Move it, MoveOn
I’m a subscriber to MoveOn.org‘s email list, so last night I got an email from them that completely stunned me. It began as follows:
Our Fox campaign is becoming a major fight. The attacks are now coming from Fox — in an attempt to intimidate other media outlets. We need your help. It’s time to take this to Congress. On Friday, we’ll deliver our Fox petition to members of Congress and we need to have at least 250,000 comments from across the nation. We’re pushing members of Congress to make Fox come clean about its rank partisanship.
It continued, presenting arguments that Fox News is heavily biased towards the right, and saying how MoveOn is pushing Congress and the FTC to question Fox News and Rupert Murdoch about the partisan bias in their news arm.
This is disgusting. MoveOn, an organization which normally puts its efforts towards fighting for causes I wholeheartedly agree with, appeared to be actively trying to deny Fox News’ right to free speech. Upon further investigation, it turns out MoveOn is attempting to convince the government that Fox News’ use of the trademarked phrase “fair and balanced” to describe themselves is false advertising. While this may be so, it’s not a case that needs to take up the time and effort of the United States Congress. It could easily be dealt with by the courts whose jurisdiction includes Fox News’ headquarters.
Now, while I dislike Fox News as much as any liberal, and consider them by far the most shamefully partisan so-called news network on television, I feel that MoveOn has gone much too far with this. And while I agree that “fair and balanced” is not a phrase that accurately describes Fox News, I also think it’s not what our senators and representatives need to be concerned with.
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I think they’re smart enough to know they can’t possibly win this one. They’ll never get enough Congressional support to move this anywhere, and the legal basis for challanging the accuracy of an advertising slogan with subjective terms like “fair” and “balanced” probably doesn’t exist. It’s a publicity stunt.
I think that makes it even more upsetting.
Well, at least we agree on something… at least in part. I would be curious to know, however, exactly how much you watch FOXNews, since I know a lot of liberals who insist it’s horrendously, evilly biased even though they’ve never watched a single minute of it. I’m not suggesting you fall into that category, but I certainly know people like that.
Personally, I watch it about as much as I watch any other TV news–which is to say, not very much. From what I’ve watched of them, they seem to present stories in a more balanced way than the other stations (primarily NBC and CBS), but as I don’t really watch any of them very much, I can’t say for sure. I object to what ALL of them do in making the news so close to entertainment as to be indistinguishable. I don’t follow news to be entertained, I follow news to be informed, and it’s a lot easier to do that on the web, where you can easily filter out the crap that floods most TV news programs.
Matthew,
While I don’t have a cable package that includes the Fox News Channel, I have watched it in the past, here and there. Not for extended periods, but enough to feel confident that it’s not just the misconceptions of an angry few that give rise to the allegations that it’s not really fair or balanced.
I agree that it seems to be much easier to find “just the facts, ma’am” on the web, where one can check various sources to try and find all the details. Unfortunately, a huge number of people rely on televised news sources, and it’s been shown that Fox News viewers are much more likely than those who get their news from other sources to hold misconceptions about the Iraq War – misconceptions that are in the Bush administration’s favor. The report this information is from can be seen here (315kb PDF). The relevant section starts on page 12.
I am a member of moveon and i think you are on the money here.
Amen.