I don't think any of those pictures are as funny as this one from CNN:
But one of those shots of John Gibson got me thinking. I like the this whole thing about being a pundit or a blogger or a FoxNews commentator, where your words are the only thing that matters. Your actions can be not only inconsistent with your words, they can directly contradict your words.
So if John Gibson says:
I say:
8 comments:
That "someone" is Larry Johnson - the guy who has been dining out on his five minutes in the CIA as a "terrorism expert".
Amusingly, he's quoted in summer of 2001 as stating that terrorism as a threat was exaggerated. So if a bunch of photos with errors in them proves a bias, then Larry Johnson has already been proven by his own words as what?
I could use a long list of factual errors from CNN, NYT, about the Scooter Libby trial to prove their bias. In fact, Johnson himself keeps repeating the same set of misrepresentations of the situation with the Libby trial that Tom Maguire has debunked repeatedly.
The indignation of liberals over Fox News is quite hilarious frankly.
Naw, hilarious is the space shuttle traveling 18 times the speed of light. It didn't blow up- it just went waaayyy back in time.
I'm not indignant about FoxNews being conservative, though I think they are bending over backwards with the 'homicide bombers' and 'homicide attackers' stuff. For me it's the commentators- O'Reily and Gibson in particular, that are just ridiculous. They have nothing to do with conservatism, and certainly no relation to 'fair and balanced', whatever that means.
For the record, I gave up on both CNN and MSNBC a long time ago.
Robin,
Karl reads FoxNews to "get the other side" of the news. It makes sense that if you know there's a bias, it would be easier to screen for it.
I have never seen any the Fox pundit shows, though I know a lot of conservatives hate O'Reilly too, which leads me to suspect they are there for political theatre rather than actual discourse...people slow down to watch car wrecks, etc.
Certainly I despise O'Reilly myself. He is not conservative, more of a populist in ideology, a blowhard in style.
Overall, network wide, I seriously think that Fox is closer to US centrist than most give it credit. It gives more conservative voices air time in opinion slots than other shows but does not restrict liberal opinion. I think Brit Hume's show is a great example of that with Mort Kondracke ( who I think is center/liberal ), Fred Barnes ( conservative ), Juan Williams ( liberal ) and Mara Liasson ( liberal ) and Brit himself who I find to be center/right.
Hannity and Colmes is a waste of time.
The shows like Greta Susteran's "Dead White Girls" just disgust me as pandering to lowest common denominator.
The actual news reporters themselves vary all over the mark but I think average out more centrist. It was hilarious when Chris Wallace was attacked by Clinton for a tough question - given that Wallace is a registered Democrat.
Neither NYT nor CNN are "liberal." There might be a liberal or progressive newspaper at the local level, but all the major media of record in the US are either center-right establishment papers, like the LA Times, Washington Post or the NYTimes, or right-wing, like Fox, Robin. It isn't the presence of "error" or "bias" but the direction and function of that error or bias that indicates that. Fox is clearly right-wing, and very far gone, as its bias and error always run in the same direction. WaPo and NYT are pro-establishment papers, which is why they served Bush for a couple of years, until it slowly began to dawn on the traditional Paleocon establishment that Bush was something new, far more to the right than they initially read him as, and far more destructive and incompetent.
It is a common claim of rightists that WaPo and NYT are liberal papers -- but that only shows how shallow their understanding is -- which explains why they are rightists in the first place.
Michael
Michael, I'll not engage in your level of namecalling. Even the NYT's own description of themselves does not match your description of them. I just don't think that a world view that the NYT is "centrist" is a view from the center.
Michael, Robin,
Both of you put your ideological carts before your critical thinking horses. Leave the media analysis to guys like me, where my objectivity is only colored by the intensity of my hangover on any given day.
Michael, I'll not engage in your level of namecalling.
ROFL. No, yours is at a different level:
"The indignation of liberals over Fox News is quite hilarious frankly."
Even the NYT's own description of themselves does not match your description of them.
Yes, as we know, organizations always describe themselves accurately to outsiders.
Michael
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