Fox News Bullies

George Carlin spoke about the seven words you can't say on television. Apparently according to the New York Times the seven letters that the media avoid typing is Fox News.

According to the New York Times articles, Fox News people are such jerks that the media self censor themselves to avoid having to deal with Fox. As David Carr wrote in the Times article, "as crude as that sounds, it works. By blacklisting reporters it does not like, planting stories with friendlies at every turn, Fox News has been living a life beyond consequence for years. Honesty compels me to admit that I have choked a few times at the keyboard when Fox News has come up in a story and it was not absolutely critical to the matter at hand."

Perhaps the best example was when a New York Times reporter repeatedly tried to get a comment from Fox News on a ratings story but couldn't get his calls returned yet "in a neat trick, while they were ignoring his calls, they e-mailed his boss asking why they had not heard from him."

This harkens back to how "The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, the Times reported.

One can only assume all of this is part of conservatives efforts to skew the news. After all conservatives expect the media to be conservative and are upset when that doesn't work. Liberals expect coverage to be balanced and are upset when it isn't.

That is why Fox News is the media of choice for conservatives and NPR is the media of choice for liberals. By continual complaining about coverage, conservatives are able to bully the media into reporting their version of reality because it is no longer worth going after the facts. And once the media is bullied into submission, the new "reality" becomes accepted.

Perhaps rather than "We Report, You Decide," Fox News slogan should be "We distort, You're Deceived."