Fox News: Everywhere You Want To Be

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By Matt Haber

November 3, 2008 | 1:02 p.m

In 1993, Rolling Stone writer Hugh Gallagher forced himself to watch MTV for seven days straight. Mr. Gallagher's reaction to the experience was easily summed up in the headline to his story: "An Experiment in Terror."

In this week's New Republic, Isaac Chotiner tries a similar (but less immersive) experiment as he watched 24 Hours of Fox News.

Writes Mr. Chotiner:

As one might expect with Barack Obama so close to the presidency, the channel is in full nuclear meltdown mode; I was afraid the stench of desperation would waft out of the television set and into my studio apartment. Fox is going ballistic for good reason: These days, absolutely nothing is going right—in both declensions of the word. The paroxysms I witnessed hinted at an answer to a critical question: What will the opposition media look like during an Obama administration?

Mr. Chotiner calls Fox News "the right's main television outlet," a risky move since The Washington Post and The New York Times have each found themselves obliged to print corrections for referring to Bill O'Reilly as a "right-wing pundit" and Hannity & Colmes as a conservative show in recent weeks.

You needn't spend 24-hours watching FOX News to see its stars, as viewers of CBS News Sunday Morning learned yesterday when correspondent Harry Smith presented a profile of Bill O'Reilly. (You can watch video of it here.) Mr. O'Reilly told Mr. Smith that his is a uniquely American story:

'Nowhere else on this planet could a wise guy from Levittown, with no uncle in the business, no social skills at all—I'm sure you'd agree —kiss nobody's butt ever, rise up and command the position that I command. That couldn't happen in Switzerland. It couldn't happen in Japan! It happens in America!'

FOX News was also in print this weekend in The New York Times, where Jim Rutenberg compared the network and its rival, MSNBC, calling their approaches to the election, A Surge on One Channel, a Tight Race on Another.