How do the Bush, Cheney, Hume and Kristol service records combined stack up to Murtha's?

Are Juan Williams and Daniel Schorr any less biased or partisan than Brit Hume? Yet they are newsmen and "News Analysts" at NPR. Juan Williams in particular occupies the unusual place of being the left-wing counter to Bill Kristol on Fox, and then goes back down the street to the NPR studios, where he is given a strange sort of license to be reporter one day, interviewer another, and "Analyst" on other days.

What Fox has going for it that NPR doesn't, is that Fox, in the interest of fairness and balance, gives voice to Juan Williams, Mara Liasson, Alan Combs, and Greta Van Sustern. I dare anyone to name five conservatives who are given similar time at NPR. For every David Brooks that you can find (Rich Lowry is merely the moderate Brooks' understudy), there is easily one or more E.J. Dionnes. The conservative voices at NPR can be counted, if at all, on the fingers of one hand, and even then they are carefully checked and shadowed by a voice on the left. And those voices don't even include the program hosts! Amy Goodman, Kurt Andersen, Garrison Keillor, Ira Glass, Farai Chedayah; Brooke Galdstone and Bob Garfield, Tavis Smiley. It is all a Left-wing Democratic cheering section. Established through our tax dollars. At least Fox pays its own way.

As for Murtha,I don't know as to whether Brit Hume has quesitoned Congressman John Murtha's senility, but if he hasn't, I sincerely hope he or someone else does! Can any Democrat imagine a worse nightmare than a live televised debate over Mideast policy between John Murtha and someone like Bill Kristol or Doug Feith or Stephen Hadley? They would need to give Murtha oxygen...

Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer

I always find it interesting when wingnuts serve up sentences such as this one:

The Democratic party will then have served its purpose, in that they will have destroyed America.

It of course presumes that there is something called "America" that somehow doesn't include Democrats. I find this very confusing because the America I know is of course much bigger than the one that this writer appears to be referring to. Tthe fact that her conception cheapens and taints our great nation is a sad byproduct of this mode of thinking....

alas....

it's a good thing they're really good at character assassination:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/19/12838/2667

Conservatives know how to chant together, but that's about it. Any alternative to their failure must be muddied.

Yeah, we knew that.

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Another point to address is that old calumny "unserious." If an opposition party can't demand that the president consult with it before starting a war, then the only meaning left for "serious" is "dead."

I expect our resident contrarians will quickly complain that Olbermann is just as "partisan" as Hume or any Fox anchor you can name.

First: No, he's not. If anyone wants to make this point, please find Olbermann quotes of equivalent partisanship and evident falsehood as what Hume is quoted by Glenn as saying. I guarantee you cannot.

Altho I don't know of Olbermann's ever trafficking in a (knowing) falsehood, he most assuredly is partisan, which is why I like him. His was a voice crying in the wilderness for quite some time, finally recognized by those who felt disenfranchised and now increasingly acknowledged and popular. But certainly I don't tune into him expecting to hear neutral assessments of Iraq or George Bush; I look to Olbermann because he is the anti-Fox, and it is about damned time.

Really, if Hume et al. were not the highest-rated cable news network, I don't think their shenanigans would be so troubling. Shooting for objectivity is all well and good, but no human being is capable of it. Olbermann's regular dressing downs of Bush aren't in the mold of journalist, either -- those are rank punditry of the urgently necessary variety. Honestly, the real difference is that Olbermann is on the correct side, and the Fox crew is replete with neocon Bush-bots. The task is simply to make sure that the public grows to understand that Fox is not fair, not balanced, is partisan, and -- most importantly -- that they are wrong. Not that Olbermann isn't partisan, or that Hume is in some objective sense less of a "real" journalist than Olbermann.

News Hounds have a category for posts on Brit's show "Special Report" (how a daily show can be special I don't know):

http://www.newshounds.us/special_report_wbrit_hume/

Some post titles:

Hume Attacking DEMOCRATS for Voter Suppression Efforts

Special Report Provides Platform for Dick Cheney's Gloom and Doom

Special Report Also Follows Script of Fox News Memo

(I love this one) Hume Bashes Local Station for Being "Unfair and Unbalanced"

Some quotes:

Brit on President Bush (Dec 2006):

" his attitude is confident. He seems comfortable. He seems to enjoy the work. He said the burden of this office is not heavy, it's light."

Brit helping George Bush blame the Generals for the failed strategies in Iraq:

"Is it fair to say then that the approach in Iraq has been more of what Casey and Abizaid wanted more than anybody else?"

Brit trying to keep John Bolton employed in the Bush Administration after his nomination failed in the 109th senate:

"But there are other capacities, perhaps in the State Department, not requiring Senate confirmation. Perhaps here that you could have given him. Did you try to get him to do that?"

Brit tying 9/11 to Iraq:

"The 9/11 attacks have led to counter attacks by American armed forces in two countries, and those conflicts are still ongoing"

I'll stop here with a comment, it's hard to specifically quote Hume to show his bias. Most of his evident bias comes from the questions not said, and the items left out of his reporting. I suppose this is why he's been able to maintain some shred of apparent credibility in journalism circles. He mostly lies by omission. The newshound archives are good at noting all the pertinent facts in many stories that Hume leaves out, always facts that would support Democratic positions on issues and detract from Republican ones. On occasion, he conducts a "fair" interview, but never a tough one of a Republican, and never a softball one of a Democrat. Glenn's catch in this post is something of a Hume aberration, a slip up if you will.

Nonetheless, it's not a slip that should be considered unrepresentative of his body of work, but instead one that reveals it.

Here is a short story about Fox that I took off the web.

Condi loves FOX

By: John Amato @ 10:05 AM - PST

No, this isn't breaking news about her love life.

(Reuters) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice let slip her news media preferences Thursday, saying, "I love every single one" of Fox News network's correspondents and also favors CBS anchor Harry Smith.

In comments overheard on an open microphone between morning television interviews, including one with Fox, the top U.S. diplomat said: "My Fox guys, I love every single one of them."

Not that this should surprise anybody.

my comments,

The owner of Fox Rupert Murdock often slams the United States in the press when he is out of this country and it routinely goes unreported here by our press. Murdock is a big time globalist just as Fox is.

What's the characterization of Olbermann's Special Comment? KO's comments are very pointed and severe in their criticisim of bush. I agree with every one of Olbermann's criticisms for they are truth, but they have taken agressive verbage in the public domain to new heights. My guess is that smoldering extremists in US corporate media republican propaganda organizations such as hume have evaluated the reaction to Olbermann's caustic truth telling and decided they can ratchet-up their lying and smearing to new personal lows.

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