context, usually in short supply on Fox News, this assertion ranks somewhere between debatable and untrue.
The American people and many of our great modern presidents have been demanding major reforms to the health-care system since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. The elections of 1948, 1960, 1964, 2000 and 2008 confirm the point, with majorities voting for candidates supporting such change. Yet congressional Republicans have managed effective campaigns against health-care changes favored variously by Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. Now Fox News has given the party of Lincoln a free ride with its repetition of the unexamined claim that today's Republican leadership really does want to overhaul health care -- if only the effort could conform to Mitch McConnell's ideas on portability and tort reform.
(Original here.)
WashPost
Sunday, March 14, 2010
One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?
Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: "The American people do not want health-care reform."
Fox repeats this as gospel. But as a matter of historical context, usually in short supply on Fox News, this assertion ranks somewhere between debatable and untrue.
The American people and many of our great modern presidents have been demanding major reforms to the health-care system since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. The elections of 1948, 1960, 1964, 2000 and 2008 confirm the point, with majorities voting for candidates supporting such change. Yet congressional Republicans have managed effective campaigns against health-care changes favored variously by Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. Now Fox News has given the party of Lincoln a free ride with its repetition of the unexamined claim that today's Republican leadership really does want to overhaul health care -- if only the effort could conform to Mitch McConnell's ideas on portability and tort reform.
(Original here.)
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2 Comments:
For starters, I do not watch Fox News, please do not take this as a defense for Fox News. My question - are there ANY honest journalists? It seems to me that every increasingly, the news is a reporter expressing their opinion instead of reporting just the 'news.' I admit that I am biased towards individual freedom and if I was a reporter you could probably guess my conservative beliefs. At the same time, I urge Vox Verax to tell the entire truth, not just the liberal half of the truth. There are plenty of examples of liberal bias, for starters, (all from http://www.mrc.org/biasalert/archive.aspx )
•Victorious Obama Exposed "Party of No;" GOP "Crazies in the Closet"
Monday, March 08, 2010
•Scolding "Harsh Rhetoric" of Tea Party "On the Fringe," Trashing "Simple-Minded" Sarah Palin
Monday, February 22, 2010
•Hailing Obama's "Command Performance;" He's Ready for Mt. Rushmore
Monday, February 08, 2010
•Media In Mourning: Teddy's Liberal Dream "Derailed"
Monday, January 25, 2010
•Once Morons "Understand" ObamaCare, They'll Love It; Ridiculous Rush Says American Health Care Is "Dandy"
Well said Tom. I, also, do not watch FNC either, but I've heard plenty of the left wing media call those involved in 'tea parties' as 'tea baggers'. Is there any wonder why so many americans tune out the mainstream media and turn to Drudge Report or Fox News.
I have tried, in vain, to listen to the Stephanie Miller radio show on
AM950 in the Twin Cities. After a few minutes I have to turn it off because all they do on her radio program is criticize Republicans and conservatives using sexual undertones. For instance, she calls John Boehner (pronounce bay-ner) as John 'Boner' - as in an erect penis. She rails on the 'tea baggers' which is a sexual position. The entire show is like that and it's disgusting and completely unentertaining. Ed Schultz's show is not sexually charged, but all he does is rip on anyone that doesn't agree with him similar to Michael Savage on the right.
Why is Fox News - a cable channel that you have to pay for to receive in your home - singled out when the mainstream broadcast and print media
have outlets that dwarf Fox News? Well, they are singled out because mainstream broadcast and print media are dying on the vine withering under the weight of their own abject bias that americans are tuning out.
This is why there is no honest journalism becuase we have a mainstream media which is no longer a watchdog of government, but, rather, a cheerleader for it.
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