The mighty Charles Krauthammer received the 2009 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism yesterday. His remarked were excerpted in the New York Post today. Awesome as usual. In it, he extols the virtues of FOXNews and points just what that network means to America. Yeah they play a little fast and loose with the trashy B-roll by this Dad’s lights and are sometimes too tabloid for my tastes, but the good they do far outweighs the cringe-worthy moments. Here is a taste of Krauthammer’s remarks. Read the whole thing here.
At a time when awards in the humanities are a near-monopoly of the left — Nobel peace prizes awarded to those, from Yasir Arafat to Jimmy Carter, who give the most succor to the forces of terror and tyranny; Pulitzers given to whichever newspaper can expose the more damaging national-security secrets — it is important for there to be an award to recognize and encourage journalism and, more generally, political thinking of a different kind.
In that respect, there should be a special award for Fox News. Fox has done a great service to the American polity — single-handedly breaking up the intellectual and ideological monopoly that for decades exerted hegemony (to use a favorite lefty cliché) over the broadcast media.
I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people. The reason Fox News has thrived and grown is because it offers a vibrant and honest alternative to those who could not abide yet another day of the news delivered to them beneath layer after layer of often undisguised liberalism.
What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.
h/t: Floyd’s Mom
Print
Digg
StumbleUpon
del.icio.us
Facebook
Yahoo! Buzz
Twitter
Google Bookmarks
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
MSN Reporter
MySpace
Orkut
Ping.fm
Reddit
RSS
Slashdot
Technorati
Tumblr
Webnews.de
Exactly. FOX is awesome and amazing because they do the news and are honest about it. They let the American people have a point of view and they do not look down their noses at us.
I love Chuck’s pieces.
Disagree with him on Palin, though.
Shepard Smith took a few well aimed potshots at the right yesterday afternoon on his Fox News show. I saw the show and he was pretty livid about the lack of support for our Pres. from the “right.” For the most part it seemed aimed at the extreme right, but some of it slopped over to the right in general.
Shepherd is a moderate guy. And about the certificate issue he is right. I am like look even if its true and it may be true we won’t ever know. Its a huge violation of the Constitution but the problem is the looney right, and I mean the World Net Daily crowd got hold of teh issue and then there are the 9-11 truthers who are also part of the shrieking masses….if the issue had any legs those people KILLED IT!
We can take Obama out in 2012 on the issues. And there is already a real shift in people’s opinions…..