“Before the president began talking — we don’t know if there was a correlation — the Dow was up 28. The Dow is now down 28 points. We’ll keep our eyes focused on that.” – Fox News Channel

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart tore into Fox News Channel Thursday, highlighting the extent to which he believes it serves as a communications arm for the Republican Party, and alleging that the line between Fox’s “opinion” programming and “news” programming aren’t as disparate as the channel claims.

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“According to Fox, the weekday news programming — and this is according to Fox — runs from 9:00 to 4:00 p.m. and from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. for a total of nine newsy hours a day,” Stewart notes. “Let me, for the audience here, help you out.

“The three hours you spend in the morning with Fox and Friends, not news,” Stewart continues. “Your 4:00 to 5:00 post tea Neil Cavuto break, not news. The 5:00 and 6:00 emotional whirlwind and therapy session that is Glenn Beck, not even close to news. O’Reilly, Hannity and then van Social Security tern, not news.

“This is according to Fox News,” Stewart adds. “Those people, the ones featured in promos about how fair and balanced Fox News is are not news. These people, otherwise known as the only people you ever think of when you think about Fox News, are not news. They are Fox opinutainment.”

Stewart posits that Fox’s opinion programs thus become a jumping off point for its newcasts.

“The Fox opinion guy’s outrage becomes the ‘some say’ source for the news side,” Stewart opines. “It’s a perpetual re-revulsion machine.”

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“Do you think Fox News is biased?” he asks rhetorically. “Of course they are biased. Of course they are.”

This following video is from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, broadcast Oct. 29, 2009.