Changes

Liberal commentators go in and out of the Fox studios all over America, every day — some of them, like host Alan Colmes and news analyst Marvin Kalb, and Eleanor Clift affiliated with the channel. There's no doubt, of course, that Fox News is more conservative than CBS, ABC, NBC or CNN. But, after all, that was its founding mission.

Liberal commentators go in and out of the Fox studios all over America, every day — some of them, like host Alan Colmes and news analyst Marvin Kalb, and Eleanor Clift affiliated with the channel. There's no doubt, of course, that Fox News is more conservative than CBS, ABC, NBC or CNN. But, after all, that was its founding mission.

Fox's real ethos is not Republican but anti-elitist — a major reason it connects with so many Americans and annoys so many coastal elites. "There's a whole country that elitists will never acknowledge," Ailes once observed. "What people resent deeply out there are those in the 'blue states' thinking they're smarter."  This anti-elitism shows itself in Fox's pro-U.S. stance in covering the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and its broadcasters' use of terms such as "terrorist" instead of the PC "militant" to refer to … well, terrorists. Since the Vietnam War era, mainstream journalists have tended to see such blunt language and side-taking as unsophisticated, a betrayal of journalistic objectivity, or perhaps their own ingrained biases against government in general.

Fox's real ethos is not Republican but anti-elitist — a major reason it connects with so many Americans and annoys so many coastal elites. "There's a whole country that elitists will never acknowledge," Ailes once observed. "What people resent deeply out there are those in the 'blue states' thinking they're smarter."  This anti-elitism shows itself in Fox's pro-U.S. stance in covering the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and its broadcasters' use of terms such as "terrorist" instead of the PC "militant" to refer to … well, terrorists. Since the Vietnam War era, mainstream journalists have tended to see such blunt language and side-taking as unsophisticated, a betrayal of journalistic objectivity, or perhaps their own ingrained biases against government in general.