Media Critics: MSNBC Is Not a Left-Wing Fox News

[babylonsister]

Media Critics: MSNBC Is Not a Left-Wing Fox News

November 30, 2010 10:18 am ET by Joe Strupp


snip//

"Intellectually, are they more honest than Fox, I think they are," Eric Deggans, media critic for the St. Petersburg Times, said of MSNBC. "I saw that Fox was more consistent in reflecting a right wing tilt than MSNBC was in reflecting a liberal tilt. I think Fox is much more evolved in what it does than MSNBC does, in reflecting a political bent, it being right-wing."

Deggans added: "Fox seems to violate tenants of fairness more often. I have written a thousand columns criticizing Fox News, I have criticized MSNBC when I think they make mistakes or go too far. I have criticized Fox more often. I have a problem with how Fox's ideology seeps into the way they report the news, in a framework that is already tilted toward the right. That makes the product unfair."

Alex S. Jones, executive director of the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, agreed.

"There is no question that the affinity between Fox and the Republican Party goes all the way to Rupert Murdoch, which in my view is not a good thing," Jones said. "One is sort of unrelentingly partisan and the other is more of an equal-opportunity basher. They are not equivalent, they are both advocacy, but not equivalent."

Jones also pointed to the recent suspensions of Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough for donating to political candidates, noting that Fox has a far worse record of such conflicts and no punishments.

"I think that MSNBC is right and Fox is wrong about allowing people to make campaign contributions -- that is just a bad idea," Jones said. "In my experience, the people who are the sort of signature voices of MSNBC, Maddow and Olbermann, tend to be more broadly critical and include Democrats in their criticism. They don't seem to be averse to criticize their own. That is not true with the voices of Fox News. Never a discouraging word is heard."

more...

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201011300010

[JitterbugPerfume]

1. K&R

[myrna minx]

2. K&R n/t

[Kolesar]

3. I recall visiting relatives and getting glued to the St. Petersburg Times

The paper had such good writing.
K&R

[niyad]

4. k and r--too bad, however, that deggans does not know the difference between tenets and tenants, nor

apparently, does the proofreader (do papers still have such positions??)

[madamesilverspurs]

5. If it's like our newspaper

the proofreader has a second job as a sign-painter for teabaggers. It's all too common that the wrong homophone is used (war/wore, are/our). Infractions ("the numbers have went up") are frequent, and there/they're/their is the constant confusion about the days of you're/your/yore.

[flpoljunkie]

6. Comparing MSNBC to Fox News is a blatant false equivalency, yet facts often don't matter.