We all know how biased Fox is. There have even been documentaries about it. But I haven't seen them admit it before now.
Scott Norvell is London bureau chief for Fox News, and on May 20 he let the mask slip in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal.
"Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly."
"And those who hate us can take solace in the fact that they aren't subsidizing Bill's bombast; we payers of the BBC license fee don't enjoy that peace of mind.
Fox News is, after all, a private channel and our presenters are quite open about where they stand on particular stories. That's our appeal. People watch us because they know what they are getting. The Beeb's institutionalized leftism would be easier to tolerate if the corporation was a little more honest about it."
The great irony here is that Norvell is chiding the BBC for not owning up to their (alleged) bias when Fox, far from owning up to their bias, have "Fair and Balanced" as their slogan.
You can read the whole article over at Slate:
Fox News Admits Bias!
There are two reasons I bring up this story. The first is that I've had people tell me that Fox is the only news that isn't biased, so it's nice to be able to refute them with the words of a Fox bureau chief.
The second reason is because of a habit I've seen among Rethugs of leading from weakness, as if the very gall to do that shows strength. How on earth could Fox News call themselves "Fair and Balanced", and even try to to trademark the phrase?
I've read it's straight from the Rove playbook, to hit the opponent where they're strongest. In the 2000 Republican primaries, Bush's thugs started smearing McCain on Vietnam. McCain of course went ballistic, and they dropped it. Kerry's war hero status was the one area Bush couldn't hope to compete - hence the Swift Boats. In a sadder piece of framing, for the people of the US, they took the fact that Kerry was a careful and nuanced thinker and slammed it as flip-flopping; and convinced much of the electorate that a man who refused to accept facts, who stuck to his guns even after shooting off all his own toes, was tough and honest.
It seems to also be a Rethug habit to flaunt your weakness, to reward incompetence. If Tenet and Bremer get medals, they must have been fighting for a good cause. If Gonzalez is confirmed as the top man at Justice, doesn't that vindicate all the anti-Geneva, pro-torture memos and policies?
Fox News should of course be called Fox Propaganda, having convinced so many of their viewers that Saddam was behind 9/11, that the whole world wanted the US to invade, and that Iraq had WMD. A friend of mine who watches only Fox has explained to me that they actually did find WMD in Iraq but they covered it up. He won't say why. And I know he got the idea from Fox, because he's not smart enough to come up with it on his own.