Reversing myself

I need to go back a reasonably old post and retract something.

I said I thought Olberman should be fired from MSNBC when he said (by way of a forced question) that he thought John McCain should be held responsible for the Russians invading Georgia. As a part of that rant I said Olberman's left-leaning commentary along with his news-anchor demeanor had fallen so far from objective than he just had to go.

Jim asked, reasonably, if I also thought that in the same way, every character on FoxNews should be removed. I said, "no" based on the idea that I never expected FoxNews to be objective. I barely ever watch their coverage of politics. I do switch over there occasionally when something newsy happens, like when Gustov was killing Galveston and no one was covering the L.A. train wreck, I spent some time there to see if they'd hit the train story. Which they did, by the way, more than the other stations. FoxNews, for all of its failure to be a serious political news station, does actually cover news reasonably well.

So... I have very little experience with their actual political coverage. But I have actually seen it more often recently, and while I stand by my statement that don't expect more from them, and I expect MSNBC to be better, I have to say I regret saying FoxNews doesn't have the responsibility to be better.

All of this is a long way to say that I think FoxNews needs to go. I wish they could stay as an alternative station to CNN. CNN is 50% entertainment news now. And half of the remaining time is given over to this bizarre blond shrew of a lawyer screaming about beheading child abductors. I'm not saying I love people who abduct and kill children, but she's horrible beyond words. Like I said, FoxNews actually does have reporters in lots of locations and someplace else to turn for actual coverage of an event is nice, but their commentary is too much of a masquerade of news.

I still think it was good that MSNBC kicked Olberman down, two wrongs don't make a right.