"Pretending that Fox News is fair and balanced only serves the right wing, in the same way that it only served the Bush administration when traditional-media reporters pretended Bush didn’t have a credibility problem — and didn’t call him out for his lies — for fear of appearing partisan. It’s self-muzzling, plain and simple. One of the startling shifts in the last decade has been how so many of the most important policy issues of our time have become matters not of honest political debate, but of competing realities (only one of which, mind you, is supported by facts.) During the Bush years, whether it was related to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, progress in Iraq, torture, or tax cuts for the rich, Bush and his acolytes operated in their own fictional world — with the traditional media only rarely issuing a reality check."

Why Journalists Shouldn’t Be Defending Fox News (via azspot) (via erickd)

My dad brought this up at dinner the other night.  Though he and I agree on this (and Obama+Cabinet’s) opinion of Fox, what about freedom of the press?  I guess I understand that something like The Onion would have no place at a press conference but how is that decided?  Who’s “good” and who’s not.