The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf responds to Jonathan Tobin's defense of Fox News, in which he wrote that the network is not uniquely biased or full of right-wing propaganda. Friedersdorf concedes that cable news overall leaves much to be desired, but when it comes to quality programming, "an hour of opinion broadcasting from the excellent Chris Hayes [from MSNBC] and an hour from Fox's Sean Hannity are not alike in value."
I am not sure why he persists in acting as though Fox critics savage the network merely because it is conservative. An exceptional network could air nothing but conservative commentary, if it was insightful and intellectually honest. The problem with Fox News is that its commentary is too often factually inaccurate and intellectually dishonest. There are notable exceptions: Just as there are a few people doing great work on MSNBC, Fox News has Erick Erickson's frequently smart commentary to make up for its months of inane Sarah Palin blathering, and Kirsten Powers to inject a semblance of fact-based sanity into Bill O'Reilly's cavalcade of gruff rants.
There are some other folks doing good work too, but they're overshadowed by inanity that overflows from the archives of The Daily Show, which has won multiple Emmys showing a generation that Fox News is rife with [bulls—t] and that trying to defend it by saying it's no worse than CNN and MSNBC is like defending Parliaments by saying they're no more unhealthy than Marlboros.
Read Conor Friedersdorf's entire piece at the Atlantic.
The Root aims to foster and advance conversations about issues relevant to the black Diaspora by presenting a variety of opinions from all perspectives, whether or not those opinions are shared by our editorial staff.