I was in London when the Keith Olbermann “scandal” broke, and I struggled to explain it to puzzled Brit friends. They wondered why a liberal newscaster on a liberal channel could get in trouble for being “caught out” making liberal campaign donations. The British media does not share their American counterparts’ squeamishness about announcing a political bent. If you “accused” the Guardian of having an inbuilt Pro-Labour tilt or the Telegraph of having an inbuilt Pro-Tory tilt they wouldn’t deny it or defend themselves (though they might wonder why you thought you had discovered something that they had strained mightily to make so blinking obvious). Indeed, there are a number of widely-appreciated jokes in Britain with punchlines that turn on the fact that each paper caters to a different political and class slice of the country. The Olbermann “scandal” would only have been scandalous in Britain if he had been caught donating to conservatives.
FoxNews broke the mold of American television journalism by declaring a political bias right up front. Until that point, it had been okay for small circulation magazines in the U.S. to do this (e.g., National Review, The Nation) but not a television network. Rather than being “shocked, shocked” at Olbermann’s behavior, MSNBC should put a waving Fox-like American flag in the corner of the screen and announce that they are a patriotic, politically liberal network and their reporting and commentary will consistently reflect their values.
I can hear MSNBC insiders rejecting my idea now: “But if we did that, we’d get criticized for liberal media bias” (sniffle). Man up MSNBC! Start an exchange program of journalists with the Guardian or the Morning Star if that will help you stiffen your upper lip. Fox gets trashed every day for conservative bias and they revel in it…show them you are as honest and proud as they are of what you believe.
Fox news, of course, does not “declare a political bias”. It thoroughly manifests one, but it goes beyond merely not declaring one to strenuously denying it. Hence “Fair And Balanced”.
Take a look at this very long list of FoxNews personalities who have donated to or campaigned for conservative candidates
http://mediamatters.org/research/201010270005
None of them have been fired of disciplined or suspended — I’m not suggesting they should be, just saying that FoxNews doesn’t share MSNBCs pretense of being apolitical
From an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Europe by Fox London Bureau Chief Scott Norvell:
“Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly”
I was in London when the Keith Olbermann “scandal” broke, and I struggled to explain it to puzzled Brit friends.
Given the rest of your post, I have to question how well you explained it.
They wondered why a liberal newscaster on a liberal channel could get in trouble for being “caught out” making liberal campaign donations.
Olbermann was “caught out” not for making liberal campaign donations but for breaking an NBC News rule that requires its journalists, including those at MSNBC, to notify their superiors before making any campaign donations. That rule (most news organizations have such a rule) may be outmoded when it comes to cable news, but as long as it’s in effect, any of MSNBC’s journalists who don’t abide by it are subject to sanction. According to Olbermann, he didn’t know about the rule and presumably would have followed it if he did.
Fox News, of course, has no such rule, not having an Old Media broadcast-network parent for which such a rule had some justification.
The British media does not share their American counterparts’ squeamishness about announcing a political bent.
True, but irrelevant in anything but a peripheral sense to the Olbermann episode.
MSNBC’s journalists make no bones about their bias. OTOH, MSNBC devotes three hours in the morning to a program hosted by a genuine conservative, making it a bit difficult for MSNBC as a whole to characterize itself as liberal.
Fox News, in contrast, has no shows hosted by a genuine liberal-yet it still styles itself “Fair and Balanced.” As Warren Terra points out above, Fox not only does not “announce” its bias, it explicitly denies having a bias.
MSNBC’s liberal journalists are ideologically biased; Fox journalists’ bias is partisan. MSNBC’s journalists are free to criticize liberal/Democratic leaders and office-holders and often do; it’s vanishingly rare for Fox’s journalists to criticize conservatives/Republicans.
And finally, it’s been reported for some time that Olbermann tends to throw his weight around at MSNBC. It seems likely that the whole hoohah was more a matter of *office* politics-a perceived need to take him down a peg-than a matter of his political leanings. That’s a bit of inside baseball, but it might have helped reduce the confusion of your Brit friends. (For that matter, it might have helped clarify the controversy in the U.S. as well.)
A. MSNBC doesn’t declare as “liberal” because, as a whole, they aren’t. Please remember that they have three solid hours of Joe Scarborough every morning-not as bad as Fox and Friends, but definitely not “liberal” even to the extent that Olbermann is-and a lot of fairly neutral news programming inbetween. One can argue that their *prime time* model is explicitly liberal, and that thwapping Olbermann for donating to liberal candidates is similar to NBC chiding Jay Leno for giving an opening monologue, but that’s not the same as saying the whole network is embracing the “anti-Fox” position.
B. Please don’t use phrases like “man up” to mean “gather your courage”. It’s demeaning to both men and women.
There is a long list of “contributors” at Fox who have given to campaigns. None of them are in a position analogous to Olbermann’s-none of them pretend to do traditional news journalism. Fox’s newscasters don’t contribute to campaigns.
If MSNBC put a flag on the screen and proclaimed themselves patriotic they’d lose some significant percentage of their viewership.
A pious reverence for “objectivity” is all right for people who believe everything they see on TV.
The incoherent MSNBC policy (you can’t make political contributions unless you get management permission first) is based on the presumptuous notion that people who watch MSNBC are in some doubt about the ideological bent of Keith Olbermann or Joe Scarborough — or the execrable Pat Buchanan. That’s just nuts.
There is no “objectivity”. There are facts (how many votes did Sestak get, how many did Toomey get) and not even the out-and-out propagandists at Fox lie about those very often. There is spin (waterboarding is torture; no, it’s enhanced interrogation) which only an idiot would confuse with fact. There is advocacy (send money to support free clinics; send money to the Chamber of Commerce) which is absolutely overt. But “objectivity”? What does that amount to aside from the trivial observation that every controversy has two sides? It would not BE a controversy, otherwise. When “objectivity” boils down to “Shape of the Earth: Opinions Differ”, I say to hell with objectivity.
-TP
“I’m not suggesting they should be, just saying that FoxNews doesn’t share MSNBCs pretense of being apolitical.”
Keith, this is simply at odds with reality. Fox’s “Fair and Balanced” slogan has been parodied so frequently as a direct result of their argument that, although they may have conservative commentators, their news is on-the-level. As the recent kerfluffle about Obama and General Custer has demonstrated, this is highly debatable. And if the NYTimes has liberal leanings, or the WSJ conservative ones, their news agenda is rarely slanted in an ideological orientation.
I’m convinced that if Fox simply called itself “The Conservative News Station” it wouldn’t drive liberals half so crazy.
Except, GeoffB, it’s not “Conservative”; it’s party-line Republican.
GeoffB: It is a fair critique of what I wrote to point out what you did: you can throw the “fair and balanced” bit on the other side of the scale to counterbalance Norvell’s comments and Fox’s policy of allowing contributions and endorsements of Republican candidates. I overstated my case about Fox’s public posture and appreciate your counter-point.
It still wouldn’t change the reality though that the British press have been openly political forever, and they are still in business. I think MSNBC (or any U.S. channel) could do the same thing. I don’t agree with the commentators who think audience share will be reduced — on net — by explicit political commitments (Yes some people would leave, but I think more would come). I think the American public actually has a soft spot for someone who believes *something* openly and a suspicion of those who claim to have no perspective, they just report the facts objectively.
“I don’t agree with the commentators who think audience share will be reduced — on net — by explicit political commitments (Yes some people would leave, but I think more would come).”
I think you are scanning the comments too quickly. The only commenter who suggested reduced audience share, Thomas, said that would occur not if MSNBC declared themselves liberal but if they declared themselves patriotic. That kind of self-righteous crap is a result lazily assuming those you disagree with have evil motives in order to avoid thinking about their point of view. The problem is that your post has a presumed equivalency between FOX and MSMBC that, while aside from the point you were trying to make (a point I agree with), supports the thinking of people like Thomas.
The best comment on the FOX/MSMBC comparison I have seen is by Keith Olbermann: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iAK10qF_Jc