Fox News Success

The success of Fox News continues to annoy the liberal media, which includes nearly everybody except Fox. Not only is Fox successful in the ratings, but now the National Press Foundation plans to honor Brit Hume, and that is just too much for some of the liberals with press credentials. Note this article from USAToday.com, written by Peter Johnson.

Or is that slogan a clever marketing line designed to hide Fox News political tilt to the right?

And with its success--by far, it's the No. 1-rated cable news channel--have journalists failed to challenge Fox News on its boast?

These questions have been raised before. But now, a well-known journalist may reignite the discussion: Geneva Overholser, former ombudsman of The Washington Post, has resigned from the board of the National Press Foundation because it plans to honor Fox News anchor Brit Hume at its annual dinner in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 19.

Past recipients of the group's Sol Taishoff award include TV newscasters David Brinkley, Dan Rather, John Chancellor, Jane Pauley, Barbara Walters, and Nina Totenberg.

Hume, the ABC White House correspondent who joined Fox in 1996 and anchors a nightly newscast, doesn't deserve the award because he and Fox practice ''ideologically connected journalism,'' Overholser says.

''Fox wants to do news from a certain viewpoint, but it wants to claim that it is 'fair and balanced,' '' she says. ''That is inaccurate and unfair to other media who engage in a quest, perhaps an imperfect quest, for objectivity.''

She says groups such as the foundation, before lauding Fox or its lead news anchor, should debate whether the way Fox reports news is good for journalism.

Someday, Overholser says, ''I think we will look back on these years and think, 'Why didn't we have a discussion so that the public could benefit from a change in journalism that Fox is very successfully bringing about?' ''

Ed Fouhy, chairman of the four-person committee that unanimously voted to give Hume the award, rejects Overholser's argument. ''Brit is an excellent journalist,'' says Fouhy, who at one time was Hume's boss at ABC. ''I admire him and his journalism.''

Says Fox's Irena Briganti: ''Brit Hume is a journalist of tremendous accomplishment, distinction and credibility. We are proud he is being recognized.''

Overholser, the former editor of The Des Moines Register who now runs the University of Missouri's Washington journalism program, quietly resigned from the board of the foundation three weeks ago.

''I would welcome a discussion about whether objectivity really exists, which media seem the least fair and balanced, whether objectivity is desirable, whether it wouldn't be better to have a more European-like model-- in which media were straightforwardly ideologically aligned,'' she wrote in an e-mail to fellow board members. ''All of those could be helpful to American journalism.

''And I can applaud Fox for all sorts of things, but being deceptively ideologically aligned--being hypocritical about it--far from contributing to such discussions, makes them impossible to have. (Fox News president Roger) Ailes has constructed the perfect trap: you question him, and the finger of accusation comes back at the questioner. One can marvel at his cleverness. But one should not confer journalistic laurels upon it.''

I did a google search and found this as one of her syndicated articles:

What we need in White House is a politician, not a CEO

Friday, June 15, 2001

By GENEVA OVERHOLSER SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- George W. Bush, you'll recall, was going to be our CEO president.

This would be a crisp, straight-ahead presidency, eye on the ball, no fuzzy math and no pollsters visible. "This president," said his chief of staff, "is the first ever to have an MBA."

But oh, what snags the vaunted CEO presidency has hit of late. Running a nation, it turns out, is not a tidy undertaking. Bottom-line thinking omits a few key factors. Crispness is no substitute for consensus.

What the president with the business degree didn't have was a mandate. Nonetheless, undeterred by having lost the popular vote,Bush came in with six-guns blazing, intent on nailing down the right wing. He stocked his administration heavily with ideologues and -- within days -- struck a remarkably unilateralist stance, ditching the global warming treaty and rebuffing South Korea's approach to pursuing peaceful relations with North Korea.

The targeted parties loved it: "Just another task taken care of, CEO-style" purred Investor's Business Daily.

In wider circles, unhappiness over the heavy-handedness began to pool. Before long, moderate Jim Jeffords had defected from the Republican Party. The United States had lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. Bush's energy policy, intended to display confidence in America, provoked widespread dismay instead. And abroad, alarm greeted the administration's blithe pursuit of whatever it felt like pursuing, including -- pre-eminently -- missile defense.

Over the past weekend, it seemed that the last vestiges of CEO hubris had given way to a rockslide of confusion. First of all, hardly three weeks after the widely touted energy blueprint was released, a ludicrous backing-away from it commenced. Remember those 1,300 new power plants Vice President Cheney told us we'd need by 2020? Remember Ari Fleischer, the president's press secretary, briskly dismissing questions about whether we'd need to think about adjusting our lifestyle? No way, he said: "The American way of life is a blessed one."

Well, Cheney's chief of staff now says that a few things about the plan were -- as news reports put it -- "miscommunicated." The administration didn't mean the power-plant building as a suggestion. Rather, it was an estimate of what would happen if we continued business as usual (which, of course, is what Fleischer was saying we must by all means consider ourselves entitled to do).

"Those numbers are sober projections," said an administration official. "They are bad numbers that make people realize that we have to do something. It's a statement of reality, not a projection of where we would like to take things."

Please. It's better by far to back off an awful plan than to stick with it. But what an uncomfortably transparent (not to mention fuzzy-math) backing-off this was.

Meanwhile, the administration was preparing for Bush's Europe trip by saying that yes indeed, it did get that global warming was serious -- for all its Kyoto treaty rejection. Yet the attempt to cultivate a better environmental image abroad was hobbled by the posing of questions most scientists feel have been answered, and by the offering of little in the way of solutions.

At the same time, yet another reversal revealed the presence of Bush's father at work behind the scenes, in this case on behalf of reinstating talks with North Korea -- which of course Bush, the fast-moving CEO, had previously (and briskly) rejected.

All of these turnarounds dramatically exhibit the problem with running the government like a business.

As president, you have a few externals to worry about that are a bit different from those confronting the usual CEO. For example, there are all those other nations -- whose interests, despite an early pledge of humility, Bush seemed prepared to ignore. As the French prime minister put it, the United States "does not seem to think that some rules, which make the international community work, need necessarily be taken into account on certain issues."

Then there's that nettlesome external, Congress, whose upper chamber is now controlled by Democrats, courtesy of Bush's straight-ahead tactics. And of course that final -- and greatest -- external, the public, which has responded to the administration's energy policy with a big vote of no confidence. A mere 37 percent support it in a new ABC-Washington Post poll.

If the nation was ready for relief from an overly poll-driven, messy presidency, this too is true: A presidency whose CEO-style self-confidence blinds it to what all around are feeling is no improvement.

......................

Nah, she's not the least bit biased herself. And oops to her, it's 2004 and Congress is full of Pubbies.

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