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As the Obama administration continually bashed Fox News as being a research arm for the Republican Party and tried to bar them from the White House press pool, the only thing I could think was “Oh my god. If they ban Fox from direct access to the White House, what other freedoms of the press might this administration go after next?”
But over the past two weeks my view on that front has changed.
A multitude of sources — from Mediamatters.org to John Stewart, host of The Daily Show — have recently reported that Fox News actually said that “9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays” is when they run objective news programs. The rest, they say, is editorial (or opinion) programming.
Now, for those of you who for one reason or another might not know, Fox News Channel is a 24-hour news network that uses the slogan “Fair and Balanced” to describe its programming. It has become blatantly obvious, solely based off of its own statements, that Fox News has become a blatant contradiction.
First off, if a 24-hour station is going to call itself a “news” station, it should probably run more than nine hours of objective news programming.
Secondly, if you openly admit that the majority of programming provided to the public from your station is opinionated, you should not be able to run the slogan “Fair and Balanced” under your logo.
Finally, if you only run nine hours of objective news programming on a 24-hour “news” channel and you admit to running a majority of opinionated programs while boasting the slogan “Fair and Balanced,” you should at least promote your “news” channel with the people who actually are providing the news during Fox’s 9 hours of objective programming.
But when you see a commercial for Fox News Channel you don’t see Jill Dobson, Kimberly Guilefoyle Newsom or Reena Ninan (I’ve never heard of them either, don’t worry) being promoted. You see Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly — all of whom are on during Fox’s designated opinion hours.
Let’s recap for a second here; we have a 24-hour network that calls itself a “news channel” that only runs nine hours of objective news programming a day. That leaves 15 hours where Fox news runs editorial programming while still maintaining that their programming is “Fair and Balanced.” This “news channel” doesn’t promote itself with the names or faces of its news anchors, but instead uses editorial hosts in most of its advertisements.
How anyone can legitimately think that this is how a news organization is supposed to work is beyond me. I honestly could care less if you watch this un-journalistic abomination of a “Fair and Balanced” network, but if you think that Glenn Beck is giving you news you are sorely mistaken.
I once believed that banning Fox news from the White House press pool would be a breach of freedom of the press, but I now see why the Obama administration has taken the stand that they have; “Fair and Balanced” Fox News Channel might not lie about facts or report false information, but the very name of their network and the slogan they’ve beaten into the heads of their viewers is a lie. It’s a slap in the face to anyone who gets their news from them, a black eye on the face of network news and a kick to the groin of a freshmen journalism major who still believes that there is room for objectivity in the world of reporting.
Fox isn't the problem, nor is CNN, or Jon Stewart, or Glenn Beck, or any other scapegoats people want to blame for our society's ongoing and worsening disorder. They are symptoms of a large society-wide failure.