"The Truth" Will be absent as Leading Journalists and Politicians Acknowledge FOX Bias in Reporting and Programming

With its attempted, often successful, agenda setting, the American right and its media echo chambers (led by Fox) have spent years targeting organizations that advocate on behalf of low-income and minority Americans.   ACORN, as the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income people Americans, has been the target of choice.

Tonight at 9:00 PM EST, Fox will be airing what it calls: "Fox News Reporting: The Truth about ACORN."  Although Fox did ask that ACORN participate in tonight's entertainment piece, they refused to provide assurances (such as that ACORN's written statement wouldn't be excessively edited) that ACORN's contributions would not be altered beyond recognition, as has been commonplace with Fox coverage of ACORN.  Without such assurance, ACORN refused to participate.

Fox's biases are well-known and ACORN is not the first organization to refuse requests to participate in Fox programming:

• Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Republican and conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg indicated his belief that Fox News was rightward-leaning: "Look, I think liberals have reasonable gripes with Fox News. It does lean to the right, primarily in its opinion programming but also in its story selection…"
• CNN's Larry King said in a January 17, 2007 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, "They're a Republican brand…."
• Progressive media watch groups such as the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and Media Matters for America have said that Fox News reporting contains conservative editorializing within news stories. Others have referred to the network as "Faux News", "GOP-TV", "Fox Noise Channel", "Fox Nothing Channel", "Fixed News" and "Cluster Fox."
• Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean has referred to Fox News as a "right-wing propaganda machine"…and several Democratic Party politicians have boycotted events hosted or sponsored by the network.
• In 2007, several major Democratic Party presidential candidates (Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson) boycotted or dropped out of Fox News-sponsored or hosted debates, forcing their cancellation.
• The Nevada State Democratic Party had originally agreed to co-host a Democratic debate with Fox News Channel in Reno, Nevada….However, after Fox News chairman Roger Ailes was quoted making a joke involving the similarity of Barack Obama's name to that of the terrorist Osama bin Laden, a firestorm of opposition arose in Democratic circles… [and] the party announced it had pulled out of the debate, effectively cancelling it.  

[Full release as PDF]

"FOX & ACORN: Comfort the Comfortable. Afflict the Afflicted." political cartoon by Mike Keefe