Today Jim Romenesko broke the Fox News Memo, written by an ex-staffer about the way it really works over at the Rightward Ho Network.
Jay Rosen has some thoughts on it all over at PressThink.
In a view probably shared by many, one blogger wrote: “FOX has every right to spin the news any way its owners and editors please.”
If we were talking about a political magazine or even a television news magazine, that would be one thing. But Fox News — whatever else it is — is still in the news business. And too often today we think about business but forget the responsibilities that covering the news entails.
Journalism is never about about advancing your viewpoint, or your political spin. It’s about getting at the truth, regardless of where the facts lead you. And anyone who has worked in journalism knows that when an editor comes over and mentions discreetly that “the boss would like this played a certain way,” or that r the pro-environment angle of a story should be played down, the only legitimate feeling for a real journalist is to feel sick to one’s stomach. I’ve worked (briefly) for such a paper once, the Sacramento Union, where new owners decreed that any reference to the National Organization for Women must be preceded by the description “the radical feminist group.”
That’s business, and ideology, at work. But it’s not journalism.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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