Fair and balanced

Despite what I said about not believing in objective reality, I really do hope that Fox "News" is driven out of business. Their utter disconnect with reality as I experience is infuriating. Also, I hate that they have convinced the rest of the MSM that balanced reporting should outweigh factual reporting. Just as separate is inherently unequal, balanced is inherently unfair.

The other day I watched a Fox "reporter" blow up at an Obama spokesperson because the latter accused Fox of being having an agenda. As evidence to the contrary, she said that they were the only objective "fair and balanced" news organization because they gave equal treatment to each candidate, while the other networks ran many more favorable stories for Obama than they ran of McCain. In real life, the Fox position is the biased one (and this is ignoring the obvious right wing bias of Fox in practice; I am now simply addressing their policy of balance as a principle). Imagine if the media had run equally positive and equally negative stories about Goldwater and Johnson, or Reagan and Mondale. In each case, one candidate and corresponding campaign was making many mistakes and generally failing to win over voters, while the other was incredibly effective. To give equally positive and negative coverage of both the campaigns would be absurd, and it would be incredibly unfair to the candidate that was running the better campaign. Really I think that the Obama spokesman was giving the most generous interpretation of Fox's programming by saying that they have an agenda. If they are trying to accurately provide information then they are more incompetent than Bush appointees, but if they have an agenda then they are incredibly competent.