It’s true they don’t use the phrase perfectly consistently. Sometimes they do say “suicide bomb”. On the other hand, sometimes their usage of the “h-bomb” phrase really is ludicrous. From a February 6, 2004 article:
Uh, OK. It may not have been the work of one of those homicide bombers, just of someone who left a bomb on a train with the intent of, you know, committing mass homicide. (Note how USA Today’s version of the same wire-story report uses “suicide bomber” in that paragraph. Reminds me of those tales of people refering to some company that had filed for bankruptcy finally being “back in the African-American”.)
Also, although the Unabomber, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the Atlanta Olympics bombing are all earlier than the Iraq war, there have certainly been stories about at least the latter two since then. Why no “homicide bomb” usage in connection with the recent news reports about Terry Nichols’ state trial for 161 counts of homicide for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing?
It depends on the context in which the word was used. If it’s included in an intro to a story about someone doing something heroic, it’s not out of place. If it comes from someone doing opinion instead of news, it’s not out of place.
If it’s along the lines of “Two heros were killed by a truck bomb”, that’s over the line.
Can’t say there haven’t been any. Among the talking heads, only the anchors really read from script, and I guess some of that makes it onto the website. As far as I can tell, they leave it to the discretion of the speaker. One thing they do consistently, though, is spell (and pronounce) Osama Usama. They say they do that because that’s how the CIA spells it.
Count me in as one who is specially ticked off by “Fox and Friends”. Hell, I can handle O’Reilly on a good day, specially if he has a point other than celebrating himselfl; Geraldo is always cheap entertainment; Shepard Smith’s smirking fratboy schtick has a certain corny eagerness that is tough to truly hate; and even Ann Coulter, Satan’s own daughter-consort, is at least articulate and pleasant to look at. But the levels of stupidity involved in “Fox and Friends” are just mindboggling – it helps that the team have no minds to boggle, I suppose, but Jeezus, Murdoch should be able to afford some people above the “will anchor for food” price range.
Well, it’s obviously a lot harder to search what’s said on the Fox News Channel on TV, but there have been zero references to Terry Nichols as a “homicide bomber” or the Oklahoma City bombing as a “homicide bombing” on Foxnews.com.
I tend not to watch Fox News, and don’t overly hold any opinion positive or negative about them (other than I find their talking head shows annoying), but had it on the other day and heard the most amazing “news update” item/commentary that really opened my eyes on them being biased.
It was one of those “at the top of the hour” news updates, and the anchorwoman came on and said the following (not exactly verbatim, best of my recollection):
“The Defense Department reported today that the shell found last week filled with the nerve-gas Sarin was an old pre-Gulf War weapon.” She then paused and said “Of course, we may still find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
Now, that last sentence seemed totally over-the-top to me. Had nothing to do with the news item whatsoever. It was as if the editors at Fox thought their audience might take the actual news item as bad, so they had to remind their audience - don’t give up hope just yet, dear Fox-watchers! Or something like that.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but it seemed so blatant, so out-of-place for a news update segment.
Anyone who doesn’t believe Fox News has a serious right-wing tilt only needs to look at this list of reporters and editors – anyone with any position of authority or face-time at Fox is culled from such unbiased sources like the Weekly Standard and the Washington Times. :rolleyes:
And please, the only people who think Alan Colmes is a “liberal” are those dumb enough to believe Fox is “Fair and balanced”; the only reason that milquetoast is on the air at all is to give Sean Hannity a target to hit (why do you think Sean hand-picked him for the job?). Well, that, and sweeping up the offices at night…
This is the mindset of people who see pervasive liberal bias. Because, you know, the media covered up how Clinton had Vince Foster and Ron Brown killed and Seymour Hersh didn’t cover it and because he wrote a true story about true events he’s evil.
…which is *probably * because neither of those two instances involved the bomber killing himself in the act of bombing. Or is there some deeper meaning you’re getting at here?
I recall watching “Forbes on Fox” one day and the host stated that he had definitive proof that Kerry thought Bush was doing an excellent job on the economy. He then showed one of Kerry’s biographical television advertisements and stated that because Kerry had failed in this advertisement to criticize Bush’s handling of the economy, it was evidence that Kerry thought the economy was Ok. Three of the panelists agreed; one thought that might be going too far.
I don’t recall ever seeing such an absurd leap of logic by a news show.
Getting back to the OP, I must say that it’s the journalistic ethics at FNC that really get me. Look at it this way. A news organization is supposed to communicate facts to its audience. Some news organizations have a political bias. FNC has decided that its job is to tell its conservative audience whatever they want to hear, regardlessof whether it’s fact or fiction. They are not a news organization. For instance, recently during a broadcast O’Reilly told his listeners that an American boycott of French goods was crippling the French economy, citing data from the Paris Business Review. The problems are that: 1.) French exports to America are up since last year and 2.) The Paris Business Review doesn’t exist outside of Mr O’Reilly’s head. I was under the impression that employees at allgedly left-leaning news sources such as CNN, the NY Times, and the New Republic have lost their jobs for stuff like that, but at FNC we don’t hear a peep of protest.
Aside from the rather low-brow political bias and desire to speak to the lowest common denominator evident in their news division, it also pays to consider FOX’s lacklustre history of general programming: the moon landing hoax documentary, the alien autopsy tape, various conspiracy theories, the execrable “Signs from God” documentary, promotion for psychic claptrap, and many, many others.
FOX has shown repeatedly that they are not to be trusted for a fair view of just about anything. We are hardly talking about material fit to be called educational or balanced. Once again, with feeling: “it’s not news, it’s entertainment”.
I do like some of their productions though, can’t go wrong with the X-Files or Millennium. And some of their reality programming is amusingly watchable from a voyeuristic point of view, although in small doses. But I think it’s ridiculous that FOX is assigned any credibility for current events coverage and documentaries.