Tim Graham: The “Professional Journalists” vs. Fox News
America’s top journalists often associate journalism with a liberal bias and only apply half of the First Amendment. They don’t believe in press freedom for conservative media and think they should be ignored as “fake news” producers. The Society of Professional Journalists, for example, which claims to promote “the free flow of information vital to informing citizens” and to “fight to protect First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press,” doesn’t seem to believe in these ideals when it comes to Fox News.
The Dominion Voting Systems’ legal suit against Fox News has revealed internal discussions at the time of the 2020 election. During this tumultuous period, Fox News called the state of Arizona for Biden before all other liberal networks. They were also concerned about their audience leaving in droves for Newsmax and OAN. Dominion’s lawyers released texts and emails showing that key Fox News executives were worried about how fact-checking Trump supporters would be “bad for business.” Trump lawyers were promoting outlandish hair-raising conspiracy theories about voting machines, which were of course impossible to prove. These theories, in addition to Trump’s refusal to concede defeat, possibly added to the Capitol Hill riots.
The SPJ did not advocate for press freedom in this situation but instead criticized Fox News: “News organizations have a fundamental obligation to be honest in the reporting and opinion they disseminate. It is unprofessional, unethical and potentially harmful for a journalist or news organization to deliberately mislead their audience, no matter the motivation or format … No responsible journalist can accept or excuse this behavior.”
The statement sounds honorable, but does it apply to all media outlets? Try Googling “SPJ statement on CNN” to see if you can find instances of the SPJ calling out CNN for deliberately misleading their audience. If anyone were to sue CNN or NBC, would we find similar incriminating texts as those discovered about Fox News?
It’s likely that liberal journalists would defend their colleagues and not accuse them of deliberately misleading their audience. Did the SPJ ever speak out against CNN or MSNBC journalists who reported on fiery riots, which they claimed were “not unruly”?
The SPJ and other Fox News critics are so clouded by their negative emotions that they fail to see that if Dominion wins its lawsuit, it would open the rest of the media to lawsuits whenever accusations turn out to be false. The legal system doesn’t have a double standard on this. Only “professional journalists” do.
On March 25th, the SPJ tweeted an article from the liberal Nieman Lab, calling Fox News “Fake News.” The author, Mark Jacob of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, questioned why any journalism school would treat Fox News as anything other than a pariah. “Interviews with three prominent journalism school deans and other news educators showed no interest in an outright ban on dealing with Fox News on internships, job opportunities and campus appearances.”
Tim Graham is the director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and the executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. For more information about Tim Graham and to read articles by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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