Not Quite The Half-Hour "News" Hour

The place you go to for all things “fair and balanced” has now become the place you can go to for some Sunday night satire – And frankly I don’t think that it’s right.

I realize that I’m certainly not their target demographic. I voted for Kerry in the last election, I’m in a group on facebook.com titled “Against gay marriage? Then don’t get one (Penn Chapter)” and I cringe at the sight of Hannity and Colmes.

I may not think the jokes are funny, but that’s not the problem I have with the show. The problem with what many call conservatives’ answer to liberals’ satirical romps “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” is that it airs on a network that considers itself a “news network.”

Lest we forget, the wildly popular mock news programs, “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are on Comedy Central. To make a show like "The Half-Hour News Hour" a part of FOX News Channel’s programming is a grave mistake that undermines the network’s already questionable credibility.

Call me a purist, but mock news does not belong on a bona-fide news network. As one critic put it, the show is more suitable for FOX News Channel’s entertainment brother, FOX.

Making matters worse, on the show’s premiere last Sunday, the network continued to have its real news ticker run along the bottom of the screen during the program, all the while interjecting an over-the-top laugh track throughout the show, as mentioned in an article on buzzle.com.

I have the feeling that many people feel the way I do – maybe even the bigwigs at FOX News themselves. The news network has only ordered two episodes of the show. And its Sunday night premiere tanked. In a journalism age that has seen Stephen Glass, Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair, let’s not deliberately muck up real news with fake.

~TD

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/127734.html

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2822.html