Due to the presence of a whopping two outspoken liberals on the network, conservatives love to argue that MSNBC leans left as far as Fox leans right. Except MSNBC simply hosts a couple of liberals, rather than having actually devoted itself to furthering conservative causes. During the conventions, Fox hosted the likes of Karl Rove and Laura Ingraham balanced out by Brit Hume, Sean Hannity and Carl Cameron (who still struggles with the idea that the South lost the Civil War) Fox's conservatism is deliberate, MSNBC's liberalism is occasional. It's hard to imagine Fox for example, taking a step like this, because they'd have to drop most of their talent:
MSNBC is removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral in the heat of the presidential campaign.
[...]
The move, confirmed by spokesmen for both networks, follows increasingly loud complaints about Olbermann's anchor role at the Democratic and Republican conventions. Olbermann, who regularly assails President Bush and GOP nominee John McCain on his "Countdown" program, was effusive in praising the acceptance speech of Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He drew flak Thursday when the Republicans played a video that included a tribute to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that if the networks had done that, "we would be rightly eviscerated at all quarters, perhaps by the Republican Party itself, for exploiting the memories of the dead, and perhaps even for trying to evoke that pain again. If you reacted to that videotape the way I did, I apologize."
Matthews' onetime praise of Obama's Iowa speech has hardly become the norm. He is also prone to questioning Obama's "normalness" given that Obama is *black*. Or so I hear.
Fox has never been scandalized by its conservative leanings, despite many embarrassing incidents of misreported stories. Despite the rise of liberal alternative media, conservatives still succeed at "working the ref" so that anything approaching objective reporting is seen as representing "liberal bias," making any actual liberal analysis beyond the pale. The temper tantrums thrown by Republican political operatives when reporters ask them basic questions about their claims points to how completely deferential they expect reporters to be. As far as they're concerned, the media isn't there to inform the public, it's there to repeat their spin. So naturally, they complain when the networks do anything else. When conservatives complain about unfair coverage, the allegedly liberal media actually listens.
--A.Serwer
