Halleluiah!!

Anyone who follows news coverage from an objective perspective has to be grateful for Fox News, as unattractive an object of admiration as it is. The mainstream media partisan and political bias is palpable, and materially damaging to democracy, so Fox’s looking glass perspective does a great deal to relieve the imbalance by reporting legitimate stories that the other networks unconscionably bury. To CNN, a missing Malaysian airplane justifies scanty coverage of dangerous U.S. foreign policy fiascos, growing evidence of criminal political activity by the IRS, and California state senators under indictment. To CBS, a smoking gun memo showing the White House deliberately misleading the public and the press in the wake of the Benghazi violence isn’t worthy of reporting. Fox remedies these and more, every day. For the remedy to be effective, credible and respectable, however, the network has to avoid justifying its ideological critics’ attacks by behaving like a clown act. That shouldn’t be so hard, really. It only requires hewing to professional journalism standards. For Fox News, however, this is often hard, and sometimes, like this morning, too hard.

Fox and Friends decided to report a minor news event in Saugus, Massachusetts as a miracle. I’m sure this pleased Fox’s demographic of god-fearing Christians, but it is juvenile, unprofessional, silly and incompetent journalism, and proselytizing to boot.  After this, there is no reason not to expect that the next time Jesus’s face is said to appear on a tortilla, Fox will break into its programming with a BREAKING NEWS!! alert. This is supposed to be a morning news show, not the “Hour of Power” or the “700 Club.” Continue reading →