The Essence of Fox

What the Fox channel says: "Fair and balanced."

What the Fox channel really means. "Every man has a perfect right to his opinion, so long as it agrees with ours."

From the Colbert Report, as noted by Editor and Publisher:

Superman, [Colbert] said, went so far as to hide his identity "by disguising himself as the farthest thing from a hero -- a newspaper reporter." He could have broken the story of his own identity at any time, won headlines and maybe a Pulitzer, but no, he wanted to save his friends Jimmy and Lois from the terror of Lex Luthor.

So Superman, Colbert added, courageously continued to be "a pretend journalist"-- with a title card on the screen next to Colbert commenting "like Brit Hume." [Of Fox]

Colbert is correct about Hume, and Fox. [Numerous cites, examples, links, at bottom.]

Fox's "news" channel is not a real news station. It covers non policy and politics news reasonably well, and on its main focus, policy and politics, it offers "other views' -- in order to masquerade as a news station -- that are often weak, distorted, misleading, or factually erroneous.

This case simply has to be made to mainstream America. It would be as if "Air America" radio decided to start a TV station, solely to promote its agenda and its views, and decided it would have a bigger impact if it offered some contrary views and pretended to be an actual news channel.

Fox as a news station has also had an underestimated effect on the debate in America. It is a large part of the problem. Not because of its views, but because it it pretends to be something it is not.

Nobody -- moderate republican (to the extent that exists anymore, as it is certainly getting wiped out in national politics), moderate democrat, independent, democrat or liberal, should go on that station. Nobody should refer to it as a news station. (Obviously, conservatives and the more dominant right wing conservatives will, because they don't see it that way. They see a station that reports politics and policy news in the manner in which they would like to see it presented, with just enough "balance" to actually fool them into thinking that they are covering all sides to the appropriate issues, accurately, and with the right emphasis and attention.)

Nor is this going down a "slippery slope." There is a difference between "bad news" stations (which most are) and a partisan right wing channel pretending to offer "balanced" news and analysis, in order to fool itself and America into believing it is something that it is not. But more importantly, the case needs to be repeatedly made, because that station is manipulating America. And more of America than many think.

In fact, a recent comprehensive poll found "the BBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera the most trusted brands in their respective home regions."

Rregardless of whether the poll is correct or incorrect, the channel is the most watched show "news" channel on cable, constantly referred to, and constantly cited, as a mainstream source of news. And through its impact both direct and indirect, it exerts a tremendous effect upon the nature of the debate in America today. To discount it's importance, merely because "everybody knows" (or, more accurately, "some people know"), that it is highly biased, is a huge mistake.

Keeping in mind that information is the lifeblood of democracy, here is a fairly amazing breakdown of the misperceptions of Fox viewers, versus those that watch other shows. Is this coincident to Fox's constant distortions? Or correlated?

Newshounds, albeit it has left plenty out, and sometimes inadvertently presents a slant of its own, nevertheless, with a limited budget, has done a fairly good job, and still has thousands of pages of evidence of Fox's distortions.

A few more examples of errors and patterns:

---A typical "mistake" distorting Democratic Senator Richard Durbin's remarks, made on Brit Hume's show, and never corrected.
---A Fox "analyst" spins, rather than reports, on the Jose Padilla case. Contrast this with the legal brief in favor of Padilla, filed by the conservative Cato Institute. The case briefly explained, and the Cato institute suggesting (correctly) that strongly conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig erred in rendering an extremely broad reading of a Congressional Statute -- the same Judge Luttig that the Fox "analyst" spun even further to appear more supportive of the administration.
---Brit Hume, rearranges Franklin Delano Roosevelt's words to tell viewers he said something completely different from what he actually said.
---Georgetown law professor David Cole illustrates first hand how the "No Spin Zone, behind the scene, and very purposefully, spun like crazy. Perfect for a campaign trying to present a point of view, yet the very anathema of responsible journalism itself.
---Before he ironically (or not so ironically) became administration press secretary, Fox host Tony Snow repeats decidedly erroneous information about a critical, and purposeful, governmental leak.
---The station presents "balanced" views on global warming, mainly by analysts with large industry ties or other subjective bias.
---Fox is the first to report a "news briefing" given in 2002 by Richard Clarke, largely contradicting Clarke's later claims after he was no longer associated with the administration. While it subsequently came to light (albeit not in this Fox article) that Clarke was charged with presenting the administration's viewpoint as his job, what was not presented was that when Clarke gave that briefing to reporters in 2002 they agreed not to use his name. This agreement was not only broken by Fox in airing this story, they also neglected to mention it. (Incidentally, almost everything Clarke said in that briefing was technically true, but much of it was highly misleading.)

An online editorial, technically overstated but not all that far off considering the role that Fox plays, reasons:

Relying on the Fox News Channel as your only source of news is like using MAD Magazine as a legitimate source of news. The Fox News Channel's reporting style is so biased and skewed that trying to obtain any real information from a news report is quite challenging. Fox News is a joke because it provides info-tainment rather than reality-based news coverage. Fox News Channel is a "news channel" in name only. The network is what L.A. Times Editor John S. Carroll calls "pseudojournalism."

Although TV news in general is sensationalist...Fox News is a modern day example of the "unreliable narrator." [It] places an acute spin in nearly every story it represents and in some cases presents untruths as truth.

Here's another brief list of examples regarding one of Fox's "journalists." Another example is here, with dozens of links to further, more egregious - if not sometimes factually or logically outrageous - examples.

The movie "Outfoxed," somewhat objectively, details how what Fox is doing, is very different from what it tells its audience it is doing.

From the Guardian, about the movie:

The title indicates the program's partisan approach. After watching Fox News at work for a while however, you wonder at how mild the title is.

For this is a scarifying expose of right-wing propagandists masquerading as news reporters, deliberately misleading the US (and world) public and waging a class war on behalf of corporate heavies. And determining Fox's policies and approach is the man at the top, the media moguls' media mogul, Rupert Murdoch.

The program is mainly concerned with revealing the ways Fox News distorts news, wages co-ordinated character assassination campaigns and basically presents "News"...devoid of responsibility or journalistic ethics.

Over 2 dozen memos by Fox news chief John Moody, regardless of what one thinks of the content, illustrate the clear intent to "push" an agenda, rather than report the news. Maureen Farell, writing in a rather discomforting piece back in 2004, aptly summarized a few:

"[Bush's] political courage and tactical cunning are worth noting in our reporting through the day," FOX News chief John Moody e-mailed staffers on June 3, 2003, in one of many instances where reporters were instructed to glowingly praise G.W. Bush as Fearless Leader Extraordinaire.

"The President goes to Charlotte to talk about job training. Buoyed by the 300K job figure last week, he can boast his policies are working," Moody wrote on April 4, 2004.

The Democratic presidential candidate, however, was not granted the same "fair and balanced" courtesy. Though Moody instructed FOX staffers give each candidate equal time, the pro-Bush/anti-Kerry bias was obvious. "John Kerry may wish he'd taken off his microphone before trashing the GOP," Moody e-mailed staffers on March 12, 2004. ". . . his coarse description of his opponents has cast a lurid glow over the campaign."

"Kerry, starting to feel the heat for his flip-flop voting record, is in West Virginia," Moody explained four days later. Etc.

Summing it all up, James Goldsborough aptly notes:

In 1996, Fox News was invented by an expatriate news mogul named Rupert Murdoch.

I'd seen what Murdoch did to the British newspapers he bought, moving them somewhere to the right of the queen, and saw what he did to The New York Post, which became a staunch Gingrich supporter.

But what would Murdoch do with a national U.S. cable news network? Eight years later, we have the answer: He has made Fox News the official Bush network, an extension of the White House press office.

Posing as a news station. And manipulating America in the process.