[Rudey]

Originally posted by DeltAlum
Rupe Biased? They Report, You Decide
Rush & Malloy
New York Daily News
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel likes to say that it is "fair and balanced." But four people who used to work for the channel said Monday that executives directed them to slant their coverage to the mogul's conservative liking.

At a press conference at the Ritz-Carlton, Murdoch's former employees - Fox News terrorism expert Larry Johnson, Fox News Washington reporter Alexander Kippen, Fox News booker Clara Frenk and Fox News freelance writer David Korb - stood with Robert Greenwald, the director of "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," a documentary on FNC that screens tonight at the New School University downtown.

Johnson said his appearances on Fox News ceased last year when he questioned the war in Iraq. "They never asked me back again," Johnson told The News' Brian Harmon.

Korb said he received orders to "make protesters look stupid and use footage of small crowds where the protesters look like pot-smoking liberals."

For his film, Greenwald obtained internal FNC memos in which execs order newswriters to describe events in a Republican-friendly way.

A Fox spokeswoman released a statement at the press conference that called the four ex-staffer's concerns "hardly worth addressing," adding that "some left due to incompetence."

Elsewhere, a former New York Post reporter claimed that Murdoch tried to dictate his stories on the media.

In a posting on Jim Romenesko's media Web site, Dan Cox said that when he was the Post's media reporter in 2002, "barely a day went by when Murdoch didn't force-feed items about his rival media moguls ...

"Not only were we not allowed to ask Murdoch any specific questions about these 'tips,' we were not allowed to check their veracity - anywhere."

Cox added, "Murdoch expected us to use them wholesale, unattributed, of course."

That echoes accounts of last week's Post "exclusive" flub on Sen. John Kerry's vice-presidential choice - which also ran without a byline.

The Post is a tabloid. It's never made any gesture to hide it.

The rest of the material: At the end of the day it's all accusations, made only by 4 people out of a large network, made by people who also are promoting a documentary, and doesn't compare to an actual study with statistical measures.

-Rudey