Vote `no' on snub of Fox News
THIS is what happens when your news network gets overly politicized. First, leading presidential candidates say you're a propaganda tool for the other side and decide they don't want to play in your sandbox. The next thing you know, Angelina Jolie -- "the best woman in the world," according to Esquire magazine,- is allegedly dis-inviting you from her movie premiere.
It's become unfashionable in most media circles to stick up in any way for Fox News Channel, so it's not surprising that the decision by Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama to nix an upcoming Democratic primary debate, a joint production of Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus, has generally been greeted with deafening silence among editorial writers and other professional fulminators.
So it needs to be said: The Democrats are dead wrong not to debate on Fox News. And it's hypocritical for the supposedly nonpartisan media to stand by and do nothing while a TV network -- even one with an obvious rightward tilt whose fairness and balance deserve every bit of the scrutiny they're getting -- is trashed by mega-million-dollar political campaigns in the heat of a White House primary battle. When politicians, one of whom may very well be the next president of the United States, start using their platforms to lob missiles at news-gathering organizations they don't like, it's hard to see how that's much different than President Nixon's infamous "enemies list."
Yes, yes, this columnist realizes he's nothing more than a deluded lackey for Fox News chief (and former Nixon advisor) Roger Ailes -- although when this column accurately pointed out Fox News' softening ratings last year, Slate's Mickey Kaus and conservative bloggers suggested I was carrying water for CNN.
But first, some background on the debate controversy. After Ailes was quoted making the world's millionth lame Obama-Osama joke (maybe the network's speechwriter took the day off), moveon.org and other liberal activist groups went medieval this past spring and helped put the kibosh on an August debate that Fox News was to cosponsor with the Nevada State Democratic Party.
The activists have since turned their sights on the Congressional Black Caucus event, scheduled for Sept. 23 in Detroit. Edwards pulled out of that debate, calling Fox News a "propaganda" tool of the GOP, and the Clinton and Obama camps followed suit, as did the Christopher Dodd and Bill Richardson campaigns.
