Fox News took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post last Friday that claimed ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN did not cover the Sept. 12 protests in Washington.
While incredulous and intellectually offensive, neither the ad’s audacity nor falsehood surprised me. But this untruth came with a twist: Real news stations took Fox News to task for it.
CNN aired a counter-ad with the slogan “Fox News: distorting, not reporting.” CNN anchor Rick Sanchez showed multiple clips of CNN’s Tea Party coverage. He asked Fox to look into the distinction between promoting the event and covering it, implored them to apologize and ended with “You lie.”
Other news networks implicated of ignoring the event by Fox News also rebuked the ad, albeit in a less forward way than CNN. And with less bite than Rick Sanchez.
The most surprising aspect of this is that it wasn’t Jon Stewart from “The Daily Show,” but Sanchez on CNN.
Sanchez anchors a cable news network, not a news satire program. Could his objectivity be called into question because of his vehement defense of his employer, CNN, and subsequent attack on its competitor Fox News?
Maybe, but so what? It doesn’t matter if it was objective or not — it was true. Verifiable even. And that’s what matters.
Fox News regularly tops MSNBC and CNN in the ratings. A non-scientific online poll by TIME named Stewart from “The Daily Show” as America’s most trusted anchor. The poll was conducted following the death of former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite.
Neither Fox News nor “The Daily Show” is objective. And yet they both succeed in reaching a large audience.
Without objectivity, the media could dismiss conspiracies about President Barack Obama’s birthplace and Bush’s involvement with 9/11. We would not have to accept uneducated viewpoints as valid to maintain objectivity.
Cable news networks could send ideologues home, like Paul Begala and Michelle Malkin. Who’s more likely to tell the truth: A journalist who’s developed a stance after studying an issue or the political strategist who sides with his or her party no matter what?
What’s the point in even inviting them anymore? What new insight could they possibly give that we didn’t already know they were going to give us?
If journalists disclose what opinion of an issue they have reached based on their reporting, it could expose journalists as reasonable human beings rather than the cartoonish behemoth politicians portray them as.
Multimedia journalist and blogger Mark Luckie wrote about bias in his blog post “10 Ugly truths about modern journalism.”
One of them is “journalists are biased.” About 60 percent of Americans polled in a Pew Research Center study agree with that. Another of Luckie’s ugly truths: Journalists don’t conspire to push the news politically left or right.
My journalism ethics class emphasized one main principle: Do not deceive. It would be less deceptive to admit the first in order to prove the second.
Chris freely admits he roots for Chris Johnson, his star fantasy player, every Sunday. Chastise him at cogino@asu.edu.
