"FAIR AND BALANCED"

From the Washington Post:

Did Fox News seek to squelch Benghazi debate?

Can Fox News handle internal dissent?

That’s the question raised by the latest flareup regarding Fox News and Geraldo Rivera. On Nov. 2, just days before the presidential election, Rivera engaged in a phenomenal debate on the set of “Fox & Friends” over Benghazi. Fox News talent Eric Bolling infuriated Rivera when he said the U.S. military failed to send help to embattled U.S. personnel in Libya: “Washington, the State Department, the CIA does nothing, sends no help.”

Rivera responded: “You are a politician looking to make a political point.”

It was a great intramural Fox disagreement. And if we are to believe a book by Jonathan Alter, it horrified Fox’s boss. In “The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies,” Alter writes that Fox News Chief Roger Ailes, “called the control room and told the producers to cut Rivera’s mic” after the argument got heated. (The New York Times’s Brian Stelter revealed this reveal yesterday.)

More here.

The article goes on to offer Fox's official version of the events, which is something along the lines of the segment running too long, which is the real reason they shut it down.  But whatever.  Either way, we are treated to the spectacle of something "fair and balanced," or, at least, "balanced" breaking out on Fox, which was then immediately shut down.  I mean, there you have it, balance.  One side pushing crazy Benghazi theories, another side calling that out as bullshit.  Balance.  But, for whatever reasons, Fox quickly ended it, and didn't return to it.  So much for "balance."

Now, of course, anybody with half a brain has long understood that "fair and balanced" is an Orwellian marketing slogan that doesn't at all describe Fox's far right propaganda.  But you so rarely get to see see it in such an obvious way.  Usually, you have to dig up a little evidence, which isn't too terribly difficult to do, and point out Fox's bullshit double standard elsewhere: it is an infrequent occurrence, indeed, when Fox's own on-air behavior makes it irrefutably obvious that they are NOT fair and balanced.  They had some balance, apparently by accident, and they immediately moved to shut it down.  That's noteworthy, I think.  

Of course, my assumption is that regular Fox viewers are so extraordinarily indoctrinated that they didn't even catch it.  Hell, I bet a Fox viewer could read this post I'm writing right now and STILL not get it.  But that's where the country is these days, I guess.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$