Fox News: Objective As... Air America?

[EmptyTimCup]

Fox News: Objective As... Air America?

Cenk Uygur of the leftist "Young Turks" radio show wrote up a funny list of "three categories of media" for the Daily Kos, putting Fox News in the category "partisan press" with Mother Jones and National Review magazines, but putting ABC, CNN, the New York Times, and the MSNBC "News Programs" on a list called "Straight News."

He also suggested they're about as much a news organization as...Air America radio.

<snip>

Uygur went so far as to insist Fox News was more akin to Air America than CNN, and that they were responsible for the "unpardonable error" of not calling the election for Al Gore in 2000:

The problem is when partisan press gets confused for straight, unbiased news. The perfect example of this is when Fox News called the 2000 election for George W. Bush first - and every other news network followed like sheep. The person in charge of calling the 2000 election at Fox News was the cousin of George W. Bush. That is not some hyperbole. It was literally Bush's cousin.

Would the other networks have panicked and called the election for Gore because Air America said he won? Would they have followed the lead of The Young Turks in calling the election for Gore if we had hired Gore's uncle to tabulate the votes for us? It's ridiculous and unthinkable, right (especially so, since Air America and The Young Turks weren't around yet at the time of that election; but you get my point -- there's no way they would consider that legitimate, but yet they considered Fox's call perfectly legitimate)?

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.