A Look at How the Left Views the Wallace-Stewart Interview (Update)

Over at the Huffington Post there are several articles about Chris Wallace’s interview with Jon Stewart. As you might guess when you consider the source, the majority side with Stewart. Many of these posts and related comments say that Wallace was schooled by Stewart and that Wallace was out of his league. Not sure which interview they watched, but it sure didn’t seem like Wallace got schooled by Stewart. It was a good interview, with give and take on both sides.

I will have to say that one area that Wallace trumped Stewart was in the bias department. Stewart just couldn’t seem to come to grips with the overwhelming evidence that the main stream media, outside of Fox News, is tilted significantly to the left. But I think that is one area where the left and the right truly do differ. We can see bias from both sides. We know that Fox News has a right leaning tilt, and that is why we watch it. But the liberals don’t seem to see the liberal bias from the rest of the media at-large. To their thinking, if they agree with the reporting, then it isn’t biased

There was one post at the Huffington Post that caught my attention for both the blatant bias take on the interview as well as the writing style. Steven Weber is an (former?) actor turned blogger for HuffPro. In his post he goes on about how badly Stewart pulled the wool over Chris Wallace’s eyes. After reading Weber’s post and others like him a conclusion was cemented in my mind. The left is just weird. Oh, and they hate Fox News with a blind passion. Actually, I have had this opinion for quite some time, this just reinforces it.

What bothers the left so much about Fox News is that it is a counter-balance to the rest of the media outlets. The left no longer has the monopoly on how the news is spun. Folks like Chris Wallace, Brit Hume, and Megan Kelly don’t make it a point to call Rand Paul a fringe candidate like Diane Sawyer of Matt Lauer have done. It irritates the left they no longer control the narrative.  When Ralph Nader was making his quadrennial runs for president, I don’t ever recall the major news organizations saying he was a fringe candidate. They might have pointed out Nader didn’t have a snowballs chance in a hot place, but never fringe.

Before you all go a throw out Hannity, Beck, and O’Reilly, I’ll counter with Olbermann, Schultz, and Matthews. None of these six individuals are hard news people, they are opinion-makers. The thing to note here is that news organizations, other than Fox News, don’t have conservative opinion-makers in predominate roles. It is actually good that there are options other than the leg tingler to get opinion on the news of the day.  It is also a good thing to get hard news from folks that might lean to the right, rather than obvious folks on the left like Lauer, Sawyer, and the others.

What I find even more interesting is that folks like Weber and others of a progressive bent seem to somehow find that Stewart schooled Wallace during the interview, while more conservative pundits seen to find that both individuals were able to make their points. Stewart did not “school” Wallace, and Wallace didn’t “school” Stewart either. The interview was a little edgy with both individuals making points and both falling on their faces.  Two that come to mind is when Wallace responded to Stewart’s statement of “you’re insane” with his lame “I am?” But Wallace scored when Stewart said he didn’t think the NY Times was a biased news organization. Of course Stewart doesn’t think the Times is biased, he agrees with most of what they say.

The paragraphs above are the long version of a comment I posted to Weber’s post. It did not take long for the liberals to come flying out of the woodwork to slam my comment.

1. So which is it - a "counter balance" or "fair and balanced". The two are mutually exclusive. If Fox is a "counter balance" then, by definition­, it covers news with a conservati­ve bias to "counter" other media. If it is "fair and balanced", then no "counterin­g" can be employed.

2. Wow, you've sure drunk their kook-aid.

3. ..."never fringe"

Well, do you pronounce potato with a long 'a' or a short 'o'? Does that make it any less starchy for you?

..."Wallac­e scored when"...

Not so much. I recall that Stewart was not so unequivoca­l in his comment about the NY Times. He actually agreed that the Times has had moments of bias, but that like the rest of the MSM is mostly focused on sensationa­lism.

4. The media isn't biased against your ideology, it's the facts that are. Your wing is like a bunch of flat earthers, believe all you want but the facts point to the world being round. If you don't like being wrong then switch your position, don't try and alter reality so much it will cause an aneurism.

5. (UPDATE)

What bothers the Left so much about Fox (and by "Left", I mean people who want their news to be factual) is that Fox falsifies too many of their reports. Stewart was right when he said that Fox News viewers are the most consistent­ly misinforme­d viewers in all of America. Isn't that enough to dislike Fox?

What I don't understand is why Fox News viewers, knowing they are being misinforme­d, keep going back for more.

My response: When it comes to misinformation I have two words for you; Dan Rather.  Also, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, please provide any instance of Fox News Department providing false information. I'm not talking about Beck and Hannity, et al, you can disagree with their opinion all you want. I am referring to hard news. Like the hard news Rather provided on Bush.

As for the Stewart statement about Fox News viewers being misinformed, you might want to take a wander over to politicfact.com. They say his statement is completely false.

I would like you to notice that while my comment did have facts interwoven; the comments against me were more of the personal attack variety. If you can’t refute the facts, attack the messenger. This is a tactic especially reserved for the progressives because they know they cannot win the battle of facts.