Thursday, May 03, 2012

The Only One Not Neutral

You wonder why I don't trust most news networks? Until the Iraq War started getting hard in the fall of 2003, I watched all the cable news networks--including MSNBC. But I got tired of all but one--Fox News--treating the war as a disinterested spectator. Not that Fox News doesn't have airhead anchors--Shepard Smith could be on any network, I'd say, cable or traditional. But Fox was not shy about being on our side in the war. Don't trust me on this, how about al Qaeda itself?

In a letter outlining al-Qaida's media strategy ahead of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the terror group's top spokesman expressed disdain for Fox News.

"From the professional point of view, they are all on one level—except [Fox News] channel which falls into the abyss as you know, and lacks neutrality too," al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn wrote in the January 2011 letter.

Not that they loved the others, with the exception of some named individuals (what a great reference for them!). But it is funny that Fox is singled out for lacking objectivity in regard to al Qaeda.

When the war is truly over, I'll watch the other networks again. When it is just run-of-the-mill bias not affecting our war effort, I can stomach them.