A lot has been made of this ongoing tiff between Fox and the White House, and last I heard, neither showed any sign of backing down. I must wonder, though, why anyone thinks Fox has a leg to stand on here. I know, supporters frequently claim that freedom of the press allows Fox to put forth whatever views they please, and I agree, but that freedom doesn't include the right to an audience, and it ABSOLUTELY doesn't include an automatic White House press pass. Consider the following:
In short, Fox wants to be considered an opinion network instead of a news network. That's absolutely fine, I have no problem with that at all. That said, do you know who else qualifies as an opinion journalist? ANY REMOTELY POLITICAL BLOGGER EVER. I'm an opinion journalist, and I for damn sure wouldn't expect access to the White House press room. It would be awesome, sure, but it's not going to happen. They want to be considered a major news network (with all the privileges thereof), but be held to the same press standards I am. Yeah, no.
Of course, there are times when the "we're just putting out opinion" just doesn't cover it, and they get caught in an outright lie:
And now, Stewart's reaction to what we will loosely refer to as Hannity's "apology":
*blinks* I'm sorry, what? Hannity's claiming that this was some isolated, minor mistake? An idiot could have caught that, so I'm not sure which would be more damning, an outright lie or the absolute incompetence he's claiming. Further, that claim would be a hell of a lot more compelling if there weren't a well-established track record of Fox pulling stupid crap like this. (You ever notice how on Fox, every politician in a scandal suddenly has a D next to their names?) Hell, how can they expect anyone to believe anything they say when they've actually been to court before defending their right to just make crap up? Seriously, I'm not kidding, look up
Akre v. Fox!
For the record, I agree that, strictly speaking, they have the right to lie, if they so choose. I have no objection to that. I would love it if other intellectually dishonest pricks followed suit in coming clean about it. However, part of being a news source is having some measure of reliability. A mere opinion source that feels free to make up and/or distort any information they want is useless, and has absolutely no place as part of the White House press corps. One of the great things about this country is the right to say what you want, but that doesn't extend to some some sort of right to be taken seriously.
Foxnews did it again....they used Palin's campaign crowd (08 campaign) and claimed it was the crowd showed up to hear about her book.
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