Don't be surprised the media elite sided with Fox

Washington reporters know that Democrats complain, but Republicans get even

By Gene Lyons

Oct. 29, 2009

Nobody should be surprised to see the nation's esteemed celebrity news media align with Fox News against the White House, although even a cynical observer like me found the unanimity mildly shocking. Don't they remember what journalism is supposed to be?

Supposedly, the press regulates its own behavior; in reality, that's been a joke for two decades. "Claiming the moral authority of a code of professional ethics it idealizes in the abstract but repudiates in practice," I wrote in 2003, "today's Washington press corps has grown as decadent and self-protective as any politician or interest group whose behavior it purports to monitor."

Today, even the fig leaf has been removed. A "journalist," so-called, is anybody paid by a media organization to enact the role on television.

Otherwise, anything goes.

The Obama administration's basic charge against Fox News is undeniably true: The network functions as the propaganda wing of the Republican Party. Fox openly organizes and promotes partisan political events such as April's "Fox News Tea Party." Its coverage of congressional "Town Hall" meetings reflected not a single individual supporting healthcare reform, as documented by Media Matters for America. Not one. Fox portrays every perceived setback for the Obama White House as a "victory" for "Fox Nation."

As necessary, Fox resorts to sheer fiction: Reporting that Glenn Beck's ballyhooed October Tea Party event drew upward of 2 million protesters to Washington. In reality, considerably more fans (102,941) attended the Auburn-Tennessee football game. (Political tip: If you hope to draw big crowds of Southern white men, avoid Saturdays in October.)

The point's neither complex nor subtle. In this country, journalists don't sponsor or participate in partisan political events. Maybe in Venezuela or China, but in the United States, no. Explaining to the New York Times, deputy White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said, "We simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization."

Yet neither the Times nor most "mainstream" pundits evaluated the claim on its merits. Most pretended not to grasp the White House's point, and then went straight to the aiding and abetting. Many invoked the ghost of Richard Nixon. Why, to criticize Fox, claimed the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus and Charles Krauthammer, was downright "Nixonian."

NPR's Ken Rudin recalled "what Nixon and Agnew did with their enemies list." So did CNN's Anderson Cooper. Rudin subsequently apologized for the "boneheaded" comparison; Cooper didn't.

Excuse me, but Nixon's enemies list was secret. Journalists and others got subjected to illegal FBI wiretaps, "black bag" break-ins and IRS audits. White House officials even discussed murdering columnist Jack Anderson.

Meanwhile, Nixon's Oval Office tapes are the gift that keeps giving to historians like "Nixonland's" Rick Perlstein. "Bob, PLEASE get me the names of the Jews, you know the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats," Nixon begged aide H.R. Haldeman. "Could we please investigate some of the (bleepbleepers)?"

Now that's what I call an enemies list.

Meanwhile, poor little Fox got criticized publicly. Oh, the horror!

Look, here's the deal. Where Democrats are concerned, journalism's vaunted ethical code quit functioning as anything but camouflage during President Clinton's first term. Out of scores of examples Joe Conason and I documented in "The Hunting of the President," the easiest to explain briefly may be a 1995 ABC "Nightline" broadcast in which a creatively edited video clip was used to insinuate that Hillary Clinton lied about "Whitewater" legal work.

After excising the words "I was what we called the billing attorney" from the first lady's remarks, ABC's Jeff Greenfield suggested that concealing that very fact explained "why the White House was so worried about what was in Vince Foster's office when he killed himself."

The phony quote then showed up everywhere: on CNN, in New York Times editorials, Maureen Dowd's column, etc. William Safire used it to predict Mrs. Clinton's indictment. After all, as Newsweek's Michael Isikoff wrote, "It is Foster's suicide that lends Whitewater its aura of menace."

Ancient history? Maybe so. But there was Jeff Greenfield on CBS News last week (he's worked for everybody), making the obligatory Nixon comparison and assuring Katie Couric that "if Fox is feeling any pain from the White House's stance, it's crying all the way to the bank."

As do they all.

See, while Fox News acolytes remain convinced of "liberal media bias," the reality is that celebrity journalists rarely, if ever, get hurt for abusing Democrats. Mistreat a name-brand Republican, however, and ...

Well, remember "60 Minutes'" Dan Rather?

Democrats complain; Republicans get even.

Hence "mainstream" political journalists, who cower like beaten dogs for fear of ending up on Fox boss (and Nixon alumnus) Roger Ailes' own enemies list, haven't had to fear the Obama White House. Last week's collective cringe makes it abundantly clear how badly they'd like to keep it that way.

© 2009 by Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

-- By Gene Lyons

Even Soulja Boy Gets the Issues More Than ABC

Loved this one.

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ABC Debates Biased? The Reviews Are In

.. From WashPo TV critic Tom Shales:

"It was another step downward for network news -- in particular ABC News, which
hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors,
Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable
performances. For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show,
Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that
already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to
claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news
to begin with. The fact is, cable networks CNN and MSNBC both did better jobs
with earlier candidate debates. Also, neither of those cable networks, if memory
serves, rushed to a commercial break just five minutes into the proceedings,
after giving each candidate a tiny, token moment to make an opening statement.
Cable news is indeed taking over from network news, and merely by being
competent."

... even our friends across the pond, at the U.K.'s Guardian, were unimpressed with what they said was possibly "the
dumbest debate in America":

"Last night's debate -- or, more specifically, the performance of its
moderators, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos -- was by turns superficial
and disingenuous. The trouble started early. Gibson began with an utterly
fatuous inquiry about whether each candidate would pledge to ask the other to be
their vice-presidential nominee if they won, and agree to accept the veep slot
if they lost ... Stephanopoulos and Gibson deserve every bit of opprobrium being
thrown their way. They delivered a noxious blend of smear, innuendo and
diversion. But it looks like the same old political junk food no longer
satisfies an electorate hungry for real change."

... Ed Morrissey says, What were you hoping for? A game of patty-cake?

"I'm not sure what anyone expected. All of the questions asked were legitimate
questions, and the time spent on them had more to do with follow-ups by the
candidates than with the moderators. None of them had been asked in a debate before last night, and
indeed most of these issues had only been reported since the last debate. ABC
didn't break a scoop last night; all of the issues they raised in that first 50
minutes have appeared in both major media outlets and in each others'
advertising."

ABC Delivers Biased Debate: Obama Answers

Before last night's ABC debate, I e-mailed some questions I would like asked. I did it for the following reasons, since the debate had become debased to the point of personal attack ads by the Clinton campaign reminiscent of the Bush campaigns... complicit with a press that was afraid to press Bush on anything. This was sent out yesterday before the debate (my e-mail), and oddly enough, the debate did exactly the opposite of what I hoped it would do. It went on the offensive of one candidate, run by a former employee of the other candidate's family. The following is what I asked, followed by Senator Obama's assessment today of last night's debate, in what I thought was very accurate. I stated as follows in my e-mail:

Attacks are using fabrications or half-truths about a candidate to divide voters and cause questions in voters minds, albeit questions fabricated by the attacker.

There is a difference between that and asking direct questions of an opponent about why they actually DID do something, or why they have certain stands on issues. That is not attacking. That is winning the political fight through discussion of issues.

Facts I'D like examined are
1) Why did Hillary support the Bush's War on Iraq when Bin Laden was in Afghanistan?
2) Why did she vote to declare the Iranian Brigade a terrorist organization, thus giving Bush the ammo to go into Iran before he leaves office?
3) Why was she the ONLY Senator (Democratic or Republican) absent from the vote on granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms?
4) Why was Mark Penn on her payroll for a full year while still consulting the Colombian government on trade and jobs? - and, concurrently, how does she feel about her husband receiving an award and large sums of money from that same Colombian government as she "professes" to oppose Nafta? And Why is Mark Penn still advising, if this is an issue?
5) Why did she work so hard to support NAFTA in the beginning?
6) Why did she vote for Bush's Federal Bankruptcy Law which made it more difficult for those with mounting credit card debts to gain bankruptcy amidst the escalation of credit card rates that approaches the usury of organized crime in decades past? (30 percent in some cases)
7) How did she feel about her ultrawealthy supporters who wrote the infamous letter to the DCCC stating that they would take their money from local campaigns if the superdelegates did not go with Hillary? And, again, concurrently, how did she feel about the ties of some of those letter writers to organizations such as Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp, which Ed Rendell now calls fair and balanced, and other groups, such as the one that sold illegal weapons to the Chinese Government, was fined, and declared bankruptcy before having to pay the U.S. Government the fine?

These are not attack points. They are checkable facts that I wish and hope the newsmedia will ask her, and that the moderators in the debate will ask her. But, given my skepticism that they won't, I hope that Senator Obama DOES check the facts on these issues, and then ask her in the debate.



What we got was an hour-long questioning of Obama on such "tough" points as: Why doesn't he wear the flag pin? (Where was Hillary's, Charlie's, and George's as they asked that question?); what about someone who was on a board with him long ago who was in the Weather Underground when he was 8, while at the same time there was no follow-up with Senator Clinton as to why she didn't feel it a problem that her husband pardoned two members of the Weather Underground?; and the re-instatement of race into the campaign by our fair friends at ABC, just as Senator Obama had delivered a wonderful speech having united the various splintered groups in this country.

And why were none of the substantial questions I, as a mere blogger, could see were factual issues that needed to be addressed?