Chris Wallace

It was a wonderful thing to read about Chris Wallace calling out MSNBC and the media in general for their blatant bias. Wallace made the remarks as part of a panel discussing media bias at the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles. The panel included Chris Wallace, Karl Rove, Howard Wolfson, and Fox VP John Moody.

The panel took questions from a large group of journalists who predictably went after Karl Rove right from the jump.

Does having Karl Rove as a commentator, given the whole testifying debacle, undermine the credibility of Fox News?

John Moody: “Mr. Rove is a certified authority on the electoral process, on politics. His track record speaks for itself. His current difference of opinion with Congress is between him and Congress.”

A while later, Rove clarified:
“It is not between me and Congress. I have not asserted any personal privilege. It’s between the White House and Congress.”

The media went on to question Rove’s credibility and ask what his role was in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

Then Chris Wallace chimed in,

“I’m struck by what I think is a double standard in the questions that particularly Karl is being asked here,” Wallace said. “I don’t understand why it is that if Congress and the White House are having a fight over executive power, that should any way constrain an independent news organization’s decision about whom to have on its payroll. I question whether if it were a conservative Congress that had subpoenaed James Carville, let’s say, whether you’d be asking CNN why they’re [employing] James Carville.”

Shouts and jeers erupted from some journalists who yelled that they would question it.

“You would,” responded Wallace. “I wonder.”

He then went further,

“The fact is,” Wallace said, “that NBC News just hired [Republican strategist] Mike Murphy, who, with all respect to Karl, has a much closer relationship with John McCain than Karl does. I’ll be curious to see whether you ask NBC about the fact that they’ve hired Mike Murphy and whether that’s a wise hiring of an interesting Republican analyst or whether that somehow compromises the journalistic integrity of MSNBC.”

The best part was when someone asked Wallace about Fox rival MSNBC.

“I think that MSNBC, in its coverage of this campaign, went so far over the line in terms of being in the  tank to Barack Obama that it lost a lot of credibility,” said the host of “Fox News Sunday.”  “For all the criticism we sometimes get about allowing our politics to infuse our journalism, the fact is that there is something of a firewall on Fox.

“You have the straight news reporters anchoring the election coverage week after week. [On MSNBC] you’ve got someone like Keith Olbermann who was delivering 10-minute screeds against President Bush — telling him to shut the hell up — telling Hillary Clinton to get out of the campaign. Which I think is fine. If he wants to say those things, let him say it. It’s an interesting show. I sometimes watch it myself.”

Then Wallace cited what he saw as the problem: Olbermann anchors the coverage “as a so-called objective anchor.” Wallace noted that Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity don’t anchor the election coverage, the conventions or Election Night on Fox News.

“Our feeling is opinion makers should deliver their opinions, and the journalists should cover the news,” Wallace said.

Thank God somebody said it, because it needed to be said. MSNBC’s coverage of the primaries was an absolute disgrace. Wallace was wrong to say MSNBC “lost a lot” of credibility, because they actually lost “all” credibility. There is nothing even remotely objective about the way that network covers politics. It’s one thing for bloggers to yell about blatant media bias, but it tends to have real impact when someone like Wallace speaks the truth in a venue like that.

-Chris Jones

(hat tip to johnny$)