Wishing for Obama's assassination won't get you fired from Faux news

[Turborama]

Media Matters

The media topic of the week was the firing of Juan Williams by NPR over his remark that he gets "nervous" around "people who are in Muslim garb" on airplanes.

Williams' firing comes weeks after CNN canned Rick Sanchez for remarks about Jon Stewart and Jews in the media. In both cases, news organizations made personnel moves in response to perceived violations of their editorial standards. Yet when it comes to cable ratings leader Fox News, it's hard to tell whether any editorial standards exist, and what - if anything - would get you reprimanded by the network.

Unlike other media outlets, Fox News has a pattern of failing to seriously discipline employees for on-air transgressions. And in positioning itself as an alternative to traditional news media, that's probably how Fox News likes it.

Take the case of Fox News contributor http://www.foxnews.com/bios/talent/li-trotta/">Liz Trotta. During a May 2008 http://mediamatters.org/research/201010110021"> segment on the Democratic presidential primaries, Trotta actually remarked that she wished somebody would "knock off" both Osama Bin Laden and then-candidate Barack Obama:

TROTTA: The vast right-wing conspiracy blame has been undermined by her evasions, by her outright lies, if I may say, by her pandering, by her race-baiting, and now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama - Obama - well, both if we could.

Continues: http://mediamatters.org/columns/201010220039