As much as any liberal can take a certain gleeful "what goes around comes around" take on Nevada Democrats killing their Fox News sponsored debate, the implications of it 
are not great - not for changing the tenor of public debate, nor for really challenging what's wrong with Fox News.
The simple take on Fox, repeated almost endlessly, is that it's the "right wing news channel," and the problem with it is ideological: that it substitutes polemics for debate, and opinions for facts. Because it makes little or no secret of its disdain for liberals and Democrats, this line goes, there's no reason for Democrats in Congress (or running for President) to give them the time of day, much less interviews and sponsored events like the upcoming debate.
But much of this misses the point: this is not what's problematic about Fox News, nor does boycotting make sense as a response, whatever the problem may be.
The problem with Fox, really, is that it calls itself "Real Journalism, fair and balanced," but mostly it passes off hour-long opinion programs with little or no real hard news content. Almost everything from 4:00 to 11:00 every weeknight is an opinion program... And in most cases, opinion programs hosted by a series of blowhard white guys: Neil Cavuto, John Gibson, Brit Hume, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, and one woman, Greta Van Susteren. The notable exception is the 7:00 newscast of Shepherd Smith, and even he shifts into opinionizing mode when called on (more on his 3:00 "Studio B" cast).
These shows basically offer a similar approach: 2, or possibly more, "opposing talking heads" come on, argue about some issue (usually one of next to no real significance in the big scheme of things), the host tries to make the liberal look bad and the conservative look good (O'Reilly, oddly, is the one who can defy this, depending on his mood... but he is more than compensated for by Hannity, who seems never to have met a liberal view he could really stomach), and then we move on. In some cases, these "debates" are framed by a lead-in "report" from a Fox reporter - more Brit Hume's approach - but mostly we are left with some recap from the host, often incorrect or overly broad, or mostly simply biased against whatever liberal view is being expressed.
Thus the problem with Fox isn't really that it's the "conservative news channel" it's that what it does, mainly, is not news. News reporting could probably benefit from stories that examined different points of view from the top newspapers and the 3 big networks (or 4, if one wants to include CNN), or even more from stories that broke news no one else notices. But Fox doesn't do that - indeed, in many ways, it can't: it lacks the deep reporting resources of its main competitors (CNN and MSNBC), relying internationally on a patchwork of its own smallish set of bureaus and links to Sky News, part of Rupert Murdoch's Sky Satellite systems; and in the US, where Fox Network still lacks a news division, it relies on links to Fox's local news powerhouses (including WNYW in NYC, WTTG in Washington and KTTV in LA). One reason for that is that Roger Ailes - who used to head Fox News, took over the Fox local stations when Rupert Murdoch had a much publicized falling out with son Lachlan, causing him to leave the company. But the net result, even now, is that Fox can easily be caught napping on unexpected breaking news, especially when it happens somewhere in the world not usually in regular coverage (like the Tsunami).
As tempting as it is to make ideology the battleground with Fox, it kind of misses the point that such disputes merely fuel Fox's whole approach - easy to cast "us vs. them" segments, designed to appeal to an audience - and this is key - that is indeed conservative and looking to have broadcasts tailor to their views and natural biases. Indeed this audience is probably the real scary monster - some conservatives feel Fox News is too supportive of "business as usual" in politics, defending a Republican Party that conservatives see as tone deaf to their concerns. That's one of the interesting subtexts of this whole 2008 process - at a time when conservative interests and Republican Party interests are starting to diverge, it's Fox that's really in a bind, when its high ratings are due in part to a conservative audience that wants to be told what it wants to hear, and little else. News, of course, isn't like that.
The really curious thing is that the Nevada Democrats used as their "fig leaf" reason for canceling a set of remarks delivered by Ailes over the weekend, where he ostensibly made fun of Barack Obama. But the larger context of those remarks was making a case that Fox News should be taken seriously as a major force in news broadcasting. Becoming a "trusted sponsor" of public service programming like debates is clearly a key piece of subverting Fox's dicey relationship with serious news and public affairs programming. There's no denying that with conservatism on the ropes, Fox is a big fat juicy target for liberal ire; but by making this a debate that's narrowly focused on Fox's perceived ideological bent, Democrats open themselves to all sorts of problems - problems that only underline charges of "liberal media bias" at other news outlets (not to mention charges of hypocrisy: Democratic candidates have already participated in a Fox debate done in conjunction with the Congressional Black Caucus, and another one is planned). Fueling the right wing noise machine will leave this a "debate" with no winners... like so many others. And one big loser, yet again, will be viewers, who deserve better broadcasting from 24 hour news cable.
Comments