He is the embodiment of the “christian” right.

See, the left has some extreme nutjobs too (Ward Churchill, eg), but WE ACTUALLY DISTANCE OURSELVES FROM THEM!

On the right, the more bigoted and just plain wrong you are, the BETTER your odds of getting on Fox.

That’s what the “fair and balanced” network thrives on! How else to explain Malkin-lang-a-lang-a-ding-dong, O’Reilly, etc. How else to explain Limbaugh? He doesn’t even believe half the shit he says, he just needs to fill 4 hours somehow. So he spews hateful and ignorant lies, and the dittoheads he plays to just nod.

I tell you, PT Barnum was right.

Then why do you watch ‘Fair and Balanced’ Fox News?

When Fox is brave enough to do away with the winks and the nudges and quell the open secret about it’s political leanings I’ll have more respect for it.

Here’s some notes about the Rev. (What exactly he reveres is a whole different conversation)

http://www.politicalstrategy.org/ammo/ammorobertson_pat.htm

Sometimes they just make the reporter go stand on the roof of the studio so we can see the Seattle skyline in the background, since that just screams RELEVENCE and CARING.

The CBS affiliate tried “News Out Of The Box” a few years ago. Basically the talking heads just milled around the studio like lost refugees as they delivered the headlines. It was the dumbest thing I have ever seen. The only thing I remember from that experiment is that one the “trusted anchors” had been sitting on a stack of phone books behind the desk. When he was forced to stand up on camera, he was about 5 foot 3.

Big difference between Fox and Fox News. But I totally agree with you on Murdoch.

MSNBC has brought in the names mentioned by Eric because they were/are getting it totally handed to them in the ratings.

There is no hypocrisy here. Murdoch is a capitalist and if the news business were dominated by conservatives, he’d have started a left wing news channel.

Huh? Not in a million years.

Liberal ideaologies such as tenure, affirmative action, and making it difficult for employers to get rid of sub par employees are NOT known to lead to the best service and products at the cheapest prices!

By what measure is MSNBC liberal?

They promoted Bush in 2000 through Chris Matthews’ “Hardball” which constantly distorted Al Gore.

They promoted the Iraq War with “Countdown Iraq.”

Hosts include Rita Cosby, Joe Scarborough, and Tucker Carlson.

I will, however, give Rupert Murdoch his due. He took up the mantle of media “it” guy when Ted Turner sold out to Time Warner and he will continue to dominate the field until he dies. While I certainly don’t think his control of world-wide media is necessarily a positive thing, the way in which he has run his various properties should be an example for future media moguls.

Remember – the NYT and Judy Miller advanced ALL of the WH’s pre-war nonsense.

Read how the “liberal” media fell all over themselves convincing us that Colin Powell mobile weapons labs BS in front of the UN was strong, powerful, slam-dunk, etc.

Your “liberal” media was all over the Clenis and his fat intern, but have given your boy George a free pass until recently, when they realized that he wasn’t a “popular president” after all.

The NYT even gave INTELLIGENT DESIGN a free pass today, in the name of equal time, I guess. Any article about ID should clearly state that it is the antithesis of intelligence and knowledge. Impartiality doesn’t mean you can’t call bullshit on the latest religous propaganda.

But the real argument here isn’t editorial content. I could care less what the pundits say. If you want to believe the BS that comes out of the mouths of Hannity, O’Reilly, etc., that’s fine. That’s your stupidity. But when it’s ALL punditry, and no news, that’s a problem. And that’s what Fox is.

Then there’s DirecTV–& for that alone, he should be worshipped. He single-handedly has managed to shake some sense into the cable behemoths who have long saddled us consumers with ridiculous prices & crappy, arrogant service. As a former Comcast-sufferer, I can attest to how scared he has them. Boy, in my community (where DirecTV dishes are sprouting like mushrooms), they’ve all of a sudden become very concerned about customer service. Not that I’ll ever go back to them, but services like Comcast On Demand have resulted directly as a way to combat DirecTV. (And, liberals, since I live in a heavily minority community–may I point out that DirecTV is much fairer in its pricing than Comcast & other cable giants. My community, just outside DC, has one of the crappiest cable systems I have ever encountered in over 30 years of using cable. Comcast has the community hostage, since it’s the only cable provider. DirecTV is far cheaper, with way more channels, & much better customer service. Boy–you’d almost think Murdoch was a liberal!)

Then, he puts a news network on the air, & in a relatively short time has managed to scare the bejesus out of the other mainstream, liberal, news organizations, & the politicians that love them. When the NY Times spends a significant amount of ink last week running an article trying to prove how unimportant you are, you know a network has arrived. Funny–Ted Turner used to be considered the media mogul who had “It.” He was forward-thinking & daring. Now, he & his then ground-breaking network are just tired, boring, predictable, & rapidly losing ratings. Yet Murdoch is the old fart–significantly older than Turner, but constantly coming up with new media innovations.

Murdoch also “gets” the Internet–again, putting him far ahead of other media organizations still trying to convince themselves that people in their pajamas should be poo-poohed. His speech a few months ago should serve as another wake-up call to those media organizations. It will be very interesting to see where he goes over the next few years in merging his various tv & print outlets with the Internet. The New York Times (& people like Angelos) can continue to splutter about “right-wing bias” & how “unimportant” Fox is. Fox will continue to eat them for lunch.

Angelos, you’ve got NPR, CNN, MSNBC, the alphabets, the NYT’s…….can’t you allow in your heart just one network for us conservatives?

Please. Have a heart.

It’s also amusing to tally up the amount of time on actual news, promos, and the worthless swooshing animations. News is way down, animations and bumpers are way up. It’s almost like buying a videogame with all cutscenes and very little actual play.

If Ailes wants to make all of Fox’s O&Os have the same McNews format, it won’t help bring more eyeballs to advertisers. Local markets have local flavor.

Paul makes a good point. There is nothing more boring, redundant and pathetic than the locals re-capping the national news. Why bother? You can flip to FOX or CNN for it 24/7.