Fox Out of the Henhouse

A short post today from The Common Man, who is under the gun to produce a massive amount of work in a short amount of time (largely because he forgot he had a movie he had to watch by this evening):

The Onion's A.V. Club provides a daily ranking of the most popular online videos on the net. Sometimes these are amusing. Sometimes they suck (never underestimate the stupidity of 13 year olds with DSL). And sometimes they are just interesting. For instance, take this video about Fox's coverage of Barak Obama. Fox has worked itself into a frenzy as it has picked apart Obama's parentage (mixed-race, his dad was Muslim), his middle name (Hussein), his schooling (four years at a Indonesian day school that has been gleefully misrepresented as a madrasa), and his apparent smoking habit. Meanwhile, I don't think they've talked much about whether they can vote for a man who admits to cheating on his wife and who publicly ridiculed a man with Parkinson's Disease (though, in all honesty, he couldn't have known that the man had Parkinson's unless he let him actuall get a sentence out) on live radio (Giuliani). Anyway, as a result of Fox's irresponsible and malicious "journalism", the Obama campaign has "frozen out Fox News", refusing to grant access and interviews.

All of this has gotten The Common Man thinking about why Fox spends so much time on its attack journalism, and why they focus on who they focus on (I never hear a bad word from them about Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich (who Sean Hannity describes as "a nice guy."), or Tom Vilsack. However, Hilary and Obama get raked over the coals on a regular basis (to the point where, three times an hour, Hannity bills his radio program as the "Stop Hillary Express"). And I've decided that it comes down to this issue of access.

Over the past 6 years, Fox has gotten access to the President and his administration that no other network has gotten. Interviews, behind-the-scenes pieces, etc. This has helped allow Fox to become a leader in cable news, despite its snearing, pandering, and sycophantic approach to the news. Fox has created a niche for itself, and it is a profitable one. It is likely that, with another Republican win in 2008, this unfettered access and preferential treatment will continue. Without it, the station could be in danger of being (at least partially) frozen out. Indeed, even if a Democratic President refused to play favorites, Fox's lucrative access would slip.

As such, The Common Man expects Fox to go out of its way between now and November of '08 to tarnish the reps of both Hillary and Obama (as if you couldn't figure that out), who they think are the only Dems who have a chance to unseat a Republican nominee. And it will not so much about political ideology as it will be about economics and maintaining a tenuous position in a competitive market. After all, exclusive interviews with former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert just don't have the same marketability as hour-long exclusive interviews of Chris Wallace blowing Vice-President Cheney.

3 notes on this entry:
1) The Common Man is not, in any way, endorsing either Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton.
2) This does not mean, however, that CNN and CNBC do not do their share of crappy journalism. Thank God for NPR.
3) The Obama video does suffer from selective editing. Fox obviously had some of these talking heads on with someone "defending" Obama, and those parts have been conveniently removed to tell a better story. That said, c'mon, is Obama's middle name and smoking habit really news? Has he ever sued a tobacco company? No? OK, shut up then.