Fox Reporter to Host Totally Balanced Anti-Health Care Reform Event [Journalismism]

Look at that, a "reporter" for a "legitimate news organization" is co-hosting a "day of health care events" sponsored by a conservative advocacy group! His name is John Stossel and as of last month he works for Fox News.

To be fair, it was ridiculous back when ABC allowed Stossel to give keynote speeches at conservative/libertarian think tank gala events while still calling him a "reporter" for 20/20 and not a "pundit" or whatever. He's always had a very specific political agenda and he's always been more than willing to distort the truth in the service of that agenda. In that respect, he's not so different from a Michael Moore, except that he's on the side of evil and also no legitimate news organization has ever tried to pawn off Michael Moore as a regular plain-old "reporter."

But! John Stossel is different! He is not fat, first of all, and second of all he has a mustache, and thirdly it is considered a corrective to "liberal bias" to have a dude straight-up lying to prove conservative points on your newscast.

Obviously he is much more at home on Fox, where they only pretend to be unbiased for the purposes of annoying people like us. So the fact that Stossel is actively promoting and co-hosting this Americans For Prosperity anti-health care event is not even really News.

But it is coming as everyone in DC is dropping their monocles at the fact that the White House has been criticizing Fox News. This is Nixonian! The White House is not allowed to say a tv station is not legitimate! It is classic Nixon dirty tricks, to punish Fox by... not granting them interviews with administration officials for the rest of the year, which is two months.

Because, you know, they so often make themselves available to representatives of the RNC, various right-wing think tanks, and Ron Paul's newsletter.

Anyway Joe Conason has a very good little piece that begins to explain what, exactly, Nixon did in his war on the press. He did not criticize the Washington Post for being mean to him. He used the power of the federal government to hurt them financially so that they'd stop reporting truthful thing about him. Calling it "Nixonian" every time a president is upset with a news organization cheapens that man's amazing legacy of bastardry.