Murdoch's pride, America's poison

Former New York Times editor, turned-coumnist, Bill Keller writes that Fox News is Rupert Murdoch's most toxic legacy (I would add that there's some rather tough competition for the title). He goes on to say that his complaint when it comes to the network is not its unabashed conservatism, but its pretending to be something it isn't: namely, 'fair and balanced':

I would never suggest that what is now called “the mainstream media” — the news organizations that most Americans depended on over the past century — achieved a golden mean. We have too often been condescending to those who don’t share our secular urban vantage point. We are too easily seduced by access. We can be credulous. (It’s also true that we have sometimes been too evenhanded, giving equal time to arguments that fail a simple fact-check.) But we try to live by a code, a discipline, that tells us to set aside our personal biases, to test not only facts but the way they add up, to seek out the dissenters and let them make their best case, to show our work. We write unsparing articles about public figures of every stripe — even, sometimes, about ourselves. When we screw up — and we do — we are obliged to own up to our mistakes and correct them. Fox does not live by that code.

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