Monday, August 08, 2005

Glass houses: CJR and Fox News

Columbia Journalism Review wrote (a few years ago) of Fox News:
The questions persist: Can a news network with executives and on-screen talent so conspicuously and so heavily right of center fulfill a promise of delivering "fair and balanced" news, information, and opinion?...

But the issue persists: Can a news network dominated by conservative hosts be genuinely "fair and balanced"? Would "fairness and balance" require hiring identifiable left-of-center figures as hosts to assure ideological equipoise?
In response, Tim Schmoyer asked of CJR,
Can a media-crit magazine dominated by liberals be genuinely non-partisan and fair, particularly toward those on the right? In light of Victor Navasky's recently disclosed role, doesn't that question take on even more substance?
By the way, the CJR article concludes that Fox News is
inevitably, the product of its creators, interlocutors, and guests. That makes it unmistakably a bully pulpit for conservative sentiment in America.
What then does that make CJR?