What is and isn't news

Many journalists seem consternated by the White House's challenging Fox for the bias in its news coverage, as though They Could Be Next. I'm sorry, but Fox is more than quantitatively different from other network and cable organizations -- it isn't just biased, it (1) fakes its own news events (funding the "Tea Partyers," for example), (2) circulates GOP talking points without critique or context, and (3) reports the crazed ideas of its commentators as things that "are being said," as though any sane person elsewhere might be discussing such notions. Analogies with MSNBC just don't fly.

Anyway, I think that Rafe is onto something when he says that the Whitehouse is bothering to make statements about Fox's problems to put the other networks on notice that they shouldn't view such Fox-generated fluff as real news.

That’s the reason behind the White House is calling Fox News out — they can afford for Fox News to be what it is, but they don’t want the New York Times or CNN to factor the priorities of Fox News into their own editorial judgement.

Indeed. The insider-driven nature of contemporary news coverage is bad enough just because of the goldfish-bowl culture of DC journalists, without their getting sucked into the fake news business by the bottom feeders among them.