Media FAIL: ‘Old-School’ News Orgs Give Fox News a Pass (washingtonpost.com)
Howell Raines, the New York Times’ former executive editor asks: “Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign?”
This line in Raines article hits it on the head IMO:
"Why has our profession, through its general silence -- or only spasmodic protest -- helped Fox legitimize a style of journalism that is dishonest in its intellectual process, untrustworthy in its conclusions and biased in its gestalt? The standard answer is economics, as represented by the collapse of print newspapers and of audience share at CBS, NBC and ABC. Some prominent print journalists are now cheering Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp. (which owns the Fox network) for his alleged commitment to print, as evidenced by his willingness to lose money on the New York Post and gamble the overall profitability of his company on the survival of the Wall Street Journal. This is like congratulating museums for preserving antique masterpieces while ignoring their predatory methods of collecting."
Ailes is also periodically subject to glowing profiles, which, while describing him as controversial and provocative, still treat him as a serious news man, rather than a partisan strategist pretending to run a news organization.