How reporters vote means nothing (exceopt that it should maybe tell you something that the most informed people vote against Republicans). That does not mean that their work is biased. Objective reporting does not mean you don’t have personal opinions. It means you don’t let it affect what you report.
Moreover, it’s a coroporate media. Editorial decisions are made at a corporate level. It’s about bottom line, not political agenda.
Well, they’re wrong. But assuming they were right, why would national unity hang on what cable news channel some people watch? I don’t see the connection here.
Fox News is not a factor here. Some may like it, some may not. Canada’s national unity, however strong or weak it may be, does not hinge on who likes Fox News.
That’s fine.
Except, of course Fox is partisan. That’s the whole point of Fox News, that they are an explicitly conservative media outlet.
There’s nothing wrong with being a partisan media organization, and for most of the history of our country most newspapers were explicitly partisan. It’s only in the 50s and 60s that a non-partisan impartial media became the ideal. But that coincided with a time when partisanship was at an all-time low, when party affiliation meant almost nothing. Not that there weren’t sharp disagreements about policy, even nasty ones, but those disagreements weren’t along party lines. You’d find both segregationist Democrats and Republicans, anticommunist Democrats and Republicans, isolationist Democrats and Republicans, conservative Democrats and Republicans, liberal Democrats and Republicans, and on and on.
The parties have achieved a sort of ideological coherence today, but the fabled golden age of bipartisanship was due to the lack of party ideological coherence at the time.
You managed to be both naive and arrogant all at once. Well done. Biased individuals results in biased reporting. It’s not always a bad thing but it’s something that we should be aware of. Reporters bias routinely leaks into stories that have nothing to do with senior editorial boards. You other comment isn’t worth responding to.
Other than at senior op-ed level it’s not. It’s down to mid-level editors so bias routinely sinks in. And as for bottom line, what does it tell you that the NY Times is suffering whereas the WSJ seems to be holding its own?
Does the pope pretend to be fair and balanced?
I’m not claiming that national unity hangs upon it; civil war isn’t on the horizon over this issue. Saying it’ll likely cause some harm is as far as I see it going.
Apologies, I thought you were American.
Is it? Wouldn’t you prefer they agree with you?
The point really isn’t whether they are or not, so far as people go. It’s what people think they are that matters. And, indeed, there are lots of people with rather divergent views on Fox’s partisanship.
Whatever. We can be sure of one thing though. This will send Fox News ratings even higher. Rupert Murdoch must be a happy man today. He’s an old, old hand at this game and knows what happens to circulation and viewing figures when politicians attack the media.
Well, yes. But having seen the data (I hesitate to use the word ‘facts’ here) they base their opinions on, there’s no point debating. Reason has no home there. Wanna talk about climate change? Thousands and thousands of hours worth of peer reviewed research apparently have the same weight as a two-page essay by a ‘fellow’ of the AEI or a list of creationist TV weathermen compiled by James Inhofe under the auspices of “International Scientists”. Wanna talk about torture? Too bad, because if you don’t support it you either hate freedom or want to coddle terrorists.
These are some things I’ve learned about the American Right during the Bush Administration. I’m learning new things about them during Obama’s every day. Fox News fans may not like hearing their source of data being labelled a propaganda machine, but that’s exactly what it is so hard cheese for them.
That’s fine too.
Fox news dominates all the other news outlets in viewership. The President has effectively declared a media war against those who watch it.
It’s disturbing enough that the White House Communications [del]Director[/del] Sheep Herder thinks she can control the flow of information with other media outlets. Finding out one of her favorite political philosophersis Mao Tse-tung doesn’t endear anyone to the idea of a President who respects a free press.
Openly attacking Fox will reinforce the long held notion that the other networks have a liberal bias and will further erode viewership for these networks.
What’s interesting here is that Obama has essentially been working with Fox News to brand it as the authentic voice of conservatism. Now by attacking Fox News he can attack conservatism as a whole by attacking Fox News while acting like he is friendly to individual conservatives. It’s actually brilliant.
Conservatives by allowing a narrow number of outlets to dominate the conservative narrative have painted themselves into a corner.
http://www.newmajority.com/why-is-the-white-house-attacking-fox
You didn’t. You didn’t offer World Net Daily as a cite. You couldn’t have.
You mean the one with the video clip of her actually saying it? Yes. Were you expecting to hear it from CBS or CNN? I think not.
What on earth does that have to do with the fact that it’s an organized effort from the White house to marginalize and delegitimize Fox news? Somebody said 1 guy at the White house made a comment so I pointed out that it was actually the president’s chief of staff, senior adviser and communications director all presenting the same argument with obviously synchronized language. I don’t care if you want to call it an attack or a deliberate effort to marginalize Fox, it’s obviously one of those depending on what weird definition of attack you use.
I’m confused – did you mean that ironically? If I say something like “Starship Troopers is my favorite example of how Hollywood can ruin a great piece of fiction,” do you interpret that as me saying that ST is one of my favorite movies? 
But Obama did appear on Fox, with Bill O. I thought he was treated very fairly and I also though he acquitted himself quite well. My opinion of him went up upon seeing that.
I agree with you that this does not make the White House look good at all. It makes them appear both afraid and heavy-handed.
Have you watched Fox News with Chris Wallace? You find that too tabloidy?
My hearing must be failing me, because I watched that whole clip, and didn’t hear her so much as mention Mao Tse Tung. Can you give me the time stamp from that clip where she says this?
It is kind of amusing how people think that the idea of the White House controlling its message is sinister as opposed to being a basic level of professionalism.