Fox "News"

I'm sure everybody reading this knows that Fox News is pretty much the worst thing to happen since the Hindenburg, but I thought this was a particularly good example of why they're terrible, which I first saw in Media Matters. The gist is that the NYT published an article that was critical of Fox, and Fox made fun of the editor and the writer of the story. That was completely unprofessional and juvenile, but that's not the worst part.

They showed pictures of the two NYT journalists, but instead of using their actual pictures, they digitally altered the pictures to make the guys look silly, and gave no indication that they were doing so. The pictures are below (along with the originals), all from Media Matters.



People on the left seem to have this attitude of "Oh, they're Fox News, of course they're doing terrible things. " But there's no way you can call yourself a news organization if you do things like this. My high school journalism teacher would have gone crazy if we had tried to pull this kind of stunt.

I did a little google search about the alteration and I found dozens of blogs that covered the story, but nothing about it from the "mainstream media" (I prefer "traditional media" or "conventional media" since "mainstream media" implies that major online news organizations like the award-winning talkingpointsmemo.com or the Huffington Post are on the fringe, but that's a topic for another post.) I didn't do an exhaustive search btw, so correct me if I'm wrong.

This is a total slamdunk case of Fox embarrassing itself, complete with pictures so it's not hard to understand. Why didn't other networks pick up on it? I think the story is newsworthy, and I don't think there's anything wrong with an actual network like ABC calling Fox out.

Why doesn't Barrack Obama pick up the story? He could denounce the story and demand a retraction and apology from Fox, and ask McCain to do the same. It could help deprive Fox of some of its undeserved legitimacely, which could help Obama next time Fox runs one of its ridiculous smears (like the "fist bump = terrorist gesture" story).

This particular distortion is very obvious and undeniable (and is based on pictures, so even USA Today could get in on the action), but Obama's challenge would be to make the case that Fox News in general is untrustworthy. This is pretty clearly true, but it's murkier and more complex than the narrow, specific falsehood of these two distorted pictures.

As a side benefit, bashing Fox would re-woo the left-wing blogs, which are currently up in arms about his changing positions and supporting telecom immunity in the FISA bill.

edit: MSNBC did do a segment on Fox's fabrication, as did a magazine I've never heard of called Editor & Publisher. NYT also responded. All three called Fox News a bunch of fuckers. Media Matters covers these here.