What's Worse? Fox News' Bias or CNN's Irrelevance?

Posted by Howie Klein, Down With Tyranny! at 5:14 AM on November 17, 2007.

This post, written by Howie Klein, originally appeared on Down With Tyranny!

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Two days ago at a barbershop-- which has since changed its TV viewing policy-- I experienced the extreme right wing propaganda of Fox News for the first time. I couldn't believe what they get away with.

Last night I switched on CNN to watch the debate and although it wasn't pornographic the way Fox is, it wasn't exactly fit for a mass audience. I mean where do they find such low-grade anchors and questioners? It must be difficult. I was relieved when they decided to have audience members ask the questions. And then I turned off the TV when one of the first questions was directed towards Hillary-- who is running for president (of the United States). "Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?" This is CNN, which is desperately trying to catch up to Fox in the ratings by appealing to people as stupid as Fox's audience. Like I said, I turned off the TV and went back to writing about the Republican hypocrisy of Bob Allen, Mitch McConnell, David Dreier, Larry Craig and the regular closet queen crew. It was almost refreshing.

But then a strange thing happened this morning. Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked the idiotic question wrote about the whole episode on her My Space page-- and she was as aghast as the rest of us were. She wanted to ask a pre-approved question about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and CNN made her ask the idiotic diamonds or pearls question. Mark Ambinder at The Atlantic has the whole sad story. Thank God for Keith Olbermann!

UPDATE: AND AS LONG AS WE'RE TALKING ABOUT CNN AND BIAS...

Markos put it well last night when he wondered aloud why CNN has Clinton hack James Carville on spinning the debate at the after-show for Hillary and identified him as a journalist instead of a Clinton hack. Is that fair?

Tagged as: media, fox news, election08, cnn, blitzer

Howie Klein is the creator of the blog Down With Tyranny!