Those bastions of objectivity over at Rolling Stone magazine have taken a break from publishing off the record comments and covering the exploits of Lady GaGa to defend America against non-liberal news bias. Their target, of course, is Roger Ailes, President of the Fox News Channel.
As Brent Bozell at NewsBusters points out, the alleged journalist used anonymous sources to make the obvious connection that being celebrated for success at a party is almost indistinguishable from a communist dictator with 70 million deaths on his record.
via NewsBusters:
After painting a picture of employees loyally cheering the boss at a holiday party, Dickinson entertained comparisons to…Mao Zedong.
“It was as though we were looking at Mao,” said disgruntled ex-employee Charlie Reina. “It’s like the Soviet Union or China: People are always looking over their shoulders,” added “a former executive” with News Corporation. Dickinson also said Ailes runs “the most formidable propaganda machine ever seen outside the communist bloc.”
Put aside that Ailes isn’t responsible for 70 million deaths and mass cannibalism, and that his politics are essentially the philosophical opposite of communism – and OK, he’s Mao.
The anonymous sources and story of the party that celebrated the Fox News executive mass murderer were from 2002, and, other than the fact that it’s extremely old, it’s hard to determine why this would suddenly be brought up now.
That is until you take a look at New York magazine, which is coincidentally attacking the same target. Deciding to move away from the strikingly obvious comparison with a psychotic tyrannical killer, they instead chose to strike fear in their readers with a far more damning description: The head of the Republican Party!
via Bozell:
The cover read “Fox News made a circus out of the Republican Party. And boy, does Roger Ailes regret it now.”
Reporter Gabriel Sherman blamed Fox for ruining the GOP primary field. “So it must have been disturbing to Ailes when the wheels started to come off Fox’s presidential-circus caravan. All he had to do was watch Fox’s May 5 debate in South Carolina to see what a mess the field was – a mess partly created by the loudmouths he’d given airtime to and a tea party he’d nurtured.”
So, from New York Magazine’s perspective, the tea party being nurtured is political suicide. Clearly it is. No one is disputing that. Certainly not November of 2010. Additionally, the GOP primary field has been “ruined” by the contributors that Fox hired, because after all, no one wants to talk about loudmouth idiots like Sarah Palin.
Though it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with the press narratives, I’m going to give it a shot based on these two articles and my own understanding of the mainstream media:
“Barack Obama was elected president in spite of the 50% of the country that is clearly racist and hates poor people. This segment of the population is under the control of the two most powerful men in America: Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh (Which we’ve never seen in the same room at the same time mind you) who send marching orders out through Fox News. Fox has employed a ragtag group of presidential hopefuls as news contributors which is at the same time hilariously pitiful because they are all so sucky and can’t win but also incredibly dangerous and deceitful because these are the most powerful people in the country and they own oil and break levees for fun and um… eat children. But mind you, the media isn’t against Republicans per se. They are only against every single person that is a member of the party because they are all racists or victims depending on which story is being told.”
As far as I can tell, this is how Rolling Stone & New York Magazines view the world. Bias is not running negative stories about large groups of protestors who oppose a democrat president who happens to be black. Bias is being happy that your news station is doing well. Bias is employing leading voices on the right to provide analysis from the right. Bias is asking difficult questions of the current administration. Bias is the absence of a leftist perspective or the inclusion of a conservative one.
Objectivity is achieved only through destroying your competitor by demonizing him.
In summary, FAUX NEWS!!!
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