What Even The White House Respects About Fox News

This is Shep's latest rant.
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Neutrality stinks. The shape of the earth has been questioned by the flat earth society, while most scientists disagree type reporting is awful.

Michael Scherer:

...betrayed his so-called "village" roots (I use that term ironically)...

I just can't get a moment's peace around here with constructs like that.

Edsall's piece is a bunch of nonsense.

His effort to debunk Thomas Frank's thesis is a sorry mess of unsupported claims and poor arguments.

In truth, Frank is 100% right. Poor, rural voters have absolutely been convinced to vote against their economic self interest.

Likely out of his own elitist projection, Edsall assumes that this means that Frank is accusing such voters of being hick rubes. In fact, all socio-economic groups are susceptible to being scared into voting against their own interest.

One could easily write a book entitled "What's the Matter With Wall Street? Why corporate executives sabotage their business competitiveness by embracing employer-provided health care and opposing single-payer health care."

While we're on the topic of objective reporting, maybe [laughs] Micheal Scherer [laughs] would care to [laughs] find out [laughs] where stories like these come from [laughs].

Michael, regardless of their purported intent, i.e. neutral reporting, it is VERY hard to report anything without using your personal bias if you have nobody in the room to question you. Every person on the face of this earth has biases and to think they are sooooo intellectually superior as to see their own and ferrett them out is an extreme stretch. You've got all these guys/gals in a room thinking they are the smartest people in the world becasue the people around them believe the same way they do.

It's like the old joke: "I've never met anyone that voted for (insert winning politician here) and he still won."

"Perhaps you need to get out more and broaden your horizons."

If media guilt results in the press leaning so far overboard to show their neutrality, why did Obama receive such a disproportionately positive coverage versus any candidate before him? I would hate to see how biased they were before they leaned so far over.

[...] …not whom you would expect. Anita Dunn, the communications director, who is leading up the White House’s rapid response effort, did point out to me that there was at least one Fox News employee who she considered an upstanding member of his profession. Did she call out Fox News Sunday’s Chris “Biggest Bunch of Crybabies” Wallace? Or Shepard “Public Option” Smith? [...]

"Note to Glenn Beck: Mother Jones magazine is named for Mary Harris Jones, who was a socialist. Put this fact up on your chalkboard and I am sure you will quickly conclude that both Garrett and I constitute a KGB sleeper cell with White House press credentials--a clear threat to the republic."

I must say that your feeble humor is hardly the appropriate response to a determined effort at shifting the Overton Window.

Who cares whether reporters are liberal? The politics of the top people is what matters. I've never, ever been in an organization where the front line people set policy.

Jack Welch signed (at least figuratively) Tim Russert's paychecks. Young Michael, I sense I am revealing a new truth to you, but here it is: Jack Welch's opinion is the one that mattered.

While the mainstream media often fail to live up to their own standards, their committed pursuit of neutrality and objectivity is crucial to the quality of American journalism. While the mainstream media often fail to live up to their own standards, their committed pursuit of neutrality and objectivity is crucial to the quality of American journalism.
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What more needs to be said, really?

neutrality and objectivity
There's the flaw in your reasoning right there. Objectivity and neutrality are not the same thing. If you use the words together like that, you make clear that you need to be educated about the difference.

Hot Air -- White House communications chief: Our favorite Fox News reporter is…
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/08/white-house-communications-chief-our-favorite-fox-news-reporter-is/

"...reporters should stop protesting and just acknowledge their own (usually) liberal views..."
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Wow. 1) do you agree that reporters feel that they themselves have "(usually) liberal views" and 2) if so, why would they keep them secret? Just wow.

Given the amount of navel gazing that the media does it is impressive how little they change much less improve.

[...] link: The White House’s Favorite Fox News Reporter (Time Magazine) Share and [...]

There is no doubt in my mind that the MSM bends over backward to favor Repubs over Dems. If the exact same circumstances of the Whitewater affair had applied to George Bush, there is no way any investigation would have happened. I can just hear Cokie and Broder scolding any Dem who would dare interupt the nation's business for something that had happened so long in the president's past.

The rest of the press let's itself be pushed around by Fox news. I'm sure presidents Carter and Clinton would never say they got fair treatment from the media. And of course Johnson famously said if he lost Walter Chronkite, he had lost the country.

Rightwingers are either delusional or cynical when they insist there is a media bia in favor of Democrats.

Objectivity and neutrality are NOT the same thing. Objectivity is paramount and neutrality can take a back seat. When you report with objectivity the story can stand on its own merits. Write with neutrality and you will always have to qualify it.

If the media were truly doing their jobs, the government would be equally standoff-ish towards all reporters. All news organizations should be called out explicitly and consistently when they get it wrong. Period.

I find strange and it make me wonder why the President cannot stand any news outlet not laying flowers at his feet and dropping to their knees in a bow when he speaks. I find the media today to be very frightening as a regular everyday taxpayer. I see ABC, NBC,CBS, CNN, MSNBC and most news magazines as the 3 hear no evil, see no evil and say no evil monkey's when it comes to anything period with Obama and his administration. I am very concerned about this and wonder why the media bias is so high. This country is in a economic crisis, citizens feel betrayed by our goverment and the media bias, we are made fun of if we stand up and demand our voices be heard on policies. Pelosi wants to stop talk radio to silence our voices also. We just went through the Clinton years when we heard of Monica Lewinsky and many other non flattering things on Pres. Clinton. During the last few years of the Bush administration we had nearly 24/7 Bush bashing. This hurt because Bush warned us nearly every year of a coming economic crisis beginning from Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac but no one cared to even investigate and look now what has happened. After just the 16 years of press coverage of just Clinton and Bush why is the media afraid to ask questions? Why does our President feel is above questions by the media and especially the American people? Why does so many American people feel we are being lied to by the liberal media by covering up stories and not investigating anything in the administration? Sadly all we have is Fox News and Talk Radio to not hear the media "Singing Everything is perfect in Obama Land" nightly, daily in the most news papers and weekly in most news magazines. I wonder are there any reporters working anymore that love our country first? I had such high respect for years of "the nightly news programs" I will never see them in that same light, sadly I will see them in the same class of trust as I see a used car salesman, a ambulance chaser lawyer and the lowest of the low a member of congress. It is a sad day for our country now because the trust is gone in so ways and places, sadder that the President thinks he is above any question and "calls out a news network" Pray for us.

gosh as far as tv goes with the news i think the dems should have no complaints what so ever. i quit watching and canceled time and newsweek back during dan rathers vietnam expose in 88 for what i saw as regular avoidance to objectivity.so i would put the scorecard as dems 4-5 to 1 for news channels with regards to conservative view points. time's writers need to get off their whiny butts and earn back the publics general respect, not just that of their adoring left leaning friends.

Fox News --America's Pravda! (gee, then the GOP would be....)

[...] contract worth around $3 million. White House respects Garrett (if not others at Fox). Share and [...]

Looking at the dismal cable ratings of CNN and MSNBC one would think that they would be 1. Finding a new audience or 2. Stealing Fox viewers or 3. Both.

Honestly, if you were a Republican would you tune in to Keith Olberman and enjoy watching him and Garafalo call you " Teabagging, Redneck Racist"?

What liberal media outlet could you watch that comports with your ideaology and frankly probably a little bit of your Christian beliefs.

People have been critizing Fox since it aired 13 years ago. Fox is still standing and stronger then ever. As hard as it might be for some to find the good in Fox they are doing something right.

[...] the contentious volleys back and forth, the White House still says it respects Fox correspondent Major Garrett. Nevertheless, Garrett talked at the Shorenstein Center about the [...]

[...] As a student of the history of the early American republic, I would argue that a media focus on “extreme elements on both sides” is nothing new in the United States. During Washington’s presidency, papers were started by leading members of the divergent parties including Philip Freneau’s National Gazette, which he started at the urging and with the assistance of Jefferson and Madison who provided him with a guaranteed income as a clerk in the State Department. [9] One of the lowest points of journalism, and a true betrayal of the public trust, was the (sometimes completely fabricated) press coverage that eventually led to the Spanish-American War. [10] If Fox News blatantly fabricated a news story, it would be fitting and proper for the administration to set the record straight. However, to claim that a news source is not a valid news source because the hosts of opinion shows on their network don’t agree with the administration’s policies is completely ridiculous. That would be like the administration advocating everyone to boycott the Washington Post because of George Will. Furthermore, if we were to take away press credentials from every network that had an obvious bias to their reporting, MSNBC would be out of the loop as well since only 14% of their stories on then-candidate Obama in the last six weeks of the election were negative versus 73% of their stories about McCain. [11] Isn’t Glenn Beck just the right’s version of Keith Olbermann? To try to invalidate the reputation of the network, which in turn would invalidate the reputations of everyone involved with the network, even Major Garrett who White House Communications Director Anita Dunn deemed “a legitimate reporter,” due to disagreement over opinion shows is shameful at best. [11] [...]