Howell Raines' forthcoming WashPost column about Fox News represents some necessary truth telling:

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?

Watching the elite Beltway press actually rally around Fox News last year after the White House called it out as an illegitimate outlet for real news was one of the saddest journalism spectacles in recent memory. Recall that during the Bush years, the GOP White House often cooked up allegations and lashed out at prominent (i.e. genuine) news organizations, such as NBC and the New York Times, and I don't recall anybody rallying around them.

But when a Democratic administration called out Fox News for what it really is, a GOP propaganda tool (i.e. the Opposition Party), the same D.C. press corps played defense for Murdoch's dishonest empire and actually demanded Dems back off.

Good grief.

As Raines notes in his column, and as Media Matters has been documenting for a very long time, today's Obama-era Fox News has shredded any semblance of professional, modern day American journalism. It long ago cut the chord with that tradition.

And yet last fall, the tsk-tsking chattering class agreed that it was the White House that was way out of line when it fact-checked Fox News.

Raines asks all the right questions, and his essay is dead-on in every way, except one. When it comes to answering the essay's central question (why won't journalists label Fox News for what it really is), I think Raines pulls his punches. His conclusion is that in this age of mass news media layoffs, journalists don't tell the truth about Fox News because they might have to work for Murdoch one day [emphasis added]:

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.

I don't believe that for a second. Well, that might account for a fraction of the playing dumb that routinely goes on regarding Fox News.

But I think the huge majority of it is explained quite simply: fear or the 'liberal media bias' charge. Conservatives have been pounding the press for more than four decades about their alleged bias and the Beltway press corps has developed rabbit ears when it comes to the allegation. And frankly, there's plenty of evidence that jouranlists are terrified of the charge and nervous about what can happen to their careers if that tag sticks.

So what's an easy way to prove you're not liberal? (Aside from becoming lapdogs during the Bush years.) You pretend Fox News is legit. You pretend that sure, Ailes has some opinion guys on at night, but there's a clear dividing line between the news and opinion. You pretend that Fox News is just the mirror opposite of MSNBC.

Basically, you sign off on a charade that, as Raines points out, any newsroom pro can see is a complete joke.

The whole thing was embarrassing to watch, and the cone of silence that Raines highlights continues to be a stain on the industry. I'm glad Raines, the former Times editors, is coming forward. It would be even better if more high-profile, working members of today's press corps did the same.