Now and then, Fox News makes a stab at living up to its "fair and balanced" tag line.
At other times, the cable network's operatives throw off all pretense, let their neatly trimmed hair down and do what they seem to love best -- blame all of the world's evils on those pointy-headed, America-hating liberals. Like, say, Barack Obama!
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday, October 11, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 36 words Type of Material: Correction
On the Media: An On the Media column in Friday's Section A about a Fox News program that looked at Sen. Barack Obama's association with Weather Underground co-founder William Ayers misspelled his last name as Ayres.
Fox host Sean Hannity and his producers served up a heaping portion of just such red meat Sunday night on "Hannity's America." And they've since been making lame defenses of the faux documentary, which bore the subtle title: "Obama and Friends: The History of Radicalism."
Fox's hourlong screed is just the kind of media coverage that has contributed to the increasingly angry and irrational tone on the campaign trail. Even by the low standards of this election's advocacy journalism, the program plumbed new depths -- relying on innuendo and guilt by association to paint the Illinois senator as a dupe of the shadowy forces of the left.
Much of Hannity's report was based on interviews with half a dozen partisan commentators, whose main qualification seems to have been a previously expressed disdain for Obama.
Near the top of the program, the host introduced one of them, Andy Martin, as an "author and journalist." But reporters in his Chicago hometown know Martin better as a perennial political candidate and serial litigant.
The Chicago Tribune has spent some time examining Martin's past. He was refused entry to the Illinois bar in the 1970s, in part because his Selective Service records showed his thoughts exhibited "a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character."
In a 1983 personal bankruptcy case, he referred to a judge as a "crooked, slimy Jew." And a federal judge noted his history of "vexatious, frivolous and scandalous" lawsuits.
When he ran for Illinois governor two years ago, Martin quoted a nearly 30-year-old Tribune editorial that called him "an absolutely brilliant campaigner" when he was running for a Senate seat. He didn't mention that the same editorial said he "has no more business in the U.S. Senate than an elk has in a phone booth."
The producer of the Hannity program declined to be interviewed, so it's impossible to determine whether Fox didn't know about Martin's history or just didn't care.
Perhaps the producers relied on the gadfly's own website, which assures us he is "a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk-show host, broadcaster and media critic." And expert in all things Barack Obama.
