Should the Media have an Adverserial Relationship to the President?

Goodness gracious, not right now! Currently we have a Republican President, so naturally the media should play a supportive role in getting his message out. When we have a Democratic President again, that's when the Media should be aggressive.

Look at this statement by Fox News Personality Bill O'Reilly. "Well, I think Fox News Channel was lucky because we were less skeptical of the war, and the war went very well. So we won." Well, of course there is some debate over whether the war went well. But not the way Mr. Reilly puts this. They were less skeptical of the war, and since the war went well, they won. That's not the same as saying, "We sifted the evidence, evaluated it, and determined that this was the right war." Not the same at all. FAIR has a pretty good response to this.

If you believe that a journalistic enterprise "wins" not by cheerleading for the more powerful side, but instead by informing its audience, then a recent study indicated that Fox News was actually the biggest loser during the war. The survey, by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, found that misconceptions about the Iraq war were closely related to what news outlets an individual relied on for information. And for each misperception studied by the research group, viewers of Fox News were the most likely to be misinformed.

Of course that depends on what Fox News viewers want to be informed on. If they want to be informed on what is actually going on, this is negative. But if they want to hear that everything is fine and President Bush is wonderful, well, than Fox is giving them what they want.