This week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers asked “What will be the top two issues in the midterm elections?” Enormous majorities on both the Left and the Right picked “Economy/jobs” as the expected top issue. On the Left, “health care reform” came in second, far ahead of the third-place “deficit/big government.” The issues of Afghanistan and Cap & Trade were very far behind. The picks on the Right were similar, expect that “deficit/government” was the choice for 2d place, with health care in third.
I wrote: “All these will be big, but the ballooning deficit and the unemployment rate will probably be of interest to the largest number of voters. Afghanistan/cap-and-trade/health care will probably motivate lots of base activists from both sides.”
The second question was “On balance, does the White House’s decision to take on Fox News help or hurt President Obama?” Eighty-seven percent of the Left, but only 18% of the Right thought it helped. I was among them: “It turns out that all those folks with ‘dissent is patriotic’ bumper stickers who worried about the president trying to shut down criticism were just a little ahead of their time. Obama’s stature is diminished in the short run, but Fox’s reporting is so harmful to the WH (Van Jones, Anita Dunn, etc.) that they may have figured some short-term cost is worth it if they can convince the more pliant folks in the MSM not to follow up those stories.”
PeteP says:
Fox’s ratings are ROCKETING, while CNN & MSNBC plummet, since Obama decided to attack them.
Quite similar to his success rate in other areas, come to think of it.
October 30, 2009, 12:31 pmAssistant Village Idiot says:
I would rather the question had been whether it helps or hurts America, not Obama. It strikes me as very typical inside-the-beltway thinking that regards all events as mere chess-pieces on the board of electoral success.
Onion Network News has lampooned this “how will this affect the election” attitude at least twice.
October 30, 2009, 12:57 pmJames T. Carrington says:
How is he shutting down Fox? With a weapon of mass press release?He’s stating that he feels attacked by them, which looks pretty consistent when put up against the headlines.
Is that a Chavez station shutdown or Bush calling out dissenters as anti-American? The station that calls itself the voice of opposition should not expect Obama to lay down like a Kerry or some other weakling…My own opinion is that Fox should keep doing what they are doing, as it is helping their bottom line (the only thing that matters).
Obama should continue to see how his responses are considered effective or not, depending on the issue. His moron Congress/Senate are not exactly helping move issues forward in a useful manner.
I don’t think that anyone beyond policy wonks will have a strong feeling about cap and trade, but health care and “dude where’s my job/credit line/dividend” are going to drive 2010 more than anything else, including Afghanistan. You can ask poll people about cap/trade but people don’t discuss it over dinner like economy problems or the health care scare stories on both side.
October 30, 2009, 1:03 pmPlugInMonster says:
James T. Carrington – funny but as much as Bush was ruthless attacked by the MSM, he never once complained. So by your own morality, Bush is a far greater man.
October 30, 2009, 1:18 pmMark N. says:
Really? I seem to recall a lot of complaining about the “liberal media” and “media bias”, and specifically about MSNBC and ABC, during the Bush administration, including frequently from the White House spokesman, and occasionally from Bush himself.
October 30, 2009, 1:31 pmPlugInMonster says:
He never tried to get them ousted from a press conference like Gibbs did. Obama has greater fascist tendencies.
October 30, 2009, 1:32 pmPaul Horwitz says:
I believe the White House decision to take on Fox is silly, although of course there is ample room for it to criticize Fox’s coverage and enthusiastic style of partisan journalism if it wishes to. But I question the statement that this represents proof positive for those who thought Obama would “shut down opposition.” As was said above, issuing a stern press release is not quite the same thing as shutting down radio stations. Nor, although I disagree with an attempt to shut Fox News out of a pool interview, has Fox generally been denied access to, say, open press conferences. Doubtless it has less access than it used to in the inside corridors, but those games were played by the last administration too. As for comparing who has “greater fascist tendencies,” this seems like a very American pasttime for both left and right, and one that is apparently made all the more enjoyable for both sides by the fact that neither party and neither of the last two administrations actually exhibited anything close enough to fascism to warrant throwing around that label. I am reminded of a great old Tom Wolfe piece where he observes that despite all the American cries that the dark night of fascism is descending, it only ever seems to actually land in Europe.
October 30, 2009, 1:54 pmB.D. says:
I don’t see how this helps Obama. It may solidify his support on the left, but it risks alienating independents and disappointing some moderate Democrats. And it stupidly feeds into doubts about the objectivity of non-Fox journalists’ by making them appear to be favored by the White House. What does this accomplish?
Rick Santelli, Jim Cramer, Rush Limbaugh, the New Yorker’s cover art, all of Fox News, “teabaggers” across the nation . . . is there any critic whose stature is beneath the office of the presidency?
October 30, 2009, 2:11 pm24AheadDotCom says:
With millions of Americans out of work, it’s certainly odd how I can’t get any help from bloggers with things like this. The Right bloggers could use things like that to make the Left bloggers look bad and, kinda more importantly, help their fellow citizens. Instead, most of those Right bloggers are just whining about less-fundamental issues when they aren’t getting distracted by shiny objects.
October 30, 2009, 2:28 pmTwirlip says:
Jog my memory here. When did Bush call dissenters “anti-American”?
For that matter, when did he say that CBS News was “not a real news organization” for running stories against him based on fraudulent documents?
October 30, 2009, 2:35 pmTwirlip says:
But they have gone well beyond merely issuing a “stern press release”. They attempted to exclude Fox from the pool of WH reporters and have urged the other networks, made up largely of Obama fans, to ignore genuine news stories appearing on Fox.
Perhaps if you were more familiar with the facts you would be less skeptical of those who regard Obama as a threat to freedom of speech and the press.
It’s difficult to imagine the intensity of the outrage if the Bush admnistration had done what the Obama people are now doing. The Bush administration was described as being quasi-fascist for suggesting that it might not be wise to describe Al Queda as heros and the US Army as cowards!
October 30, 2009, 2:43 pmpublic_defender says:
War? Since when is criticism “war”? An administration gives fewer interviews to reporters who are basically working for the other party and that’s “war”?
That said, the overt criticism is as unwise as it is true. Fox feeds on its own victim complex, and there is no need to provide extra nourishment.
October 30, 2009, 2:45 pmPaul Horwitz says:
I appreciate what you have to say, Twirlip (if that *is* your real name), but I respectfully disagree on a number of fronts. Let me reiterate that I don’t believe the administration’s actions on this front are wise, so I am not defending the administration in this sense; only arguing that there is a long stretch between unwise actions of this sort and claims of threats to freedom of the press or of incipient fascism. Much of what the administration has done consists of not calling on Fox at news conferences, which is petty but minor and an action that all administrations perform in one way or another with the press; criticizing Fox openly, which again I think unwise but not illegitimate; and excluding or attempting to exclude Fox from a pool interview, which again I think unwise, although it is worth noting that plenty of other news organizations were left out of the pool. The problem in the latter case is the reason for leaving Fox out of the pool, in my view. Nevertheless, all of this is, I repeat, a far cry from “a threat to freedom of speech and of the press.” And, again, if the administration thinks Fox is a terrible journalism organization, although it ought not give it unequal treatment, I think it is entitled to not give it most-favored-nation treatment either, and certainly is entitled to make its criticisms public, although it might be unwise to do so. As for suggesting that a particular story is lousy and that other media outlets ought not bother running with it, this too is common practice for administrations, and should be, although I feel less sanguine about this when the practice is strategically aimed at “genuine news stories,” although with all due respect these are in the eye of the beholder.
As for your last graf, of course I can imagine the intensity of the reaction if the Bush administration were to do similar things. When it not infrequently tried to route around the major networks and papers (except for Fox), when it raised questions about whether newspapers were violating national security with particular stories or questioned the patriotism of particular stories and comments, when it talked in terms of the “reality-based community,” it was lambasted and some people did talk about fascism. That’s rather my point. The term is thrown around with gusto by people who like to occupy themselves with that particular hobby — a hobby made possible largely by the fact that this is self-evidently not a country whose administrations in recent years have approached anything like fascist tendencies. It’s a fine sport for some, but not for me. I think it degrades discourse.
October 30, 2009, 2:56 pmPaul Horwitz says:
On reflection, I should have deleted the last sentence from my last comment. It accurately describes my views but was unnecessary.
October 30, 2009, 3:14 pmTwirlip says:
I’m sure that sentence meant something meaningful, in your mind.
That’s not open to debate. Newspapers were violating national security with particular stories, and they have never denied doing so. What they have done is claim that they have a “freedom of the press” justification for doing so.
You’re mixed up. It was the left which described itself as the “reality-based community”, and still likes to do so.
We know the reason for their trying to exclude Fox from the pool. It is part of the effort to delegitimize Fox as a news organisation. And we know the reaon for that also – it is because Fox has mainstreamed several stories which the White House would prefer not be widely known, such as Van Jones being a communist.
What is a mystery is why anyone not already a fascist thug would consider that an acceptable reason to try to shut up one of Americas largest news networks.
Please link me to an instance of the Bush adminisration telling the media that they ought not cover a story which the Bushies found embarrassing.
October 30, 2009, 3:38 pmuh_clem says:
As long as the question is framed as whether the decision take on Fox News helps or hurts Obama, it’s a negative.
However, if the question is whether Fox is a legitimate news source, then it plays fairly poorly for Fox. Of course, this is the real issue, but unfortunately pundits tend to focus the “horse race” aspect of inside-the-beltway machinations (who’s up? who’s down? is this good for McCain?) instead of reporting on the issue itself.
It’s fairly clear that there’s no clear dividing line at Fox between editorializing/opininating and news reportage. Most other news organizations at least try to present themselves as separating the two. Fox doesn’t even bother to pretend.
October 30, 2009, 3:40 pmTwirlip says:
Again with this dishonest hackery. if you need to lie about the most basic facts surrounding this case, it indcates you know you are on shakey ground.
The Bush administration never attempted to do to the other networks what Obama is attempting to do with Fox, in spite of their working for the Democrats.
In fairness to the other networks, they see the danger of this precedent and have pushed back aganst the White House, demonstrating a little more concern for the freedom of the press than you annoying Democratc Party cheerleaders.
October 30, 2009, 3:44 pmrj says:
Puh-leeze.
Fox is a non-issue. The WH not trying to shut it down or take it off the air, it just refuses to cooperate with it, which is fine. For chrissakes, FNC runs RNC press releases and talking points verbatim without attribution as such, typos included! It’s run and staffed by former GOPers and when the Bush WH needed a press secretary, it grabbed someone from FNC who didn’t really need to change the material all that much.
None of this means that FNC should be shut down or that they lack a right to do what they’re doing. It’s a free country.
If the RNC had a Sunday morning talk show, do you think Obama would want to go on it? Of course not, and that’s his prerogative. If you think this is some kind of silencing of dissent, you’re either prone to hysterics, conspiracy-minded or both.
October 30, 2009, 3:45 pmTwirlip says:
Unlike the New York Times? The Washington Post? CBS News? ABC News? MSNBC? CNN?
What fantasy world do you people live in where the MSM are all so careful about dividing their “news” from their opininating?
If you must lie to yourself, fine. Don’t try to lie to everyone else.
October 30, 2009, 3:48 pmuh_clem says:
Unlike the New York Times? The Washington Post? CBS News? ABC News? MSNBC? CNN?
Yes. Exactly. Add in the pre-Murdoch WSJ, Time, Newsweek, LA Times, The Economist, McClatchy, USA Today, NPR, BBC, Financial Times, the Economist et. al.
There’s something called “journalistic ethics”. Most news organizations in the US practice it, or at least try to (no org is perfect). One particular outlet has given up all pretense.
What fantasy world do you people live in…
It’s called Earth. You should come down and visit sometime. It’s quite nice here.
October 30, 2009, 3:57 pmPaul Horwitz says:
As a structural matter, there is in fact a difference between what Fox is accused of and what happens at the New York Times and Washington Post, and for that matter at the Wall Street Journal. (I can’t speak for what happens at the network or cable news organizations, although I must say I don’t consider them, or Fox, to be worthy of much attention.) The editorial boards at those papers are entirely separate from the work done by reporters and editors. They have separate offices, often on a separate floor or in a separate area. They have no power to assign stories. They have, for that matter, no power to hire or fire reporters. They work entirely independently from the reporting branch of the paper. This is neither a mystery nor a fraud, but a well-established structure and a fact. You may well complain that the top editors of those papers, who are not the same as the editors who sit on the editorial board, in fact hire people who tend to share the same ideology as the folks on the editorial board, and that is a fair argument to make. But it is also a separate complaint.
I would note that Fox itself in effect has made this point for me, at least normatively although perhaps not factually, by insisting that its own reporters are distinct from and independent from any politically driven editorial direction. The reason it is accused of dishonesty on this is because of memos that have been widely circulated in which its editors appear to direct the politics of its coverage. I think those claims have some basis, but in fairness would note that there is a difference between claiming that there is no dividing line at Fox between editorializing and news coverage in the abstract, and claiming that there is no dividing line between its opinion-oriented personalities and its reporting staff. The former might be true, or partially true, without the latter being true at all.
October 30, 2009, 3:58 pmTwirlip says:
How is this any different from the other news channels, except that they hire former Democratic party people and run DNC talking points?
The reason the other news people are not going along with this nonsense is not that they are not liberals, it is that they are not moronic liberals. They see the danger of a future Republican President decidng that they are not “really” news people.
In all the fatuous whining about Fox and RNC talking points, what gets glossed over is that what Fox said about ACORN, about Van Jones, about Anita Dunne, was 100% correct. You just don’t like them saying it. You just don’t like the other networks mentioning it after Fox breaks it. Your problem is not really with Fox or even with Republcans, your problem is with the truth.
October 30, 2009, 3:59 pmTwirlip says:
Paul, you are an imbecile. No doubt you still believe in the Tooth Fairy as well.
October 30, 2009, 4:02 pmPaul Horwitz says:
Twirlip, without wanting to pursue this too much further, is your statement that I am an imbecile, which I am hoping and guessing is not based on personal acquaintance, based on some empirical work you have done? Have you worked at any of these papers? Or at a major newspaper, as I have? I can understand your making a claim that these papers are biased; there is plenty of room for argument on that score. But are you seriously pressing the point that they are biased specifically because their *editorial boards* determine news coverage? Because I must assert that this is simply false with respect to major newspapers.
Also, and with respect, I must retract my earlier retraction of the statement about the degradation of discourse.
October 30, 2009, 4:07 pmTwirlip says:
What part of “journalistic ethics” permits news people to run a story based on pathetic forgeries in an effort to take down a President?
What part of “journalistic ethics” is entailed in journalists supporting one political party overwhelmingly with their money and their votes?
What sort of “journalistic ethics” do we see on display when a “journalist” tells the American peoplle that they had had a temper tantrum for voting against the “journalists” prefered party?
What part of “journalistic ethics” is involved when “journalists” tell the President that they would like to give him a blow-job for protecting the right to an abortion? Or write school-girlish fantasies involving the Presidents well-toned body?
Your understanding of journalism is on a par with your understanding of ethics, and both are in the gutter.
October 30, 2009, 4:12 pmTwirlip says:
It is based on your making imbecilic statements.
Nothing escapes you, does it?
I thought I was reading Volokh, but I seem to have stumbled into Daily Kos by mistake. This place is not normally overrun with die-hard cheerleaders for the Democratic Party.
October 30, 2009, 4:16 pmuh_clem says:
How is this any different from the other news channels, except that they hire former Democratic party people and run DNC talking points?
The other news organizations (see list above) do not publish press releases verbatim without attribution as such, typos included. That’s one of the things that makes them news organizations.
Where are these Democratic Party people running the other news organizations? Look at the biographies of the presidents of major network news organizations:
NBC News- Steve Capus – carreer journalist starting with WCAU-TV in 1986, followed by a career in NBC news. Worked his way up the ladder to become head of News.
ABC News – David Westin -lawyer He clerked for J. Edward Lumbard and Lewis Powell, before becoming ABC’s in-house counsel and then moving up the management ladder.
CBS – Sean McManus – TV sales guy specializing is sports, then head of CBS Sports before moving over to News.
Fox News – Roger Ailes – political consultant for many Republican candidates during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, including the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and GHW Bush.
As the song goes, one of these things is not like the other. Can you tell me which one before I finish my song?
October 30, 2009, 4:22 pmRyan Waxx says:
Gee, I would NEVER have expected that reaction from you. No, really!
October 30, 2009, 5:00 pmB.D. says:
I’m sure Fox News is just hating this ratings boost.
October 30, 2009, 5:11 pmgerber says:
“It turns out that all those folks with ‘dissent is patriotic’ bumper stickers who worried about the president trying to shut down criticism were just a little ahead of their time.”
I guess you forgot about the Bush administrations “war” on MSNBC.
Hackery, thy name is Kopel.
October 30, 2009, 5:19 pmPaul Horwitz says:
“Twirlip,” if I read your last comment correctly, I must say I am caught between admiring your persistence and wondering at why you should make such a move. You have before you a universe of possible explanations why major newspapers are biased in their reporting: because of class background, because of what is taught in journalism school, because of the liberal bias implicit in traditional narratives pursued by journalists, or because, as a practical matter, the senior editors — the Executive Editor, the Managing Editor, and so forth — who are actually charged with hiring reporters and editors are biased and hire people who share their biases. Many journalists, including those working for these papers, would be quite willing to sign on to some of these explanations, entirely or up to a point. And these explanations all have the virtue of simplicity. They economize on additional required facts or suppositions. You have instead apparently chosen to insist that the actual mechanism by which these reporters become biased (or, to be fair, one of the mechanisms) is that editorial boards, which in my experience are ignored by everyone else in the newsroom and whose members most likely have never met most of the reporters at a large major newspaper, are secretly giving orders to reporters. You have argued that the elaborate firewalls newspapers build between these people and the newsroom staff are ruses, covers for some more sinister plan, even though you could make a more persuasive and parsimonious argument for ideological bias among the newsroom staff at major newspapers without any of this. And you do so without specific evidence! You kind of point to bias in general, but this can be explained by any of the mechanisms I have pointed to above — and you would find liberals and moderates who agreed with such arguments — and does not specifically support the mechanism you have argued for, which is that editorial boards are giving sub rosa orders.
If your argument is indeed that the actual, specific mechanism by which bias at major newspapers occurs is specifically through editorial boards, the nature of which I hesitate to suggest that you may not fully understand, then I tip my hat to your stubbornness, which is real integrity of a sort. But if you just want to argue that the major papers are biased, regardless of how this occurs, then it strikes me that you have cut off your nose to spite your face. You have lots of available explanations for this bias — explanations that are more parsimonious, more consistent with known facts, and more likely to win support across the board. Yet you have chosen to persist in making a weaker argument, one that requires more assumptions, more facts, and one that goes against both the available public facts and at least this individual’s experience. As I say, this strikes me as an admirably stubborn but a decidedly curious move. And notice that in none of this was it required that I use the word “imbecile.”
October 30, 2009, 5:41 pmLeo Marvin says:
Paul Horowitz,
Thank you for saying everything I was thinking, but more eloquently than I could have, and more civilly than I would have under the circumstances.
October 30, 2009, 6:03 pmChrisTS says:
Paul Horwitz says:
I think it degrades discourse.
On reflection, I should have deleted the last sentence from my last comment. It accurately describes my views but was unnecessary
I agree with everything you have written except the last. It is necessary to point out when discourse is degraded, particularly on a blog thread – of which discourse is the heart.
October 30, 2009, 7:03 pmzuch says:
PlugInMonster says:
Gibbs didn’t do this either. This is a RW made-up story. At best they didn’t get invited, and as to whether they’d even requested that, that’s a bit of a “he said”/”she said” type of dispute.
But Dubya didn’t interview with the NYT after 2004, threatened them with prosecution, and even Dana Perino admitted that they worked with MSNBC “not so much” towards the end of the Dubya maladministration.
Cheers,
October 30, 2009, 7:21 pmzuch says:
As for proper reporting of the WH/Faux dustup, the best account of this is on the best network for real news in existence today.
Cheers,
October 30, 2009, 7:23 pmzuch says:
Twirlip:
Depends what you mean by “gennn-yooo-innnn”, I guess.
Cheers,
October 30, 2009, 7:28 pmzuch says:
And then we have the despicable behaviour of the Dubya maladministration towards Helen Thomas towards the end of the Dubya maladministration….
Cheers,
October 30, 2009, 7:30 pmzuch says:
Twirlip:
“[V]iolating national security”? What do you mean by that? Can you be more specific? Would such “violation[s]” encompass, let’s say, simply criticising the administration? If not, why not?
See the Pentagon Papers case. It might be enlightening … if you care to be enlightened.
Cheers,
October 30, 2009, 7:35 pmloki13 says:
Paul Horowitz,
Thank you for your post at 31. Very well written and insightful, although given your opponent (if not your audience) it was rahter like killin’ sketters with a thermonuclear warhead.
How do you define “implicit”?
October 30, 2009, 8:03 pmFrater Plotter says:
Just a reminder: Fox News is the organization that went to court to defend its right to fire reporters who refuse to broadcast a story that is known to be false — despite whistleblower laws and public policy.
Read that again. Fox News fired two reporters for refusing to broadcast a story. The reporters said that this was because they story was not true, and under whistleblower laws their termination was wrongful. In its defense Fox News did not argue that the story was in fact true, or that the difference was one of opinion or political position, or that the courts should not sit in judgment over the accuracy of journalism. Rather they argued that deliberately broadcasting a false story as news was an OK thing for a news station to do, and to require of its reporters.
This is not the action of a news enterprise. It is the action of a phony-news enterprise, one which produces a mix of entertainment, self-promotion, and outright false stories and presents them as news.
October 30, 2009, 8:11 pmSarcastro says:
b-b-but MSNBC!
October 30, 2009, 8:38 pmDave N says:
Frater Potter,
How about going to a primary source (I decided to look your claim up since you didn’t provide a link)? I know it is an article of faith that Fox News is EVIL, so I looked into the case. The Florida Court of Appeals decision is here.
It does not say what you (or Kos, or Huffington, or DU) say it does, nor that Fox News lied. In fact, Fox News WON the lawsuit on appeal with respect to one of the two reporters and at trial with respect to the other. But heck, don’t let facts get in the way of your narrative.
October 30, 2009, 9:25 pmgeokstr says:
There ya go. Fixed that for the inadvertant omissions.
October 30, 2009, 9:37 pmloki13 says:
b-b-but…… Alinsky!
Simple assertions don’t make things true.* Paul Horwitz wrote above, in a rather nice and thoughtful piece, as to why there might be implicit biases in parts of the media (well, there was another implicit messsage too, but…). However, that is a different case from a media outlet that is overtly partisan, and structured to be that way.
If you wish, you can argue that this is a *good thing*, and that we should be more like, inter alia, Europe in this respect, and that the growth of journalistic ethics and the American tradition of unbiased reporting in the 20th Century is a farce, but I think that requires more intellectual ammunition than your Rules for Radicals will provide.
*I have a pony…. oh, wait…. I still don’t.
October 30, 2009, 9:46 pmFrater Plotter says:
I fear you missed the point. Yes, they won the lawsuit, meaning that they did not wrongfully fire two reporters. In order to achieve that result, they argued (successfully) for the right to lie and falsify news stories.
They argued that making fake news was not wrong, and therefore firing a reporter for refusing to make fake news was not wrongful termination. This is not an argument that an honest news organization would make. It’s as if a pharmaceutical company argued for the right to sell placebos in place of effective drugs, or a bank argued for the right to invest your deposits in penny stocks and Franklin Mint collectors’ items: even if they win the case, the fact that they made the argument proves that they are not honest.
My point wasn’t that Fox News should have lost their employment-law case. I don’t really give a shit for employment law. Rather, my point was that in order to win their employment-law case, Fox News admitted that they are interested in deliberately, knowingly lying to the American public and calling it news.
October 31, 2009, 12:21 amRelic says:
To recap the decision: the Fox affiliate asked for the reporters to provide supporting documentation for their claims in a news story, and, apparently, tried to change the news story. The specifics aren’t clear, but from what I gather the reporters didn’t come up with the requested documentation. The reporters claimed that the station changing the news story amounted to intentional distortion, and went public. The station fired the reporters, and the reporters claimed that this was a breach of contract and in violation of the whistle-blower statute. The court found that the news distortion policy was not a rule protected by the whistle-blower statute, because the whistle-blower statute has a specific definition of a “rule”. Whether or not the station was actually “lying” isn’t really covered in the decision. No, that would require an investigation of the news story in question and the research done for the story. But that’s hard, and Fox r bad, so it’s easier to just claim that Fox is lying and hope people take your word for it.
October 31, 2009, 2:37 amGuy says:
Dave N, in reading that decision, did you notice that WTVT won because the court agreed that they can intentionally falsify news if they want to? Frater Plotter didn’t say that their legal argument was wrong, just that they argued that they were allowed to fire journalists for refusing to knowingly report false stories – which they did argue, in fact. Showing that they won on those grounds proves nothing. Now, Not having the facts in front of me, I can’t say that they didn’t argue that the story wasn’t, in fact, true, but the opinion doesn’t say that they didn’t either.
At any rate, what you should have said is that this, if true, would really only establish the lack of integrity at that local affiliate – which has little to do with the Fox News channel. Though I suppose someone could argue that it is evidence of a far-reaching, systematic problem that pervades all of News Corp.
October 31, 2009, 2:57 amGuy says:
And now I see all the points I covered have already been brought up… note to self, refresh the thread before adding a comment when coming back to a page that I’ve had opened forever.
October 31, 2009, 3:00 amDave N says:
The way I have read the reporting is that the courts looked at it the way it would a summary judgment situation: that is looked at the facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. This means that the court would have to assume that Fox News allowed a “lie” to air — not that a lie actually aired.
I looked at various breathless prose on the left on this issue and none provided evidence that Fox took the position that it could lie. Nor, for that matter, did the Court of Appeals’ decision. I know that things like how a court looks at legal issues doesn’t matter on Kos — but they should on a legal blog.
November 1, 2009, 1:30 amSKI says:
Jon Stewart gave a compelling breakdown of the ludicrous nature of this issue Thursday night.
Fox News isn’t in the news business. They are in the entertainment/advocacy business.
November 1, 2009, 10:56 amNathanael says:
What “Fox News reporting”? Haven’t you ever looked at the major, objective studies documenting their incredible penchant for what we colloquially call “just making shit up” — but only if that shit is pro-Republican or anti-Democratic?
There is no Obama “war” on Fox News. He’s just calling it what it is, a Republican propaganda outfit. Republican propaganda outfits have the right to exist, they just shouldn’t pretend to be news stations.
November 1, 2009, 2:01 pmNathanael says:
Nope, nope, you don’t get off that easily. Because that court ruled that Fox News could fire people for refusing to air lies, and those people didn’t even get a trial over the question of whether they were being ordered to air lies.
November 1, 2009, 2:03 pmNathanael says:
[Regarding W]
Those were definite threats to the newspapers, especially Cheney’s “watch what you say” line.
For lunacy, or more accurately delusions of godhood. Have you looked up the origin of that phrase? That was the Bush aide who claimed that “we make our own reality”. Didn’t work out so well. Obviously.
Yes, but *that* was because of stuff like Mahar Arar; kidnapping innocent computer programmers and sending them off to Syria to be tortured. Oh, and stuff like Jose Padilla, and Guanatanamo Bay torture, and so forth. Oh, and the revelation that the Bush administration had been illegally wiretapping on a grand scale without warrants — a rare instance of confessing to a felony on national televsion.
November 1, 2009, 2:14 pmDave N says:
Nathaniel,
I read the opinion. Did you?
And you are right, it wasn’t a summary judgment standard, it was good old fashioned Rule 12(b)(6): Failure to state a claim for which relief might be granted. But again, under THAT standard, the facts are viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party.
Either you are not an attorney or you are willfully ignorant of the law, which makes you a sad excuse for an attorney.
And please, please point to where the opinion said what you claimed it did — because it clearly did not.
November 1, 2009, 3:32 pmMRM #23 « Cornell Insider says:
[...] Bloggers say the economy will still be the main issue for the 2010 [...]
November 1, 2009, 8:37 pmninjamedic says:
While Fox News may indeed represent “opinion journalism masquerading as news,” it still concerns me that we have an adminstration stating that they are “not going to legitimize them as a news organization.” Anita Dunn, and perhaps the White House as a whole, has lost sight of the fact that it is not a function of the government to legitimize or delegitimize a news agency. The citizens of this country legitimize a news agency by turning to that media outlet for their view of current events whether you agree with those citizens or not.
November 2, 2009, 1:43 pm