Howell Raines, the New York Times’ erstwhile executive editor, sounds downright alarmed in a Washington Post Op-Ed article about the lack of journalistic standards and blatant displays of “disinformation” he sees on Fox News. What’s more, he doesn’t think that “honest” journalists are doing their part (except for Barbara Walters, kind of!) to wrangle Roger Ailes’ beast of a network into line. —KA
Howell Raines in The Washington Post:
As for Fox’s campaign against the Obama administration, perhaps the only traditional network star to put Ailes on the spot, at least a little, has been his friend, the venerable Barbara Walters, who was hosting ABC’s Sunday morning talk show. More accurately, she allowed another guest, Arianna Huffington, to belabor Ailes recently about his biased coverage of Obama. Ailes countered that he should be judged as a producer of ratings rather than a journalist—audience is his only yardstick. While true as far as it goes, this hair-splitting defense purports to absolve Ailes of responsibility for creating a news department whose raison d’etre is to dictate the outcome of our nation’s political discourse.
For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party. And let no one be misled by occasional spurts of criticism of the GOP on Fox. In a bygone era of fact-based commentary typified, left to right, by my late colleagues Scotty Reston and Bill Safire, these deceptions would have been given their proper label: disinformation.
Under the pretense of correcting a Democratic bias in news reporting, Fox has accomplished something that seemed impossible before Ailes imported to the news studio the tricks he learned in Richard Nixon’s campaign think tank: He and his video ferrets have intimidated center-right and center-left journalists into suppressing conclusions—whether on health-care reform or other issues—they once would have stated as demonstrably proven by their reporting. I try not to believe that this kid-gloves handling amounts to self-censorship, but it’s hard to ignore the evidence. News Corp., with 64,000 employees worldwide, receives the tender treatment accorded a future employer.
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By Richard_Ralph_Roehl, March 13, 2010 at 7:27 pm Link to this comment
There are no real journalists left… least not in the establishment media machine here in capitalist/fascist Amerika. There are only pundits and propagandists in the media… and they are there for the same reasons that politicians have replaced statesmen. A whore is a whore is a whore! And especiall-lie on TALK HATE RADIO!
Yesss… I’m talkin’ to you, Mr. Oxycontin!
Whore? I shall rest my case with Wolf ‘Blizter’. If Amerika’s faster poo food folks look between the Wolf’s non bearded cheeks, you’ll find ethno/racist Zionist bigots lurking there. And it farts apartheid and genocide… usually done with Amerikan made weapons!
The truth hurts! Doesn’t it?
Report thisBy samosamo, March 13, 2010 at 5:09 pm Link to this comment
By mrfreeze, March 13 at 6:44 pm
Thanks for your view on the almost overwhelming problem
with the MSM as I find your comment most descriptive, but as
you indicate the issues of the MSM, you shouldn’t group
everyone within the ‘we’ catagory as in: ““We apparently love to
be dumbed-down by the likes of Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and
many others.”” because US aren’t dumb or numbed and refuse
to be, it is that large portion of people who are taking the
dope as real and trying to make decisions from that dribble.
I would like to think that enough reporters, being able to
Report thisarticulate far better than myself, would get together and start as
big and far reaching attack on the MSM every time they
started saying lies or leaving the pertinent news out of their
diatribes but who would want or could work for free, though I
believe that would be an effective way to ‘call out’ the current
MSM for their irresponsible reporting.
By mrfreeze, March 13, 2010 at 2:44 pm Link to this comment
In the past couple of years over 40,000 professional journalists have left the news business. A victim of the Internet, a 24/7 uber-pseudo news cycle, loss of ad revenue and a bad case of self-deception, the News Industry has been de-fanged and reduced to “entertainment tonight” quality.
But, the real problem lies in the fact that Americans have allowed this to happen. We apparently love to be dumbed-down by the likes of Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and many others.
Just the other day I tuned-into a local talk-radio program (very rare for me to do this) and what most impressed me was a) the total lack of professional/intellectual integrity of the host and, b) the lack of any intelligence on the part of the callers. I hate to sound “elitist” but the callers sounded uneducated, ill-informed and culturally empty. The whole affair lacked any journalist or news “VALUE.”
So my friends, you may as well face the fact that the main Media outlets are and will continue to be nothing more than right wing propaganda and that your fellow Americans will devolve into nothing more than half-wits and dunder-heads.
Report thisBy gerard, March 13, 2010 at 2:31 pm Link to this comment
WriterOnTheStorm: Well, I wish it was that easy. And what? Getting worked up at the “drop of a fact”?
Report thisIf that were all ... just a fact or two here and there ... just one or two lies per week ... and nobody urging the overthrow of reason and commity by flag-waving white supremacists with AK47s. Ah, well…
By WriterOnTheStorm, March 13, 2010 at 2:00 pm Link to this comment
Or how about just ignoring Fox? As soon as people stop getting worked up at the
Report thisdrop of a fact, we can all move on. And Fox can slide into obscurity.
By blaad, March 13, 2010 at 11:26 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Fox has gone to court to argue for the right to lie and won (at least twice). Anybody have the case names at hand? I’ll try to find them. Fox’s legal fight to lie should be pointed out over and over again. Most people don’t know bout it.
Modgudur, you sound like a little child in a school yard. Your reasoning is so childish it’s amazing that you’re willing to put it in writing. This is a serious situation, if you are afraid to fight, please stay out of the way.
Report thisBy Johnny Dangereaux, March 13, 2010 at 10:55 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
There aren’t ‘real journalists’ to take them to task ya DB!
All you media shills are bought and paid for…you are becoming IRRELEVANT, exponentially I might add….HAHAHA!!
as gerard said
“but just that Fox is not the only agency for promoting half-truths and imaginery evils.”
ABSAFRIKINLUTELY! ALL MSM IS GUILTY-PERIOD—Sell Outs!
Tiabbi is the only mainstream writer that tells the truth!
Why don’t you move to some island with your cousin, Thurstan Howell the 3rd!?!
Report thisYou don’t like Fox? Don’t watch….Duh!
By gerard, March 13, 2010 at 10:29 am Link to this comment
Yeah, well one problem regarding Fox et al is that the 9/11 attack and the subsequent Bush wars bent an already conservative journalism completely out of shape. All the stations and papers leaned way over to the right, which in its way “entitled” Fox to go ballistic on the far right. Nowhere could you find any historical explanations for the long-smouldering outrage that caused 9/11, No journalist would take the high road and advocate for not rushing into military conflicts that still aren’t settled and perhaps never will be. Tens of thousands of psrecious human lives have paid, and are still paying, the price.
Report thisWhen it comes to patriotism, the very word turns truth into dangerous fiction and far more than scoundrels answer its siren call. No excuse for Fox, but just that Fox is not the only agency for promoting half-truths and imaginery evils.
By modgudur, March 13, 2010 at 9:58 am Link to this comment
Good Grief, just another case of the “pot calling the kettle black”. Calling people names makes one look like the names they are using.
Report thisBy samosamo, March 13, 2010 at 8:57 am Link to this comment
Perhaps the damage is done since rupert’s fux news has
been allowed to ‘get away’ with their charade of ‘fair and
balanced’ BS they pour out so fast and at huge volumes that they
are the poster child of ‘tell a lie enough times and with enough fluff and garnish and the fools will believe it’.
But is does help to have a bevy of well enhanced bimbos talking
Report thisto the dumbstream who haven’t a clue as to what is said
because of all those fantasies racing through their heads which
requires this: Is infotainment really a good way to present news?