Pitts: Why mistrust Fox? Let me count the ways

Perhaps you are familiar with an old saying: Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I've found that maxim valuable as I wade through the recent hand-wringing and recrimination among journalists and their critics over the fact that most mainstream media were slow to pick up on the story of corruption at ACORN.

New York Times ombudsman Clark Hoyt (a former colleague) and Andrew Alexander, his counterpart at The Washington Post, are among those who have asked whether that laggard performance reflects an unfortunate deafness to conservative media. As one of my readers put it, "There is a lot wrong with ACORN, and Fox was the only channel talking about it."

I might join this pity party if I thought Fox a credible news source. I do not. Consider just a few of the network's and its hosts' recent lowlights:

► June 3 - In a column Bill O'Reilly says he never called murdered abortion doctor George Tiller "a baby killer."

This is wrong. PolitiFact.com has documented 24 instances just since 2005, of O'Reilly referring to the doctor as "Tiller the baby killer."

► June 10 - Glenn Beck asks, "Why do we have automatic citizenship upon birth? We're the only country in the world that has it."

This is incorrect. Canada has it, as do 32 other nations.

► June 18 - Sean Hannity says that under the Cash For Clunkers program, "all we've got to do is ... go to a local junkyard, all you've got to do is tow it to your house. And you're going to get $4,500."

This is false. The program requires the car to be drivable and to have been registered for at least a year.

► July 22 - Beck says the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy "has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population."

This is untrue. The claim is based on a textbook John Holdren co-authored in 1977 that analyzed and "rejected" such coercive means of birth control.



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