FAIR AND BALANCED

From the Huffington Post:

Dozens of media outlets ran stories on Tuesday about the fact that industry titan News Corp -- the parent company of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, among many other media properties -- had donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.

Notably, though, Fox News itself apparently chose not to run a single story on the contribution. "While many news organizations reported Tuesday on the $1 million gift, a late-afternoon search of Fox News' Web site produced no mention of it," the New York Times reported. Media Matters also noted, "Fox News has not mentioned the contribution, according to searches of the TVEyes and Nexis databases."

More here.

That FOX News is a not-so-thinly-veiled right-wing propaganda machine has been well established by now--check out, for instance, this fabulous documentary, Outfoxed, or read this Wikipedia page on FOX News controversies. Nonetheless, the heavily biased "news" network continues to assert publicly that it is "fair and balanced," the most objective of all news sources. Of course, that claim is pretty much a joke these days, and their silence on this political donation business, when pretty much everybody else in news land was all over it, makes the joke a little bit funnier.

I mean, News Corp is a business, after all, and businesses, especially big businesses, make political donations. I'm quite certain, for example, that NBC's former parent corporation, GE, which is a major defense contractor, has made donations to the Republican Party, so why on earth would FOX be so shy about reporting its contribution? Maybe they're worried about tarnishing that wonderful "fair and balanced" reputation they've worked so hard to attain over the years.

Really, they've got nothing to worry about. Their loyal viewers don't care if FOX gives money to the Republicans, and everybody else thinks the "fair and balanced" thing is bullshit. Sometimes I just don't understand conservatives.

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