Serious news organizations, like National Public Radio, NBC News, the Washington Post, and the New York Times have policies about neutrality by their staff. An example is the WaPo memo to their newsroom managers, quoted in the Calderone piece:
"Events, like those organized by Glenn Beck or involving Jon Stewart and Steven [sic] Colbert, are political, and therefore Post newsroom employees may not participate. By participate, we mean that Post newsroom employees cannot in any way put themselves in a position that could be construed as supporting (or opposing) that cause. That means no T-shirts, buttons, marching, chanting, etc. This guideline does not prohibit Post newsroom employees from observing — that is, watching and listening from the sidelines. The important thing is that it should be evident to anyone that you are observing, as journalists do, not participating, whether you are covering the event or not."The article mentions this obviously applying to recent rallies - Beck's evangelical political rally on the date and site of the Martin Luther King event in August, and the progressive "One Nation" rally featuring MSNBC host Ed Shultz among the roster of other speakers.
I think the memos should have also mentioned events like the political rally in April in Minneapolis with Fox N(ot)ews contributor Sarah Palin and host Sean Hannity that was a fund raiser and politically rally for Michele Bachmann, a regular guest of Mr. Hannity. Hannity did his show from the rally location later that same day.
There is chronic snark from the right that viewers don't recognize that both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert host respective comedy shows. That is an observation driven by a Time Magazine Poll back in July 2009, which made no pretense to being scientific, that showed how respective serious television news journalists compared, after the death of Walter Cronkite. I think this is a humorous observation about Stewart and Colbert viewers, considering the genuinely serious people who are interviewed on both programs. I think this is even funnier as a comment on 'liberals' news sources, given that Tea Partier and Birther Queen Orly Taitz cited a similarly unscientific fun poll in her filing to Judge Land in Georgia, one where she not only claimed the poll legitimized her inquiry into Obama's birth certificate on behalf of the American people, she also transposed the numbers, changing the actual unscientific poll of 58% to 85%. Fox news is about as factual as Orly Taitz; and the birthers and Tea Partiers and conservatives who rely on Fox for actual news information do as little fact checking, blindly and uncritically accepting garbage as fact without fact checking. It is Fox 'News' viewers who are the fools. In comparison, the statements made on Stewart's and Colbert's programs are rigorously fact checked better than the entire Fox network's presentations. The viewers of those two half-hour programs are far more critical and better informed.
I regularly watch both Stewart and Colbert. They make no pretense of being serious news programming. Given that caveat, they also are not guilty of the pants-on-fire lie claimed in the cable network Fox News motto, "fair and balanced". Fox is neither 'fair" nor "balanced', and it is less reliable as News than EITHER the treatment of news stories by Stewart or Colbert. Fox News programming is rarely sufficiently factual to be even jokingly called news. While Fox News tries to excuse their claim by asserting that they do relatively little news coverage, they are far less clear about where that division is drawn between their supposed news coverage and their outright pandering as the de facto media outlet for conservative candidates and causes seeking to avoid hard questions by serious journalists.
Witness the recent advice from Sarah Palin to Christine O'Donnell that she should use Fox News as her outlet to reaching voters. Even this hasn't saved O'Donnell; Colbert showed footage of both Palin, and O'Donnell, unable to answer questions about supreme court decisions, along with the not-surprising information that O'Donnell was prepped by Palin's advisers. Apparently neither of them had been prepped very well.
This parallels other conservative candidates who are making a habit of ducking serious journalists and avoiding debates, opting instead for softball events preaching to the choir. An example would be Michele Bachmann declining a debate with the other congressional candidates for the Minnesota 6th district. Instead, she opted for softball questions on the local Salem right-wing 1280AM radio station that pretentiously calls itself "the Patriot", (as if conservatives were somehow miraculously more patriotic than the rest of us).
On the Patriot, Bachmann can count on preaching to the choir, and on few, if any, challenging questions NOT reaching Bachmann. My colleague Penigma has not gotten through when he has tried on two previous occasions - and we are both old friends of one of the hosts of a show featuring Bachmann as guest. If a caller does get through with a challenge to the right wing perspective, they can look forward to being talked over by both hosts, preventing a sentence from being completed, and being disconnected before any challenge is seriously posed.
Bachmann is doing only two debates, one not even in her own congressional district. The other candidates are engaging in more debates, which Bachmann declined, and have been distinctly more available to local journalists to answer questions than Bachmann.
Sharron Angle, in Nevada, has similarly opted fairly exclusively to speak to conservative media, actually running away from other news questions. In Arizona, a local news station has done some impressive investigative journalism into the allegedly unethical connections between the for-profit company which is benefiting from the privatizing of all Arizona jails, and the passage of conservative legislation which would increase the illegal immigrant prisoners, on the federal dime. Arizona governor Brewer's response has been to cut off any response to legitimate news inquiries by the station, and to pull all campaign advertising in a punitive attempt to avoid legitimate news coverage of a serious voter issue relating to Brewer.
Given the recent millions of dollars in contributions by Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, given the rallies and fund raising efforts by Fox News employees, given the Fox News hosted and promoted tea party rallies - events which by no stretch of the imagination could be considered grass roots. If there is any truth in labelling, if Fox News would ever be held accountable for the content of their programming, they would replace the title "Fox News" with the title "the Fox Conservative Media Outlet, Mouthpiece of Republican and Tea Party Propagandists and Fund Raisers", and they would replace their motto "fair and balanced" with the more honest "don't look to closely; we don't hold up to fact checking" or maybe "just believe us and give us your money".
The joint Stewart rally for sanity and Colbert rally for fear on the National Mall in Washington DC is already looking to far exceed either the Beck rally where the attendance was grossly over reported, and a Bachmann event that was likewise grossly over reported, including video of an entirely different event to support the fake claims. Those numbers ON the mall are expanded even further when one counts the local events nation wide held in conjunction with the mall events, with video broadcast live to those local events and on Comedy Central's cable channel, home to Stewart and Colbert. Stewart and Colbert will be more entertaining AND more factual than previous Fox hosted rallies, or any coverage on Fox News.
I hope that there will be plenty of media staffers in attendance. They just have to remember to 'look like they are observing' and try not to openly have too much of a good time. I'll get the DVR warmed up for it on October 30th, so I can cheer for Sanity, not the opposite - Hannity and the rest of Fox News.
I think you mean Fix(ed) News. The rumors of a vast left wing bias are such claptrap. They primarily stem from ONE poll done in the 1980's (that's right, 25 years ago), in which on primarily SOCIAL issues, the respondents (the media in Washington DC iirc) identified themselves as primarily supporting liberal positions over conservative. OH MY GOD!!! They ACTUALLY supported the idea of choice, of rights for gays, and iirc the questions, Social Security improvements (which were underway at the time thanks to Claude Pepper, and despite the objections of Ronald Reagan, who signed the bill into law - largest tax increase in history btw) etc.. what a terrible thing!
ReplyDeleteOf course, what ISN'T reported is that in other areas, such as spending and foriegn policy questions, in that same poll, the DC press staff primarily showed up as just about dead center.
Since then dozens, literally, of conservative "think tanks" - aka places of sure, high-paying employment for right-wing "journalists" to hide-out between media jobs and public sector jobs (damn that media and government verbally, but be DAMNED sure to work for them) - since then, Fox News, the biggest lie this country has seen since the sinking of the Maine - all have appeared, dragging the country's coverage of issues from decent under the likes of Walter Cronkite, Harry Reed (Conkite's long-time partner), Edward Murrow, etc.. a time when news was what where when and how, but rarely IF EVER, why - to now the absolute drech that is Hannity or O'Reilly. Colbert and Stewart rightly and routinely humiliate Hannity and O'Rielly and (insert your talking Fox News Head).. not because I THINK they are right, not even because they are funny, but quite simply because what Fox News aspouses is SO unjust, SO imporperly done, and so abjectly incorrect, mocking it is child's play - which OUGHT to entertain the Fox News audience, and probably would, if it wasn't making fun of them so often.