In a 2003 interview for Broadcasting & Cable magazine, Roger Ailes, president of FOX News, said this:
Bias has to do with the elimination of points of view, not presenting a point of view.Ailes said this in regards to the mythical specter of the “liberal” media, but nothing could be a better description of FOX, particularly as they exclude Ron Paul from the Jan. 6 presidential debate in New Hampshire.
In a response to Paul’s snubbing, Richard A. Viguerie, the author of Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause, said:
I am dismayed that the Fox News Channel apparently plans to bar Ron Paul from its January 6 presidential debate. I have not yet declared my support for any candidate, but I find this action inexcusable. –snip-FOX has abandoned its slogan “Fair and Balanced”, probably because the phrase has become a joke — now when someone claims something is “Fair and Balanced”, it means watch your ass for unfairness and no balance. However, FOX still uses the catch phrase “We Report. You Decide.” This is technically correct, except for one thing — FOX’s reporting is so outrageously biased that it only allows its viewers to make one decision: either support good, virtuous, strong, freedom-loving republicans or hate godless, amoral, terrorism-supporting, money-stealing democrats, all while fearing brown people and non-christians. They hold a gun to the heads of their viewers and say, "Support pro-war republicans or die. But, you know, it's your decision."
Ron Paul is a traditional limited-government conservative in the grand tradition of Robert A. Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan. He has astounded the political world by raising almost $20 million in campaign funds during the last quarter of 2007. In the latest Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, he is ahead of Fred Thompson in New Hampshire. Yet Fox News is inviting Thompson and barring Ron Paul. –snip-
A Republican presidential debate without Ron Paul is a ‘debate’ between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. All the other Republican candidates would continue the Big Government policies of President George W. Bush, and the differences between them are mostly minor and cosmetic.
Fox News itself apparently wants to limit the GOP discussion to variations on a Neocon theme of perpetual war for perpetual big government.
