Posted on 04/14/2007 8:32:31 PM PDT by neverdem
In his Washington Post column today, E.J. Dionne argues that Democratic presidential candidates have no obligation to go on Fox News. He notes correctly that first John Edwards and then Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton declined to appear on a debate cosponsored by Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus. Leading Democratic candidates did appear on such a debate in the 2004 cycle, in which the lead questioners were Fox's Brit Hume and a black journalist selected by the CBC. My recollection is that both asked thoughtful and fair questions that gave candidates an opportunity to present their views.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
That's the title of the link under the sidebar, "THE IMUS CONTROVERSY," at Newsweek, and the title of the link at RealClearPolitics.com. Click on that link, and the title is "Market Forces."
I thought these two stories are complimentary about the difficulty of the dems in attracting the white male demographic in 2008. The true believers on the left seem to have completely misread the last election, IMHO.
They are afraid just to be on FOX but they have the courage to confront America`s enemies? OK, if that`s what they say!
In the meantime, they seem to be in a frenzy to buy more rope for their hanging!
I don’t care what channel liberal marxists go on, I don’t watch them anyway. I quit watching Fox after it went left.
How did it go left?
At least Eleanor is honest enough to admit only the mentally ill liberals and shut ins are faithfully watching MSNBC.
"I admire Roger Ailes' genius in building Fox News. I wish liberals could create a comparably powerful network."-E.J. Dionne
Yes E.J., because we know that ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN are just small fish with their nationwide affiliates, armies of journalists, and millions of dollars in assets. Bizarro world must be a wonderful place to live in.
They refuse to debate because when you debate you have to come up with ideas, they don’t have any so how can they debate?
LOL! Well stated!
With their hiring of all the liberals on the channel now and all their liberal crap. Shep Smith comes to mind. So does the fool Coombs to name a couple. Fox is not what Fox was a few years ago to me.
Any politician can choose not to appear on FNC or any other venue which doesn't float their boat. But it certainly speaks volumes about the relative clout of FNC and ABC (et. al.) that the Democratic candidates feel entirely free to dis Fox in a way that it would never occur to a Republican candidate to dis ABC.The planted axiom of the choice of the Democrats to dis FNC is that ABC et. al. are objective. Indeed, that axiom is planted in the entire FCC broadcast licensing scheme - and more-or-less explicit in McCain-Feingold. It is also embedded in the "Fairness Doctrine" which the Democrats are determined to resurrect, precisely to suppress the open discussion of politics.
Democrats oppose the open expression of political opinion because they reject the idea of the possibility of their own fallibility. That is not an unprecedented position for people to take - otherwise it would not have a name handed down to us by history. The name for that attitude is "sophistry," and it derives from the Sophists of ancient Greece. The root of the word means "wisdom." The Sophists claimed to be wise.
That implied, of course, that any opposition to their own ideas was foolish. And that is precisely the position that "progressive" politicians and "objective" journalists take. Indeed, journalists call politicians who agree with them "progressive" because Americans universally believe in progress (i.e., they are not conservative). Journalists and other Democrats use "Objectivity" (applied only to journalists) and "progressivism" (never applied to journalists) as surrogates for "wisdom," but their meaning is the same.
Many Americans, including Jim Robinson and those who subscribe to the tenets of FR, call themselves "conservatives," but the term - like "right wingers" - is actually a slur (much as the term "Yankee" originally was). This is obvious from the fact that "conservatives" are the ones who want to accomplish such things as drilling for the oil in and near ANWR and producing nuclear electric power, whereas "progressives" want to stop the expansion of industry and fuel production - indeed, they want to reduce the production of power. American "conservatives" conserve freedom, and freedom implies the ability to do things that were not done before - the sine qua non of progress.The conceit of the Sophists was rejected by the Philosophers. Philosophers rejected argument from a claim of wisdom, and insisted only that they loved wisdom - not that they were specially endowed with it. Thus the philosopher is open to facts and logic, whereas the sophist is eager to shut off debate.It is obvious that the sophist requires an advantage in power to make it possible to foreclose his opponent's ability to bring facts and logic to the table. The modern sophists of the Democratic Party exploit the PR power of the one-way media for that purpose. The reason they enjoy the overwhelming advantage in that arena is simple - journalists who claim to be objective must band together to sustain their image, and by acting in unison they reject criticism of journalism as a whole by rejecting criticism of each individual journalist. And "progressives" - be they Democratic politicians or labor unionists or plaintiff lawyers or teachers - join in and support the project of sustaining the image of journalism as being objective. All such people have the common objective of promoting criticism above action. "Progressivism" is simply the attitude that criticism and second guessing is what is significant, and the person who undertakes a task and works to achieve it - Theodore Roosevelt's "man in the arena" - counts for nothing.
The irony of the claim of the "progressive" to superior wisdom is that "progressivism" the journalism which it adores is inherently not wise but superficial. The most topical book, for example, will be written on a subject of more enduring significance than a reporter's story which was chosen because it was either bad ("If it bleeds, it leads) or what usually does not happen ("Man Bites Dog, not Dog Bites Man"). And will be written on a much longer deadline, which allows for superior research and editing.
BTTT
Shep Smith, who I rarely watched, was there for quite a while before I stopped wasting my money on cable programming. Coombs was there from the beginning, i.e. Hannity & Coombs. They said they were "fair and balanced." Compared to other news sources, I thought they were. They didn't call themselves conservative, but everyone else in the left wing, MSM did as an epithet.
Perhaps Dionne was being sarcastic?
Thanks for the ping c_I_c
Perhaps Dionne was being oblivious? That's his par for the course. He doesn't think the MSM is biased.
I forgot my /sarcasm tag? No excuse. You’re right.
Dionne’s own words here...
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/theyre_democrats_not_idiots/
Thanks for the link. I hadn’t read it. Typical EJ!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.