Alfred, are you employed by FOX?

"It's tough for leftist journalists to ask questions that Republican primary voters want answered, I suppose."

The problem with people like you is that you are so far to the Right that virtually anybody who disagrees with you or challenges your views you deride as "leftist." Virtually everybody is to the Left of you. Oddly, you provide no specific examples of "leftist journalists'" questions.

Do you understand what FOX News is and does? From a strictly business perspective, FOX fills a void, and, thus, makes money. That is, it tells Right-wing Republicans things that they want to hear. If you the Right doesn't like what the "MSM" tells them about their favorite conservative political figures or the results of their favorite conservative policies, perhaps the Right should address the substance of the messages and not attack the messengers.

You say, "I'd like to see how (the Democratic candidates) would do if intelligent news professionals like Hume, Goler, Garrett, Bret Baier, or Jim Angle got to ask them questions. But the Democrats fear the fanatics in their party's left wing. If they fear the folk at moveon.org, how would one fare when challenged by real threats, if elected President? Almost certainly not well, so their refusal to appear on Fox News is a substantial disqualifier for whichever Democrat is nominated."

Don't mistake "intelligent news professionals" for people who simply support your limited worldview (perhaps "stateview" would be more accurate?). You are conflating "intelligent" with "agrees with my partisan views." Why would any Democrat give an interview with a network that they know would deliberately distort their views? That would be like George Bush giving an interview to Al Jazeera.

By the way, George W. Bush was faced with a real threat per the 8/6/01 PDB. In response to that threat, he bravely went on a four-week vacation. Five weeks later, America was down two towers, two 757s, two 767s, and the Pentagon was almost turned into a square.

Now, regarding the accuracy of FOX news reporting, I'll give you a specific, detailed example of FOX's deliberate distortions:

On February 23, 2007, I engaged a conservative blogger in a similar discussion of the validity of FOX News "reporting." While in the middle of writing a comment on a conservative blog, I turned FOX News on to see what distortions they were propagating at the moment. This is what I found:

FOX ran a piece called, "If Hollywood Ran America." This was presented as a legitimate news program. It is obviously designed to reinforce the idea that Hollywood "liberals" have political designs for an America that they supposedly hate (yes, they said that). Fox is "appointing" various celebrities to government postitions and putting words into the mouths of said celbrities and speculating how, to various degrees, these individuals would destroy Amreica.

FOX deliberately misquoted Spike Lee's recent documentary about Hurricane Katrina and the damage to New Orleans ("When the Levees Broke"). The Fox reproter said that, "accoding to Spike Lee, the government blew up the levees." Fox then ran a clip from the documentary in which an individual that Lee had interviewed said that he believed the government blew up the levees. (Like it or not, there are quite a number of individuals who subscribe to this paranoid view, as there are many 9/11 or JFK conspiracy theorists. I suppose that, in effect, years of negelct might have had the same effect on the levees as blowing them up, but we'll save that argument for another day.)

Lee obviously (to anybody who watched his documentary) wanted to make the point in the documentary that some individuals are so disillusioned with their government that they would belive in such ridiculous conspiracies. Rather than merely make such an unsupported suggeston, Lee actually caught such an individual on camera. It was obvioulsy the interviewee's opinion that the government had blown the levees up. This is radically different from suggesting, as Fox did, that Spike Lee (and, by extension, "Hollywood Liberals") believes that the government blew up the levees.

This was presented in matter-of-fact news-style reporting. It was virtually all opinion, or fiction, but I didn't see the words "opinion" or "editorial" on the screen anywhere. They were making shit up left and right. This is why FOX has zero credibility to anybody who pays attention.

You say, "Thus far, Barack Obama has gotten away with glittering generalities and platitudes." Have you watched any of the MSM coverage of the primaries? I have watched a lot of CNN's coverage and, while many commentators give Obama high marks for delivering inspirational speeches, CNN's commentators almost always bring up the fact that he has relatively little experience. Bear in mind that Bush has assembled one of the most experienced cabinets in modern history. These guys go back to the Nixon Adminsitration. This experienced team is dreaming of a 35 percent approval rating.

Then you deliver this priceless nugget: "It’s too bad that most liberals neither get nor want news from a perspective other than that of partisan liberals like themselves. But liberals prefer ignorance. If they didn’t, would they be liberals?"

Allow me to offer, "It’s too bad that most conservatives neither get nor want news from a perspective other than that of partisan conservatives like themselves. But conservatives prefer ignorance. If they didn’t, would they be conservatives.

Bear in mind that FOX News, when accused of being anything but "Fair and Balanced" argued that it wasn't really a legitimate news source, but an entertainment company.

FOX: We decide, you believe.

I think Nulla's point was that FOX deliberately misrepresents opinion as fact. At Salon, it is pretty clear what is factual and what is opinion and Salon doen't mask the fact that it primarily provides commentary.

I don't agree with many of the opinions put forth by Salon's writers, but at least here the comments provide a forum for discussion, whereas television is a one-way medium.