In his weekly title headed “Outfoxing Fox News”, Gil Smart asserts “…the slogan ‘fair and balanced’ was never intended to mean that the network would balance its own coverage; rather, Fox’s overt conservative bias would itself provide the balance…the dedication of an entire news network to undermining one party and boosting the other really is unique—to this era, anyway.”
WATCHDOG: The qualification “to this era, anyway” does credit to the writer. It demonstrates a nuance often missing from his columns, an understanding that throughout much of the history of democracies, and until mid-century in the USA, it was common for newspapers to reflect a school of thought and often to be secretly sponsored and subsidized towards that end.
Rupert Murdoch who heads Fox News has simply applied an approach that proved so successful for him in the newspaper publishing business to a CABLE network.
