Morphizm.com -- ...And Ten Reasons Why American Culture Sucked in 2002

Fox News: "We're not biased!"

"I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel", tabloid mogul Rupert Murdoch told Salon back in March of 2001. Many writers and reporters took up that challenge but they couldn't get a word in because loudmouths like the "fair and balanced" Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Geraldo Rivera and the Beltway Boys kept interrupting them. You think I'm joking but I'm not. Although television has -- as the Ginsu-sharp Mark Crispin Miller wrote in his excellent book, The Bush Dyslexicon -- become far from relevant when it comes to substantive political commentary, Fox News is a three-ring circus run by pseudo-journalists with hard-to-ignore ties to the Republican Party. Let's break this down, shall we? Fox News president and founder, Roger Ailes? A longtime Republican strategist that worked for Nixon (!), Reagan and even helped craft George the Former's infamous Willie Horton campaign. That should be enough, don't you think? This guy is a right-wing shark, plain and simple -- he even produced Rush Limbaugh's short-lived TV show -- and if he's running a news network, uh, what was the argument again? But let's continue. Well-regarded Fox News anchor Tony Snow? Speechwriter for George Bush. Bill O'Reilly? Registered Republican and contributor to the conservative WorldNetDaily.com. This guy has his own talk show, people. Recurring "analyst" William Kristol? Chief of Staff to Dan Quayle. The list goes on, and this is just the stuff they're telling us. Now I'm not one for partisan politics -- as a character from the amazing film, Waking Life, put it, "Do you want the puppet on the left or the puppet on the right?" -- but any network that incessantly repeats the mantra, "The only network that America turns to for fair and balanced journalism" (Really Fox? All of America? The entire country?), is trying to sell you something. And once you take a look at the buyers, it's pretty easy to see what's on the menu. Taste this: "If it hadn't been for Fox, I don't know what I'd have done for the news." Guess who said that? Trent Lott.

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He also starts 10 Reasons Why it Didn't Suck with Lord of the Rings and Spirited Away.