Drudge Reports, You Decide: Fox News is Run By Vicious Blackmailers

The Drudge Report has apparently uncovered proof of what some people have been saying all along: That Fox News isn't about news at all.

In another of a recent plague of Drudge Exclusives, fedora aficionado Matt Drudge reveals all anyone needs to know about Fox News' journalistic integrity. In a posting that is supposed to be about Fox's shrewd strategy to control the damage caused by Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, a film showing the network's right wing bias, Drudge inadvertantly reveals more about how Fox sees the world than Outfoxed does:

The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that FOX NEWS executives are lining up a parade of employees who formerly worked at CNN & MSNBC and have been downloading information on how editorial decisions are made at these networks, including the agenda for how stories are supposed to be covered.

A senior FOX NEWS executive tells DRUDGE: "We have enough ammunition to nail both MSNBC & CNN." Sources say FOX is prepared to go public with these accounts if necessary.

I don't know which is worse: That Fox would be willing to withhold genuine news to get a rival to spike a story Fox doesn't want reported, or that Fox News would prepare and broadcast material that isn't news to smear a rival's reputation. Either way, the network comes off looking less like a journalistic endeavor than a mafia protection racket.

A serious and self-respecting news organization would confront the kind of charges apparently made in Outfoxed head-on. They'd conducting a point-by-point interview with the President of news and perhaps the Editor in Chief of the program, magazine or newspaper to defend the integrity of the news organization. One can imagine Edward R. Murrow looking straight into the camera, or Ted Koppel leading discussing what they would consider a very serious accusation.

Fox, on the other hand, resorts to blackmail. How very...oh, what's the phrase I'm looking for? Oh, yes, here it is: Bush Republican.

And we got it from Drudge, so it must be true.