He also suggested they're about as much a news organization as...Air America radio.
In a Monday blog post insisting the White House is "100% Right" to suggest Fox isn't a real news network, Uygur insisted "The Obama White House has taken on Fox News channel in an effort to point out they are not a legitimate news network. This is very important because out of all the outlets mentioned above, they are the only ones being dishonest about what category they are in." Here's the list:
Opinion Outlets
-- Keith Olbermann
-- Bill O'Reilly
-- The Young Turks
-- Wall Street Journal Editorial Side
Partisan Press (Ideologically Driven Press)
-- The Nation
-- Fox News Channel
-- National Review
-- Mother Jones
-- Drudge Report
Straight News
-- CNN
-- ABC News
-- MSNBC News Programs
-- New York Times
-- Wall Street Journal (Non-Editorial)
Uygur went so far as to insist Fox News was more akin to Air America than CNN, and that they were responsible for the "unpardonable error" of not calling the election for Al Gore in 2000:
The problem is when partisan press gets confused for straight, unbiased news. The perfect example of this is when Fox News called the 2000 election for George W. Bush first - and every other news network followed like sheep. The person in charge of calling the 2000 election at Fox News was the cousin of George W. Bush. That is not some hyperbole. It was literally Bush's cousin.
Would the other networks have panicked and called the election for Gore because Air America said he won? Would they have followed the lead of The Young Turks in calling the election for Gore if we had hired Gore's uncle to tabulate the votes for us? It's ridiculous and unthinkable, right (especially so, since Air America and The Young Turks weren't around yet at the time of that election; but you get my point -- there's no way they would consider that legitimate, but yet they considered Fox's call perfectly legitimate)?
So, why did they commit this unpardonable error in the 2000 election when Fox News was involved? Because Fox has purposely sold itself as straight news when they know that they are nothing of the sort - specifically to be able to influence the rest of the press in this way. And the rest of the media bought it.
