One of the biggest stories any media watchdog worth their salt should note this week is Fox News’ Bret Bairer apologizing for a poorly sourced story an FBI indictment is forthcoming for Hillary Clinton. So how did Howard Kurtz handle it given his first chance on his “Media Buzz” show? Kurtz buried the lead. Segment after segment he pounded home the point the liberal media is in the tank for Hillary Clinton. With 8 minutes left in the show he brought in Fox News’ supposedly ‘hard news’ reporter Ed Henry to discuss the FBI leaks media coverage in detail.
Boasting he was just “sticking with the facts” Ed Henry did his best to recast Baier’s bogus reporting as actually true at its core. Huh? Well, you can pull this off if you stick only to cherry-picked facts.
Henry’s data-mining gave Kurtz the chance to lead Henry through a long discussion of surgically cherry-picked facts to carry the narrative the Clinton Foundation scandal is a huge story that will run on long after the election.
Certainly, the Clinton Foundation corruption narrative is legitimate and should be covered by the press. Certainly, the Clinton Foundation story will endure long after Election 2016 is decided. However, “Media Buzz” claims to be a media watchdog program. When the chance to watchdog Fox News’ own heavy conservative bias, Howard mostly took a pass. Worse, it’s pretty clear Howard was deflecting the conversation to mop up Bret Baier’s partisan sloppy reporting.
Howard leave the editorializing and even reporting of the news to other Fox shows. Not your job.
The Propaganda Factory 