Teetering on the razor's edge of deceit

What does it take to make regular viewers of the Fox News Channel understand that Fox isn't as "Fair and Balanced" as they claim to be? Living in the great Hoosier state of Indiana you run into multitudes who only get their national news from Faux. A quick tangent . . . I think I've finally figured out just what a Hoosier is. During the last election, several husbands must've been concerned their wives might betray them and vote for Kerry. Several times I heard the phrase, "Hoosier wife voting for?"

My wife's stepfather is a regular Fox viewer. There are times I mention a news item I read about Bush or a member of his cabinet and he looks at me like I'm speaking a foreign language. It wasn't until the annual Independence Day cookout that I realized it was a foreign language. I was speaking "Truth" and he hadn't really heard it spoken on a routine basis since before cable news started.

What gave it away was a conversation with his son. I attempted to talk to him about the University of Maryland's PIPA report that came out last year just before the election. I told him the name of the report was "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters". I went on to explain that many Bush supporters still believed there were WMDs in Iraq while most of Kerry's supporters had a better grasp of the truth. For the next ten minutes he tried to tell me the reason Bush supporters believed there were WMDs in Iraq was because Kerry was such a flip-flopper. Huh? So if you believe the sky is red and I know it's blue, it's because the washing machine is set on spin? Makes just as much sense as his "explanation". My wife finally pulled me away with the excuse we were going to be late to the fireworks display. I don't really remember the fireworks. I was dumbfounded for the next twenty-four hours.

I was hoping comments by Fox reporters about the London attacks would awaken some of the Zombies, but most of them may be too far gone. It turns out John Gibson of Fox is still carrying that silly grudge against the French. Anyone remember "Freedom Fries"? Anyway, the day before the London attacks, Gibson was quoted as saying, "By the way, just wanted to tell you people, we missed . . . the International Olympic Committee missed a golden opportunity today. If they had picked France, if they had picked France instead of London to hold the Olympics, it would have been the one time we could look forward to where we didn't worry about terrorism. They'd blow up Paris, and who cares?" If that wasn't bad enough, Gibson showed an even more callous attitude after the bombings when he said, "The bombings in London: This is why I thought the Brits should let the French have the Olympics . . . let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while." And yet people still watch Fox.

Brian Kilmeade was downright giddy about the bombings. He felt they took the spotlight off trivial matters like aid to Africa and global warming. After all, who needs to worry about things that mundane? Talking about Prime Minister Tony Blair, Kilmeade said, "And he made the statement, clearly shaken, but clearly determined. This is his second address in the last hour. First to the people of London, and now at the G8 summit, where their topic number one . . . believe it or not . . . was global warming, the second was African aid. And that was the first time since 9/11 when they should know, and they do know now, that terrorism should be number one. But it's important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, in the Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened." What do you expect, Kilmeade believes in the Fox model of keeping people fearful.

Of course, it's not just Fox . . . sorry, another quick tangent . . . there are others who work to keep the American public misinformed. Take for instance that bastion of blow hardiness, Rush "I'm against drug abuse unless it's mine" Limbaugh who doesn't think the London attacks are worthy of all the news they're getting. In Rush's eye, if you don't take out a thousand people, it doesn't really count as a terror attack. Rush's actual quote was, "That's, ah, the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. Very powerful, excellent. And it was such a great contrast to what we're seeing in our own media this morning with the hand-wringing I was speaking about and the 'Oh, woe is us' and 'Oh, what did we do to cause this?' and 'Oh, does this mean we're going to get hit?' and 'Oh ...' It's like I said . . . 40 people dead, 150 seriously wounded, 1,000 wounded, out of over one-million people in that transit tube. It's not a successful terrorist attack, folks." Sure Rush, you tell the relatives of the dead and seriously injured how unsuccessful the attack was.

I suppose no piece written about Fox can be complete with speaking about founder Rupert Murdoch and Fox Top Gun Bill O'Reilly. Just how much power does Rupert Murdoch have? By now, most of us are familiar with the daily "talking points memo" received by newspapers and TV news departments owned by Murdoch. If Murdoch decides he doesn't like Ritz crackers, you can pretty much count on editorials and commentaries on the evils of the little round and orange cracker for a full twenty-four hour period. In February of 2003, Murdoch came out and stated he was completely for an invasion of Iraq . . . oddly enough, all 175 editors that worked for Murdoch were backing the war as well. With this much power, one has to wonder . . . does Fox and Murdoch follow the Bush line or is it vice versa?

And finally, we come to Mr. Bill O'Reilly. I used to think he was simply that strange man who hosted "A Current Affair". It turns out he is a lot more insidious than that. O'Reilly is so smug he never admits to being wrong . . . which is strange when you consider the man is wrong . . . a lot! Back in February of 2002, O'Reilly claimed that 58% of single mother homes were on welfare. The following night, that figure dropped to 52% and finally on February 7, he reported the truth, it was 14%. But O'Reilly never admitted to being wrong . . . he was after all only 44 points off on his initial "guess". One night a guest told O'Reilly that 60% of the population of the United States would live in poverty for at least one year of their life. O'Reilly was clearly upset, he shot back at his guest with, "Not in the United States. . . . No, that’s bogus. I mean, that’s a socialist stat. You can believe it if you want to, but it’s not true." At this point the guest explained that it was a fact and came from a study conducted by Cornell University. Seeing no way out of his faux pas, he decided to cast aspersions against the university and said with total bluster, "Well, what more do I have to say?" To finish my Oh Really Factor, let's look at what Bill said about Jennifer Wilbanks after she went missing . . . "It's got to be a crime. A woman like that with a long history of responsibility. She had a steady job.... She just wouldn't bolt and not tell anybody."

I can think of no better way to end this piece than with the following question: What do you call a bus load of Fox journalists teetering perilously on the edge of a cliff just before falling over the edge?

Answer . . . Fair and Balanced.