Not WoT, but relevant to media coverage of the WoT. EFL.
Geneva Overholser, former ombudsman of The Washington Post, has resigned from the board of the National Press Foundation because it plans to honor Fox News anchor Brit Hume at its annual dinner in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 19. Past recipients of the group’s Sol Taishoff award include TV newscasters David Brinkley, Dan Rather, John Chancellor, Jane Pauley, Barbara Walters and Nina Totenberg. Hume, the ABC White House correspondent who joined Fox in 1996 and anchors a nightly newscast, doesn’t deserve the award because he and Fox practice "ideologically connected journalism," Overholser says.
| She says that after they gave an award to Nina Totenberg? And she didn't turn into a pillar of salt? |
"Fox wants to do news from a certain viewpoint, but it wants to claim that it is ’fair and balanced,’ " she says. "That is inaccurate and unfair to other media who engage in a quest, perhaps an imperfect quest, for objectivity."
| "... perhaps even a hideously imperfect quest for objectivity." |
She says groups such as the foundation, before lauding Fox or its lead news anchor, should debate whether the way Fox reports news is good for journalism. Someday, Overholser says, "I think we will look back on these years and think, ’Why didn’t we have a discussion so that the public could benefit from a change in journalism that Fox is very successfully bringing about?’ "
| We already had the discussion. Didn't you get our note? |
Ed Fouhy, chairman of the four-person committee that unanimously voted to give Hume the award, rejects Overholser’s argument. "Brit is an excellent journalist," says Fouhy, who at one time was Hume’s boss at ABC. "I admire him and his journalism."
| Fox didn't hire him away from ABC because he was a dullard... |
Says Fox’s Irena Briganti: "Brit Hume is a journalist of tremendous accomplishment, distinction and credibility. We are proud he is being recognized."
| He'd be a star wherever he worked. It just galls them it's Fox... |
Overholser, the former editor of The Des Moines Register who now runs the University of Missouri’s Washington journalism program, quietly resigned from the board of the foundation three weeks ago. "I would welcome a discussion about whether objectivity really exists, which media seem the least fair and balanced, whether objectivity is desirable, whether it wouldn’t be better to have a more European-like model — in which media were straightforwardly ideologically aligned," she wrote in an e-mail to fellow board members. "All of those could be helpful to American journalism. And I can applaud Fox for all sorts of things, but being deceptively ideologically aligned — being hypocritical about it — far from contributing to such discussions, makes them impossible to have. (Fox News president Roger) Ailes has constructed the perfect trap: you question him, and the finger of accusation comes back at the questioner. One can marvel at his cleverness. But one should not confer journalistic laurels upon it." |