Even though they're extremely late to the game, it's nice to finally see someone from a major media outlet say what needs to be said about Fox. They're not "news." As we recently discussed here, some Fox viewers were paid to watch CNN for a month, and even though it may not have changed their political preferences, many of them did change beliefs, priorities and political attitudes.

NBC's Dan Froomkin took things a step further in a recent op-ed and discussed the fact that Fox doesn't deserve to be treated as "news" in the first place:

The problem with Fox “News,” the cable TV channel, isn’t just what it is — it’s also what it isn’t.

It is often a purveyor of propaganda and misinformation. What it’s not is a source of “news” — at least not by any normal definition.

Froomkin went onto discuss the study and the fact that it does show that some "Fox viewers are reachable with real news" before getting to the meat of his argument about what Fox actually is, and what the rest of the media should do about it.

But the biggest takeaway for me is the realization that Fox viewers aren’t just manipulated and misinformed — they are literally being made ignorant by their consumption habits. Watching Fox, they hear a lot of “news-like” things, but they don’t learn about what’s really happening.

And here’s where we in the mainstream media can do something useful: We can stop talking about Fox like it’s a different form of news — and start talking about how it isn’t news at all. It’s the opposite of news. It’s instead of news. It’s the absence of news.

We can explain more clearly that real news organizations present viewers with the information they need regardless of whether it hurts or helps a specific cause or political party.

Mainstream, reality-based journalists have been way too charitable to Fox over the years, partly because the network once employed some of them, and partly to maintain the façade of political neutrality.

But it’s time to firmly declare that Fox is not news.

It's way past time, and this is something the liberal blogosphere has been complaining about for years on end. Fox is not "news." They are right wing propaganda and the networks have one purpose, which is to keep Republicans and their political allies in power, and their viewers in the dark about any issue that doesn't further that agenda.

Here's to hoping some of them take Froomkin's advice, but we've seen it fall on deaf ears for ages around here, so I'm not holding my breath for the rest of them to follow suit start treating Fox with the scorn they deserve.