WP: "Why don't honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News?"

[Atman]

Or, as Patriot Majority's Facebook posting labels it: RIGHTWING PROPAGANDA "WITHOUT PRECEDENT IN MODERN HISTORY"

What is truly scary is how many people I know who still think Fox is a legitimate news source, oblivious to its genesis, its agenda, its reason for being...

----------------

One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?

Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: "The American people do not want health-care reform."

Fox repeats this as gospel. But as a matter of historical context, usually in short supply on Fox News, this assertion ranks somewhere between debatable and untrue.

The American people and many of our great modern presidents have been demanding major reforms to the health-care system since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. The elections of 1948, 1960, 1964, 2000 and 2008 confirm the point, with majorities voting for candidates supporting such change. Yet congressional Republicans have managed effective campaigns against health-care changes favored variously by Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. Now Fox News has given the party of Lincoln a free ride with its repetition of the unexamined claim that today's Republican leadership really does want to overhaul health care -- if only the effort could conform to Mitch McConnell's ideas on portability and tort reform.

(continued at link...)


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/11/AR2010031102523.html

[Echo In Light]

1. FOX also serves as a red herring: makes people think they'll get 'honest' coverage at other M$M

Not by a long shot

[mmonk]

4. +1

[peekaloo]

2. the problem is contained within the question.

"honest journalists"

[ProgressiveProfessor]

12. "Professional" journalism is a fraud

There are no effective standards, no enforcement, and no integrity. Talk heads are just that, the print hack little better.

[Echo In Light]

14. An exercise in how to 'report' un-reality as a means of imposing it on the public mind

If a large enough % of the populace hold to same version of un-reality...

The sane ones within the asylum are of courser thought to be crazy by the rest

[Captain Hilts]

3. People don't want to say the Emperor is buck nekkid. nt

[glowing]

5. WP calling out Fox news.. That's rich. Didn't they print an Op Ed by a Puke

Senator recently full of blatant lies without any factual correction alongside the "opinion" of this idiot.

the media is run for profit. This means ad revenue... This means that they don't want to rock the boat if it means that they will lose clients, money, and viability. How do you call out what every media source is guilty of. Truth is hard to find.

[Atman]

7. I was going to add to my post that I expected people to say "The Washington Post?!"

That's part of the problem. The Washington Post has an editorial page, but it publishes mostly real news. It is a NEWS organization, and like every newspaper still in existence in this country, it has an EDITORIAL page wherein the editors and the board gets to state their own case. Newspapers have always done this. You miss the point entirely by saying that a WP editorial was by "a puke." So what? Has Fox News EVER allowed "a 'Rat" unfettered access to its airwaves? No Alan Colmes bullshit, I'm talking about giving a real Democrat 5 minutes uninterrupted, without a panel of right-wing axmen waiting breathlessly for him/her to finish so they can move in for the kill and pick the carcass clean? Never. That's the point, NOT that the WP actually has enough faith in it's own integrity to allow genuine opposing viewpoints to see the light of day.

If the WP was ONLY a left wing rag the way Fox is ONLY a right wing mouthpiece, then they'd be worthless, too.

.

[depakid]

10. The Post is worse than that- the editorial board contrdicted facts published by their own reporters!

[lynne]

6. A review of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics -

- provides evidence that journalists are extinct.

http://www.spj.org/pdf/ethicscode.pdf

[ProgressiveProfessor]

13. Another farce

Nice looking website, but anyone can join...

[high density]

8. We know this isn't unique to Fox News

Jake Tapper this morning was pimping the Fox News idea that "the plurality" of Americans are against reform even though people are very much in favor of the pieces of it. Both he and Tom Brokaw on NBC were playing crap from Scott Brown. Who gives a shit what he has to say?

[salguine]

9. because all the honest journalists were completely marginalized a long time ago.

[Cleita]

11. They do all the time like Keith Olbermann, Amy Goodman and

Bill Moyers. You also see criticism in magazines like The Nation, but as long as Ruppert Murdock, the Rev. Moon and GE own the majority of media outlets, very little of it happens in the MSM where most people get their information. The worst part is that they claim immunity under the First Amendment. I would like to see that modified. I would like to see them fined every time they print or say a lie, or ignore real news like what's really happening in the wars, if they don't retract it or make up for it with equal space or time if it was a mistake as soon as they discover the mistake. I know many disagree with me but I think straight news and reports should be kept honest and cover everything that is important to Americans and that affects their lives no matter how unpleasant it may be. Just recently, hardly anyone reported on the Copenhagen Climate conference except Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! It was stunning in its failure of reaching any consensus, many walked out on it, and yet was largely ignored by the MSM. As far as opinion, sure blather on Rush/Sean/Billo. You do have that right under the Constitution.

[gratuitous]

15. I think honest journalists DO take on Ailes and Fox

But I sure as shit wouldn't expect anyone on the staff at the Washington Post to know that, or to know anyone who qualifies as an honest journalist.

[progressoid]

16. honest journalists?? What, all two of them??