You may have heard that Barack Obama shared some thoughts about Fox News Channel in a recent interview with Rolling Stone. When asked about the channel, Obama pointed out that media outlets with a political perspective have been relatively common throughout U.S. history, but that he believed Fox‘s perspective is “ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class.”
The New York Times‘ Jim Rutenberg had a piece (10/2/10) on Fox‘s political activism this year–particularly News Corp‘s million-dollar donations to the Republican Governors’ Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But Fox‘s response to Obama’s criticism of the network gets the last word in the piece–in the form of an anonymous source:
An executive at Fox News who agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity expressed “astonishment” over Mr. Obama’s focus on the network. “We are so in his head,” he said. “Can you believe with all the other things going on in this world he’s preoccupied with Fox News?”
The Times–mostly in the wake of the Iraq War/Judith Miller debacles–attempted to clamp down on the use of anonymous sources. But such sourcing patterns persist. Former Times public editor critiqued the paper on these failures a few times, in one case (3/21/09) pointing to specific rules that would seem to apply here:
The policy says anonymous sources should be used only as “a last resort when the story is of compelling public interest and the information is not available any other way.”
And:
The policy says the newspaper will not allow personal or partisan attacks from behind a mask of anonymity.
Rutenberg’s piece seems to fail on both those counts. You learn nothing of real value from the anonymous Fox source, and it would seem to constitute an attack of some sort, since the Fox executive is saying that Obama is “preoccupied” with Fox News instead of dealing with more important matters.
Why doesn’t FAIR write something on the hatchet job in The Nation. Everyone hates Lou Dobbs, yet nobody can defend the journalism in that article that came out today. Just awful — one of the worst examples of deceiving journalism we’ve seen in a while. Perhaps you’re not writing about it because the ‘journalist’ used to work for you?
How about the childish and immature idiot-locution “we are so in his head . . . . “? Glenn Greenwald has been reporting on the reckless use of anonymous sourcing for a while now–it’s getting worse, and the NYT is one the biggest violators, despite their bogus claims that they are “clamping down” on this anti-journalistic behavior.
P.S.: I subscribe to the Nation, John, and I’m guessing that your little rant is full of shit. I will be reading the article to which you are referring very soon, and if you’re just engaging in some right-wing, mis-informed or ignorant vaporing, I’m going to say something about it, something that may be unpleasant, and that will almost certainly involve you. “Everybody” hates Lou Dobbs? Really? I don’t hate him, though he is in fact a racist, bloviating, lying bonehead and asshole, and a rich one at that. Hmmm . . . did Mr. Dobbs perhaps get caught in a little bit of rank hypocrisy about something? I can’t wait to read up on it. What’s with the collective pronouns, dude? Who are all these folks (” . . . we’ve seen in a while,” “everyone,” “yet nobody can defend . . . “) that are on “your” side, and who, if anybody, or nobody, or somebody, is on “my” side, or Jim Naureckas’ side, or whatever? Time to start thinking first, and then writing.
The internet is so full of “anonymous” vitriol of the sore-loser Obama-haters that I’ve quit being amazed. But I’m still completely disgusted. // Jean Clelland-Morin
And the Confederate conservative echo chamber says that the NYTimes is “liberal”…LMAO…!