In this country, journalists don’t sponsor or participate in partisan political events. Maybe in Venezuela or China, but in the United States, no.

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Salon’s Gene Lyons on FOX News’ creation and subsequent coverage of the phony Tea Party protests.

Lyons’ larger point, and one that I’ve been baffled by, is that no one should be surprised that the rest of the media has leapt to FOX’s defense as they’ve been criticized for spouting Republican party talking points. Democrats complain but Republicans, Lyons insists, get even.

I’m surprised because I can’t seem to figure the angle that everyone from The New Yorker to Brian Williams is coming from when they say that the White House is being unfair by having the temerity to point out that FOX News is a wholly different beast than other media organizations.

It’s not as if FOX was complaining when they were granted unprecedented access, that other, legitimate organizations were never privy to during the Bush years. You didn’t see Chris Wallace complaining about all the unfair treatment of the New York Times when they revealed the Bush administration’s secret wire tapping project – in fact, FOX joined in the right-wing pile on. They certainly weren’t defending the right of the fourth estate to investigate secretive government programs then.

So, why, media? The noble, if futile, defense of your hallowed ground is admirable, but FOX has never been one of you, has gone out of its way to insist and prove regularly that they have no desire to be one of you and will willfully sell you out for a Nielsen point. You should know better than to talk of Nixonian enemies list in regards to this spat between FOX News and the White House, especially since FOX’s visionary, Roger Ailes, is the man who literally personifies Nixonian media relations – he invented the genre.

FOX sullies what you do, their mere existence drags you down further into the cesspool with them. It doesn’t tarnish your reputation to recognize that they aren’t one of you, even if they send a satellite truck to cover the same press conferences you do. They’ve convinced an entire demographic that “the liberal media” is an actual thing and that they alone hold a monopoly on balance. We deserve better than this, stand up for yourself.