[CTRL] Fox News-We Distort, We Decide!

[William Shannon]

WE DISTORT, WE DECIDE: Doing Fox a Favor Authentic Journalists Lend Credibility to GOP-TV John Moyers is the publisher of TomPaine.com and the executive director of the Florence Fund. WARNING: The author insists the following report is fair and balanced, without any taint of opinion. Any suspicion that the author holds an opinion is completely off base, as proven by the author's repetition of the following declaration: Fair and balanced ... fair and balanced ... fair and balanced ... fair and balanced. Convincing, isn't it? Roll Call editor Mort Kondracke and NPR reporter Mara Liasson, first-rate professionals, are doing the Fox News Channel a big favor -- lending their valuable credibility to a network that cannot earn its own. Kondracke and Liasson appear regularly in Fox's evening lineup, part of anchorman Brit Hume's "Special Report." Along with Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes, each is identified as a "Fox News Contributor" -- a formal title and position that elevates them from mere guest status, making them part of the Fox team. But despite the regular on-air gig and the title, it seems like Fox News Channel is getting the better end of this association. You see, the twenty-four hour news channel is eager to have credibility as an honest-to-goodness journalistic outfit. But its bias is so overtly conservative, so obviously manipulative of the news, that Fox News Channel (FNC) doesn't stand a chance of earning such a reputation on its own. Hence the presence of real-life and credible journalists like Kondracke and Liasson. You might call it "credibility by association." But "wishful thinking" might be more accurate. HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT Fox hosts like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Tony Snow and Brit Hume dominate Fox's evening lineup and help give its "news" a firm rightward twist. We here at TomPaine.com respect strong opinions -- we have plenty of them ourselves. So we don't begrudge Fox hosts having a point of view. We say, bring on the debate! It's just that these guys don't have the courage to own up to it. Instead, they hide behind Fox's twin mantras, "Fair and Balanced" and "We report. You decide." These are repeated so frequently and with such earnestness that they take on the feel of propaganda. Truth by confident assertion. Believe us because we say it is so. "Fair and balanced" if you see things through the eyes of Newt Gingrich, whose title of FNC "analyst" gives him more status than mere "contributor" Kondracke or Liasson. As for "we report," FNC doesn't do much original reporting. It favors cost-effective punditry instead. And "you decide" is disingenuous since every news organization naturally exercises its discretion in the practical matter of selecting stories and topics to feature. "We distort. We decide" would be more like it. Or maybe just plain "GOP-TV." After all, FNC Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes is a long-time Republican loyalist and consultant, going all the way back to the low-flying Nixon days. If FNC hosts and reporters got any easier on GOP positions I might think their scripts were cribbed right out of party talking points. There really isn't a need for conservative guests or GOP spokesmen since FNC's hosts and reporters do such a good job representing those points of view themselves. Nonetheless, conservative guests predominate. When there is a liberal guest (and on Fox that typically means a centrist), they're almost always paired with a conservative one. Add the conservative FNC host and it's two on one. An extensive report on FNC by Neil Hickey in the March/April 1998 Columbia Journalism Review included this passage: Some of FNC's severest critics are former employees. ... Several complained of "management sticking their fingers" in the writing and editing of stories and of attempting to cook the facts to make a story more palatable to right-of-center tastes. ("I've worked at a lot of news organizations and never found that kind of manipulation.") The bias at Fox News Channel is so obvious that it seems a waste of time to offer evidence of its existence, which is readily available to anyone willing to tune in. But just to model some behavior for Fox, here are a few examples: On August 16, during coverage of the Democratic convention, Bill O'Reilly confessed to his guest, "I'm so glad you're here because I'm so tired of defending George W. Bush." Curiously, this remark was excised from a transcript found on the Nexis database. In fairness, O'Reilly twice said in the same broadcast that he's "not rooting for anyone," though it was hard to miss his aggressive assertion and defense of conservative positions throughout the evening. Brit Hume recently interviewed Jeff Birnbaum, Fortune magazine's Washington bureau chief, about political contributions. Birnbaum started out fairly noting that the GOP beats the Democrats in the overall money chase, but who focused on the GOP's lead in small contributions, and incorrectly stated that the Dems get most of the mega-contributions. Hume worked hard to focus the conversation on that, running down a list of the biggest donors and categorizing them as leaning toward one party or the other. All but two of the big-business donors were labeled as 'sitting on the fence' by giving to both parties (as if that implies balance, and therefore legitimacy, to the purchased influence), and Hume emphasized the labor-union donors, failing to note that union contributions represent small contributions from millions of union workers (see www.OpenSecrets.org for all the fundraising facts). On October 25, host Shepard Smith interviewed Scott Hogenson, who was identified only as "Executive Editor, CNSNews.com." Why wouldn't Fox tell viewers that "CNS.com" is the Conservative News Service of Alexandria, Virginia, a project of the far-right-fringe Media Research Center founded by L. Brent Bozell, III? Why not tell viewers and let them decide what to think of the fact? O'Reilly recently had Audrey Mullen on his show to talk about prescription drug coverage and Al Gore's healthcare proposals. Mullen was identified as the "government affairs representative for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons." Turns out the Association, founded in 1943, has long been a staunch opponent of Medicaid and Medicare. Some of its past leaders were members of the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society. And it turns out two years ago she served as executive director of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, a notorious outfit known both for it its hard-edged conservatism and as an adjunct of the GOP. Mullen's name pops up in Congressional testimony as an officer of a fly-by-night outfit called "Women for Tax Reform," which was investigated for its role in here-today-gone-tomorrow attack ads in 1996. When she appeared on O'Reilly's show, she offered only substance-lite rhetoric opposing Gore's policies, and as a review of the transcript shows, O'Reilly helped out by pitching softball questions. It amounted to a lovefest between two Gore opponents. Last week, FNC reporter Brian Wilson presented a story on last-minute wrangling between Congress and the White House over long-delayed appropriation bills. President Clinton was threatening a veto, Wilson reported, while Congress was trying to wrap up and get home. But Wilson didn't mention that Clinton was standing firm against a package of pork-barrel tax cuts - $240 billion worth - that the Republican leadership had hidden behind a fig-leaf minimum wage increase. The Washington Post, on that very day, had editorialized in the strongest possible words against the pork and in favor of a Clinton veto if it was sent by Congress to the White House. Wilson didn't say anything about this, the central element of the controversy, and his spin led viewers to wonder why the White House was blocking legislation that had to be passed before Congress could adjourn. Is this fair and balanced? You decide. TRYING TO HAVE IT BOTH WAYS The irony in all this is that Fox News Channel is trying to have it both ways -- trying to gain mainstream credibility by putting on the mask of "we report, you decide," while at the same time holding itself up as the antidote to 'liberal media bias.' But it can't have it both ways. FNC either balances other media outlets by presenting a version of events that is tweaked to the right as far as the others are allegedly tweaked to the left, OR it walks the middle path of "fair and balanced." If a scale is tipped to the left, adding weight to the middle doesn't balance it out. Only adding weight to the right will do that. Neil Hickey's thorough 1998 CJR piece exposes this contradiction. Ailes, Hume and others repeatedly speak out of both sides of their mouths, claiming a deliberate aversion to bias even as they mouth the evidence that they are a right-tiled network. "We're going to provide straight, factual information ... with less 'spin' and less 'face time' for anchors," Ailes said when FNC was first launched. "The intention here is to do a broadcast people can trust," Hume said in early FNC promotional spots. In October Hume told a reporter for Electronic Media, ''It's a trick to be interesting and to be neutral and balanced. We think we've got that.'' Dear reader -- pick yourself up off the floor and stop laughing. Be assured he said it with a straight face. Only one person affiliated with FNC seems to shoot straight in Hickey's report: Fred Barnes ... feels the network isn't as conservative as it has the right to be. The way to balance the news, he says, is to offer coverage "that's quite candidly conservative" as a useful counterpoint to "the more liberal tendencies of the other networks." Barnes is right. If Fox News Channel wants to present conservative-spun news, fine. But it ought to own up to its ideology, not run from it. It's not really fooling anyone anyway, so why not just be honest? Instead, FNC maintains the ruse. Fox's ratings are up, thanks no doubt to a loyal core audience of Hillary haters and Limbaugh "dittoheads" (you know, the ones who thought Ron Brown was assassinated by Vince Foster's gay dog). It's even giving CNN and MSNBC a run in the ratings now and then (during the GOP convention, for example), though nothing suggests this is a reflection on "fair and balanced" reporting. More likely it's a response to some of the genuinely entertaining aspects of the network's offerings. ... OK, so I've been watching it for months, and I'll admit to being entertained now and then, even interested sometimes. I like Shepard Smith's daily skip through the news clips from across the nation and around the world. And give Fox credit for giving airtime to Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan, and for including genuine liberal media critic Jeff Cohen on a weekly program. But more respectable opinion than mine will look askance at FNC as long as it continues to harp on its ludicrous "fair and balanced" and "we report, you decide" claims. The funny thing is, the dubious proclamations are what makes it so hard to trust Fox News Channel. I'd trust them more if they 'fessed up. Meanwhile, amidst the ruse sit Liasson, Kondracke and a sprinkling of others -- authentic journalists sharing their hard-earned credibility with a cadre of blustering partisans. Did I hear that Fox might hire John Stossel away from ABC News? Hmm ... Who would be getting the better end of THAT deal? Originally published at: http://www.tompaine.com/features/2000/10/31/6.html � 1999-2000 The Florence Fund