Johnny, This One’s For You!
I don’t usually do requests. Well, it wasn’t so much a request as an accusation. To wit, the charge is I’ve been tap dancing around covering Brit Hume’s all-star panel when liberal Mara Liasson sits in the chair. So on the day following said ‘request’ I’ve chosen to spotlight the same. Is my job easy or what?
The central issue is how balanced is the panel with Mara on it? The short answer is not very. But the good news is it’s marginally less biased than when conservative Charles Krauthammer takes her spot.
One thing that’s not obvious from my clip is how the conservatives on the panel, Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes, dominate the conversation. That’s because I’ve tried to include everything Mara said while trimming the rest to fit YouTube’s 10-minute limit.
Most striking is the fact liberal Mara’s the only panelist exhibiting much balance. She yields points to both sides, Republican and Democratic. No such consideration really comes from the conservative partisan pair of Fred and Mort. The only difference separating the two is Mort is more the grudging realist while Fred is reluctant to yield an inch.
“The agenda the Republic is going to focus on – the Republicans are going focus on – is one centered on national security. Not that national security isn’t important but it’s also useful to them politically to have it focused on an issue where they’re seen as strong – or they believe they’re being seen as strong. Democrats? Well you get the idea.” – Brit Hume 9-5-2006
Shifting gears from glaring bias to the subtle, conservative host Brit Hume nudges the spin to the right. He opens the segments before and after the break with clips strengthening the Republicans’ hands. The first features a resolute President Bush and the second a non-partisan Senator Frist calling for cooperation followed by an uncomplimentary one of Senator Reid acting petty. Brit gets a chuckle out of the latter. Another thing to note during the intros is how he describes the Republicans’ positions while quickly passing over the Democrat’s case. One minor point of amusement comes when Brit can’t resist his conservative urges to mock the Europeans with an “oh dear” when Mort points out President Bush avoided using the term “Islamofascist” in his speech.
For fun, keep a mental tally of how many times nice and not so nice things are said about the Democrats and the Republicans. It’ll be lopsided. Then recall I’ve cut out some of the conservative stuff.
That’s fairness and balance Fox News style: 3 on 1.
Since this clip is a montage, as I’ve said in the past, it leaves me open to charges of cherry picking convenient snips. So I’m sure my critics will be up until the wee hours trying to sniff out some data-mining on my part. All I can say is “good luck”.
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I’m convinced that Brit Hume’s panel is one of the systematic biases at Fox, also being the Beltway boys.
Kondracke: Conservative-moderate
Fred Barnes: Conservative-strong
Brit Hume: Conservative-strong
Mara: Moderate
And of course, when she’s replaced with Krauthammer, it’s just a right-wing circlejerk.
Fox puts one slightly moderate person up there against 2 other conservatives and they call it balanced. That’s their idea of balanced.
THANK YOU.
njguy93@yahoo.com