FOX News Watch host Eric Burns and weekly panelist Cal Thomas (a syndicated columnist and host of another FOX News Channel show) chided USA Today for commissioning “propagandist” Michael Moore to provide commentary on the Republican National Convention. Thomas and Burns contrasted Moore's coverage with that of “conservative journalist” Jonah Goldberg (National Review Online's editor-at-large), who provided commentary on the 2004 Democratic National Convention (DNC) for USA Today.

From the September 5 edition of FOX News Channel's FOX News Watch:

THOMAS: [H]e [Moore] gets a platform in USA Today. I think it was totally driven -- they had Jonah Goldberg of National Review covering the Democrat Convention, and his coverage was more point by point and to the issues, and Moore was more mocking and political advocacy.

BURNS: And Goldberg is more a conservative journalist ...

THOMAS: Yes, right.

BURNS: As opposed to Moore, who was more of a propagandist.

THOMAS: Couldn't have said it better.

As Media Matters for America noted at the time, in his first daily DNC column for USA Today, Goldberg distorted a New York Times survey (pdf) of Democratic delegates to falsely claim that most delegates believed “the war on terrorism and national security aren't that important.”

Goldberg was hired by USA Today to replace right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, whom the paper dropped, citing a “difference of opinion over editing.”

Goldberg, whom Burns and Thomas identified as “a conservative journalist,” wrote the following about the Washington, DC-area sniper in October 2002 on National Review Online's weblog, The Corner (as MMFA has documented):

IS JOHN MUHAMMED A THREEFER? We know the Sniper is a Nation of Islam Muslim (which is to say he belongs to a cult that uses Islamic jargon). We know he's black. But I've got this nagging feeling we might find out that he also practices an alternative lifestyle -- I mean besides from all of the murdering. There's just something about this Batman and Robin act -- Malvo is his “ward”? -- that strikes me as odd, in a specific way. Call it a hunch. Not that there's anything wrong with that.