Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for April 26, 2012

Maybe, like the town drunk, Roland will pass out in the gutter.

As a town drunk, I resent that remark.

I meant Garry’s remark, not Leftwingpatriot’s.

The news you might get from the town drunk isprobably more accurate and less biased thanyou’d get from Fuchs…. [I stoutly resisted thestrong temptation to change one of the letters,this being aa family news site and all….

Just proves once more every village needs its idiot…

or like getting d news from d repuklican party

In all due respect for fairness and balance, I REALLY like today’s strip and the comments.

Hey, faux news is good at something – Playing commercials.

fox news is crap. block that channel and fox business. does anyone at fox news actually visited the troops? has hannity or o’reilly went to iraq or afghanistan or helmand and embed themselves with our troops? cnn has, msnbc has, and even colbert spent a week in iraq. and, a tiny blurp about the murdocks being questioned on their channels.

Everybody goes on about Fox because it IS different. Its slant is so obviously Republican, it reminds me of the old communist news reports (I used to live in West Berlin and watch East German TV). Every news outlet has a general bias, but most are not out there to support a particular party as Fox is. What they report and how they report it is essentially designed to undermine anything non-Republican.

Sweet!

There is an old and traditional news bias: “If it bleeds it leads, if it thinks it stinks.” That you will always have with you. — Then there is the bias of, say, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. The editorial page has a definite slant, but the news staff has somewhat more independence. And the Times had Safire, and does have Douthat and Brooks, to give conservative views. (They present an establishment William-F-Buckley kind of conservatism, however, rather than the modern looney-tunes sort.) There may be a Conservative voice on the Journal, too. I think what makes Fox different, the is breakdown between news and opinion pieces, and the hectoring, bullying manner of it. There is a world of difference between “I think you are mistaken, and here are the reasons …” and “You can’t be stupid enough to believe the drivel you are spouting …” There is a certain classiness in trying to persuade, trying to move the consensus of opinion in your own direction, which Fox seems to lack. They aren’t interested in persuading anyone: they are only interested in provoking and antagonizing. They don’t provide food for thought: they only provide fuel for resentment. In Colonial times, there was a crime called “maintenance.” It was also called malicious gossip. It consisted of the intentional use of tale-telling to provoke people against one another, encourage resentments, maintain quarrels ,and so poison the whole community. Fox reminds me of the Southern press just before the Civil War. The goal was to subvert the Union, and encourage secession. Lincoln was no radical, and his election did not threaten the South; but it did threaten to decrease the South’s power over the national government. Conservatism is useful and necessary as a counterbalance to some of the excesses the left will fall into. Checks and balances are a good thing. But Fox and its ilk seem rather more like agents of destruction than of balance. Their goal is polarization not a more favorable consensus. Their goal is to divide, not unite. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” — Mark 3:25

Only real patriots watch fox news.Just ask sister sarah.

I guess I shouldn’t expect to find logic in a comic strip. If the hypothetical Fox News in Gary’s World wanted to mock King Barry Rollie would be creating stories that the war was going badly.Speaking of Baghdad Bob, did anyone else notice HRH announced the War on Terror is over?

Calling a Faux News “reporter” a town drunk would be an insult to town drunks.

Last year I sat across the table from a very wealthy woman who said “I cannot understand why any woman wouldn’t be a Republican.” There was a moment of silence at the table. She had absolutely no idea what she had just said about herself.

Mel’s remark is extremely unfair to town drunks everywhere. They shouldn’t be lumped into the same category as Fox News. Here’s hoping the Murdoch investigation turns up something on this side of the pond.

And Fox proved their bias when bin Laden was killed – their coverage never mentioned Obama, only showed pictures of Bush. Fox viewers are wonderfully insane and stupid and will never let facts get in the way of their love for morons.

Your conclusion isn’t warranted. There is an obvious bias – more than a bias in their reporting. And as Diughfoot said, with Fox there is a breakdown between reporting and commentary. I’m often unhappy with the Democratic Party, but that has nothing to do with Fox.

The best source for truly unbiased news about America and the rest of the world is to get a shortwave radio and listen to English language stations from Europe. Sadly, the BBC discontinued their North American service quite a few years ago. The best you can hope for from them is to pick up their Caribbean service. News about America from overseas can prove very eye-opening.

The Town Drunk will tell you anything you want to hear, if you buy him a drink afterwards. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes knows which side their bread is buttered, and act accordingly. Being a social activist takes a lot of personal effort and is not without risk. Much safer to be a lapdog . . . which is why so many people bend Conservative (though there’s isn’t even hardly any clear definition of what the term means) and need the likes of Limbaugh and Fox News to reinforce their basic cowardliness.

More unearned insults for fox. do you people THINK?

Fox’s “slant” is toward the TRUTH, which can’t be found on the Democrat side.Wwhat’s left? Republicans. Are you people INSANE? Do you really WANT another 4 years of Obama? That scares the HELL out of me!

It’s hard to argue with fools who think they know it all.

One thing Fox News is good at; having attractive women wearing skimpy outfits reporting their stories. Appeals to all the stupid white men who watch their drivel.

Is Hedley actually aware that nobody is looking at him?

We ALL have opinions – most of which are wrong.This is only my opinion, which is probably wrong.’Twas ever thus.

ZING!

Yeah, it’s always great for a station’s credibility when one of its big talking heads doesn’t know how tides work, and thus insists “god did it”.

@cdward. Fox may be obviously Republican but the others are obviously Democrat and there are more of them. There are two sides to every story, not just the Democrat side. Fox has broken plenty of important stories that the “mainstream media” chose to ignore.

Trudeau – 4,567 vs. Straw Man – 0

Does getting news from Doonesbury still make people smart?

All the mainstream news, and Fox is mainstream, is sensationalist, superficial nonsense. Sean Hannity and Anderson Cooper may not be idiots, but if they are not, they are doing a good job of faking it. To be fair to SH and AC, their peers are just as bad.

There is no terror, just man-made disasters.

ALL the major networks have a strong right-wing Republican bias. The latest proof came from a study reported by FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY IN REPORTING. On the Sunday morning talk shows, 70% of their one-on-one interviews with partisans guests were with Republicans. Women and minorities are also ignored. In an 8 month period, Meet the Press had only 6 one-on-one interviews with women. 3 of those 6 shows were with Michele Bachmann. In the last election ALL the major networks and PBS were documented to be more negative about Obama than McCain. FOX’s bias is the most extreme, but all the networks that we allow to use OUR PUBLIC air waves thnk Republican white males are waay more worthy of media attention than the rest of us.

I’ve never heard anyone from FOX News say the war in Afganistan is going well, good or even mildly OK…What a load of crap.

Yes watching fox news is good for lowering your IQ by several points..

A small burro and a Bull African Elephant on a teeter totter DOES represent Faux News “fair and balanced”. It isn’t so much the bias, as the total lies that spew, as from Limbaugh, that is most offensive. CNN is very conservative and biased, jus ask Wolf Blitzer. CBS and ABC are strongly slanted right-wise. NBC with the MSNBC affiliate, does obtain some “balance”, but the non-cable “news” isn’t.

Journalism used to mean “accuracy first” in ALL stories, even Woodward and Bernstein were challenged to prove their sources were correct, for a story that ended up totally correct. Just as the press SHOULD HAVE mandated the Bush administration PROVE, at least to Congress, WMDs existed, or that there was valid reason to totally destroy Afghanistan and Iraq’s governments BEFORE we invaded, and totally failed under Bush in the singular “proclaimed” mission, to get bin Laden.

…all is fair in love and war! I believe this is war.

What I wonder is, is there a network of trolls that contact each other, or does Faux send out a blanket email saying that they’re under attack, and get over there and start mindlessly insulting people who actually think before they post?I might think differently if even one person could intelligently argue a point, rather than just repeatedly bleating “I’m right and you’re wrong.”

The reason the disdain for Faux Snooze more than others is because Faux makes up the news completely. They are totally fact-free reporting. They even admitted in court when sued by two former reporters that they make things up “to counter the liberal bias” of reality. Some things in the news SHOULD be based solely on facts, not made-up propaganda.

Spoken like a true Faux Snooze Kool-Aid drinker. What other lies can you parrot?

Town Drunks everywhere deserve an apology.

having been a working newsman for over 30 years, i find that of all the networks, fox is perhaps the worst for not confirming stories before they air…they do slant(opps, sorry the word should be tilt and slide)toward the republican party…it’s interesting to watch them and discover, just what bias in the news is…if they had their way, all liberals and anyone else that disagrees with their point of view, would be rounded up and put in re-education camps…gee, just like the dictatorships we say we abhor…..amazing ain’t it

“I’m Gary Trudeau. If you disagree with me, you’re stupid. Q.E.D.”

Fix News has been caught in so many lies they should sell rugs.

Accurate and profound as usual.

Fox is consistant. Fox is entertaining. How many times do I have to tell you, you can’t believe everything you hear on television and radio. Get real.

I watch Fox News—so does my husband, and so do many other very intelligent people whom I know. We are not stupid, nor are we becoming stupid. I resent this direct insult. I would not insult the viewers of network news, and I think we ALL need to watch more than one news channel/network. ALL media is biased, to some extent. They ALL have agendas. It just depends on YOUR bias as to whether or not you think other news programs are slanted or not.

Hey, I’m sorry you’re offended, but regular readers here have documented numerous time Fox did not just have a bias, but out-and-out lied to support it. Perhaps you, and many other hit-and-run commenters should not be so invested in a media source as to take it personally.

the only thing all the news outlets want are rating’s. they will say what they need to so their rating’s will go up. The prime news oranizations are all lib and fox is conser. Watch the one you want and believe everything they say as you drink your koolaid. Garry is a lib and his strip is going to lean that way all the time.

Satire is not for the thin of skin.

New Corp may have more problems than people sneering at Fox News. Rupert Murdoch has already got to the “Mistakes were made, but not by me” stage in the phone hacking scandal. Somebody is going down. Rupert is trying real hard to make sure that it’s not him.

Yea—those white guys at MSNBC is where to get the ‘real’ news -’ FAUX News’ is so ‘blame Bush’ - sorry people-the current admin owns it all now

Thanks for the enlightenment. About the only PBS I ever get to watch is newshour on our foreign language channel (SBS). They seem pretty balanced to me.

I actually think that sometimes it is necessary to go on and on to get a fully backgrounded news story.

It’s a pity they can’t be funded by your government in the same way the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) and BBC are.

I understand the arguments against govt funding but also see that it can happen without a leaning towards the government of the day. Both BBC and our ABC have been in trouble with governments in the past because they perceived them of being biased in the other direction but it hasn;t made a shred of difference – the government doesn’t really have the power to hire and fire people within these organisations – at least not without pullig a lot of strings to do so.

Trudeau is just another Boomer ( trying to assuage his conscience) who didn’t have the guts to serve when Lefty-Democrat LBJ was sending a bunch of us off to Viet Nam to get shot-up. I also spent two years in Afghanistan. IT SUCKS. However, Blaming the war on a news station is really stupid. 75% of the deaths is Afghanistan have come under BHO’s reign.

You only have one alternative – move to another country ||:-)> Clearly you cannot abide either political party of your own…or watch no news and get all your information from…where? All media has a leaning towards one party or another. It is literally impossible to be completely unbiased and even if you were it would be perceived to be biased. And it sounds as though if you dare to be different you don’t get a lot of support either. There’s just no hope. None at all.

Anyone who wants to defend Fox News as an unbiased news outlet is a moron. There, I said it. The other telvision news outlets at least try to separate “news” from “opinion”, but Roger Ailes makes sure that Fox News has a consistent slant towards Republican thinking.Trudeau is a little behind on this piece. Fox is much more interested in the John Edwards trial and the Secret Service scandal at the moment.At this point, Fox wants nothing to do with news on Afghanistan unless it’s to make Obama look bad. Pretty much everyone knows we need to exit in as dignified a manner as possible, but opinions vary on what that means, even in conservative circles. The only thing they agree on is that blame must be placed on Obama, rather than on Bush for getting distracted by Saddam and allowing Karzai into power. Much like the economy, Obama is playing the hand he was dealt in Afghanistan.

“Teapublicans want to strip women of all their rights, end voting laws” – This sounds an aweful lot like musilm fundamentalist thinking.

As is this strip determined to undermine anything that IS “Republican” or non “left-leaning Liberal” in general!

Gary. you are such a TOTAL hypocrite and weasel!

I haven’t watched FOX at all this year, and beyond that maybe five or 10 minutes over the past couple of years, and after that I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter though because everybody’s telling me that I’m doing the right thing.

Think Olbermann’s going to sue Al Gore’s pants off? I didn’t think anything could be worse than FOX.

With all the vitriol spewed against Republicans, how are they such a threat to Democrats and how do they keep getting elected? If so many people ridicule Fox News, why do they have such a good rating. Just curious since I don’t watch Political News. (One reason could be because I haven’t had a TV in over 10years and don’t miss it either.

When a person is used to getting the news from liberals, FOX will of course appear to be slanted to the right. I like FOX. It balances in part, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS Time Magazine, NY Times and on and on. CNN is also slanted to the left although not to the extent of the others.

Garry Trudeau: Typical Lib. Arrogant, condescending and sanctimonious. Excuse me, but wasn’t Afghanistan supposed to be just war…or, so Obama said it was? So, when the Libs screw it up, it’s Bush’s fault, right? Fox News shows more balance than the Libs will ever show in their lives.