The Guardian
Fox News' first 15 years of 'balanced' journalism
The prospectus was utterly false: America's leading cable news network has become a megaphone for rightwing propaganda
By Matthew Butler
In January of 1996, at a press conference announcing the formation of Fox News, Roger Ailes told assembled reporters, "We just expect to do fine, balanced journalism."
Nine months later on 6 October 1996, the network went on air. From the start, the channel was not your standard cable news network, and it certainly didn't live up to the promise of "balance". Former Fox News President Joe Peyronnin recounted, "There was a litmus test. [Ailes] was going to figure out who was liberal or conservative when he came in, and try to get rid of the liberals."
As he had done with Rush Limbaugh earlier in the decade, Roger Ailes's strategy at Fox was to bring conservative talk radio to television. Along the way, the network has built up an incredible track record of smears, bigotry and lies. Fox's bias was clear early on, but the 2000 election was where its true colors began to show. Its polling arm would reportedly ask questions such as "Who would be the most likely to cheat at cards – Bill Clinton or Al Gore?"
On election night, it was George Bush's cousin, John Ellis, who instructed the network to call Florida early for George Bush. Ellis was quoted by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker describing the scene that evening: "It was just the three of us guys handing the phone back and forth – me with the numbers, one of them a governor, the other the president-elect. Now that was cool."
As the 2008 election heated up, Fox – now leading the news cable news pack – also led the way in smearing Democratic candidates. It promoted an article from InsightMag.com claiming Barack Obama had attended primary school at a Madrassa in Indonesia. The story was false, but that didn't prevent its repetition by anchors on the network.
The story had obvious racial undertones, as did the Fox's constant promotion of the future president's ties to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, which Bill O'Reilly referred to as "Willie Horton … times a thousand" Never mind that the 1988 presidential election's venture into racial politics is regarded by most as shameful. O'Reilly, however, might have just been currying favor with his boss, Roger Ailes, who once said, ''The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it.''
Following the election of Barack Obama, Fox News took another turn, transforming itself from Ailes's original vision into a political campaign primarily designed to attack the president, progressives and the policies they supported. The network drove the Tea Party movement, running more than 100 ads promoting the Tea Party (thinly disguised as Fox News promos) in the week leading up to the first major protests on 15 April 2009. It encouraged and fuelled the angry town hall meeting the faced by many members of Congress in 2009. The network worked to smear administration officials such as Van Jones, Kevin Jennings and Shirley Sherrod. It distorted the truth about the healthcare bill, spreading Sarah Palin's claim that it contained "death panels" months after responsible news outlets had debunked the charge.
Each time Fox succeeded over an opponent, its website – FoxNation – would declared as its top headline, "Fox Nation Victory". News networks don't win political fights; that is the role of an advocacy group, which Fox had become.
Roger Ailes was not shy in 2009 about the role he thought Fox should play. He recruited Glenn Beck to the network, telling him,"I see this as the Alamo … If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we'd be fine."
Beck would use Fox's platform to promote bizarre conspiracy theories, make oddly apocalyptic pronouncements and attack opponents as Nazis. His utter disregard for sensitivities surrounding comparisons to the Holocaust resulted in 400 Rabbis signing a letter to Rupert Murdoch, in which they told the mogul:
"You diminish the memory and meaning of the Holocaust when you use it to discredit any individual or organization you disagree with. That is what Fox News has done in recent weeks."
With Beck gone, Roger Ailes now acknowledges the network might have gone too far, and has apparently indicated a desire to rein in some of Fox's excesses. Howard Kurtz reported last week in Newsweek that Ailes "calls it a 'course correction'". Regardless of promises, the network shows no desire to slow down. For example, while Fox had praised and helped promote the Tea Parties, its coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement has largely consisted of mocking and insulting the protesters.
If its first 15 years is a guide, and as long as Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes rule Fox's roost, the network will be the last place to find "balanced journalism".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/07/fox-news-15-years
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