I really haven’t been following the whole thing on L.A. Times editor John Carroll attacking Bill O’ Reilly and Fox News as “psuedojournalism”, except what Hugh Hewitt has said at his site. But there is a great piece at OpinionJounal.com about it. Roger Ailes, the chairman and CEO of Fox News, has fired back, correcting John Carroll’s hack statements. Check this out:
Mr. Carroll essentially announced that the reason Fox News Channel is the No. 1 cable news network and is gaining viewers is because the American people are stupid and gullible. In addition, he deliberately confused our highly rated news analysis and opinion shows like Bill O'Reilly with our hard news coverage. Mr. Carroll cites not a single example of what he calls "pseudojournalism" from our actual news coverage. He cites only Bill O'Reilly's opinions and an old push poll that purports to show that more Fox News viewers believed things that were not true about Iraq and the War on Terror than did viewers of other outlets. But he cites no instance of our having reported any of these things.
The American people watch Fox News because we are “stupid and gullible”. I don’t believe myself to be stupid or gullible, therefore I watch Fox News. Not only do I get the straight story, I can get opinion and analysis from people like Bill O’ Reilly. With NBC, CBS, and ABC the new is all opinion, mingled with facts. Mr. Ailes goes on refuting Carroll:
What the audience at the University of Oregon was not informed about are the many firsts and exclusives that Fox News has reported. Fox News is the network that broke George W. Bush's DUI four days before the election. Greg Kelly rolled into Baghdad ahead of any other reporter, on the back of a M-113 armored personnel carrier--video of which was requested by news organizations world-wide. Steve Harrigan ventured into danger zones from Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia and the Congo, to report on a genocidal war largely ignored by other media. Jim Angle scooped the rest of Washington on what Richard Clarke had said about the administration while he was there, as opposed to what he wrote later in his book. Fox called every Democratic primary race in 2004 first and accurately, and was praised by the Congressional Black Caucus for partnering with them on producing two Democratic primary debates. We have been the only network seriously reporting on the Oil-for-Food program, where a corrupt U.N. appears to have paid for anti-Americanism all over the world.
Breaking George W. Bush’s DUI story and producing Democratic primary debates. Seems pretty fair and balanced to me.
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