Howie Kurtz: Fox News is ‘entitled’ to ‘misinform our society.’

[bridgit]

'On Wednesday, during an appearance on Glenn Beck’s CNN Headline News show, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz said that Fox News is “entitled” to be “a cheerleader for the Bush administration” that is “misinforming our society.” Kurtz’s comments came in the context of dismissing the criticisms of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who routinely mocks the cable news network. Watch it:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/14/kurtz-fox-news-is-entitled-to-misinform-our-society :freak:

[rusty quoin]

1. A court ruling also decided Fox News is free to mislead.

Just because every fiber of your being tells you it should be illegal, doesn't mean it actually is. Just ask anyone from the Bush administration.

[OHdem10]

2. While they are free to mislead and are very good at

misleading, it seems there should be someone somewhere
to point out the truth, or at least warn the people
they get misleading information at Fox.

There seem to be something askew when a group of American
citizens are being mislead en masse.

The country can never come together when you have whole
groups of people being given different facts on the same
situation.

[supernova]

3. But it's the opposite of moral or ethical

Just because something is legal doesn't mean that it is the right thing to do morally.

Again, I don't know hwo HK is fuckable.

[Igel]

4. I watched it.

It's at least two-way ambiguous.

"They" might be the same as the earlier "it"--Fox News. Or it may be the same as "he"--Olberman.

"They" is often used as a third-person singular indefinite, but only with animates. This favors "Olberman" as the referent. On the other hand, there could be semantic agreement between "Fox News" (composed of a lot of people) and "they".

In any event, in the absence of a law limiting newspapers to reporting only what the governments says is the 'truth', he's technically right. In which case he's being ironic. Since they consider Olberman to be the person doing the misinforming, however, the ambiguity isn't diminished--because then he'd be saying Olberman has the right to misinform.

So that's what, two-way ambiguous, but with two variant readings for each reading?

[defendandprotect]

5. Howie Kurtz has never seemed too concerned with the ideals of a "free press."