Last weekend Rush Limbaugh stopped by the "Fox News Sunday" show hosted by Chris Wallace. FNS is a Fox News Channel “Opinion” show (their words, not mine) as defined by Fox senior vice president for news, Michael Clemente’s announcement of the distinction between “news” and “opinion” programming on the Fox News Channel.
In case you are interested, Clemente said actual objective “news” reporting was limited to the hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays only. That’s about 27% of FNC’s total programming schedule – not much news for a channel with the word “news” in its title, one would think. I’m not sure MSNBC does very much better, but, then again, they don’t put ‘news’ in their title either.
Anyway, Rush was the main guest on the show and sat for a ‘wide ranging’ interview. Topics ranged widely from criticism of Obama as president all the way to criticism of Obama as a person. For 30 minutes Limbaugh excitedly expressed his negative “opinions” of the President, encouraged by the similarly minded Chris Wallace, including his “opinion” that President Obama used his Dover Air Force Base visit purely for political gain and that Obama didn’t actually care for our brave men and women of the Armed Forces. Nothing really wrong there – the show is admittedly “opinion” programming and not objective “news” reporting. But what happened later was more than a little deceptive.
First, the blogosphere (both conservative and liberal) took notice of the interview and began to reprint the “opinions” expressed by Limbaugh. Soon other outlets picked up the story as well, including TPM, Drudge, HuffPo and Politico. There is nothing wrong with this either. Many of the sites I mentioned operate primarily as news aggregation websites, re-titling items generated elsewhere to suit their readers, and they make no claims of being “Fair and Balanced” like Fox does. Suddenly, though, it seemed that Limbaugh’s “opinion” was becoming “news.”
About 3 hours after the interview, a “news” item appeared on the Fox News website among the top stories of the day referencing Limbaugh’s interview. The item was not “below the fold” – as Clemente likes to refer to Fox’s “opinion” programming, alongside their other “opinion” pieces, but right at the top alongside Fox’s “objective news”.
Before long this “news” item became THE top story of the day on Foxnews.com, replete with a photo of an incredulous looking Rush set within a photo of Obama saluting a returning dead soldier’s flag-draped coffin, with the blaring headline “Limbaugh Blasts Obama ‘PHOTO OP?’”
Limbaugh’s (and Fox’s) “opinions” of President Obama were thus re-branded and presented as “news.” But is it really “news” that Limbaugh thinks Obama is a ‘Narcissist’ or that he thinks Obama is out to ‘destroy the private sector’? By the way; what was the reason for the question mark if not to forward the “opinion” that the photo-op was disingenuous.
And so, there it is. Fox’s journalistic version of money laundering. Repackage “opinions” as genuine “news” and pass them off to the unsuspecting public.
Fox and conservatives argue that Rush’s statements in and of themselves are newsworthy and would therefore qualify as bonafide “news,” but the point of the item wasn’t to report on Rush’s comments, it was clearly to legitimize those “opinions.”
Clemente and the rest of the Fox brass can try all they want to compartmentalize their “opinion” programming, but when they blatantly present “opinions” as “objective” journalism they aren’t fooling anyone.
MS11.16.09
UPDATE: For a appropriate example of this type of behavior in action, check out today’s Foxnews page, and it’s coverage of Bow-gate 2. Brought up by fringe Neo-cons on Sunday, suddenly it is “news” that the President respected Japanese culture by bowing to the Emperor. See: Bad Form, or 'When in Rome...'?
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