This is a point I've returned to repeatedly, but the mainstream media - the "serious" media - really needs to figure out how to handle outlets like Fox. Aside from their complete lack of ethics or standards, they also imagine (or claim to imagine) they're correcting an imbalance which doesn't exist.
Fox came of age during the late Clinton years, when the Clinton Rules of journalism - later transferred to Gore - were in full force. In terms of substance they didn't differ much from what you could find on MSNBC or CNN night after night. Mostly, they differed in style. There were some signs that the rest of the media were slowly recovering from their Clinton hangover when 9/11 hit, and they let Fox be the leader in how to approach the news then as well.
At some point one would hope these outlets would recover their moral center and start living up to the standards they claim to, and in part that will require seeing themselves as a counterweight to the bullshit spewed by the right wing propagandists at outlets such as Fox. Not necessarily an ideological counterweight, though giving a liberal a TV show every now and then wouldn't be such a bad idea, but a factual one.
The right wing noise machine has not only gone unchecked for too long, it's been embraced and mainstreamed. It's long past time for that to change.
