10/27/2004|||109887400754271460||||||

THE WORLD'S MOST MALIGNED NEWS CHANNEL

Much as I enjoy visiting Harry's Place, I take issue with the swipe at Fox News. (John Lloyd's interesting polemic, What The Media Are Doing To Our Politics makes similar criticisms of the notorious Murdoch channel.)

There's a fair point to be made about the partisan tone of some of the coverage, although I prefer to take my news from a network that's at least honest about where its sympathies lie (unlike some I could mention). I don't give two hoots for the Scott Peterson murder trial, but a lot of Fox's output is sophisticated and reasonably even-handed. To give one example, Mid East experts Dennis Ross and Marc Ginzburg were on recently, taking contrasting stances on Bush's policy. The high-powered panel on Brit Hume's weekday show pits, say, Fred Barnes and William Kristol against Cee Cee Connolly and Juan Williams (yes, it's generally tilted towards Barnes and Co , but that at least makes Williams's side work hard at developing their arguments - something liberals aren't accustomed to doing.) And to the best of my knowledge, there isn't a programme on British TV that analyses the media as acutely as the weekly Fox Newswatch: left-wing regular Neil Gabler regularly gets in potshots at Fox itself.

My wife also has a crush on Fox Report's ultra-cool presenter, Shepard Smith, but that's another story...

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/10/worlds-most-maligned-news-channel-much.html|||10/27/2004 11:19:00 am|||||||||

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