Matt Stoller: Action Item: Senator Reid, Don't Legitimize Fox News (HuffPost)

Matt Stoller

03.05.2007
Action Item: Senator Reid, Don't Legitimize Fox News

Over the past week and a half, many of us have been engaged in a very public conversation with the Nevada Democratic Party leadership on their choice to have Fox News host a Presidential forum in August in Nevada. 3500 of you sent emails to Nevada State Party Chair Tom Collins through Blogpac.

Moveon has a petition, and Robert Greenwald has created a video at FoxAttacks where the petition is hosted to demonstrate the partisan nature of Fox News as an information source.

The argument that we've made is not that the Fox News audience is bad in and of itself. It's important to talk to the whole public; the election of Howard Dean to DNC Chair was about the 50 state strategy, and no one has pushed that strategy harder than the progressive wing of the party. And it worked, in 2006, as we elected a whole host of members of Congress that seemed unlikely to win when insiders in DC were drawing up their prognostications for yet another swing state strategy. No, the problem that we have is that allowing Fox News to singlehandedly host the debate gives that channel the legitimacy of claiming to be a real news source. If the Democratic Party places its highest and most valuable political debate - that over our nominee to the Presidency - on Fox News, we are giving a Republican partisan news outlet the ability to argue that they are not biased. We force thousands of diehard Democrats to watch a Republican propaganda outlet, and allow Fox News to spin and impute meaning to the debate. This is a serious problem.

The reaction to our reasonable request has unfortunately not been what we had hoped. Harry Reid has basically stayed silent, and as one of the most powerful Democrats in the country, and certainly the most powerful in Nevada, he has a part in this decision. It's hard to believe that he would not take some interest in a Presidential forum in his state. After a few days, several Nevada union leaders, including Danny Thompson of the Nevada AFL-CIO, D. Taylor of the Culinary Union, and Rusty McAllister of the Firefighters, backed the choice of Fox News by Tom Collins of the Nevada State Democratic Party, arguing that Democrats need to reach out to a diverse audience segment. Of course, Fox News makes regular and dishonest arguments against the minimum wage, for corporate abuses, and for privatizing Social Security. Prominent Fox News figures use misleading statistics to bolster the case for right-wing economics, and we can be sure that Fox News is very willing to spread lies about stronger labor law protections. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-stoller/action-item-senator-reid_b_42698.html

K&R

a right wing travesty's masquerading as a democratic event. Also tell that repug want to be Reid to stay off of fucks snooze. I would also pressure all of the democratic candidates to not appear on this right wing hate network without a guarantee of equal, unedited and uninterrupted time to respond to the right wing spin on any so called news program on their network. It is easier to tell them to fuc* off than try to defend their lies about what you didn't say

shunned. This is a huge and extremely annoying mistake by Reid. Everything about it is wrong and sends a terrible message. Dems should NOT enable Rupert Murdoch and Fox.