Media update

Blogging's just too easy these days. As new heights of hypocrisy are reached these things just write themselves.

And here we go again. Fox News is refusing to air an anti-Alito ad "citing its lawyers' contention that the spot is factually incorrect."

Is it shooting fish in a barrel to say: "gee, I wish Fox News would apply that standard to their reporting"?

The AP article reads like an Onion story: "'It's not about ideology, it's about quality and honesty,' said Irena Briganti, a Fox News spokeswoman. She noted that Fox had refused to run one ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in which Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry was called a traitor."

Apart from this astonishing display of integrity, however, Fox did run other factually-challenged Swift Boat ads in addition to providing oodles of free air time by discussing the ads on its programs. As if they were real ads created by honest people about events that actually occurred the way they portray them and not the reality that it was a well-funded group of bitter liars advised by Bush's lawyer.

Needless to say, the ad's contentions are supported by the public record.

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GQ ain't just for lookin' good.

The mag has a lengthy exposé on Sinclair Broadcasting, in which it concludes that: "Whether minor or major, political or personal, the litany of deceptions at Sinclair do serve a common purpose. They may be designed to cut costs (like the weather forecasts), or to protect Republican allies by attacking Democratic rivals, or to promote a war and reap the profits, but what binds Sinclair's business strategy together is the company's commitment to the bottom line... the story of Sinclair is not merely about the rise of bias in the news, because bias is a product of idealism. The story of Sinclair is also about the limits of that idealism, about what happens when bias succumbs to business interests and greed masquerades as principle."

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Former Washington Post ombuds(wo)man Geneva Overholser criticized the Post for its relationship with Woodward and advised them to choose between his book writing and his reporting/editing:

"It isn't an arrangement that can really work at the Post," said Overholser, who served as ombudsman from 1995 to 1998 and later as a Post columnist for three years. "If I were editor, I would say, 'Bob, you've got to pick.'"