Comments on: Fox News Employee In Trouble For Publicly Expressing Network’s Pro-McCain Stance

By: daniel rotter

daniel rotter — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:17:41 +0000

Thank you, Sean. It’s just that these mistakes shatter the illusion that I’m perfect (just kidding).

By: Sean D. Martin

Sean D. Martin — Sun, 11 May 2008 16:04:51 +0000

Note to daniel rotter: We all make typos and small grammatical slips. Nobody worries about it. You needn’t either.

By: daniel rotter

daniel rotter — Sun, 11 May 2008 02:09:30 +0000

Correction: “going to voting for Democrats” should have been “going to be voting for Democrats” (note to self: proofread your posts before you hit the “submit” button).

By: daniel rotter

daniel rotter — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:21:21 +0000

“Daniel, Savage is a ‘period.’ A nasty, smelly, bloody mess that shouldn’t be discussed in polite society”.

Comedic answer: But how do you really feel, sir? Non-comedic answer: Amen, brother. Amen.

“So are Democrats the only acceptable party for a Fox News PA to admit they voted for?”

Are you implying that Fox would not have fired this lady if she publicly said that she voted for Obama or Clinton? You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re question is basically moot, anyway, since most people associated with Fox News aren’t going to voting for Democrats.

By: Sean D. Martin

Sean D. Martin — Sat, 10 May 2008 17:24:48 +0000

So are Democrats the only acceptable party for a Fox News PA to admit they voted for?

Exactly. The story (if there is one here, which I don’t think there should be) isn’t that some extremely minor minor peon expressed an opinion.

The story (if there is one, and there really isn’t but don’t let that stop folks on both sides of from trumpeting their hypocrisy and making a big deal out of every trivial word spoken even thought that is drastically unfair when coming from the other side) is that Fox, defender of freedom and what America stands for, fired someone for doing so.

By: jojo

jojo — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:13:46 +0000

So are Democrats the only acceptable party for a Fox News PA to admit they voted for?

By: Randy Brown

Randy Brown — Sat, 10 May 2008 13:51:50 +0000

Daniel, Savage IS a “period”. A nasty, smelly, bloody mess that shouldn’t be discussed in polite society.

By: daniel rotter

daniel rotter — Sat, 10 May 2008 09:30:51 +0000

There should have been a period after “Savage”.

By: daniel rotter

daniel rotter — Sat, 10 May 2008 09:29:19 +0000

“giving a conservative wackjob a show…”

Rheinhard, MSNBC already did that with Michael Savage

By: Micheline

Micheline — Sat, 10 May 2008 04:12:20 +0000

I also love John McCain’s answer which indicates that he is well aware of Fox and the rest of the media is going to be the propaganda arm of his campaign.

By: TX Liberal

TX Liberal — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:46:49 +0000

I just wonder if Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Brent Hume, or even Geraldo Rivera had said the same thing they would be fired. Somehow I think not. Talk about knee jerk reactions!

By: Quaker in a Basement

Quaker in a Basement — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:50:08 +0000

On the one hand, we’re talking a 24 year old assistant, not Roger Ailes (the bad), or Bill O’Reilly (the worse). So I don’t know how far this can realistically be flogged as an indicator of a systemic bias at the network.

I think the young assistant made the critical mistake of openly reflecting the corporate culture of the newsroom where she works. Fox likes to pretend to have journalistic ethics. I think the talk on the inside is too similar to what the assistant said in public.

By: Sean D. Martin

Sean D. Martin — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:45:55 +0000

Thinking about this a bit more, I don’t really see how this young woman’s comments does anything to reveal Fox’s bias. A very minor cog in a large company expresses a personal opinion. If some secretary at Exxon said gas prices were too high should that be taken as being some great reveal about official company policy?

Far more revealing is the fact the Fox then fired her, after several years of service. The proper response from Fox should have been “We’re a large company and our employees hold a large variety of opinions. Nothing further to say.” Better still, just make no comment at all.

This is another non-issue being writ large because people want to jump an every little word uttered rather than discuss anything actually, y’know, relevant.

By: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle

Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:42:22 +0000

SpiderJ:
You realize what they were doing, right? Obviously mostly brain dead people work at Faux Noise(which includes Olvier’s girl Kirsten Powers). The problem is sorting out the brain dead people who open their mouth too much from the ones that knew when to keep their trap shut.

By: SpiderJ

SpiderJ — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:27:01 +0000

Fox et all just seem truly deluded. They actually believe they are fair and balanced.

Moreso, they believe that enough people still buy into the idea that they are fair and balanced, to the point that they’ll fire this girl to protect their tarnished brand image.

By: Sean D. Martin

Sean D. Martin — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:16:51 +0000

And the really, well, I can’t decide if the right word is “sad” or “scary”, but the really something part of that, Rheinhard, is that Ailes, O’Reilly or any of the senior folks at Fox have no concept at all of their hypocrisy.

At least Limbaugh has referred to himself as an entertainer and publicly acknowledge that his job is to “grab as many listeners as I can hand hold them for as long as possible”. He’s a liar and destructive of the common good, but he knows it.

Fox et all just seem truly deluded. They actually believe they are fair and balanced.

By: Rheinhard

Rheinhard — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:38:04 +0000

On the other hand, I have no doubt at all that if the same thing happened with an MSNBC staffer praising Obama, the wingnut blogs would be outraged and O’Reilly would dedicate a week of solid coverage including sending his homunculus Jesse Waters to harass any MSNBC executives to demand they repudiate their network bias and commit to giving a conservative wackjob a show instead of Keith Olbermann.