John McCain Is As Untouchable As... The Lowest Caste In India???

This time around, I made the effort.

During the last 6 weeks of the Presidential campaign (and the weeks since—I am a creature of habit, after all) I read CNN and FOX News back to back 3-4 times a day. I wanted to see the “liberal media” at work, or find out how “fair and balanced” FOX is. And while my findings are the subject of another day and another essay, suffice to say it wasn’t pretty. And to cap it off, the weekend after the election, Fox posted a trio of articles so egregiously bad that, as Brandon says, “I couldn’t pass this one up.”

Not that any 24-hour news organization is blemish-free or bias-free, but from a news station, you expect certain things. News, for one, but just saying what’s going on is not enough. The job of a journalist (let me grab my dictionary) is to gather and disseminate accurate information while striving for a non-biased viewpoint in a professional manner. Yet three times in about 18 hours (three times), FOX ran a story which was so exceptionally biased, false, or unprofessional that I had to mention them, which ties to my larger point about why, despite really trying, I just can’t respect what FOXnews does.

Strike one, the headline:

Obama: Presidential Dog Can't Be 'Mutt Like Me'

President-elect Barack Obama uses throwaway remark "mutt like me" in reference to what his family is not looking for in the First Dog.

My question: did anyone even read the transcript before making this headline?

The President-elect said:

“With respect to the dog, this is a major issue… we have two criteria that have to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypo-allergenic. There are a number of breeds that are hypo-allergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog. But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me… so, whether we're going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household.”

How in the hell does that translate into “presidential dog can’t be” or “what his family is not looking for”?

President-elect Obama and his family would prefer a shelter mutt, but they must choose carefully and possibly abandon that idea because of his daughter’s allergies. Read the quote, newsman— it’s right there! Whoever wrote this headline needs a swift kick in the ass, especially since every other news outlet that I could find got the story right.

Strike two, from about 4 hours later. The headline:

Iraq to US: Please Don’t Go

One would think from that headline (and a hefty percentage of people read only the headline) that the Iraqi government, or perhaps the people, are begging the US to stay.

Yet nowhere in the long ensuing article do any of those three words show up, together or separately. The quotes from Iraqi officials are butchered to hell, but still nowhere in them is there an even slightly pleading tone for the US to not leave. They do warn of a "period of a legal vacuum" if the US withdraws too early, but that’s it.

An excerpt:

[Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister] said the government was studying the latest amendments, and expressed hope the deal will be resolved "as soon as possible because time is running out." He added the pact is key to preserving "the security improvement which has been achieved" in recent months.

So how did this ‘journalist’ get from ‘hey guys let’s sit down and hammer out a deal that works for both of us’ to ‘OMG don’t leave, America!’? This headline was so offensive to me because it is antithetical to the entire purpose of a headline: it was not an attempt to encapsulate the idea of the article, or represent an accurate portrayal of those it semi-quotes— this headline was a deliberate attempt to make readers feel and believe something which is not really true. This is called manipulation and bias. Sorry, FOX, neither the Iraqi people nor the Iraqi government is begging us to stay, no matter how much you want that to be true and write headlines to make it seem true.

Strike three, about 12 hours later. The headline:

First Bush-Obama Meeting: Hard Feelings and Hand Sanitizer

As President and President-elect prepare for their post-election meeting at the White House on Monday, memories of their first encounter linger.

‘Linger’ for who? I am pretty positive the American people neither remember nor care. I am also pretty sure the President and President-elect have had enough going on in the past 4 years to not dwell on a 3 minute chat. What this looks like, to me, is a throwaway news item couched in salacious terminology to make it seem dramatic. Normally, I wouldn’t even bring it up, except… well, you read it. Cut and pasted from FOXnews.com:

The two men shook hands and then, according to Obama, Bush turned to an aide, "who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the president’s hand."

Bush then offered some to Obama, who recalled: "Not wanting to seem unhygienic, I took a squirt."

When I quoted from this passage to Bush during an Oval Office interview, the president seemed irritated to learn he had been taken to task by the senator he once counseled.

“I thought I was actually showing some kindness,” Bush said indignantly. “And out of that he came with this belief?”

The president added with a bit of a scowl: “He doesn’t know me very well.”

Yeah, I don’t know what happened with the formatting either. Fucked up apostrophes, randomly spaced lines, shrinking font—don’t these things get proofread before they get posted and then again after? Brandon and I combined have run at least 6 third-rate blogs, and we still have the self-respect to make sure things that we post look okay—it reflects poorly on us if we do not, and let’s just say I won’t be checking with Fox in the near future if I have a question about proper AP style.

Now, of course, FOXnews isn’t the only news source capable of bad reporting, bias, and typos-- it’s kind of a standard fact of modern, web-based media, and I have taken CNN to task several times for similar things. In fact, I slammed CNN hard during the primaries for some awful, offensive, race-baiting stories. However, CBS, ABC, and CNN at least keep their snafus to a minimum, and keep a modicum of impartiality when it comes to political reporting. Yes, CNN backed Obama, and you could tell. But they spent a decent amount of time covering the positives of John McCain. FOX backed McCain, and, with only one notable exception, didn’t even pretend to treat Barack Obama with any measure of respect.

Example: find me one reputable news site that would ever feature the headline: “Obama Is As Untouchable As A Really Hot Chick”, which FOX did about 2 weeks before the election, wherein the author compared Obama to a good buddy’s new stripper girlfriend with fake tits (no, I am not making this up—I have the link if you want to read it) who is so hot that he ignores her dubious, two-timing ways and won’t figure it out until he is left in ruin. I still do a mental double-take every time I think about that. Not only is that offensive on several levels, but it’s a mockery of the entire purpose of reporting the news.

One last point, and for me it’s the biggest point: I cannot respect FOX News because they put words on top of pictures. Simple as that. No reputable news source does that. None. Not CNN, not ABC, not CBS, not the AP. You know who puts words on top of pictures? Tabloids put words on top of pictures. Shitty, partisan, rag magazines designed to manipulate emotion and spark controversy put words on top of pictures. No one else does this, but apparently the editors at FOX think this is a “fair and balanced” graphic.

Pictures and how they are used in online media is something I am thinking and writing a lot about, and I have a nifty folder full of pictures pulled from various websites, but the only people who would post a picture like this and call it ‘news’ is Fox.