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Why Most Journalists Dislike Fox News: It’s Not The Reason You Think

by Open-Publishing - Monday 31 July 2006
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Television USA

http://www.ideagrove.com/blog/2006/...

Why Most Journalists Dislike Fox News: It’s Not The Reason You Think
By Scott Baradell
Friday, July 28, 2006

According to Dee Rambeau, July is Media Orchard’s "Pick on Fox News" month — so since July is almost over, I thought I’d better get in one last lick.

This may be hard for people who have never been journalists to understand, but I do not dislike Fox News because my politics are left of Roger Ailes’. I dislike Fox News because it undermines the efforts of all journalists who work hard to be objective in their coverage of the day’s events.

Ailes smirks that Fox News is "Fair and Balanced" when everyone at that network knows that it has a political agenda that comes down from on high. That smirk not only makes Fox News a liar — it also mocks the integrity of all journalists who have committed their lives and careers to the ideals of objective journalism.

Let me explain something to those of you who have never been reporters; for most journalists, integrity is everything. Say what you will about reporters’ ethics, but I know from experience that you’ll hear more serious discussion of ethical questions in a newsroom than you’ll ever hear in a boardroom. Most reporters care passionately about what they do — and just as passionately about doing it right.

Journalists, in general, don’t enter the profession to make money. If money were their goal, they would apply their college educations and insatiable curiosity in more profitable directions — such as becoming political operatives.

Young people enter journalism, for the most part, because they want to make a difference. Their egos are fed not by the money they make, but by the impact they have. Journalists have impact by covering controversy and causing change. If change is anti-conservative — in the true sense of the word "conservative" — it is not anti-Republican.

Republicans and Democrats have worked together peacefully and productively in newsrooms for years, because they have always used the same rulebook. When I was a reporter in Lynchburg, Va., I remember covering a series of stories on a politically charged issue with a reporter who was as Republican as they come. I don’t think we discussed our personal politics once while writing that series — because we both were more committed to the discipline of journalism than to our politics.

While more individual journalists may tend to hold so-called "liberal" views than so-called "conservative" views, none of Fox News’ competitors — not CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN or MSNBC — issues dictates from the executive suite about how stories should be covered. Only Fox News does that. None of Fox News’ competitors has a political filter for hiring talent. Only Fox News has that.

That’s why "Fair and Balanced" is an example of the Big Lie. And why all of us — no matter our politics — should be a little bothered by that. It’s certainly why virtually all journalists who take objectivity seriously dislike Fox News.

One last point: This phenomenon works both ways. I once worked at an alternative weekly — one with its own set of political views. In that setting, I was the staff "conservative." I once wrote an article that the chain’s editorial chief thought was too "conservative" in tone, and — in so many words — he told me as much.

Having been trained in daily newspaper newsrooms — where it was about what you learned from your reporting, not what you believed beforehand — I was shocked by the complaint. It wasn’t long before I left that alt weekly.

So when I knock Fox News, it’s not because I worry about its politics. No, I worry that the ratings success of Fox News will undermine the profession of journalism generally in the public’s mind, so that any reporter who endeavors to cover stories objectively will be greeted with a Roger Ailes-inspired smirk.

Forum posts

  • So if most journalists are honest, caring individuals and if CBS and the like do not dictate how stories should be covered, why do we get so little honest news? Why did we have all major media beating the drum for the war against Iraq? Why do we now have all major media providing misleading, at best, coverage on Israel’s war against Palestine and Lebanon? Where are these truthful journalists reporting? I certainly am not seeing or hearing any of their work.

  • In America, it has be a tradition to believe that journalists are somehow a cut above the moral fabric of ordinary American and that (implicitly) the ordinary American is morally superior to other humans. It the past was the communist boogieman and what and how they report was somehow almost always a lie and fiction, while American journalists were reporting the truth.

    With rare exceptions in even rarer situations events were reported as they occurred.

    However, now as in the past, the "news" presented in MSM is pure fiction. It is unreasonable to think that a journalist is somehow able to be an expert in one field and then equally qualified in another the following day — as s/he cover varying stories from fire in a highrise to a plane crash, and so on.

    Let me qualify by saying in circumstances journalist, as such, who are experts in a particular field often find employment with select publishers and cover only one subject for which the qualify. A good example is "Jane’s Defense" publications...

    The other major mistake in understanding is that journalist are somehow not of the American street. When in fact, they have the same biases and same values of the American street and will respond to events in the same self-ignorant, self-serving and self-censoring ways. Therefore, it is never possible to get "news" (as in events and situations transpiring out of eye and ear shot) reported that are not distilled through these bias-filters.

    Readers can midigate this view-thru-the-straw by attemting to read in other languages and other non-MSM (meaning other countries’ media output) and try to balance the confidence level of what is being reported. But, it should be remembered, as U.S. MSM is being questioned by the reader, critical thought should be applied to non-MSM output as well.

    It is an ongoing effort (a personal jihad, if you will) in one’s life...