Fox News: Fair and Balanced?

Fox News claims to be "Fair and Balanced" - an earlier slogan stated that they report the fact and let the viewers decide what to believe. Perfect fairness and balance may be unattainable, but can we conclude that Fox News even tries? That seems unlikely.

At least, it is unlikely if we believe the accuracy of this letter submitted to Poynter Online, apparently by someone who has worked at Fox News for six years:

Not once in the 20+ years I had worked in broadcast journalism prior to Fox - including lengthy stays at The Associated Press, CBS Radio and ABC/Good Morning America - did I feel any pressure to toe a management line. But at Fox, if my boss wasn't warning me to "be careful" how I handled the writing of a special about Ronald Reagan ("You know how Roger [Fox News Chairman Ailes] feels about him."), he was telling me how the environmental special I was to produce should lean ("You can give both sides, but make sure the pro-environmentalists don't get the last word.")

[T]he roots of FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. ... One day this past spring, just after the U.S. invaded Iraq, The Memo warned us that anti-war protesters would be "whining" about U.S. bombs killing Iraqi civilians, and suggested they could tell that to the families of American soldiers dying there. Editing copy that morning, I was not surprised when an eager young producer killed a correspondent's report on the day's fighting - simply because it included a brief shot of children in an Iraqi hospital.

If tales such as these are at all accurate, they describe a truly reprehensible state of affairs over at Fox News. Not only would it mean that they are engaging in open and deliberate attempts to manipulate the American people through deceptive propaganda, but they are lying to the American people about doing it.

Thanks to Atrios for the original link.

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