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October 31, 2003

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Fox News, revealed

Salon interviews Charlie Reina [click through the ad], a very angry former producer at Fox News, who wrote a long post on Romenesko when ABC News guy Chris Wallace announced he was moving over to Fox. Reina discusses the obvious political bias of Fox management, but does stress the dischord between management and much of the younger, more liberal news staff. He includes specific anecdotes of his bosses urging him to write prescriptive news stories, expressing an opinion about how events should play out, instead of just covering them. Hardly a surprise, but still pretty alarming. He says, "Hearing the mantra, you know, 'Fair and balanced. We report, you decide.' I mean, come on. Don't make me laugh."

Hey Charlie, if you need a job, go ahead and give us a call. -amy

Amy and I were talking about Fox News bias a few months ago, and my general take on it was, Look, there's no sense arguing about whether Fox News is biased or not. Let's just move on. Everyone just needs to accept that it is biased, and start thinking about a more important question: What does it mean? What does it mean that the primary source of news for a sizable portion of America (including my dad, for example) is deliberately skewing their reporting to favor a certain political ideology? What it seems to mean is that Americans will end up being misinformed, and, worse, they will be convinced that they are not misinformed, because Fox News told them they are right. The most obvious example of this is the fact that 33% of Fox viewers think that we've found WMD in Iraq, but this is just the beginning. As we accept deliberate and sustained bias as a part of the news, the entire idea of truth is undermined, a result which I think is precisely what the far right wants and has been working towards since Bush was elected. If you can eliminate objective truth, then no one can really object to anything you say, and so whoever can get the most people to accept whatever they say -- true or false -- wins. More on this in a few days. -adm

categories: Media
posted by amy at 1:36 PM | #

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