Clearly, the Fox News Channel is not the type of news outfit that would earn the admiration of the likes of an Edward R. Murrow. But, if you are a Fox News disciple, you don't give a hay about an Edward R. Murrow or even Cronkite or Sevareid. What could they possibly know about "fair and balanced" journalism?
That attitude is why Fox News supporters' outright rejection of the charges that the network is a publicity arm of the Republican Party is unsurprising. They defend the network's right to make full use of the editorial latitude available to opinion shows like Hannity, or Huckabee. They also maintain that the network's on-air hard news staff -- most notably Britt Hume, Major Garrett and Christopher Wallace -- is comprised of objective professionals who draw the line on subtle editorializing and simply stick to the facts.
Even were this true, it remains quite difficult to begrudge Obama for insisting that during his interviews with Fox, that he also receives the same soft-ball questioning and deferential indulgence the network lays on Bush, Dick Chaney and other Republican Party officials. If this is a fact to which Obama can legitimately lay claim, it obviously means that -- regardless of Fox News' supporters' contention that the network's hard news content is produced by "sticking to the facts" -- it continues to have a credibility problem.
But the Administration's charge deserves consideration even if only on the basis of the network's peculiar habit of misrepresenting the party affiliations of Republicans involved in political scandals. If anything, the subconscious clarity of this particular Fox News Channel distortion represents the perfect metaphor in support of Dunn's charge.
It happened during the Mark Foley sex scandal when Fox News "mistakenly" misidentified Foley, a Florida Republican, as a Democrat on at least two occasions. It was easy to spot the big fat "D," prominently positioned right next to Foley's name during the network's reporting of the story.
A repeat of this "error" occurred during the network's reportage of the Rhode Island congressional race between Lincoln Chafee and Sheldon Whitehouse when it identified the Democratic winner, Whitehouse, as a Republican and the GOP loser, Chafee, a Democrat. It happened again during investigations of Republican Ted Stevens of Alaska, who Fox News misidentified as a Democrat. Most recently it showed up during a segment on Republican Gov. Mark Sanford. This pattern of "mistakes" -- always occurring in one direction -- is among the many reasons why Dunn's criticism of Fox News deserves consideration.
What, me worry?
I can recall an incident during Bush's first term when a Fox New personality became indignant over a question related to the journalistic objectivity of both he and his employer, in light of their shameful (from a journalistic standpoint) pro-America cheer leading. The question resulted in a testy response; something about how proud he is to wear his patriotism "on his sleeve."
This disconnect about the pitfalls of co-mingling flag-waving politics and broadcast journalism seems to be part of the mind-set of most past and present Fox News personalities. It is likely to remain a prerequisite for the future Fox News stars to come. That this Mad Magazine-esque "what, me worry?" level of estrangement from the concepts of quid-pro-quo and conflict-of-interest within a news organization seems of little matter to Fox News' most passionate supporters is quite disturbing and thus well worth pondering.
While I certainly don't know him personally, I'm quite familiar with Bill O'Reilly going back to his days as a local anchor for a tabloid-style news station in Boston where I'm from. Even then, O'Reilly's prickly personality was too overbearing and among the reasons he didn't last very long around here. However, based on his current network's viewer profile, it comes as little surprise that O'Reilly, the cable channel's biggest star, has finally found a successful niche with Fox News.
The same may apply to Geraldo Rivera; he of "Al Capone's vault" infamy. Was anyone really shocked, given Rivera's pre-Fox profile as a journalist that he wound up on that network? Does anyone truly believe that he will ever again work for any of the big three networks? Or, that his move to Fox has revived Rivera's credibility? What about John Stossel? Has the former ABC newsman's move to Fox in any way re-animated his credibility as an investigative reporter?
As for Beck, we've all witnessed his direful transformation from bunker-mentality demagogue on CNN to budding megalomaniac on Fox. And what of Dobbs who, at this writing is in fact, reportedly set to jump to Fox. Would that defection restore his journalistic stature? It seems quite unlikely. From this vantage point, Greta van Susteren stands as perhaps Fox's only politically-neutral news personality even if -- with her often-tiresome focus on missing white girls -- pretty much all she does is provide a reasonable, less screechy alternative to HLN News' Nancy Grace.
Nevertheless, it remains obvious that from the onset, the bosses at Fox News have been aware that flag-waving works well with the "easily-swayed-by patriotic-appeal" conservative and Republican-voting viewers it covets. Among the many early indicators of the network's pro-Republican passion happened on election night 2000, when Fox News prematurely announced that Bush won Florida, causing other major networks to follow suit. Since that obvious breach of Election Day coverage standards, Fox News has gone on to establish an irrefutable reputation as avidly pro-Bush/GOP and, unlike most major news organizations, a reliable font of unfeigned pro-America nationalism.
"Reverse" patriotism?
There is a bit of irony in the fact that for all its flag-waving hyper-patriotism during the Bush years, today, in the era of Obama, Fox very often comes off as firmly un-American as any member of the old Weather Underground or the ACORN lefties it loves to skewer. The network's persistent advocacy of the failure of the Obama administration and by proxy, the nation, stands in sharp contrast to its behavior during the Bush era, when -- by spreading the "Bush Doctrine" in a fashion reminiscent of the way the old TASS news agency spread Soviet propaganda -- Fox News represented perhaps the closest thing to state-run television since American Forces Network.
Meanwhile, today, in the era of Obama, Fox News, like the GOP, seems positioned to function as a resistance force against American progress by further turning up the heat on its relentless promotion of political and cultural polarization. In recent months, the network has helped generate opposition to health care reform and financial bail-outs, expressed disappointment over the President's Nobel award, and has gone to great lengths to undermine Obama's Olympic bid by portraying Chicago as a violent, mob-infested American city, then following up with a shameless show of elation over the failure of the President's bid.
