From Los Angeles Times media columnist James Rainey's October 30 column:

The debate over the meaning of Fox News has become so routine, and so routinely partisan, that one hesitates to join the fray again. But when the debate reaches a presidential level, it seems worth reminding everyone, again, how much the boundaries between news and opinion have blurred and how sanguine most people have become about it all.

[...]

Fox employs some other neat devices for infusing its newscasts with the view from the right. How about zippy headlines, like the one this spring that asserted: “House Dems vote to protect pedophiles, but not veterans.”

Outrageous! And outrageously misleading. That claim referred to hate crimes legislation designed to protect gays and others, a proposal which at least one Republican lawmaker falsely claimed could protect pedophiles, even though federal law already made it clear such statutes covered only consenting adults.

What about those tea party promos? I suppose the constant stories, listing times and locales for the protests, could be explained away as strictly informational. So why did Fox offer up a “virtual tea party” online for those who couldn't make the real events?

Fox's news hosts don't offer up extended screeds as Hannity and Beck do, but some can't seem to resist lending their voices to the company line.

When Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann in March decried a government that seemed to be pushing “toward socialism,” Martha MacCallum, host of the day-time “The Live Desk” seemed to have no reservation saying: “I think you're absolutely right about that.”

Just this week, MacCallum's on-air partner, Trace Gallagher, asked Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell sympathetically how Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada could possibly accuse Republicans of being obstructionist when they “haven't seen what's in this bill, much less how much it's going to cost.”

After guiding McConnell gently through his interview, Gallagher then challenged and interrupted health reform defender Eliot Engel, a Democratic congressman from New York.

Previously:

Fox's news programs echo its “opinion” shows: Smears, doctored videos, GOP talking points