Fox News Follies

Fox News has a wonderful habit of labelling Republicans as Democrats whenever they do something wrong: http://crooksandliars.com/node/29158/print. I think focusing on Fox is a mistake though, given that the rest of the mainstream media is where I see the problem. Everyone now knows how biased Fox is, except maybe the majority of people still watching it who blindly follow conservative orthodoxy. The problem is the more cloaked conservative bias of the mainstream media. I've mentioned this before, but Pew found in 2000 that while the media is the left of the general public on social issues, they are to the right on economics and foreign affairs. I think we saw that obviously in the buildup to the Iraq War and the 2000 and 2004 elections. Given how bad a campaign McCain ran, it changed to some extent last year -- but while most are arguing the media is having a love affair with Obama, it seems absurd at times how quickly they expect him to fix all the problems in the world, how much they continue to allow conservative voices to frame debates and how quickly they attempted to end the "honeymoon period." The key concern for me is the quick change from a focus on a still faltering economy (where unemployment continues to climb toward 10%) to deficits. True recovery may be a year and a half out and I wonder when and if they will start blaming the crisis on Obama rather than its rightful heirs (Reagan, Clinton and Bush).