Fox News isn’t just ridiculously biased against Democrats. It’s also ridiculously biased in favor of Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani has a couple of problems. He’s running for the nomination of the Family Values Party, but he’s been married three times. He’s running for the nomination of the Anti Abortion Party, but he’s pro-choice. He’s running as the Homeland Security candidate, but he tried to have a career criminal with ties to the mafia put in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. And in an attempt to cultivate a tough-guy image, he’s recruited the craziest of the neocon nutjobs to advise him on foreign policy. But he’s so pussy-whipped that he’s forced to take his wife’s phone calls in the middle of speeches. On top of that, Mayor Giuliani has been exposed as the sort of candidate who will say anything, including known falsehoods, in order to get elected.

So how does Mayor Giuliani maintain his comfortable lead in the run-up to the Republican primaries? He’s got a secret weapon. Fox News, the influential media outlet among American conservatives, slants its coverage toward Giuliani. Fox demands that Giuliani’s rivals refrain from using Fox News footage in their ads and on their websites, but doesn’t have a problem with Giuliani’s use of Fox footage. Fox buries stories favorable to Giuliani’s Republican rivals and stories that are unfavorable to Giuliani. And Fox News runs hit pieces attacking the religious views of Giuliani’s most formidable opponent, Mitt Romney:

Romney does seem to understand the importance of wooing [religious] voters and has already begun courting in earnest. Meeting with a group of Christian leaders recently, he was said to have assured them that he shared various doctrines with them which led one Baptist leader, Richard Lee, a pastor from Cummings, Georgia, to quip, “so you’re really a Baptist!”

But Romney is no Baptist, but rather a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a church that not a few Evangelicals consider to be a cult, as opposed to other Christian denominations like the Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians etc. which they view as legitimate branches of the Christian tree.

While Romney’s outreach to such Christian leaders is smart to be sure, if he continues to go into the kind of doctrinal detail that he has been getting into, answering questions on his views of the nature and work of Christ for example, it will create severe strains that could cripple his chances for the presidency by reminding them of their clear doctrinal differences, thereby increasing their discomfort level at a time when he should be focusing on the political issues that unite them. Debating religious dogma and theology will do nothing more than raise the dander of that wing of Christendom which specializes in pointing out the doctrinal errors of others and the results could be messy.

Note that Fox’s correspondent has to contradict his own reporting in order to portray Romney as a religious outsider. He reports that a Baptist leader is pleased with Romney’s answers to questions about religious doctrine, then says that Romney must avoid discussing religion if he is to avoid alienating Christians. The Romney campaign has definitely noticed the bias, and a recent Fox News debate in Iowa had to be canceled because Romney refused to participate.

So why is Fox News acting as the unofficial house organ of the Giuliani campaign? I think that part of the reason is that Giuliani is the front-runner, and the folks at Fox want one of the candidates to lock in the nomination early so that the Republican won’t be hurt in a nasty primary battle. But there appears to be a personal reason as well:

Roger Ailes and Rudolph W. Giuliani have been pulling for each other for nearly two decades.

Mr. Ailes was the media consultant to Mr. Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign in 1989. Mr. Giuliani, as mayor, officiated at Mr. Ailes’s wedding and intervened on his behalf when Mr. Ailes’s company, Fox News Channel, was blocked from securing a cable station in the city.

This year, they were tablemates at the White House correspondents dinner, which Mr. Giuliani attended as a guest of Fox’s parent company, the News Corporation.

Now these allies and friends find themselves on largely uncharted political turf. Mr. Giuliani, 63, is a leading Republican candidate for president. Mr. Ailes, 67, is head of Fox News, the pre-eminent media outlet for likely voters in a Republican primary.

The bottom line is this: for whatever reason, Fox News has decided to shape its coverage in a way that helps the Giuliani campaign. Instead of reporting the news, they’re burying stories that might hurt the former mayor. Instead of educating its viewers, Fox News is making them more ignorant.

(cross posted at appletree)

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This entry by gordo was posted on Saturday, November 17th, 2007 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Presstitutes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.