Fair and Balanced

During my vacation I had the opportunity to watch a lot of the Fox News Channel. We upgraded our cable back in January but haven't really had that much time to get into their programming. However, this past week I started watching some of their regular programs during the night and found it very entertaining. Fox & Friends, O'Reilly Factor, Hannity and Glen Beck speak to the issues that I feel are important. The fact that they have a conservative slant is that much better.

However, I would like to take issue with their slogan, Fair and Balanced. I would interpret that as meaning treating all sides of the issues fairly and reporting all perspectives in a balanced manner. My question is why do they feel it is necessary to be fair and balanced? Why pretend to be something you are not? Unless this is some kind of inside joke a blind dog could see that their programming is from a decidedly conservative perspective. The mainstream media doesn't even bother with balanced reporting so why should Fox give it lip service?

Friday night I was watching the Factor and Laura Ingram was the guest host. An aside, I think she is one of the smartest interviewers and commentators out there. Well, she had Sally Quinn of the Washington Post in a segment and was interviewing her about the Obama playbook on health care, nuclear treaties, the dissing of Israel, etc. Old Sally sounded like she was channeling Robert Gibbs instead of being a member of the Fourth Estate, the vaunted media. She defended him like he was signing her paycheck. Then Laura played a clip of Sarah Palin with one of her catchy little barbs at Obama. OMG did the claws come out! I'll swear that if they had been in the same room we would have had a cat fight for sure. Sally started down the mantra that all the liberals have against Palin and you could see the spittle coming from her lips. Laura straightened her out and just as Sally was revving up again Laura ended the segment with "we are all out of time".

As I said I am really enjoying their programming and want to see more of Sarah Palin on their channel. With Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh doing their daily bits and Sarah making her jabs I think Obama and his people will be thrown into seizures in the not too distant future.