Leonard Pitts recently wrote a column on how awful Fox News is for not giving the Rupert Murdoch story their full attention, 24/7. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little, but you get the idea.
His essay was totally devoid of logic or consistency. If you’d like to see what I mean, you can find it
HERE. If nothing else, you’ll get a good laugh out of it. Go ahead, read it. I’ll wait.
Good, you’re back. Now, here is the letter I wrote in reply. I tried to send it to him directly, but the email address given at the end of his column didn’t work. My email bounced. I really think that he needs to get this, so I’m hoping that someone has a good email address for him, or even better, that someone reading this will take a copy of it to the Miami Herald and serve it to Mr. Pitts as a lunch special.
Dear Mr. Pitts,
I always read your column. I became a fan of yours when the column you wrote after 9/11 went viral on the internet. Since then, I have seen you stretch the rules of logic in incredible ways, but I read your columns anyway. I guess you could say that I was so impressed with the aforementioned essay that began “You unspeakable bastard”, before we even knew who was behind the terrorist attacks, that I keep reading, hoping to find something just as good. So far, nada.
I often (or usually) disagree with you, but your columns are normally well written and entertaining. But your crazy logic in this piece is a new low for you.
Point One.
You said
“As it happens, one of the biggest news stories of the past few weeks has been the phone hacking scandal that now ensnares media baron Rupert Murdoch.”
It may be an important story, but it is hardly one of the biggest stories of the past few weeks. I can see where a journalist would put more importance on it than a non-journalist, but most of the country are not journalists. It doesn’t affect the average persons job, security, money, preferred candidate, the budget, wars, or anything else near and dear to them. It was just an interesting curiosity.
Point two.
You said
“The Pew Research Cen ter’s Project for Excellence in Journalism just surveyed re portage of the story in two time frames: July 6-8 and11-15. In that period, according to Pew, CNN devoted almost 170 minutes to the story, MSNBC about 145. Fox? About 30. That bears repeat ing: One of the biggest stories of the summer gets, over the course of six days, a half-hour of attention from Fox “News.”
This statement means nothing. It could just as well mean that CNN and MSNBC spent too much time on a story that was unimportant to the average person. The only thing that made it important to those two organizations is that it gave them a chance to embarrass Fox. There are thousands of instances where CNN and MSNBC beat a story into the ground in an attempt to make the right (and Fox) look like evil racist homophobes, and it normally backfires on them.
Point three.
You point out how CBS reported on the Bush-Air National Guard story, how the New York Time reported on Jason Blair, and NRP reported on the sting.
And Fox reported on Murdoch problems.
How much time or column space did those news organizations devote to stories that embarrassed them as compared to other news outlets. If the only criteria is reporting on a story, then they all pass the test, including Fox. If the criteria is how much time each news outlet spent on those stories as compared to others, then you need to supply the same comparisons that you used to denigrate Fox. How much time did NPR devote to coverage of the sting as compared to Fox. Probably not as much. Same for your other two examples.
You said “Fox’s failure to report…” in the hopes that people wouldn’t notice that earlier in the piece you said that Fox
did report on it, albeit for fewer minutes than two other companies, but most of us have IQ’s higher than that of a potted plant, so we didn’t fall for your switcheroo.
Mr. Pitts, I realize that you are an opinion guy instead of a hard news guy, but you should be less partisan. You are guilty of distorting the facts to push your own viewpoint.
Even an opinion writer has a responsibility to be logical, consistent, and fair in his arguments, and you failed on this one.
So, to paraphrase you:
Step one. Tell the truth.
That’s the way I see it.
Neill Arnhart
Neill Arnhart——
Bio and Archives
Neill Arnhart lives in Southern Indiana with his wife, step daughter, two dachshunds named Ricky and Lucy, an Australian Cattle dog named Indiana (Indy for short) an inside cat named Elphaba, and about a dozen barn cats. Aside from living in the US, he has lived on the island of Trinidad, and in Venezuela, back when it was nice place.
When not rousing the rabble with sarcastic essay’s, he hides behind the secret identity of a mild mannered insurance agent, specializing in Medicare, and other matters concerning senior citizens.
