Fox's Rant and Runt Show

Hannity & Colmes, Fox News Channel's primetime debate show, figures prominently in the cable network's campaign to market its right-leaning programming as "fair & balanced," the network's ever-present slogan. Fox News executives argue that the show, pitting conservative Sean Hannity against liberal Alan Colmes with guests from both right and left, presents a spirited and even-handed nightly debate.

Fox News president Roger Ailes is clearly riled by those who suggest the show has a slant to it: "I get attacked for putting Sean Hannity on because he's a conservative – even when Alan Colmes, the liberal, is there to balance him!" Ailes is so insistent that Hannity & Colmes plays it "down the middle" that he says producers use a stopwatch to ensure equal time between the two hosts.

But a systematic review of Hannity & Colmes does reveal a show listing to the right in virtually every respect, from mismatched hosts – the show pairs the aggressive conservative Sean Hannity with the mildly liberal, often conciliatory Alan Colmes – to a format where conservatives out-number, out-talk and out-interrupt their liberal opponents.

The dissimilar circumstances under which the two hosts came to Fox News are revealing. Recruited from Atlanta's talk radio scene by Roger Ailes, Hannity was hired so far in advance of a decision about a co-host that Fox staffers referred to the show as "Hannity & Liberal To Be Determined," or "LTBD." Finally, after auditioning prospective left hosts, Colmes won the job – after Hannity expressed his preference for the mild-mannered New York radio host.

The result is a debate show that doesn't add up to a fair fight, say many critics, because Colmes' wishy-washy views and low-key delivery just can't stand up to the relentlessly ideological and combative Sean Hannity. It's a widely held view outside Fox studios.

"The title ... Hannity & Colmes, is something of a misnomer, because the other host – the timid, bespectacled liberal Alan Colmes – acts essentially as a sacrificial lamb and may as well not be there," reads a review in Britain's Sunday Business Post. Other critics are no less harsh. When the show recently began featuring a weekly commentary by outspoken conservative comic Dennis Miller, further weighting the discussion to the right, Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg described the Hannity/Miller/Colmes line-up as "two rants, one runt."

The notion that Colmes plays second fiddle to Hannity is shared by television critics across the country. At least four papers, including the Salt Lake City Tribune, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and the New York Times have run articles referring to Colmes as Hannity's "sidekick."

Fellow liberals don't disagree. In his best selling "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," liberal comic Al Franken calls Colmes "a moderate milquetoast" and "a liberal on-air punching bag" and puts Colmes' name in tiny typeface in every reference to the show.

And though Fox News markets Colmes as "a hard-hitting liberal known for his electric commentary" on FoxNews.com, it doesn't even get much help from Colmes himself. "I think I'm quite moderate," Colmes blandly told USA Today, not long before being hired as the show's left-wing counterweight to Hannity.

Even Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch seems to have trouble making the case that Colmes is a clear-cut liberal. When asked at a congressional hearing last spring to identify the liberals featured on the Fox News Channel, he offered "Alan Colmes for one." He added the name of On the Record host Greta Van Susteren – a liberal mainly because she used to work at the centrist CNN – before seeming to apologize: "You know, it's in the eye of the beholder, I guess."