"Read MoveOn's FOX Complaint To The FTC -- Before It's Sent"

Cablenewser has the scoop:

In a document to be sent to the Federal Trade Commission Monday morning, MoveOn.org complains about "deceptive practices" allegedly used by FOX News. "The Commission should institute an enforcement proceeding against Fox News; order Fox News to cease and desist from using the slogan and mark "Fair and Balanced; and take such other action as may be appropriate to remedy the injury to consumers from Fox News' deceptive practices." The petition complains about the "open partisanship of anchors and correspondents," "imbalance in guests and panelists," and "imbalance in selection of topics..."

He's got the PDF, and quotes from MoveOn's latest Whine-Across-America in the next post.

Here's part of the PDF:

The network makes no effort whatsoever to achieve any semblance of balance on its many interview shows. For example, a study of the interview show "Special Report with Brit Hume" for the last six months of 2003 concluded that conservative guests outnumbered progressive guests five to one; and a similar study of the program in 2002 concluded that conservative guests outnumbered progressive ones, 14 to one.

The networks' coverage of current events is grossly distorted and biased. For example, a recent survey showed that much higher percentages of viewers whose main source of news is FNC have misperceptions about indisputable facts about the war, than do viewers of other news outlets...

"Progressives?" Why not "liberals?" Is MoveOn almost coming right out and admitting its Watermelon status?

After that excerpt, the whining and frothing even gets worse. They reference a few less-than-damning memos and the "unbiased" FAIR organization. Oddly Enough, the name "Al Franken" appears at several points in reference to Fox suing him over the title of his book; I wonder if he's involved in this in some way...

My prediction: Fox will threaten to sue the New York Times over the slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print." The unbiased NYT will tell their operatives to stop. But, it won't be necessary because the FTC will just consider it a juvenile publicity stunt.

Politics · Sun, 07/18/2004 - 18:29 · Importance: 1