Mark Mellman: Hounding Fox News coverage

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http://thehill.com/mark-mellman/hounding-fox-news-coverage-2007-03-20.html

Hounding Fox News coverage
By Mark Mellman
March 20, 2007

Journalists strive to report the news, not to be the news. So Fox News should have been a bit embarrassed to headline a story that ended with the Nevada Democratic Party canceling Fox’s sponsorship of a pre-caucus debate.

Then again, Fox is not a typical news organization. There are first-rate journalists at Fox, committed to accuracy, objectivity and fairness. However, as a network, Fox’s prime commitment is to the triumph of conservative politics, not to a well-informed public. From hiring hosts to selecting stories to framing questions for discussion, Fox demonstrates its dedication to advancing the ideological interests of the right.

As former Fox reporter/anchor Jon Du Pre put it in the documentary “Outfoxed,” “We weren’t necessarily, as it was told to us, a newsgathering organization so much as we were a proponent of a point of view … we were there to reinforce a constituency.”

Conservatives retort that other media project a liberal bias, while Fox presents a needed counterweight. The liberal bias of network news is debatable; that Fox regularly reports false and inaccurate stories designed to drum up support for their candidates and causes is beyond serious dispute.

Can you imagine other networks allowing, let alone encouraging, their anchors to utter statements like “John Kerry has Kim Jong Il on his side ... North Korea loves John Kerry” as part of a newscast?

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