Kevin Collins: Suing to silence a small liberal voice

The absurdities promulgated by the conservative media reached new heights at the end of August when Fox News sued Al Franken for trademark infringement for his use of the phrase "Fair and Balanced" in the title of his new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, in a suit that was literally laughed out of the courtroom.

The judge in the case told the lawyers at the hearing, "This case is wholly without merit, both factually and legally," continuing, "It is ironic that a media company, which should be protecting the First Amendment, is seeking to undermine it." Fox News has since withdrawn the lawsuit, but not before catapulting the book from 438th on Amazon's best seller list to No. 1.

Do Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News' parent company, and Roger Ailes, the head of President Bush the Elder's 1998 campaign who now runs the channel, really believe they are "Fair and Balanced?" I doubt it, as each is a savvy businessman who knows to which demographic he is advertising.

But if they do, it is only one example among many of how the conservative press is taken in by their own myths. They refuse, unlike mainstream news outlets, to consider new or opposing ideas and are therefore doomed to groupthink.

This inbred intellectualism of the Right replaces fairness and balance with smug self-righteousness, and it stifles meaningful debate and effective problem solving. Don't mistake me, there are intelligent conservatives who engage in real debate rather than shouting insults. Also, the Left has its own groupthink. In the liberal half of the blogsphere, hyperlinked metajournalism is as much of a preoccupation as posting original thoughts.

But even left-wing bloggers are critical of each other, and when is the last time you heard Bill O'Reilly say, "You know, I think that Sean Hannity was a little out there the other night?"

What O'Reilly does say is "Shut up." And he says it a lot. In an August 28 piece in Slate, Jack Shafer documents 28 instances in which he uses the phrase. This includes a "shut up" aimed at Al Franken at the Los Angeles Book Fair, where each were promoting their latest book. You can read it for yourself. It seems that Bill O'Reilly, in his horribly misnamed No Spin Zone, doesn't want to hear other people's version of the news, just his own.

The truth is that the media in this nation carry a conservative, not a liberal, bias. While there are liberal media, they are not that which Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter claim exist. Progressive magazines like The American Prospect, Mother Jones and others surely are liberal, as are editorial page writers at The New York Times. But few people read the magazines of the Left, and for every Paul Krugman there is a Bill Kristol.

Conservatives, on the other hand, dominate the wide-reaching media of cable television and talk radio, and do so without a liberal equivalent. Some may say Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are only the antidote to NPR and CNN, but NPR, CNN and their similarly defamed breathren are not truly liberal. They just report the whole of reality, including unfortunate facts (like the existence of working poor in this country and our quickly worsening budget deficit) that Fox News and its viewers would rather ignore.

And that's just the extreme Right press. The vast majority of news outlets in this country are owned by corporations. While CNN is a credible news organization and not a corporate tool, it is the factory owners, as one political observer has pointed out, and not the auto workers, who decide which cars get made and which cars are left as scraps of paper in the drafting room wastebasket.

Truly fair and balanced reporting encounters the problem NPR does when covering Israel and Palestine: each side claims it favors the other. Fair reporting, like a fair deal, leaves all parties disappointed, because it necessarily explores all sides of the issue in question.

All of this is why Fox News really sued Al Franken. Not because he's a disinterested news source -- he is the liberal media -- and not because he used the words "Fair and Balanced," but because he had a different point of view, and Bill O'Reilly doesn't like that. Fox failed, due to that pesky law we call the First Amendment, but the right-wing press will no doubt continue to yell "Shut up" at those with whom it disagrees. So if you really want fair and balanced reporting, when Fox reports, change the channel.

Kevin Collins is a College sophomore from Milwaukee, Wis.

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