For years Fox has used the tagline "Fair and Balanced" as a way to justify the slant of their news. In this multi-part interview with Jon Stewart and Bret Baier, Baier never denies that Fox's Opinion Branch has a Right-Ward Slant but he oddly chooses the defensive crouch that all that his show is "Hard News" and isn't affected by all that "Right-Ward Spin". Oh reallly?
Stewart: People would say (NPR) has a Liberal Bias, and Fox has a more Conservative Slant.
Baier: On the Opinion Shows there'sno doubt on Fox they come from the Right, but if you watch my show or Shepard Smith's show...
Well, you can say that again. If Fox is really "Fair and Balanced" where are all the News Opinion Shows that are hosted and presented from the Left or are run by Former Democratic Law Makers? Fox has had Former Alaskan Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on their payroll with his own show. Current Ohio Governor John Kascich had his own show on Fox (and his run for Governor prompted Fox to donate $1 Million to the Republican Governor's association), not to mention having Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.
Where are the shows hosted by former Democratic Governors and Senators?
The only one I can think of is Parker/Spitzer on CNN and he had to split the bill to get that gig.
So yes, Fox's OPINION section - which is nearly all of their broadcasting - is clearly slanted to the Right. But Baier still denies this has any impact on their "Hard News".
Stewart: I'm suggestion not that (Fox) isn't popular or powerful. So's Crack. You don't feel that Fox is an Activist Conservative Network?
Baier: Not with what I do everyday. Every morning I go in, we have a morning meeting we have correspondents all over the world.
Sure, you have a morning meeting - but it seems that people like John Moody and Bill Sammons who actively promoted that Fox suggest that Barack Obama is a Marxist/Socialist.
On October 27, 2008, Sammon sent an email to colleagues highlighting what he described as "Obama's references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists" in his 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father. Shortly after sending the email, Sammon -- then the network's Washington deputy managing editor -- appeared on two Fox News programs to discuss his research and also wrote a FoxNews.com piece about Obama's "affinity to Marxists" that was disseminated throughout the conservative blogosphere.
By that evening, the subject line of Sammon's email had been inserted -- word-for-word -- into show notes written in preparation for the next morning's Fox & Friends, which featured an appearance by Sammon.
The information in Sammon's email wasn't exactly breaking news. He had already published essentially the same research about Obama's 1995 memoir a year earlier in his book Meet the Next President. But Sammon, who has since been promoted to Washington managing editor, believed the "biased" media were failing to question Obama's purported links to radicals and socialism. Sammon also believed Sen. John McCain's campaign could gain momentum by capitalizing on those links.
Stewart continues to press his point.
Stewart: I honestly was expecting you to say look: Roger Ailes is a passionate, relatively ideological Conservative who has created an organization that reflects what he thinks is a dirth of that opinion in the larger marketplace. And he considers this a counterweight to the victimization that Conservatives have felt by a in "Liberal Media". I'm surprise you're like "Well, a couple of guys are out there for most part...". Why can't you own that?
Baier: The opinion side, is one side. I got it. You're saying the entire network is driven by the Top Down - I get a call and...
Stewart argues that Baier is like the "Eye of a Hurricane" that is safe harbor from the opinion side. But he's actually wrong - Baier is lying to him, because he really does get a call or at the very least an email.
During the Health Care Debate Sammon's issued an Email arguing that Fox shouldn't use the phrase "Public Option" - based on direction which had come directly from Republican Pollster Frank Luntz.
Based on Luntz direction, Sammon's then set the tone for Fox News Reporting. Not their Opinion - their REPORTING.
At the height of the health care reform debate last fall, Bill Sammon, Fox News' controversial Washington managing editor, sent a memo directing his network's journalists not to use the phrase "public option."
Instead, Sammon wrote, Fox's reporters should use "government option" and similar phrases -- wording that a top Republican pollster had recommended in order to turn public opinion against the Democrats' reform efforts.
Journalists on the network's flagship news program, Special Report with Bret Baier, appear to have followed Sammon's directive in reporting on health care reform that evening.
And during later reports when Baier and others again began using the phrase "public option" rather than "Government Run Option" - Sammons complained.
Sammon's email appears to have had an impact. On the October 27 Special Report -- unlike on the previous night's broadcast -- Fox journalists made no references to the "public option" without using versions of the pre-approved qualifiers outlined in Sammon's and Clemente's emails.
Reporting on health care reform that night, Baier referenced the public option three times. In each instance, he referred to it as "government-run health insurance" or a "government-run health insurance option" -- precisely echoing the first wording choice laid out by Sammon.
On the same show, correspondent Jim Angle referred to "a government insurance plan, the so-called public option"; "a government insurance option"; and "a government insurance plan."
The wording of Sammon's email -- a "friendly reminder" not to "slip back into calling it the 'public option' " -- suggests that someone in the Fox News chain of command had previously issued similar instructions.
So Baier's claim that this is anykind of wall of protection between the Conservative/Partisan elements of Fox and the News elements of Fox is completely false. There is NO Difference, one section directly impacts the other.
Now, like Stewart, I don't really have a problem with that fact. If you want to provide News with a partisan slant, you can do that - what I object to is their Lying about it as if that isn't exactly what's going on. Fox should be able to present themselves exactly as Stewart suggested, as a counterweight the the "Liberal Bias" of the rest of the media. I mean, the rest of the media doesn't have partisans running their news divisions specifically injecting pollster approved language into their broadcasts, but I'm willing to admit they generally don't completely represent the Conservative Point of View either (Because IMO that view is often Deluded and Paranoid). So it's fair to note the mainsteam media doesn't naturally entertain many of the notions that Conservatives think are paramount, like say Death Panels and Creeping Socialism.
It's not that their biased ideologically - they're actually biased toward laziness - it's because those ideas are flat-out crazy.
Fox Stands Apart from that. Unfortunately, in the process they also stand apart from quite a bit of Fact and Reality.
Vyan