The Green[e]house Effect: a Weblog

Fair and Balanced! Fair and Balanced! Fair and Balanced!

Like a good soldier, I’m taking up for the First Amendment by joining in the Fair and Balanced Day shenanigans — it’s the least I can do to keep Bill O’Reilly up at night. Judging from his latest column [I can’t find a link for it, sad to say], we might have sent the man on a paranoid bender:

Using liberal-leaning newspapers and publishing houses, the critics of [Fox News] have unleashed defamatory personal attacks on me and other Fox news analysts and have attempted to denigrate the entire network … Now, Fox News is striking back by putting the demonizers on notice that they will be held responsible when they violate trademarks or launch defamatory personal attacks on Fox personnel.

You mean the defamatory personal attack about winning a Polk award but claiming you won a Peabody? Oh, wait, that’s a fact. Same difference, though.

Fox News has become the highest rated news network on cable because we feature lively debate and all honest voices are welcome. We don’t do drive-by character assassinations, and we don’t denigrate opposing points of view by launching gratuitous personal attacks.

Here’s an example of how Fox News gives respectful treatment to opposing points of view:

Media Notes’ Howard Kurtz reports that Fox News’ outdoor news ticker displayed the following yesterday: “War protester auditions here today…Thanks for coming!” And: “How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them.” And: “Attention protesters: The Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street.”

Question: what’s a fair and balanced news network doing with an “opposing point of view”? Aren’t their broadcasts evenly balanced? Somebody help me out — do they mean that their opponents are swarthy and tottering? Or are they just talking about all those “defamatory personal attacks”?

Since Fox News is so Fair and Balanced™, I’ve whipped up some anagrams for “Fox News is fair and balanced”:

• Wine, anal sex, and rabid scoff.
• Fond sex-based financial war.
• Fixable acidness and a frown.
• Fair-faced, insane blonds wax.
• Wax off — radiance in baldness!
• Bad wins afford nice anal sex.

I don’t know what those anal sex references tell you about Bill O’Reilly’s predilections — now there’s a defamatory personal attack for you! — but hey, I’m just working with what Fox© News™ gave me.

Posted by Greg Greene at August 15, 2003 12:53 PM | TrackBack