Fox News Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Shrill leftish types like to paint Fox News as a fundamentalist organization, there to stuff one shade of news into the gullet of a compliant viewer.

This view is, frankly, unbalanced.

Fox News is a driven, modern business that regularly beats its competitors and scales heights to which, for example, CNN aspires.

As proof of this might I offer its new, gizmo-filled newsroom, called "The Deck." This isn't something from "Minority Report." It's a technological laboratory for major reporting.

I am grateful to the Verge for having its eyes opened to tablets of a size perhaps never before seen in captivity.

As presented by Fox's Shepard Smith to an undoubtedly entranced audience, this makes the NSA's "Star Trek" office look like something from the 1960s. Which, I suppose, it is.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Here we have tablets the size of Piers Morgan's and Bill O'Reilly's egos combined. They are, according to Smith, called BATs.

No, not because you can damage someone permanently if you hit them over the head with one, but because it stands for Big Area Touchscreens. They have a big area. And you touch them.

You'll be wondering what these Windows-based monstrosities will help Fox News do -- other than look at cat videos at almost movie-like size.

Senior producer Jonathan Glenn explains in the video: "A lot of the people don't have the time to sift through everything at once."

Well, of course not. Theirs is only an 11-inch screen. Here, Fox News can do a faster, better job of working out what is true and what is mere propaganda. Or, worse, a story from The Onion.

A 55-inch screen must make it five times faster and easier to find the needle of truth in the haystack of information.

Smith explained that all this technology included brand-new aspects that would allow Fox News to perform its news-gathering functions on camera.

"Eventually I think this concept will be copied and it will become the norm," mused Kim Rosenberg, senior executive producer.

Included in this concept is a 38-foot-long video wall, operated by just one remote.

Providing news to the modern, nonlinear, distracted audience, is a complex and ever-evolving task that requires very advanced technology.

In order to be informative and a thriving business, you need to update your methods and your looks on a regular basis. (Which I know that some presenters already do.)

As Smith describes it: "It takes a lot of tools."