Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Fairly unbalanced

This Fox News anchor rolls his eyes and his voice drips with sarcasm as he keeps throwing GOP talking points at Bob Barr:



The anchor begins the interview this way:
"So, could he be a spoiler for John McCain? . . . Libertarian nominees have never managed to get more than 1 percent of the vote in presidential elections . . . . Do you really think you have a realistic chance of getting elected, and if not, then why are you doing this?"
Barr gives a 45-second answer, then the anchor says:
"Let me stop you there. In a close race, you could turn out to be the kind of spoiler for John McCain that Ralph Nader was Al Gore eight years ago. . . ."
The anchor then reads back to Barr a quote from Newt Gingrich. So the Barr candidacy is only of interest to Fox News insofar as Barr threatens to be a "spoiler for John McCain." (In point of fact, it was not Nader, but Pat Buchanan who delivered the fatal blow to Gore in Florida, due to the Palm Beach County "butterfly ballot.")

Is Fox News in the business of reporting the news, or is it in the business of electing John McCain? I can understand an unabashed GOP publicist like Stephen Spruiell parroting the Gingrich spin, but nobody ever expects anything except Republican talking points from National Review anymore. I thought Fox, at least, wanted to maintain some semblance of independence.

UPDATE: It's not that I've got anything against Republican talking points per se. I like this RNC ad, for example:



(Via Hot Air.) That's a campaign ad that doesn't pretend to be anything but a campaign ad, whereas the Fox anchor was delivering Republican talking points as if they were actually news.

1 comment:

  1. Let's face it.

    To get McPain elected DESPITE:

    1) Open borders amnesty;
    2) Squishy on ESCR;
    3) Squishy on the 2A;
    4) Flat-out opposed to free political speech;
    5) An evident enchantment with wars (see Burma remarks); and
    6) Cap-and-enslave

    is going to take a LOT of work.

    One of the local yappers here is already hard at it; Fox may as well join in.

    ReplyDelete