QUOTE OF THE DAY…. A fair amount of the Sunday shows appear to have been devoted to discussing NPR’s decision to part ways with Juan Williams. “Fox News Sunday,” perhaps not surprisingly given Williams’ presence for the roundtable, talked about it at some length, including Brit Hume’s suggestion that perhaps NPR is racist.
On the flip side, Andrew Sullivan raised a fair point, noting, “On Fox News, if you say something bigoted, you get rewarded, you get promoted, and you get celebrated — and that’s a direct media strategy.”
But it was E.J. Dionne, appearing on “Meet the Press,” whose words seemed especially relevant this morning: “NPR is quite simply one of the best news organizations in the world… Fox News, on the other hand, is a Republican propaganda network.”
Now, Dionne has a reputation as an influential center-left voice — he identified himself later in the show as a “liberal” — but it’s worth noting that there was no pushback when he made the observation.
I found this noteworthy, not because it was new, but because of Dionne’s willingness to state this simply as a matter of incontrovertible fact. We’ve all seen plenty of commentators, including the one you’re reading now, describe Fox News as a “Republican propaganda network.” But here was a respected member of the D.C. political establishment, stating plainly on one of the leading Sunday shows — where such talk is uncommon — what we all know to be true about Fox News.
Good for him. Here’s hoping others also drop the “some have accused” and “many Democrats believe” pretenses, and just start describing the network the same way.
