Jon Stewart sums up Fox News in slamming the way it edited his highly-touted interview with the news organization’s Chris Wallace.
The key moment in the interview, Stewart believes, is when Wallace noted that Fox tells “the other side” of news coverage. Stewart says this:
The other side of the story. “We don’t tell both sides of the story, we tell one side…the other side, the one we perceive is never told. Because as you know, news only comes in two sides. And if the conservative side isn’t being told what’s being told must be liberal. Fox News isn’t fair and balanced. It’s balancing the system, man. Don’t you get it? The system’s unfair and unbalanced. To balance the system, Fox has to be the purest form of right wing resin. Because of how heavy left wing America is. Hollywood, comedians, every single news organization, the Internet, facts, history, science, it’s all just left wing bullshit, man….” Is Fox unbalanced? Yeah. Seriously, their ears are nearly touching the floor. But it’s only because the system is unbalanced.
Stewart suggests something I’ve often said and mentioned in some writings. There is an opening in the U.S. for a thoughtful, serious news organization that may have a conservative inclination to try and counter what it perceives as leftist, Democratic liberal (OOPS!) I mean “progressive” political assumptions. Politics, comedy and news all operate within the context of shared assumptions. But Fox is not that organization to fill the gap since it has become like much of what Air America’s failed talk shows were: a REACTION to another perception as opposed to a fresh-start attempt to tackle a goal. The goal would be delivering the most accurate news reports and serious analysis possible.
(The unsung newspaper that I have long felt best achieves the goal is THIS ONE.)
Air America’s programs too often were merely the anti-Rush Limbaugh much as some of MSNBC’s programs often seem to be the anti-Fox News. And Fox News too often tries to be the anti-news media, anti-left to center-left political culture mechanism. By strictly reacting and offering product for those who don’t like one side they can make big bucks and influence the course of the Republican Party — but Fox is NOT filling the gap.
Fox News is news grafted to overt political assumptions grafted onto the talk radio political culture and talk radio political discussion style.
The quality or lack of quality of some of the thoughtfulness and accuracy of its personalities’ assertions have not lifted American political debate — or enhanced the news biz. Just as American newspapers were greatly impacted by evening network newscasts which caused many evening newspapers to close, and just as American newspapers were influenced by the success of supermarket tabloids in the 1980s in the way they covered political scandals, America’s political and news cultures have been influenced by Fox News’ choice to offer “the other side” through an ideological and talk radio style prism. “Fair and balanced” is as accurate as the claim as the claim that “progressives” are not really “liberals.”
Here’s Stewart’s segment:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.