Fox News Again One-Sided In Its Notre Dame Coverage

I was moving through some channels and caught a Fox News live broadcast from the graduation ceremonies at the University of Notre Dame. As most people are aware, a relatively small but vocal group of narrow-minded bigots are angry because President Obama (who is pro choice) is the commencement speaker and is being given an honorary degree. Fox News has one of its moron reporters Griff Jenkins (who looked like an idiot when he tried to ambush Janeane Garofalo outside of a coffee shop) on the scene doing some “reporting” of the days events. Jenkins’ reporting, however, has been anything but fair and balanced from what I saw. He spoke at length about the people who are protesting (the idiots who are being arrested and the more dignified silent protesters) and he also talked about people who are considering withholding donations to Notre Dame because of the controversy of President Obama being allowed to speak there and being awarded the honorary degree. Where was the reporting about the people who are annoyed by all of this attention from these wing-nut protesters ruining their graduation day? Where are the reports on people who applaud Notre Dame being open to people speaking even if they have a differing opinion? Where are the advocates of free speech and freedom of thought who were whining when Miss California Carrie Prejean was supposedly punished for her anti-gay marriage opinion? It seems that Jenkins’ less-than-stellar reputation as a reporter continues. His report, at least the one that I saw, was neither fair nor balanced and certainly appeared to be ideologically driven.

Check Out Crooks And Liars Blog On Difference Between Hate Speech And Hateful Speech

Crooks and Liars writer David Neiwert has a nice blog entry about the difference between hate speech and hateful speech. Neiwert correctly points out that some pundits, like Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, often confuse the two. In this case, O’Reilly once again confuses issues in his zest to protect the honor of conservatives he feels are unfairly being attacked: Carrie Prejean and the tea baggers.

There’s an ambiguity in the rhetoric used by people who fight bigotry that people like Bill O’Reilly — people who couldn’t care less about fighting bigotry, and indeed do their best to undermine such efforts — love to exploit. It involves the word “hate.”
We use “hate” generically as a stand-in for “bigotry”, in part because the word better conveys the sewer of hatefulness that is part and parcel of bigoted attitudes and behavior, and it wraps up the concepts of racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and ethnic bigotry all into a neat bundle.
So what properly should be called “bias-motivated crimes” we call, more handily, “hate crimes”. Deeply racist and/or bigoted organizations like the skinheads and neo-Nazis, we call “hate groups.” What is more precisely labeled “violently bigoted speech” we call “hate speech.”

Crooks and Liars:
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/oreilly-doesnt-know-difference-betwe