It is a well established fact that Fox News Channel gives orders on how to cover the news based on political leanings. Their Vice President of News was caught giving directions after the 2006 election on how to misdirect the audience to concentrate on news that's more favorable to Republicans. This was just one of daily memos that he writes to direct his so-called news reporters on how to cover/slant the news.
I suppose the reporters who work at Fox News Channel could disregard the orders of their boss and produce excellent journalism regardless. I am not sure it would make it on-air even if they did, but I suppose they could try. The evidence seems to indicate that they don't.
There are a few exceptions, such as the initial Hurricane Katrina coverage, when the situation was so bad that even the Fox reporters and anchors couldn't help but report what was plainly in front of them.
But over all, the norm is much more so what Martha MacCallum did after reading the John Moody memo - she did as she was ordered. She reported on a story as if she was reading her boss's memo straight on to the air. Remember, the memo was written in the morning asking the reporters to slant their coverage in this direction, without any knowledge whether this so-called news even existed.
Then there are the numerous attacks against Democrats with leading banners such as "Encouraging the Enemy?" Interestingly, no one has ever seen a suggesting by Fox that Republicans might be hurting the war on terror. Newshounds catalogs Fox News everyday. I'm pretty sure they would have picked up on it if this surprising development had occurred.
By the way, my favorite Fox graphic of all time read, "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" How far will they go to suck up to this administration? If I worked in news at Fox, I would have quit that day, if I hadn't a long time ago.
Conversely, does anyone honestly believe that Fox wouldn't have had a ticker for how many days Osama bin Laden hasn't been caught since 9/11 - if there was a Democratic president?
And now there are the numerous attacks on Barack Obama. Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films has chronicled some of these attacks here. Funny, I didn't see similar attacks against any of the Republican front-runners. I'm sure it must be a coincidence.
At this point, it is laughable to suggest that Fox doesn't have a conservative slant. And that is being generous. I think a real case could be made that FNC serving as the propaganda arm of the Republican Party.
Given this, isn't it time someone asked whether the so-called reporters and anchors at Fox can still call themselves journalists? Should they be classified as actors instead? Commentators? Talk show hosts? Prop pieces? Whatever they might be, it seems impossible to classify them as journalists under the classic definition.
So, I wonder if the people who continue to work for Fox News Channel, full well knowing their agenda and how they are directed to aid and abet that agenda, are doing very serious damage to their careers. Can any of these people really be hired as real reporters anymore?
Can anyone hire Brit Hume as a news anchor anymore with a straight face? Can Carl Cameron pretend to be a reporter at a real news station? Can Neil Cavuto ever show his face anywhere but at an Eddie Munster impersonation convention again?
Remember these guys are not the talk show hosts of Fox News Channel. They are the well known face and opinionated voices of the Fox "news" division. But how about the less well known reporters, correspondents and producers of Fox News? Is it time to disqualify them from ever working in news again? How much propaganda work can you do before you can no longer call yourself a journalist?