Tag: Fox News

MSNBC’s news-opinion dilemma

It looks like the political cross-dressing act at MSNBC has reached its limit. According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times, talk-show hosts Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews will not anchor the cable network’s coverage of the upcoming debates or on election night, which should tone down the battle between NBC’s journalists and MSNBC’s opinionators.

I have quibbles about this, but overall I think it was the right move. Barack Obama has no bigger advocates in the mainstream media than Olbermann and Matthews, and it has looked strange all year to have serious journalists like Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell and, before his death, Tim Russert seeming to answer to them. Recently, it all boiled over on the air.

Olbermann and Matthews reportedly will continue to appear as analysts, while David Gregory will serve as the anchor. That’s all fine. My larger concern is that in addition to being moved out of the anchor slots, they will also be expected to tone down their opinions, lest they run afoul of the Republicans’ current war against the media. Olbermann was exactly right in his revulsion at Republican efforts to stamp their brand on the terrorist attacks of 9/11, even if it was unseemly for him to do it from the anchor desk.

The problem, of course, is that there are no such scruples about the dividing line between news and opinion at Fox News. Stelter, for instance, does not question the fiction that Bill O’Reilly is not allowed to anchor Fox’s convention coverage, a piece of information that would be a surprise to anyone tuning in between 8 and 9 p.m. the last two weeks. Fox’s signature news personality, Brit Hume, is a good journalist, but he also leans noticeably to the right.

MSNBC this year is experiencing the first semi-success of its benighted existence by loading up on liberal political talk shows. Today Rachel Maddow debuts at 9 p.m., extending that trend. I don’t know how long it can last, since the network is still firmly ensconced in last place. But as long as network executives can find a way to keep the journalists and the talkers from ripping each other’s throats out, MSNBC has become a refreshing alternative to Fox News.

I just hope it’s Williams and Brokaw who are driving the anchor-desk shift — and not Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt.

Bitterness and hate at MSNBC

Jon Stewart’s got some great clips (move it ahead to around 11:30) of the meltdown at MSNBC. It turns out that Rachel Maddow’s upbraiding of Pat Buchanan has been the least of it.

One other thing I saw late last night, following Joe Biden’s speech: Keith Olbermann asked Brian Williams a question about whether McCain might use his vice-presidential announcement to take away from Obama’s moment. Except that he asked his question following an elaborate set-up in which he said something to the effect that he didn’t want to put Williams in the awkward position of seeming partisan. Williams semi-acknowledged that some sort of conversation had taken place.

It seemed clear to me that Williams must have been complaining that he and other NBC journalists feels as though they’re getting sucked into the liberal talk-show atmosphere that has led to MSNBC’s rise in the ratings.

It also seems clear that Tim Russert was the only personality strong enough to keep all this backbiting from spilling over. Another reason to lament his passing.

By the way, it’s mainly MSNBC, but not only MSNBC. The other night on Fox News, Brit Hume took the crossover from Sean Hannity and said — I’m sure I’ve got this almost word for word — I’ve always wanted to be on “Hannity & Colmes,” if only for a moment. The contempt on Hume’s face was palpable.

What Ailes a media critic

New York Times media columnist David Carr weighs in with a terrific inside look at how Fox News tries to smother even the mildest of unfavorable coverage with freezeouts, smears and, yes, doctored photos. And, he admits, it sometimes works:

By blacklisting reporters it does not like, planting stories with friendlies at every turn, Fox News has been living a life beyond consequence for years. Honesty compels me to admit that I have choked a few times at the keyboard when Fox News has come up in a story and it was not absolutely critical to the matter at hand.

Carr also cites a Fox News spokeswoman who says the most recent outrage — altering photos of Times media reporter Jacques Steinberg and his editor — was no biggie because cable news programs often engage in such antics for humorous effect.

That, of course, is pathetic. There was nothing funny about the Photoshopping; the two men were simply uglified for an audience that had no idea what they actually look like. Carr finds the plastic surgery done on Steinberg to be anti-Semitic, which is a very tough accusation. But I think he’s right.

Thanks to Carr’s column, the war between Fox and the Times is now fully engaged. It will be interesting to see what comes next.

Fox moves from eccentric to weird

Is it just me, or do the Fox News Channel‘s recent missteps strike you as qualitatively different from what has come before? It’s as though your eccentric uncle has finally gone off the deep end, his uncertain grounding in reality having given way to something else entirely.

The latest, as you may have heard, is that Fox altered photos of two New York Times reporters to make them appear more sinister, elongating their faces, yellowing their teeth and giving one of them a receding hairline.

That follows Fox’s labeling Michelle Obama as “Obama’s Baby Mama!”, and Fox host E.D. Hill’s wondering whether the Obamas’ playful fist bump was a “terrorist fist jab.”

You can dismiss all of this as right-wing propaganda if you like. I’m not so sure. It strikes me as genuinely nutty, and it makes me wonder whether the rudder has fallen off.

Think it has anything to do with Roger Ailes’ being unhappy over the nice things Rupert Murdoch has said about Barack Obama? Just wondering.

Fox News’ underpublicized sick joke

I saw this on Talking Points Memo yesterday, and note that it’s been picked up by the New York Times editorial-page blog as well. Have a look at Fox News Channel contributor Liz Trotta as she jokes that it would be just great if Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama — and eh, who can tell them apart, anyway? — were both killed:

The question of the day is why Trotta’s sick joke hasn’t generated more outrage. After all, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews had to apologize publicly after he said Hillary Clinton’s political success was based on her husband’s “messing around.”

I’m tempted to say it’s because no one takes Fox News seriously, but certainly Media Matters, the liberal media-watchdog group, has been quick to pounce on Fox for other offenses. Perhaps it was because Trotta expressed her sick thoughts in the middle of a holiday weekend.

Roger Ailes’ latest war

Robert Greenwald, maker of the documentary “Outfoxed,” has put together a three-and-a-half-minute clip of agitprop from the Fox News Channel in which Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and company push for war against Iran.

As Greenwald shows, the rhetoric is almost identical to what Fox was saying in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Have a look:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsPs-5Wqfoo]
You can learn more about “Fox Attacks Iran,” and sign a petition, here. Media Matters is on the case as well. This is scary stuff. As Christiane Amanpour observers in the clip, Fox’s warmongering on Iraq had a huge effect on how other media outlets behaved. Could it happen again?