Again - I’m not talking about ideological slant - I’m talking about everything up to and including deliberate lies, directly in the service of a political party.

Hopefully you’re not under the assumption that those of us on the right haven’t felt exactly the same way about the network news, for 30 years (at least). Brit Hume didn’t put up some forged documents in an effort to derail John Kerry’s campaign & then get an award for courage from his peers after getting caught.

Are you guys REALLY of the mindset of “yeah, those other networks may be full of liberals, but they don’t let it affect their jobs like Fox conservatives do”?

Can you think of any good reason why a democrat would want to appear on fox news

The same reason a Republican would show up on This Week with Steffy or Meet the Press with Russert. Getting out their message to the masses.

Guys, Fox is #1, which means that there are more than just a bunch of dittoheads watching. You’re cutting off your noses to spite your faces, primarily because the leading advocates on ‘your side’ have decided that this strategy is the way to go. Well, Kos & co. are political ignoramouses. You guys wasted millions on the Dean campaign. You guys wasted millions on the Lamont campaign.

Get your message to the people & convince them that you are better than the other guy. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? What, the moderator at the debate is going to turn out to be Sean Hannity in disguise? It’s a debate, not a hit piece a-la 60 Minutes (another show that GOPers still go on, btw)! They’re willing to tell the nation that they’ll stand up to Al Qaeda but not Fox News? They won’t give Fox News credibility but they’re willing to sit down & negotiate with Hamas? Makes no sense.

Be smart….choosing the echo chamber isn’t smart.

Clinton? Yes, I think he was guilty of obstruction & perjury, but he wasn’t guilty of anything to do with Whitewater, which is what the NYT and Ken Starr made a circus out of for 4 years until they figured out they needed another angle of attack.

Again - I’m not talking about ideological slant - I’m talking about everything up to and including deliberate lies, directly in the service of a political party. When they go that far, there is no point in helping them fight you. Can you think of any good reason why a democrat would want to appear on fox news, unless they are a lieberman/miller type democrat who wants to trash real democrats and thereby build up their “moderate” creds?

The only person, on the other hand, who went after Clinton more savagely than the “liberal” New York Times was Kenneth Starr.

A. Please tell me those scare-quotes were a joke. Please tell me that - while I’m being straightforward & saying that FNC most definitely leans righward - you’re not claiming that the NYT is a flaming bastion of liberalism.
B. Er, he was guilty. Starr was appointed by the Clinton admin to investigate. You see me complaining about Fitzgerald “going after” Libby? Nope, I said “if he’s guilty, burn him” (not literally, of course). Clinton was GUILTY. Remember the golden quote I culled? It applies. It wasn’t Ken Starr’s fault that Clinton was guilty. It’s not Fitzgerald’s fault that Libby was guilty.

Which reporters are slanted? I’ll dodge that one, but mention that it was a guy from their news room who took Scotty McClellan’s place.

Again, the divergence between news and anchors/commentary. Tony Snow’s job was the anchor of Fox News Sunday & he led the panel during the discussions (in a non-partisan fashion, I might add, only asking questions & not giving commentary). Tony Snow’s commentary was clearly labeled when it was presented.

However, if we’re going to have that as a baseline, then the GOP should boycott ABC (Steffy - lord, has there ever been a bigger case of politics being disguised as journalism? What, did Carville fail the audition?). Or NBC (Russert), MSNBC (Matthews), both former DNC staffers. And since Walter Cronkite’s come out as a socialist & we all finally know where Dan ‘memo’ Rather’s intentions lie, that gives us….zero…networks with former GOP ties while they’re all replete with Dem staffers or sympathizers. I can go further. PBS had Bill Moyers. ABC had the late Art Schlesinger. They all present/presented the DNC talking points and gave stories angled against the conservative point of view.

One other thing: every one of them claims or claimed that they were non-partisan.

I’m not trying to convince you that FNC is middle of the road. It isn’t. But, if FNC were nothing but 24/7 Rush Limbaugh commentary, it’d still have a long ways to go to make up for the leftward tilt of the major networks. And the GOP didn’t run away from them. They could’ve. Heck, Gwen Ifill moderated a debate! Jim Lehrer - good guy - led a debate, IIRC, recently. Go look up the questions he asked. From the left.

BTW, how’d I steer this from a discussion of the gov’t & a post on Boortz to media bias? Sorry, old habit.

Trust me, Fox covered Mark Foley just like everyone else did.

Everyone else captioned the story with “Mark Foley, (D - FL)”? Everyone else lead the story as the latest “Democratic Scandal”? I don’t remember it that way.

Re: Hume & Clinton - I think that goes to show that treatment of Clinton isn’t necessarily a litmus test. Most news organizations suck up to the President… Bush got a very long honeymoon in the press, not just FN. The only person, on the other hand, who went after Clinton more savagely than the “liberal” New York Times was Kenneth Starr.

Which reporters are slanted? I’ll dodge that one, but mention that it was a guy from their news room who took Scotty McClellan’s place.

Yes, the FN editorialists don’t make bones about their biases, while some the CNN editorialists try to portray themselves as “above the fray”. I see that as self-importance more than dishonesty. Actually, O’Reilly has a bit of the same schtick. He does ask his viewers to believe the unbelievable - that he is fair & open-minded. And Hannity is paired with Holmes in hopes of getting viewers to believe there is “balance” at the network… But the real reason that they don’t go to lengths to “hide” their bias is that it would interfere with their function as political activists.

I think it was this one (none of their archives are active). http://www.cmpa.com/studies/index.htm

I remember a buddy who is a right-winger who used to hate Hume & who thought he was a liberal prior to him going to FNC. I actually thought he leaned left, too, but barely. Go figure.

Which JOURNALIST on the network is a toady for the GOP? Steve Centanni? Carl Cameron? Megan Kendall? I’m being serious. I know that Brit Hume is on the right & when he leads the panel or in his grapevine segments that he’s playing the role of commentarian, but the news segments are just that: news. There could be an argument over the choices of what stories are covered, sure, that goes for every channel, but their news is pretty nonpartisan, IMO. And, I’ll add, so has CNNs in recent years (or at least more so than it used to be).

It’s obvious that the Democratic party has decided to use this as a political ploy. It’s politics….this isn’t an actual instance of “news”, this is political strategy. Trust me, Fox covered Mark Foley just like everyone else did. It’s just that Fox was the network that asked Clinton about terrorism BEFORE 9/11 (gasp!) because history did happen. Kos & co. are just carrying the water for the party.

The Democratic party was glad to have the debate on Fox….until the nutroots kicked into gear. I can get the atual quotes, if necesssary. Trying to remove the cred of the #1 news channel is a cheap ploy being undertaken by the far left.