Fox News Admits Bias
Its London bureau chief blurts out the political slant that dare not speak its name.
By Timothy Noah
Slate Chatterbox column
Posted Tuesday, May 31, 2005, at 9:40 AM PT
Sound the klaxons! Corporate Message breakdown at Fox News! This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill. Assume battle stations! Fire in the hole! A-woo-ga! A-woo-ga!
The usually disciplined foot soldiers at Fox News have long maintained that their news organization is not biased in favor of conservatism. This charade is so important to Fox News that the company has actually sought to trademark the phrase "fair and balanced" (which is a bit like Richard Nixon trademarking the phrase "not a crook"). No fair-minded person actually believes that Fox News is unbiased, so pretending that it is calls for steely corporate resolve. On occasion, this vigilance pays off. Last year, for example, the Wall Street Journal actually ran a correction after its news pages described Fox News, accurately, as "a network sympathetic to the Bush cause and popular with Republicans." Getting one of this country's most prestigious newspapers to state that up is down and black is white is no small public-relations victory, and if we can't admire Fox News' candor, we can at least marvel at its ability to remain on message. Or rather, we could admire it, before Scott Norvell went and shot his big mouth off.
Norvell is London bureau chief for Fox News, and on May 20 he let the mask slip in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal. So far, the damage has been contained, because Norvell's comments—in an op-ed he wrote decrying left-wing bias at the BBC—appeared only in the Journal's European edition. But Chatterbox's agents are everywhere. [...] Read what Novell said at Slate website Chatterbox column: http://slate.com/id/2119864
Water Remains Wet
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 01 June 2005
The sky is up. Water is wet. Fox News is biased towards the Republican party. These are the axioms that define reality in our world. The first two do not get challenged all that much, but the third - the Fox news bias - has been the subject of various and sundry arguments and excuses from those for whom that network happily carries all that wet water.
They are fair and balanced, right? They say so, anyway. Never mind that O'Reilly, Hannity, Gibson and the rest of them expend prodigious amounts of energy and lip-spittle flaying anything and everything that is not marching in lock-step with The Anointed One in the Oval. Sure, they've got Colmes on the Left, who on most days does a fair impersonation of the littlest puppy in the litter, the one who can't quite get to the milk. Aside from him, however, the voices you hear from that network are raised in gravel-voiced unison with whatever happens to be spilling from the White House press office. [...] Read the rest of Pitt's article about the Murdoch empire at Truthout site: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/060105Y.shtml
© Virginia Metze
By Timothy Noah
Slate Chatterbox column
Posted Tuesday, May 31, 2005, at 9:40 AM PT
Sound the klaxons! Corporate Message breakdown at Fox News! This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill. Assume battle stations! Fire in the hole! A-woo-ga! A-woo-ga!
The usually disciplined foot soldiers at Fox News have long maintained that their news organization is not biased in favor of conservatism. This charade is so important to Fox News that the company has actually sought to trademark the phrase "fair and balanced" (which is a bit like Richard Nixon trademarking the phrase "not a crook"). No fair-minded person actually believes that Fox News is unbiased, so pretending that it is calls for steely corporate resolve. On occasion, this vigilance pays off. Last year, for example, the Wall Street Journal actually ran a correction after its news pages described Fox News, accurately, as "a network sympathetic to the Bush cause and popular with Republicans." Getting one of this country's most prestigious newspapers to state that up is down and black is white is no small public-relations victory, and if we can't admire Fox News' candor, we can at least marvel at its ability to remain on message. Or rather, we could admire it, before Scott Norvell went and shot his big mouth off.
Norvell is London bureau chief for Fox News, and on May 20 he let the mask slip in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal. So far, the damage has been contained, because Norvell's comments—in an op-ed he wrote decrying left-wing bias at the BBC—appeared only in the Journal's European edition. But Chatterbox's agents are everywhere. [...] Read what Novell said at Slate website Chatterbox column: http://slate.com/id/2119864
Water Remains Wet
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 01 June 2005
The sky is up. Water is wet. Fox News is biased towards the Republican party. These are the axioms that define reality in our world. The first two do not get challenged all that much, but the third - the Fox news bias - has been the subject of various and sundry arguments and excuses from those for whom that network happily carries all that wet water.
They are fair and balanced, right? They say so, anyway. Never mind that O'Reilly, Hannity, Gibson and the rest of them expend prodigious amounts of energy and lip-spittle flaying anything and everything that is not marching in lock-step with The Anointed One in the Oval. Sure, they've got Colmes on the Left, who on most days does a fair impersonation of the littlest puppy in the litter, the one who can't quite get to the milk. Aside from him, however, the voices you hear from that network are raised in gravel-voiced unison with whatever happens to be spilling from the White House press office. [...] Read the rest of Pitt's article about the Murdoch empire at Truthout site: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/060105Y.shtml
© Virginia Metze
Starmail - 3. Jun, 19:12
