The panel on the Fox News Watch, the weekend show on Fox News that claims to look for bias in the media, apparently isn't too happy with President Obama for telling Rolling Stone Magazine that their right wing propaganda network might not be so good
October 2, 2010

The panel on the Fox News Watch, the weekend show on Fox News that claims to look for bias in the media, apparently isn't too happy with President Obama for telling Rolling Stone Magazine that their right wing propaganda network might not be so good for the country.

The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition... it is part of the tradition that has a very clear point of view. It's a point of view that I disagree with... It's a point of view that is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.

Jim Pinkerton immediately confuses Fox's propagandized viewers to Fox itself and pretends the president said their viewers are destructive to the country. He also manages to give two whole examples of some reporting he didn't like during that “golden age” from back in the 1930's and the 1960's from Walter Duranty and Daniel Schorr. Nothing like holding some old grudges there.

I find the gripe against Shorr particularly amusing since it's for a "hit piece" he did on Barry Goldwater. Here's how the right wing rag Newsbusters portrayed the story. Looking Back at Schorr’s Goldwater-Nazi Axis CBS Evening News Hit Piece. And here's how it was portrayed in his obit in the New York Times linked above.

Goldwater had held a grudge since 1964, when Mr. Schorr, while at CBS, reported on the enthusiasm of right-wing Germans for Goldwater as he secured the presidential nomination that year. Mr. Schorr noted that a planned postconvention Goldwater trip mainly involved time at an American military recreation center in Berchtesgaden, site of a favorite Hitler retreat.

Heaven forbid someone was doing some guilt by association in their reporting. We all know the "reporters" on Fox "News" would never do a thing like that.

Rich Lowry defends Fox with this overly simplistic explanation:

Liberals hate Fox News. Barack Obama is a liberal. Obama hates Fox.

Yeah, that's the ticket. The problem is not that Fox is a propaganda network. The problem is with liberals who have an irrational hatred of Fox. And note to Rich Lowry, Obama is not a liberal and you know it.

The New York Times' former reporter Judith Miller, who we all know as the woman who helped sell us the Iraq war, plays the victim card for Fox and says the criticism of Fox will just make them more popular. Sadly, since Sarah Palin has proven that playing the victim card seems to play well with conservatives who just dig in if they think they're being attacked, I'd say she's right when it comes to the crowd that watches their network because they actually think it's news. Critical thinking is not exactly most of those people's strong point.

They shift topics slightly and start criticizing MSNBC after they received some praise from the White House last week. The White House said something nice about Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, therefore MSNBC is in the tank with the administration. Pinkerton pretends like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are somehow representative of all of the programming on MSNBC and ignores the fact that most of the programming on that network is just as bad as Fox is. The whole group also ignores the fact that there's been plenty of criticism of the White House from both Maddow and Olbermann whether they got some feigned praise from spokesman Bill Burton or not.

Judith Miller goes on to claim that Fox's daytime coverage is just straight reporting and not opinion shows like their prime time shows. I assume she's never watched any of it to be able to make that claim.

And after endless hours of fear mongering over the ginned up “Ground Zero Mosque” bullpucky, Jim Pinkerton thinks the White House should have called up Rupert Murdoch and thanked them for not covering the Koran burning story in Florida.

Host Jon Scott wraps things up by saying it's “vestiges of the enemies list.” Really? So Obama is just like Nixon now because he dared to make a pretty mild statement about just how bad your network is? These people make my head hurt. This is Fox's show to expose media bias. The fact that they're willing to even put a show on the air that makes that claim is mind boggling.

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