This Time Bill O'Reilly Got It Right (NY Time Editorial)

[acmavm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/arts/19RICH.html

<snip>
IF a stopped clock is right twice a day, why shouldn't Bill O'Reilly be right at least once in a blue moon? When Fox News's most self-infatuated star attacked CNN for keeping James Carville and Paul Begala as hosts on "Crossfire" after they had joined the Kerry campaign, he fingered yet another symptom of the decline and fall of the American news culture. "In the wake of the vicious attacks on Fox News for allegedly being `G.O.P. TV,' I expected the media to brutally dismember CNN and the new boys on John Kerry's bus," Mr. O'Reilly wrote in his syndicated column. "But instead it's been the silence of the lambs from the press. Can you say media bias?"

Yes, you can, though it must be said in the same breath that Mr. O'Reilly is only half-right. Fox News isn't "allegedly" G.O.P. TV — it is G.O.P. TV. The campiest recent example of its own bias came during the Republican convention when Mr. O'Reilly played host to two second-tier G.O.P. publicity hounds, Georgette Mosbacher and Monica Crowley, as they whined that a straight-ahead, unexceptional convention photo spread that they had voluntarily posed for in New York magazine wasn't flattering enough. Presenting no evidence whatsoever, the two women (one of whom, Ms. Crowley, doubles as a Fox "analyst") bantered darkly with Mr. O'Reilly about how this "dirty trick" to present unglamorous portraits of them and such luminaries as Henry Kissinger and Al D'Amato was a conspiracy of "radical" and "Upper West Side" Democrats. (We all know what Upper West Side means, ladies.) This was G.O.P. TV raised to not-ready-for-prime time self-parody, lacking only the studio audience to yuk it up.

<snip>

What much of the other news media have offered as an alternative has not been an alternative at all. At some point after 9/11, the news business jumped the shark and started relaying unchallenged administration propaganda — though with less zeal and showbiz pizazz than Fox. The notorious March 2003 presidential news conference at which not a single probing question was asked by the entire White House press corps heralded the broader Foxification to come. As Michael Massing, a frequent critic of this newspaper and others, put it on PBS's NewsHour, the failure of the American news media to apply proper skepticism to the administration's stated rationale for war in Iraq is "one of the most serious institutional failures of the press" since our slide into Vietnam. Mr. Massing attributes some of this to the fear of challenging a president then at the height of his popularity. Whatever the explanation — and there are many, depending on the news organization — the net effect was that the entire press came off as Fox Lite. The motive to parrot the administration line may not have been ideological, as it was at Fox, but since the misinformation was the same, news consumers can't be blamed for finding that a distinction without a difference.

<snip>
Any sideshow that can turn the press itself into the subject, whether it's about typewriter fonts or "Crossfire" hosts doing double duty on the Kerry campaign, serves an administration that would like to distract attention from its defeats in the current war, from Abu Ghraib to Fallujah to Tora Bora. When the press isn't creating its own embarrassments, the administration will step in to intimidate and undermine journalists who don't regurgitate its approved narrative. That impulse was most nakedly revealed when a principal architect of the administration's Iraq policy, Paul Wolfowitz, blamed bad news from the occupation on the cowardice of reporters too "afraid to travel" beyond Baghdad to gather all the festive developments. (Mr. Wolfowitz later apologized, but only after he had been repeatedly chastised for slurring the some 30 reporters who had been killed covering his war.)

-MORE-

<snip>
Between the White House and Fox's smears of the mainstream press and the mainstream press's own scandals and failings of will, the toll on the entire news media's position in our culture has been enormous. A Pew Research Center survey published in June found that the credibility of all news sources is low, in some cases falling precipitously since the start of the Bush administration: major newspapers, the broadcast networks, the cable news networks and PBS alike.

<snip>

[question everything]

1. I don't understand. There is a difference between news and opinions

CNN has it, FOX does not.

Read Al Franken's book to find the examples on how their "news" shows are loaded with RWers, starting with Brit Hume.

I was at the gym on Thanksgiving watching what I thought was CNN Headline News about Bush visit to Iraq. And then I notices that something was very different in the tone of the stories, only to realize that the gym operators switched that TV to Fox based on "popular demand."

[PROGRESSIVE1]

2. .........................

[SeanQ]

3. "Wrong information always shown by the media...

...Negative images is the main criteria" -BEP - 'Where is the Love?'

http://www.grendels-den.org/000_whereisthelove.ram

[Skinner]

4. Great article.

Thanks for posting it.

I encourage people to actually click on the link and read the whole thing.

[Mojambo]

5. It's Cable Opinion NOT Cable News

The sooner people start calling it what it is the better.

[nyhuskyfan]

6. What a bozo

Crossfire is not a News show, it's an opinion show, which is balanced from people representing both sides of the political aisle. Mary Matalin was on Crossfire in 2000, while she was a PAID advisor to the Bush campaign.

[KoKo]

7. Carvell and Begala should have resigned because as Rich points out

it justifies CNN being called "Liberal" when in fact it's a carbon copy wanna be of Fox. That's what Rich was trying to say.

Carville and Begalla are now perpetuating the myth of liberal media by not resigning. And, the fact that few watch the show doesn't mean the damage isn't done.

[TexasBushwhacker]

9. Oh bullshit - both sides are still on the show

Crossfire still has Tucker Carlson and Bob Novak. What difference does it makes if Carville and Begala are unpaid advisors to the Kerry campaign? Both sides are still represented on the program.

[Pluvious]

8. Everyone should view Outfoxed

#1 doc on Amazon, you can rent from netflix, blockbuster, etc

Do NOT view at night, or you'll lose a night's sleep like I did.

(thanks for the story link friend)

________________
"I believe that mass media exists to confirm the hallucinations of the masses"
-John Perry Barlow (22FEB2002)

[teryang]

10. ******************* never gets it right

No one watches this shit anymore. The news and cable broadcasters hosed themselves. They are now irrelevant. Cry me a river.

I wouldn't even look at the NY Times today for the news, although I was literally raised on it. The only reason I go to their site, is if someone proves to me, a priori, that there is some isolated article there worth reading.

Since when is watching faux entertaining? Perhaps it is for those with low self esteem. I think you have to have low self esteem to watch any of the cable news channels.

The buzz, the hype, the packaging, the graphics, the spin, the ridiculously unprofessional analysis and editorialization, is for morons who either can't or don't read. My time is too valuable.