Bernie Goldberg on "Fox Derangement Syndrome"
By Mycroft Posted in Archived — Comments (30) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
This evening I caught Bernie Goldberg on TV discussing his new book, Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right. He said, "...'Fox derangement syndrome' ... [Liberals] go after Fox because they put conservatives AND liberals on to discuss issues. Every time I turn [FoxNews] on I see a liberal discussing an issue ALONG WITH a conservative. This drives liberals NUTS; they foam at the mouth."
While I was really amused by his description, it still baffled me. Why would anybody object to a network that gave his own point of view a hearing? "Derangement" -- as in at least a temporary insanity -- couldn't be the only answer, I thought. Then it dawned on me (finally, yes, I know; I'm slow) that there's an additional explanation for it: a religious, or at least quasi-religious, reaction to heresy, which they apparently regard ANY mention of conservative, libertarian or individualist positions as. Fundamentalist liberals and fundamentalist Muslims must have a lot of internal emotional turmoil in common.
"Well, you know, its just like that liberal bias in the mainstream media, You libs have been telling us for years, its all in your mind, it doesn't exist. So its the same way with Fox bias, Its all in your head, it dosen't exist."
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
There is virtually nowhere that you can find truly unbiased media. Every prominent media outlet is biased in one way or another.
And Bernie Goldberg's point about Fox News (or any cable news outlet) putting on both conservative and liberal guests really misses the larger point.
It's not a question of whether you just throw up one conservative and one liberal host or guest, it's the quality of a given guest or host in representing their respective position that matters.
And that is what Fox News, from a certain perspective, does so effectively. They put a steadfast conservative up against a clownish liberal. The obvious example is Hannity (stud) and Colmes (clown). Or O'Reilly will do this by having Michell Malkin (steadfast conservative) debate that blond haired liberal that no one has ever heard of.
CNN (which I don't watch) likely does the same thing. As does MSNBC.
I will say, however, in defense of CNN that at least they feature Glen Beck - a well known, capable, articulate conservative. By contrast, I can't think of a single prominent liberal that Fox News features. Am I missing someone?
NBC, CNN, etc., at least as far as full-time gigs go. Alan Colmes, while not a household name, holds his own in a most dignified way, articulating the leftist cause with pinache. The same goes for Jane Hall and Ellis Henniken of Newsday. I can't say the same for Neal Gabler, however. HE's your real example of a buffoon. He's articulate and makes good points (he was the FIRST one to point out Imus' sin was that his targets were kids trying to better themselves, not jaded, compromised adults -- so far as I know), but his vociferous in-your-face belligerence is defintely off-putting.
The obvious example is Hannity (stud) and Colmes (clown)
Are you serious? This has to be the first time I've ever heard Hannity referred to as a stud. He reminds me of the kid in grade school that gave away all his toys to other kids in the hopes it would make him popular.
As for guests, I don't think there is such a thing as a decent guest from either side on TV news. TV news is so dumbed down that even if you put a good guy on, the segment still comes off as idiotic.
There is virtually nowhere that you can find truly unbiased media. Every prominent media outlet is biased in one way or another.
I think the WSJ does a pretty good job. And among the ones with detectable bias, there are degrees. All media outlets are certainly not created equal.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
While O'Reilly is ground zero for FDS, Hannity is next. And neither is actually ever seen by the left. They simply read about them on Media Matters -- pre-packaged and pre-spun.
The man is a walking talking point. If Hannity were removed from Fox News tomorrow, a lot of the bias complaints would go, too. It's like Olbermann on MSNBC: Take his BDS garbage off, and you'd need to pay more attention to saner voices like Carlson and Scarborough.
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
I don't mean Hannity is a stud in a literal sense. I mean Hannity is a stud from the standpoint of aggressively articulating the conservative talking points and being a big name within the hardcore conservative realm.
Alan Colmes, though a smart guy, is not. Nowhere close.
By comparison, it would be like if you put Al Franken on a show opposite some goofy looking, liberal nobody had ever heard of. Franken would crush him just based on his stature within hardcore liberal realm as well as his force of personality.
Same with Hannity and Colmes.
As for guests, I don't think there is such a thing as a decent guest from either side on TV news. TV news is so dumbed down that even if you put a good guy on, the segment still comes off as idiotic.
I agree here. In addition, the real problem with TV news, and in particular cable news, is that they all strive to put often extreme liberal and extreme conservative guests on to articulate as black and white an opinion as possible. When in reality the vast majority of Americans have opinions that exist somewhere in the middle.
I think the WSJ does a pretty good job.
I read the WSJ every day. It's a great paper. And it has a decided conservative bias. There's no question.
I read the WSJ every day. It's a great paper. And it has a decided conservative bias. There's no question.
Their editorial page is conservative. Their news is not. Someone in acadamia did a study a couple years back on bias of newspapers and they classified the content as actually biased pretty hard left based on the sources used (even more so than the NY Times IIRC). I'd say they are as close to unbiased in their straight news coverage as you are going to find anywhere.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
I agree, he is a walking talking point. I feel like he bullies people on his show and in the end (and it sucks because I agree with him) I think it actually hurts the conservative side of the debate. My favorites include George Will, Bernie Goldberg, Cal Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Pat Buchanan (aside from Iraq). These conservatives debate cordially and typically blow the other side away with their intellect. I can't really say the same about Hannity.
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Bobby Jindal Saves Louisiana
is clearly a moderate.
I read a book by her a couple of years ago. She actually comes from a very old and prominent Republican family. Her father was a very popular Republican judge and campaign manager as well as best friend and mentor for Republican Senator Joe McCarthy who was also best man at her parents wedding.
http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/vann-vanvorhis.html
Van Susteren, Urban — of Appleton, Outagamie County, Wis. Republican. Alternate delegate to Republican National Convention from Wisconsin, 1948.
"Van Susteren writes, "everybody went nuts. The conservatives hated me before they even knew me, and the liberals felt betrayed. Even people who had never seen me on television seemed to have an opinion. . . ."
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780739306536
I read a book by her a couple of years ago. She actually comes from a very old and prominent Republican family. Her father was a very popular Republican judge and campaign manager as well as best friend and mentor for Republican Senator Joe McCarthy who was also best man at her parents wedding.
Her father is a Republican and therefore that makes her a moderate? This would be one of the dumbest exercises of reasoning I have ever heard/read on this site.
I mean, you do know that Hillary's dad was/is a Republican and that she was a Goldwater Girl. Does that make her now a "moderate?"
Forgive me for saying this but you're not exactly making a name for yourself as one of the smarter posters we have here. i.e. your Nixon, Ford and abortion argument is really very weak - do you even have a clue why?
George W. Bush: He's A Folder ... Not A Fighter.
nothing to do with my reasoning or any reasoning for that matter i'm just taking her for her word. By the way her sister unsuccessfully ran for Senator in Maryland as a democrat.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46046
to impress people around here!
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
show host . I've seen people here claim he was a far left liberal. The truth is he was a radical independent loose cannon whose big mouth got him in trouble. He endorsed Ric Santorum, Harold Ford, and Joe Lieberman so I can't call him Liberal or Conservative. People need to realize that it's not always good v evil or liberal v conservative that makes things to simple.
I'm quite conservative, and IMO, Colmes is the more fair of the two and does a decent to good job of representing liberalism. Hannity is a very predictable partisan...so much so that I don't really like watching him.
FOX used to have Terry McAuliffe (DNC chair) as a frequent guest and commentator. Howard Dean seems afraid to confront the opposition.
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
but I thought Dean has a "50 state strategy." Does he know who lives in just a few of those 50 states . . . conservatives? That's right Howard, that means you need to address Fox News viewers, people who don't buy into the bias of CNN and MSNBC.
As for liberal commentators on Fox, they recently hired Harold Ford Jr. and obviously Wes Clark is a contributer. While they aren't exactly the Dennis Kucinich type, they provide a more rational democratic viewpoint.
are as articulate a group of Liberals as you are going to find anywhere. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson routinely appear on Fox, as do any number of Liberals responding to particular situations where they are involved, or responding to comments they have made elsewhere.... such as Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Maher, or Whoopie Goldberg.
It's not that Fox doesn't adequately present the liberal viewpoinst that ticks liberals off..... It's that Fox is decidedly anti-elitist in their philosophy. So the elitists hate and go-after Fox, as articulated in an LA Times article by Brian C. Anderson year ago.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-anderson4oct04,0,2195035.story...
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“God made all men. It was Sam Colt made ‘em equal.” – Matthew Quiggley
Think Fox News drives liberals nuts due to its supposed center-right ideology? What would happen if somebody who calls themselves a liberal and a left-libertarian tore the progressive agenda a new one on a daily basis? (Granted, I'm by no means a modern liberal, and could, nine times out of ten, just be thought of as a Republican, but what happens if their own terms were turned on them... hehe...)
"I could explain, but that would be very long, very convoluted, and make you look very stupid. Nobody wants that... except maybe me."
I watch Fox, MSNBC, and CNN
Read NYTimes, Indystar, WSJ, WashingtonPost, and my hometown one.
And of course read blogs
Fox News is not "fair and balanced" period. It is laughable that people try and defend that and some Conservatives at Fox don't. In an editoral Cal Thomas wrote that Fox News is Conservative and it is good because there is liberal stations out there so it balances things out.
The other day I flipped to see what Bill O'Reilly was talking about. I have bought some of his books in the past, and while I disagree with him I sometimes like watching him. Of course on a day I finally could Michelle Malkin was hosting instead. Now if you are Fox News and Bill O'Reilly is trying to protray himself as an independent you do not put Malkin to host.
That's like characterizing the WaPo based on their editorial page alone.
The question is whether the news portions of FOX are biased. I don't know the answer but it is a different question.
I do know that they use terms like "our troops" instead of "US troops." But everyone did that during WWII. The other news sources started changing and acting as if they aren't American. Fox doesn't do that. Is that "conservative" bias? I'm not sure I'd characterize it that way.
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Bobby Jindal Saves Louisiana
Then again so are all the supposed Liberals that the OP is referring to. Not a single one of them is a news anchor. They are ALL editorialists.
Anyone who has EVER watched Fox and Friends and can say with a straight face that Fox is fair and balanced and anything but right-of-center is beyond me.
FTR, I have no problem with Fox and their bias. They discovered a successful business model of providing easily digestible content to Republicans. Roger Ailes realized that there were was an untapped market that could be exploited for big monetary gains.
I find it amusing. I turn it on to get a laugh. Not that their programs are more or less laughable than the programs on CNN or MSNBC but since their business model is to cater to Republicans, it is really amusing to watch it at play. The Fox and Friends people are the funniest because they are so clearly playing a specific role it is just plain hilarious.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why ... I dream of things that never were and ask why not. - Robert Kennedy
Most of commentators seem to be center-right, but I really don't think anyone can argue that fox does a better job than any other network of putting on guests with opposing viewpoints. And O'Reilly and others do treat the liberals with respect even when they disagree with him.
Fox only seems conservative relative to the other networks. If there was a network as conservative as NBC was liberal, where almost everyone who worked there was conservative, where they only put on guests that agreed with them, and where selectively didn't report stories that hurt the conservative agenda, FOX would seem very balanced and mainstream.
It would be easier to take their "fair and balanced" claims seriously without ongoing storylines that misrepresent the facts.
One example that sticks with me:
When "The Judge" is trotted out repeatedly to insist that Jack Abramoff is the face of a bi-partisan scandal, I have to challenge not only his motivation, but also his presentation of the facts. No mention at all that Jack was an active Republican operative since college, and that he was hired by clients because of his access to Republican lawmakers. No mention that Abramoff never made a personal contribution to a Democrat. His primary point, and one repeated often by other Fox personalities, was that Abramoff clients contributed to Democrats as well.
Doocey's attack on Obama is just one recent example.
If NBC or the Times pulled this kind of nonsense, you know that Brit would call them on it.
Oh, and when Brit Hume sees fit to devote evening newscast time to a story of misspellings on Streisand's website, I have got to question his motivation. (If you want to challenge her views, fine, but this was silly)
FNC is fair and balanced, CNN is not. Both have biases, but CNN's bias is hard core ultra left, while FNC is mostly towards moderate (social) conservatism... You have to go all 700 Club to find something that is as far right as CNN is left.
Fox News is the only mainstream media outlet that comes close to being "fair and balanced" in the sense that they even ATTEMPT to report the facts, show both sides, and let YOU make up your mind. Of course Fox News APPEARS to be conservative, if mostly in part due to how far, far left the rest of them are. I don't think anyone is really saying that FNC doesn't lean right, but it is "fair and balanced" in that it reports facts (remember, O'Reilly and Hannity ARE NOT NEWS REPORTERS)
It all comes down to how biased, unfair, and unbalanced the others are (from the far, far left) vs. how much of a slight conservative bent FNC might have, while still being "fair and balanced".
After all, even a bowl of room temperature water feels boiling hot, after your hand has been submerged in nearly frozen water for a couple minutes...
A nice controlled double tap-tap to this scumbag's forehead before he could slaughter any more innocent kids.....
Its as if they feel as long as dissent is not voiced it strengthens their ideas. Almost as if they understand in their hearts how poor their ideas are.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777