Robert Maguire's Library tagged bias →  View Popular

UPDATE:  The New York Times reports that when the White House tried to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with Treasury Department official Kenneth Feinberg, "Fox’s television news competitors refused to go along," insisting that Fox be included.  Even Charles Krauthammer, on Fox, praised the media for standing up for Fox:  "what happened today was other news organizations -- admirably and on principle -- standing up and saying no."  And Fox News itself credited NBC White Correspondent Savannah Guthrie as "the first reporter to hold President Obama to account for his aides' 'attacks' on Fox News," when she questioned him with hostility about the criticisms. 

Numerous establishment journalists have strongly condemned the Obama White House for its criticisms of Fox -- exactly the opposite of Carlson's complaints. The discrepancy between that behavior and their conduct towards the Bush White House's press attacks also demonstrates, as usual, that reality is the exact opposite of the Right's incessant and petulant complaints about "The Liberal Media."

Here are some other measures you could use when classifying media outfits:

3) Accuracy--Are they committed to not telling untruths?

4) Fairness--Do they try to present all sides, even if it's only to take on an opponent's best argument (as opposed to his worst)?

5) Discipline--Do they tolerate dissenting voices within the organization--even when those voices are effective? Will they assign major stories that will cut against their interests and arguments?

6) Willingness to Suppress: You can have a commitment to accuracy, even a commitment to going out and finding and publicizing the truth for its own sake--but what happens when that commitment collides cataclysmically with your other, ideological purpose? The New York Times has a high commitment to accuracy, for example--and it's so big it almost has to be relatively tolerant of individual deviation. But would it endanger the Democrats' Senate majority by printing a series of damaging exposes of a leading Democratic Senator shortly before an election?  The Times answered that one for us in 2002.

I can suggest a better place to look for signs of Fox's fealty to Bush - how did they handle the conservative rebellion in early 2006 over both Harriet Miers and the Dubai port deal?  If Fox was truly in the tank for Bush, as opposed to holding a conservative point of view, they would have tilted in favor of Harriet and Dubai.  Did they? [E.A.]

My impression is they did--on Miers, anyway. ... Samples:

MORT KONDRACKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ROLL CALL: Well, you know, I trust the president. I trust the president to know this person that he's known for 10 years, and what her mind is and how she thinks. And he thinks she is strong and all that.

When various conservatives say, "Oh my God, you know, we're scared that she's going to turn into David Souter" -- as I said yesterday, I don't think that's going to happen.

--Fox News All Stars, Oct. 4, 2005

BRIT HUME: Needless to say, our colleague, Mr. Will, lacks enthusiasm for Harriet Miers, as does Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Laura Ingraham, and the former Justice Department lawyer John Yu, not to mention David Frum. What do they all have in common? Well, they're products of the most prestigious Eastern schools.

Some observations on whether there is in all of this a whiff of elitism in the air from Fred Barnes, a graduate of the University of Virginia, as indeed I am, Mort Kondracke, a graduate, I'm afraid to say, of Dartmouth, and Mara Liasson, a graduate, dare I say it, of Brown University.

All right, folks. What about it? Is there a bit of elitism in all of this?

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": Well, there may be snobbery even.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Snobbery even? Snobbery even? Go ahead, Fred