Everyone--and I do mean everyone, including Silicon Alley Insider, not exactly a Cable Game regular--professes to be upset over Fox News' apparent photo-altering of pictures of Jacques Steinberg and Steven Redicliffe. Those two employees of The New York Times, of course, are regarded as big enemies of FNC.
OK, fine. I don't recall liberal critics being so upset when Richard Nixon was being ripped and ridiculed, but that's another story.
The Cable Gamer is not here to argue the merits and demerits of the argument about whether FNC did the right thing or not in photo-shopping Steinberg and Reddicliffe. There's a long back story here--Redicliffe is a former News Corp. employee--and no doubt those two Timesmen will find a way to retaliate, soon, against FNC.
What I will point out, though, is that adjusting appearances is an ancient art of political commentary. Above, for example, see how Thomas Nast, probably the most famous and influential political cartoonist in US history, drew Boss Tweed in the late 19th century.
That's probably not the way that Tweed's mother would have depicted him, huh? But Nast didn't care. The First Amendment protected his right to mock Tweed, and the same First Amendment protects Fox's right to stick it to Steinberg and Reddicliffe.
You don't have to like it, I don't have to like it. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. observed in a Supreme Court opinion nearly a century ago, free speech isn't for the speech we love, it's for the speech we hate.
3 comments:
Pretty selective outrage, Olbermann does it every day.
While I agree that political satire has a place, there are two things that I think you're missing.
First, Steinberg and Redicliffe are not political figures. Steinberg in particular is just a reporter - a media reporter at that, not a political reporter. Boss Tweed, and Richard Nixon, along with Bill Clinton, George Bush, and a host of others, are politicians and political figures.
Second, satire usually has a point to prove. For example, in the Boss Tweed example, it is trying to show that everything he did was done with money in mind. No similar point can be found in the altered photos of Steinberg and Redicliffe.
What I really wonder is how many people on either side of this issue have actually read the original article to which Fox & Friends was responding. I did. It seemed rather benign from a political standpoint, and relied on facts and quotes rather than opinion. In fact, it wasn't derogatory toward Fox at all.
While I agree with your point about the First Amendment, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
First, unlike Boss Tweed, Richard Nixon, as well as Bill Clinton, George Bush, and other political figures, Redicliffe and especially Steinberg are not political figures. They are reporters. Steinberg is just a media reporter, not even a political reporter.
Second, there was nothing in Steinberg's article that could have prompted the attack. I think very few people commenting on this have actually read the supposed hit piece that Fox & Friends was talking about.
Finally, political satire usually has a point. For example, the Boss Tweed cartoon was trying to make the point that Tweed was driven by money, not the well being of his constituents. What point, other than mockery, was intended by the manipulation of Steinberg's and Redicliffe's photos?
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