Fox News host certain she can be objective in her journalism Michael Roston and David Edwards

Published: Friday February 15, 2008



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Print This Email This Drawing their inspiration from an article published at the Politico earlier in the week regarding whether or not political news reporters should vote, Fox News hosts had a new worry this week: whether or not journalists covering politics can really remain objective. For one Fox News on-hair host, the question was easy to answer. "I feel I can do my job but still exercise my right to vote," Fox News host Martha MacCallum argued, pointing to her journalistic objectivity. MacCallum quoted from Politico's John F. Harris, who wrote, "My belief is that being a journalist for an ideologically neutral publication like Politico, or the Washington Post, where I used to work, does not mean having no opinions. It means exercising self-discipline in the public expression of those opinions so as not to give sources and readers cause to question someones commitment to fairness." MacCallum's agreement with a "commitment to fairness" comes just a few weeks after a huge controversy erupted online after her Fox show took aim (Video link) at an Xbox 360 game which she claimed featured "full digital nudity and sex." "The Internet hath no fury like a gamer scorned," Seth Schiesel reported for The New York Times last month, adding that "the game world has been ablaze with indignation since the Fox News program The Live Desk With Martha MacCallum said on Monday that Mass Effect, one of the most critically praised games of 2007, contains frontal nudity and explicit depictions of sexual activity. The assertions of virtual lasciviousness first appeared earlier this month among conservative bloggers incensed by brief YouTube clips excerpted from the 30- to 40-hour game." Schiesel noted that the game "includes a complicated romantic subplot that is no more risqué in its plot or graphic in its depiction than evening network television." And while a guest on MacCullum's show apologized in the Times article for 'sexing up' a game she had never played, the host and network have refused to apologize or correct the record. After the game's publisher Electronic Arts asked the network to "set the record straight on a number of errors and misstatements" which reached "a new level of recklessness," Fox's only response was to extend "several invitations to EA through a company representative to appear on Live Desk With Martha MacCallum to discuss "it." An offer that the game publisher rejected. Nearly a year and a half ago, MacCallum was also called out by the liberal blog News Hounds for possibly using an allegedly leaked Fox internal memo as a source for a report on Iraq. The leaked memo instructed employees to "Be On The Lookout For Any Statements From The Iraqi Insurgents...Thrilled At The Prospect Of A Dem Controlled Congress." "During the Live Desk show that aired the same day as the memo, MacCallum claimed without providing any details or sources that there were 'some reports of cheering in the streets on the behalf of the supporters of the insurgency in Iraq, that theyre very pleased with the way things are going here and also with the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld.'" News Hounds complained. "Was MacCallum's 'source' for the happiness of insurgents in fact nothing more than the morning memo from her boss? We'll never know, but the coincidence is certainly suggestive." 'UnAmerican' for journalists to abstain? During Friday's segment, another commentator on Fox seemed to imply that journalists choosing to abstain from voting were giving into Islamic terrorists. "The first elections in Afghanistan, the Taliban threatened death, anyone who voted had their fingers chopped off but there were news reports on women lining up around the polling places even if it meant that they were going to be harmed because they know what it means to vote in a free election," argued Christine O'Donnell, a Republican strategist. "To have journalists say that I cannot be objective if my I vote, then you should not be a journalist." Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson, Jr., went as far as to say that journalists who choose not to vote were not acting like "real Americans." The remark prompted the Politico's Jim Vandehei to joke that he sometimes doesn't vote because he's "unAmerican." "I didn't know that until right now, it's fantastic," he added. This video is from Fox's Live Desk, broadcast February 15, 2008.



