Friday, July 23, 2004

Fox and Friends

Well it's safe to say that this hasn't been a banner week for Future President Kerry.  I don't think it's a disasterous week; none of the big anti-Kerry stories (Berger's wandering hands, the problems with Richard Clark's story) are real campaign sinking torpedoes.  But it's not been the greatest.

On the other hand it hasn't been a terribly grea weak for Fox News either, as this new Documentary Outfoxed has gotten out to the people.  It demonstrates to those who don't know that the best argument for Fox News isn't that it is fair and balanced (it isn't) but some vague argument about how it balances the more "liberal" news stations. 

One claim being made by Fox defenders and employees is that they can't be seen as pro President Bush because they are the ones who broke the story of President Bush's DUI.  Well Eric Boehlert takes issue with that particular interpretation in an article at Salon today.

"The truth is that it was a resourceful 27-year-old reporter at a local Fox affiliate, WPXT-TV in Portland, Maine, who uncovered the DUI story, not the Fox News Channel in New York or Washington, the partisan national network that's the focus of Robert Greenwald's new documentary, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism." Nobody associated with "Outfoxed" or elsewhere participating in the media debate has suggested that local Fox news teams in places like Bakersfield, Calif.; Birmingham, Ala.; or Boise, Idaho operate under Republican marching orders as they cover arsons, car crashes and zoo openings. So it's not that unusual that an enterprising reporter, operating off the FNC reservation as it were, could play a starring role in the DUI story. Not surprisingly, Ailes and Cameron are now conveniently trying to pretend that it was Sean Hannity's "Fair and Balanced" Fox News, those bold seekers of the truth, who unearthed the damaging dirt on Bush that almost cost him the election."

Of particular note in Boehlert's article is the way they chose to present it in 2000 as compared to how they present it today. 

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