This morning Fox News TV was all agog with a report that Iran had pointed ballistic missiles towards Israel.

I searched for this news item tonight, and could only find a Canadian newspaper report stating that Iran said they would strike Israel with missiles if Israel attacked their nuclear facilities.

The item has subsequently been changed on the Fox website to correlate to the Canadian item.

So did Fox News just make a mistake? Or did they jump too eagerly on a story that sounded like it could frighten people?

Well that explains my little chat with the neighbor. He mentioned this and that they were nuclear capable. I've warned him about Fox News but he's pretty set in his ways and it's not worth being pissed off at each other for too long so I don't push it too much anymore. He's about 76 and originally from Latvia. A refugee from the Big War.

He seems to think Obama is quite the liar too but I can't agree or disagree with him there. I just have my suspicions about where he gets some of his ideas.

I think Foxnews made a mistake, unfortunately it is the same mistake them and others make. They report stories before they know the story. Being first beats being correct sometimes.

Jokul, you are a very sweet, forgiving man and you should be--and are--well-loved for that quality.

But, let's face it. If a news 'source' has a choice between spreading fear to the masses (which sells advertising space) and actually reporting the news that may not sell advertising space, what will that 'news' source do--until, of course, it's called on it?

Publicly supported or subscriber supported cable should be able to find objective, or at least reasonable, analysts on both sides of the fence. There ARE some reasonable, non-ideologue liberals, and there are a few conservative analysts who also manage this difficult feat, but when you get to the fringe left and the neocons, you only find screamers. PBS has Moyers, but nobody with a contrasting point of view.

But now that I think about it, reasonable news would probably not be watched by many people.

The point of my OP was also to enquire as to whether or not Fox is just going along with the by now familiar administration program of raising the terror alert bar in time of crisis. We're all aware that the color coded alerts were fake, now the administration needs something new to keep us scared.

"A Scared America votes Republican"

Is Fox News on board with that?

Is CNN on board with the leftist agenda? Is MSNBC on board with the leftist agenda? Is NPR on board with the leftist agenda? Is CBS on board with the leftist agenda? Is NBC on board with the leftist agenda? Is ABC on board with the leftist agenda?

You are not going to like this, Dax, but Fox News is actually pretty damn close to its mantra of "fair and balanced." In any event, its a great deal closer to "fair and balanced" than are the other news outlets I named.

In the instance at hand, I think Fox News likely did what it thought was in its commercial interests...it pounced on a story likely to generate views and thus revenue. I ascribe commercial motivations to that action and you apparently ascribe political motivations. I think the commercial motivations might be easier to prove but I am willing to concede that does not disprove any potential political motivations.

I do believe that Fox is politically as well as commercially motivated. Absent talk radio, Fox is the only right leaning network on the block, so the interests are entwined.

they do have some objective news, but at least once an hour they'll throw in a talking point story, and their analysis is all right wing, except for Alan Colmes.

That isn't what I object to. I object to them calling themselves fair and balanced when they clearly are not. At least neither MSNBC nor CNN makes that claim.

I mean, they have Karl Rove doing political analysis for them, Look at their commentators, Gingrich, Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Bernard Goldberg, it's a roster of the far right. If they got any further right they'd be using White Supremacist leaders as their analysts.

Anyone else note the manner in which Dax suggests the right is racist?

(Yawn) Get back to us when something new is said. The problem (all objective studies aside which have concluded that Fox News Channel DOES, in fact, provide the most balanced news coverage among the major networks), is that the political left is going to continue to brand Fox as latter-day Nazis simply because they DON'T act like a media outlet for the Democratic National Committee.

Is your reply an example of the objectivity commonly expressed by the right when describing Fox's "Fair and Balanced" claim? I've gotten the impression, from you, the objectivity you display pertains to a noun rather than an adjective.