Howell Raines rips Fox News, Ailes in Wash. Post column
March 11, 2010 7:40 pm ET by Media Matters staff
In a column titled, "Why don't honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News?" to be published in Sunday's Washington Post, but available online, former New York Times editor Howell Raines writes:
One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?
Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. This is not a liberal-versus-conservative issue. It is a matter of Fox turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: "The American people do not want health-care reform."
Fox repeats this as gospel. But as a matter of historical context, usually in short supply on Fox News, this assertion ranks somewhere between debatable and untrue.
Raines later wrote:
For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party. And let no one be misled by occasional spurts of criticism of the GOP on Fox. In a bygone era of fact-based commentary typified, left to right, by my late colleagues Scotty Reston and Bill Safire, these deceptions would have been given their proper label: disinformation.
Under the pretense of correcting a Democratic bias in news reporting, Fox has accomplished something that seemed impossible before [Roger] Ailes imported to the news studio the tricks he learned in Richard Nixon's campaign think tank: He and his video ferrets have intimidated center-right and center-left journalists into suppressing conclusions -- whether on health-care reform or other issues -- they once would have stated as demonstrably proven by their reporting. I try not to believe that this kid-gloves handling amounts to self-censorship, but it's hard to ignore the evidence. News Corp., with 64,000 employees worldwide, receives the tender treatment accorded a future employer.
Real journalism is gone. Whether it be the fault of journalists or big media, it is gone.
No, Dolly, I agree with alan.
Raines is too little, too late. There has been too much false FOX -- and false NYTimes! -- gone by, and no credible journalist or journalism has said a peep of protest. ... the false reporting of Florida 2000 ballot counts. ... the false reporting of WMD, and boom boom nationalistic boosterism parading into false 'war' on a tactic!, and THOUSANDS of sacrificed American troops killed, dead, for NOTHING, NO REASON, and TENS of thousands of American troops casualties, families suffering, for NOTHING, NO REASON, and NO journalism says a thing, not. one. peep. Why in the he!! is Raines here now, blathering on?
Only? "one question"! "has tugged at" (sure, don't strain anything) Raines's "professional(?) conscience" -- what about HUMAN conscience!? Got ANY? -- for only one "year-long." Where the he!! has Raines been for the last 10 years??? It's just sick. It's just sickening.
Besides, 'conscience' shaming is worthless, a non-starter dead on arrival being laid at FOX's doorstep. FOX/Ailes LUUUUVESSSSS blood boiling at them, changes nothing, and goes back and does more of their same LIARS crimes -- those hours of partisan politics broadcasts are CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS, of 'stock' in trade, and the dollar value MUST legally be reported: CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS under Federal Election Commission regulation and jurisdiction. Raines defeats himself in his wussy tsk-tsk. So little. So late.
Besides, again, what recourse in action does Raines offer? None.
Try this: BOYCOTT bundled Pay TV !! (cable or dish).
Take ACTION, individually, be personally responsible.
YOU can DO THIS at home -- TRY IT.
Turn off FOX, pay your cable bill, you still pay FOX.
It don't matter whether or not you actually watch FOX in the bundle of channels.
All and the only thing that matters is that you pay your cable TV bill. Then you pay FOX.
Forget about TV channel revenue from selling ad time, forget boycotting advertisers -- each TV channel slice of pay TV subscriber fees is multiple times more revenue than ad sales.
When cash flow dries up for the other bundled channels -- when we BOYCOTT the BUNDLE of Pay TV -- then the other channels are going to attack FOX as the loser dragging them all down, and cable operators are going to cancel FOX out of the bundle.
Maintain the BOYCOTT until FOX is BANKRUPT and GONE. NO death-bed 'conversion,' remorse, and 'reform' since we canNOT believe or trust LIARS.
Destroy FOX and dangle the corpse high, twisting slowly slowly in the wind -- like Father Coughlin and Nazi propogandist Goebbels -- making a cautionary example to all other broadcasting.
We, people, must act for ourselves to single out FOX and destroy it with our BOYCOTT stopping bundled Pay TV. Otherwise, if we fail to act, FOX is dragging all journalism, print and broadcast, down into oblivion; destroy FOX before FOX destroys America.
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If that were the case, what the hell was up with the Whitewater story in the 90s?
They aren't a legitimate news organization, and they shouldn't get treated like they are legit!
History shows that a well educated, modern society (Germany) can succumb to properly managed disinformation.
That is the danger - the ease with which Fox and its conservative associates so freely and consistently play loose with facts, inuendo, and subtle suggestion to influence it's viewers, and achieve rating success.
If Fox truly felt it was Fair and Balanced, it would not feel so compelled to state it right next to its name.
In my world, Fox News has it right and Howell Raines doesn't.
You don't get to live in a world where Fox News is right about the cost of health care reform. You're stuck living in this one.
Every accounting of the proposed legislation has come to the conclusion that it will contribute a massive reduction in costs for the government. "Your world" consists of simple-minded allegations, repeated over and over again until they become believed like a religious mantra.