I don't want to focus too much on the individuals at yesterday's tea parties. Picking crazies from the crowd was shoddy practice when lefties were protesting the Iraq War and it's no better when conservatives are wasting oolong because they don't like being taxed. The crazies at the front of the crowd, however, are a different story. In particular, it seems that Fox News has really given up on any vestigial effort to sell itself as a legitimate news organization:Fox News, though actively promoting the "tea party" protests for tax day, tried to argue that it was not behind yesterday's coast-to-coast events. But Fox News analyst Tobin Smith, who took the stage in Lafayette Square yesterday, evidently didn't get the memo. "On behalf of Fox News Channel," he told more than 500 mud-spattered demonstrators, "I want to say: Welcome to the Comedy Channel of America, Washington, D.C."After a few preliminaries, he went into a Fox News commercial for anchor Glenn Beck. "Anybody watching Glenn?" he asked to cheers. "That was a shameless plug, wasn't it? Glenn says hello as well. He's out at another tea party." Indeed he was, as were Sean Hannity and Neil Cavuto.A small group of counterdemonstrators, wearing ballgowns, tuxedoes and pig snouts, interrupted and were stripped of their signs. Smith seized the display as an opportunity to highlight the Fox News slogan. "You know what 'Fair and Balanced' means?" he asked. " 'Fair and Balanced' means we take our message and try to overcompensate for their lack of message." Smith left with instructions: "Keep watching Fox, will you?"
Tea party attendees probably should keep an eye on Fox. But it's not clear why anyone else should tune in. Indeed, it was just a few years ago that liberals were organizing to scotch the Congressional Black Caucus's effort to cohost a presidential primary debate with Fox News. They succeeded. But the fact that they'd had to organize at all was evidence that Fox retained a certain aura of legitimacy. At this point, however, the efforts to paint them as a conservative message channel seem to have been sufficiently successful that they've decided to simply go with it. Which is sort of a sensible decision: The Obama administration isn't going to give the access or attention they need to be influential. The relevant policymakers aren't going to turn to them for information. The media isn't going to look to them for cues. They're not going to gain a competitive edge trying to be a nonpartisan news organization. On the other hand, there's a new opposition party in the country, and opposition parties tend to be ferocious consumers of likeminded media (see the rise of liberal blogs for evidence of this). There's a real business opportunity in turning explicitly conservative, just as there was in being maximally pro-administration. And this, I think, is the sort of thing people should expect from news outlets in the future: There'll be a couple of truly nonpartisan outlets, but an increasingly competitive media environment will force ever more ideological segmentation.
