Fair And Balanced

"Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative." ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I confess that I am not a news junkie. When I get up in the morning I do not turn on the TV news. I will watch almost anything else. I usually get my news when I sign on to AOL in the morning, and AOL doesn't always report news fairly. It tends to report it with a left leaning bias. My regular readers may have noticed, over time, that I often refer to AOL news when I post a blog entry.

For instance, I noticed AOL reported that President Gerald R. Ford died (I think they were pretty fair overall on this story for a change), but no where was the news that Saddam's death sentence was upheld on appeal.

Perhaps that is not good news for the Liberal media.

Because I am not a news junkie, I remember very few details about President Ford, except, according to the news media, he seemed to fall down a lot. It seems since he was a Republican, that was the only thing about his presidency that the news media thought newsworthy. That and the pardoning of President Nixon, which eventually even the news media agreed was a good idea.


Over the Christmas holidays (Yes, I say "Christmas", not "winter solstice" or some other Liberal nomenclature) We had the pleasure of my fiancee's 84 year old father, who spent Christmas weekend with us.

He is a news junkie. While he usually prefers FOX news, he does, on occasion, watch one of the other major news channels. And because he was a guest, I allowed him to choose the channel we watched. So, I watched news. All weekend.

It's a good thing, really. Because I finally had the opportunity to see what people are talking about when they argue over whether FOX news is indeed fair and balanced. And I think I see the difference between them and the other news outlets.

Whenever MSNBC or CBS or NBC or ABC or CNN etc, presents what they consider fair and balanced opinion segments, this is what they do:

They put one Conservative commentator on the panel and at least 2, usually as many as 4, Liberal commentators on, and then they give more time to the Liberals.

This is what the Liberal media calls fair and balanced.

FOX news, on the other hand, puts one Conservative and one Liberal commentator on and gives them equal time.

This is what the Liberal media calls radical extreme right wing reporting.

Even one of their top programs, Hannity and Colmes, presents both sides with equal time and they have both Conservative and Liberal guests. I don't see that kind of format being used on any of the other news networks.

So, in my opinion, when FOX news say they are fair and balanced, I agree.

It is no wonder they have the best ratings.