It says a lot about MSM types who choose to associate their profession with the thing that Fox News does.
Atrios: Make Me Care
Journalists want me to care about quality journalism, and I do, if not necessarily the existing institutions and elite practitioners of it, but their failure to differentiate quality journalism from the partisan hacktitude of Fox News is one of the problems with their profession.Benen: MARCUS MUST HAVE MISSED IT....
I don't have any problem with ideological media, obviously, though ideological is different than partisan, but people in elite media should have a modest understanding of the role of the various players in their ecosystem. Maybe it's fine that Fox News is basically just an extension of the Republican party, what's not fine is all the people pretending that isn't the case.
Now that the White House is describing the Republican cable news network as a Republican cable news network, the media establishment is starting to register its disapproval. The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus seemed especially disgusted that the obviously-partisan Fox News was being called out for making a mockery of American journalism, calling the White House's recent remarks "dumb," "childish," "petty," "Nixonian," and "self defeating."Media Matters: Does the WashPost's Ruth Marcus even watch Fox News?
But this was the part of Marcus' criticism that stood out:
Where the White House has gone way overboard is in its decision to treat Fox as an outright enemy and to go public with the assault. Imagine the outcry if the Bush administration had pulled a similar hissy fit with MSNBC.It's funny she should put it that way. Marcus may have missed it, but the Bush administration did go after NBC News quite a bit.
Marcus must have forgotten, for example, when a top White House advisor to President Bush targeted NBC in May 2008, accusing the network of deceptive editing and blurring the lines between "news" and "opinion." Officials from the Bush team, around that time, began treating NBC and MSNBC as political opponents.
The president's press secretary at the time proceeded to complain about NBC from behind the White House podium, saying that staffers had grown "fed up" with the network's coverage, and that frustration among the president's aides "reached a boiling point" and "boiled over." Dana Perino's remarks, ironically enough, came in response to a pointed question from a Fox News correspondent.
Two things to remember here. One, the complaints about NBC News were baseless, especially as compared to Fox News literally reading Republican Party talking points on the air and passing them off as legitimate political journalism.
And two, when the Bush gang did go after NBC News, there were precious few observers blasting the Bush White House as "dumb," "childish," "petty," "Nixonian," and "self defeating."
"Imagine the outcry if the Bush administration had pulled a similar hissy fit with MSNBC." Yes, imagine it.
Update: Media Matters also responds to Marcus. After noting two dozen examples -- from just this month -- of Fox News breaking from the standards of professional journalism, the piece concludes, "Can any serious journalist look at that record and claim that it's the White House that ought to change its behavior?"
After reading her predictable, talking points-approved condemnation of the White House's push back against Fox News, my suspicion is that the Post columnist doesn't watch Fox News. And my guess is she's not alone among the growing army of Village pundits who have all stepped forward to uniformly announce that the White House is way off the mark in deciding to fact check Fox News.
In a way, Marcus is simply reinforcing the age-old Beltway truism: When Democrats criticize the press it's whiny and petty, but when Republicans do it, it's savvy and brash. (Just ask veterans of the Clinton administration.)
But more specifically, Marcus is commenting on a media landscape of which she is completely ignorant. For instance, she claims Fox News operates just like MSNBC did during the Bush years. MSNBC featured Bush bashers Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, and today Fox News boasts Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, so c'mon what's the big deal. I guess the big deal is I don't remember either Olbermann or Maddow comparing MSNBC employees to persecuted Jews during the Holocaust, which was the twisted comparison Beck recently made regarding the Fox News staff.
In other words, I don't recall Olbermann or Maddow going bat shit crazy on national television, scribbling away on a chalkboard as they fantasized about connecting George Bush to every conceivable strain of historical evil. And I don't remember either MSNBC host launching hateful and hollow witch hunts against semi-obscure administration officials, the way Hannity has latched onto the homophobic attacks against Kevin Jennings.
But guess what? The same elite pundits who are telling the White House is chill out over Fox News are the same elite pundits who for weeks have refused to acknowledge the disgusting and immoral Jennings witch hunt. Which brings me back to my original question: Do journalists like Marcus even watch Fox News? Do they understand what its programming day now looks like? My guess is the answer is no, even though lots of them have taken it upon themselves to speak out as Fox News experts; to lecture the White House about how normal and mainstream the cable outlet is.
For Marcus' edification, here's a recent example of where the Fox News family broke from the standards of professional journalism and clearly pushed a falsehood.
Here's another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another.
Yes, that list just covers a sampling from this October. And no, I don't recall MSNBC flooding its airwaves with provably false programming the way Fox News now does on a routine basis.
Can any serious journalist look at the kind of media malpractice record that Fox News has accumulated this year and really claim that it's not doing anything that's unusual or unique in the ranks of modern-day American journalism? Or that it's just like MSNBC, but from the right? Or that the White House should not be concerned about the nearly uninterrupted falsehoods unleashed in its direction?
Can any serious journalist look at that record and claim that it's the White House that ought to change its behavior? They can if they don't actually watch Fox News.
For various media figures derisive of the White House's criticism of Fox News, there seems to be some confusion over the nature of the problem.
For much of the media establishment, Fox News and MSNBC are somehow bookends, one on the right; one on the left. The prior has Beck, O'Reilly, and Hannity; the latter has Schultz, Olbermann, and Maddow. Both are cable news networks with primetime commentators who bring a certain perspective to their political analysis. So, the establishment asks, what's the big deal?
It's probably obvious to anyone who's actually watched these networks, but given the lingering confusion, let's pause briefly to explain why the conventional wisdom is absurd.
There are plenty of angles to this, far more than can be explored in a single blog post. It's tempting to note, for example, that if MSNBC had a relationship with the Democratic Party the way Fox News does with the Republican Party, MSNBC wouldn't give Joe Scarborough three hours a day and have Pat Buchanan on daily as a paid on-air analyst.
For that matter, it's also tempting to note that comparing the primetime lineups as relative equals is almost comical -- Rachel Maddow brings more depth of thought and intellectual seriousness to her work than everyone on Fox News combined. To look at the lineups and say, "Well, Hannity's on the right and Maddow's on the left," draws an equivalency where none exists.
But let's put all of that aside and focus on a point too many observers don't appreciate: the line between Fox News' personality-driven primetime hosts and Fox News' "reporting" doesn't exist. This isn't a network that does legitimate journalism during the day, and then let's GOP clowns run wild at night -- this is a network that acts as the arm of a political party and a cog in a larger partisan machine all day.
According to the network, Fox News' reporting is "objective" during its "news hours" -- 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays (eastern). Senior vice president for news Michael Clemente recently said, "The average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and the editorial page."
And that would be persuasive, if such a difference existed on the Republican network. But as this video helps demonstrate, Clemente is drawing a distinction where none exists. To describe Fox News' "news hours" as "objective" is demonstrably ridiculous.
Josh Marshall, who keeps the cable networks running throughout the day at the TPM offices, noted last night, "[A]s a product [Fox News'] straight news is almost more the stuff of parody than the talk shows which are at least more or less straightforward about what they are.... MSNBC has now made a big push to refashion itself as a liberal or perhaps just non-hard-right-wing alternative to Fox. But the distinction between the two operations becomes clear whenever you watch 'news' on MSNBC as opposed to Maddow, Olbermann or Ed."
Josh added, "If you actually watch Fox News with any regularity it's hard to see any point to discussing the fact that the station operates more or less openly as a wing of the GOP." And yet, now that the White House has shown the audacity to note this plain fact, the pushback from other media figures is pretty intense.
For Ruth Marcus and others, the problem isn't that Fox News is making a mockery of modern journalism; the problem is that the White House has acknowledged reality. The establishment, I'm afraid, is complaining about the wrong party here.
- from the comments:
More better video homework please
Of course Josh is correct, but he is also waxing anecdotal.
The video Steve presents is better than anecdotes, and much better than HuffPo's sloppy and lame The Ten Most Egregious Fox News Distortions, bit still not good enough.
This is a fleeting teachable moment. A chance for America to look closely and collectively at journalism. And it looks like we have not done our homework. Will someone please edit together something simple and powerful?
Posted by: koreyel on October 20, 2009 at 1:44 PM
Marshall: News at Fox News?
Earlier this evening I watched a segment on the Newshour about the now-open feud between the Obama White House and Fox News. The segment ran a quote from a Fox News exec who took the White House to task for not distinguishing between Fox's talk shows -- which lean heavily right -- and its straight news which supposedly adheres to traditional standards of fairness, objectivity and editorial integrity. What surprised me is that the host and the guests seemed, at least implicitly, to grant this distinction.Marshall: He's Got a Point
At TPM we have all the cable channels running through the day in our news room. So I think we collectively can count ourselves as experts at cable news watching -- admittedly a rather dubious honor. And the whole point of Fox is that no distinction exists.
I'm sure there are legit, ethical journalists in the organization (in fact, I've known several of them. And God help them.) And there are standouts like Shep Smith who goes off the reservation with some regularity. But as a product the straight news is almost more the stuff of parody than the talk shows which are at least more or less straightforward about what they are.
As we know, MSNBC has now made a big push to refashion itself as a liberal or perhaps just non-hard-right-wing alternative to Fox. But the distinction between the two operations becomes clear whenever you watch 'news' on MSNBC as opposed to Maddow, Olbermann or Ed.
If you actually watch Fox News with any regularity it's hard to see any point to discussing the fact that the station operates more or less openly as a wing of the GOP. The more interesting question is whether and (I would say) how news organizations with strong editorial viewpoints can maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity, fairness and reportorial excellence. That's a critical question for journalism today because in many ways that is the direction much if not all reportage is going. But it's a conversation Fox isn't even a part of except as the paradigmatic example of how it's not done.
As business, a thing of genius. As journalism, really?
From TPM Reader MA ...Atrios: Somehow This Is Excellent News For Republicans
I think Fox has made a mistake in this tiff with the White House. By conceding that their evening talk lineup is biased, they've made it easier to nail them down on the specifics of their news lineup. For starters, Megyn Kelly is a big part of their daytime "news" lineup, and is perhaps the most biased anchor on the network besides Beck. More importantly, they've actually entered a debate about what their programming is, perhaps for the first time. Before they just said "fair and balanced" and then chuckled to themselves. But now they are part of an actual debate and thus have to defend their record. For example, would someone ask the Fox news spokesperson why Fox's news anchors continue to refer to suicide bombers by the Bush administration's favored term "homicide bomber?"
As Greg notes, Republicans are positioned about as well as they were in 2006 and 2008, which is to say they're not well positioned at all. George Bush destroyed everything he touched, including the Republican party. Still, even after the country elected a biracial black guy named Barack Hussein Obama, the Villager media still has this odd deference to what's left of God's Own Party.
Sully: GOP Still Dead; Weather At 11
The only news in Chris Cilizza's post on the latest WaPo poll is that he honestly seems to believe that the first nine months of Obama's presidency have been good for Republicans. Anyone not suckered by the usual Beltway hooey - i.e. someone not paid by the WaPo to convey conventional "non-biased" wisdom - could see that the Republicans were drowning, not waving.
Their success in airing the most bizarre claims about the president, their extremist town halls, their disavowal from the get-go of any attempt to work with the new president on anything may have helped gin up enthusiasm in their base - but at the expense of making that base even smaller and alienating by large margins the independent voters they desperately need.
Once again, the GOP is all tactics and no strategy. And the Dish pointed out a while back that the party i.d. was cratering and that the generic ballot question showed the Democrats gaining again. Add the Palin circus to the mix and the Beck train wreck and most sane independents are more convinced than ever that the GOP is a lost cause for a while. They're not impressed by the Democrats, of course, and the post-election honeymoon is over for POTUS. But Obama's ratings remain firm for a newbie and his big strategic moves are gaining momentum.
Meep. meep.
No comments:
Post a Comment