8 Reasons Fox Is Not a News Organization

By Adele Stan, AlterNet. Posted October 24, 2009.

After all, defeating government regulation of any kind could assure billions for Murdoch the investor, while advertising profits for a show with 3 million viewers would at most bring in millions. It's all about the zeros -- how many.

2. Fox's alliance with the corporate-funded astroturf group Americans for Prosperity -- We've scratched our heads trying to come up with an analogous relationship between a cable news channel and a corporate-funded group that organizes fearful people to disrupt public meetings, but we came up empty.

Americans For Prosperity, a group that received funding from Koch Industries, an oil-and-energy company and major polluter, also organized this summer's town hall disrupters. Although they kicked off their rabble-rousing campaign by galvanizing opposition to health care reform, their real target appears to be energy reform, especially the cap-and-trade provision that will make dirty industries pay a pretty penny to pollute.

At an AFP conference in Pittsburgh in August, we noticed that the roster of speakers was heavily populated by News Corp. personalities, including Fox News contributors Malkin and Jim Pinkerton, and Wall Street Journal columnists John Fund and Stephen Moore. (News Corp. also owns WSJ.) AFP Policy Director Phil Kerpen, who also addressed the crowd, has a column at FoxNews.com, and he was quick to use it to take credit for the resignation of White House adviser Van Jones, against whom he helped orchestrate a smear campaign in collusion with other Fox personalities, including Beck.

When, at the August RightOnline conference, AlterNet asked AFP President Tim Phillips whether his organization had a partnership with Murdoch, he looked stunned:

 "We have someone from Fox News?" he asked.

 "Well, Fox News Channel contributors," I replied.

 "OK. So, they're not on the payroll of Fox News. Do any of those guys get money from Fox News?"

 He's asking me? "I don't know if they're paid by Fox," I said, "but I assume that they are. Do you have a partnership with Rupert Murdoch?"

 "Not at all, not at all," he replied with a little laugh. "The fact is, the Wall Street Journal's my favorite newspaper; I love those guys. I like what they write. ... But there's no partnership -- financially, understood or anything else."

 I checked with the Fox News Washington bureau, and indeed Malkin and Pinkerton are paid by Fox, and are branded by the News Channel, listed on the "talent" page of its Web site. Fund and Moore are full-time employees of the Wall Street Journal, and AFP's Kerpen has a weekly platform on Fox's well-traveled Web site.

In fact, Murdoch's minions accounted for more than one-third of the roster of speakers at the conference plenary session.

Now, the News Channel's sibling station, Fox Business News channel is, fittingly, getting in on the act. The ink barely dry on his new contract with Fox, John Stossel is hitting the road with AFP's Phillips to argue against "government-forced health care" at AFP rallies, the Raw Story reports.

Stossel hosts a weekly show on FBN, and appears on Fox News Channel as a commentator. In August, Stossel appeared on Mike Huckabee's Fox News show, where he advocated for the right of insurance companies to charge more for, or to dump, patients who have pre-existing conditions.

"I mean, an insurance company helps us by saying, 'We're gonna charge the town drunk more for car insurance than we're gonna charge you,' " Stossel said.

Nice. Comparing someone who has, say, multiple sclerosis, with the town drunk -- because MS is apparently the result of bad behavior. In the same segment, he said insurance companies should have the right to charge women more because "women go to the doctor more often. ... Some discrimination is good."

3. On-air fundraising for Republican PACs -- Fox News personalities encourage viewers to contribute money to, and visit the Web sites of, specific Republican-affiliated political action committees. We can't find a single instance of either CNN or MSNBC doing anything of the kind for Democratic causes.

Oh, sure, Keith Olbermann raised money for free health clinics for the uninsured, but it's our understanding that there are uninsured Republicans. And Rachel Maddow raised money for jerseys for an Iraqi baseball team (who learned the game from American troops), but last time we looked, baseball was the Great American Bipartisan Pastime.

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