A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

One of the salient features of the "reality-based" community in recent times has been their desire to go after FoxNews any chance they get and to try to deny it any publicity whatsoever. Remember the time that Democratic Presidential candidates wanted to go on Fox in order to debate? Their netroot base moved instantly to shut it down. And succeeded; evidently, each of the people who styles himself/herself as the next courageous President of the United States does not dare cross the netroot Line of Death and wander into Fox territory.

There danger lies, after all!

And now, for the next exercise in monumental hubris:

Liberal activists are stepping up their campaign against Fox News Channel by pressuring advertisers not to patronize the network.

MoveOn.org, the Campaign for America's Future and liberal blogs like DailyKos.com are asking thousands of supporters to monitor who is advertising on the network. Once a database is gathered, an organized phone-calling campaign will begin, said Jim Gilliam, vice president of media strategy for Brave New Films, a company that has made anti-Fox videos.

The groups have successfully pressured Democratic presidential candidates not to appear at any debate sponsored by Fox, and are also trying to get Home Depot Inc. to stop advertising there.

At least 5,000 people nationwide have signed up to compile logs on who is running commercials on Fox, Gilliam said. The groups want to first concentrate on businesses running local ads, as opposed to national commercials.

"It's a lot more effective for Sam's Diner to get calls from 10 people in his town than going to the consumer complaint department of some pharmaceutical company," Gilliam said.

Some of videos produced by Gilliam's company compile statements made by Fox anchors and guests that the activists consider misleading, such as those that question global warming.

Representatives for Fox News Channel, which is owned by News Corp., did not immediately return calls for comment.

Home Depot has not had an unusual number of calls, said spokesman Jerry Shields, and the home improvement chain will not change its advertising strategy.

"We're not in the business of censoring media," Shields said. "We need to reach our customer base through all mediums available."

As I have said before, there is nothing like this on the center-right side of the political spectrum. Republicans don't get angry and exercised when their candidates meet with either NPR or the New York Times editorial board--and none of these news organizations are exactly right-wing propaganda outlets, if you know what I mean. On the contrary, far from it. But if a Democratic candidate even so much as glances towards the direction of FoxNews, the netroots explode in fury and outrage.

One cannot help but think that the netroots possess some kind of long term lack of confidence in both their ideas and their ability to propagate those ideas. Instead of competing in the battle of ideas and welcoming the opportunity to argue and debate, they try instead to shout down and shut down the voices on the other side of the philosophical divide (or at least, what they perceive to be the other side of the philosophical divide). Of course, democratic discourse suffers in this way, but that is not their concern. As with the attempt to reintroduce the "Fairness Doctrine," the efforts of the netroots and partisans on the other side is not so much to foster colloquy but rather to ensure informational control to the greatest degree possible.

Good for the Fox advertisers who have made it clear that they will attempt to resist such efforts at control. But one wonders just how free and fair the nature of our national debate will be if these new censors find themselves allies not only in the majority halls in Congress, but in the White House as well.