Friday, August 20, 2010

Fox News Hides Conflict Of Interest

From an article by Barbara Morrill at the Daily Kos:
It will come as no surprise to learn that Bill O'Reilly was the first Fox News on-air personality to to lose the Democratic Governors Association challenge:
In the wake of Fox News officially becoming the media arm of the Republican Party with its $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association, Nathan Daschle, the executive director of its Democratic counterpart has issued a challenge in a letter to Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes:
In the interest of some fairness and balance, I request that you add a formal disclaimer to your news coverage any time any of your programs cover governors or gubernatorial races between now and Election Day.
During Wednesday's broadcast, Bill-O had the Republican gubernatorial candidate from Ohio, John Kasich, on his program and didn't bother to inform his audience that he had a vested interest in promoting Kasich's candidacy.

On the other hand, O'Reilly was fair and balanced. He opened by calling Kasich his "pal," cited a Rasmussen poll, said that Kasich's Democratic opponent wouldn't come on his show because he couldn't handle the questions. O'Reilly then peppered Kasich with hard-hitting questions on the President, how the liberal media might hurt him, and whether Sarah Palin would be campaigning for him. Ouch.
The hardcore conservative viewers of Fox probably don't care that they are getting biased news because to them they are finally getting what they want, but there are those out there that actually believe Fox is giving "fair and balanced" news, and it would be in the best interests of those people to know just who they are getting their information from.

You see these complaints frequently on right-wing sites, claiming Media Matters receives its funding from George Soros and that their perspective is skewed, but time and time again Media Matters denies any funding from Soros, but here you have Fox News' parent company making a huge contribution to the Republican party and you don't hear a single peep?

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