The shameless hypocrisy of the Fox news gang-- always lambasting CNN for its supposed liberal biases, always indignant about "spin" on other networks-- is exposed here yet again. Not a surprising story but one that should be well publicized nonetheless.

FOX News isn't Conservative; They Just Give Money to Bush
By Scott Spicciati Editor | Scott's Archive
January 19, 2004

The pundits at FOX News still haven't gotten over Dan Rather's appearance at a Democratic fundraiser a few years ago -- he says he didn't know it was a fundraiser -- that's a different debate. But the folks at FOX don't mind doing it themselves, while at it giving lots of money directly to the Bush reelection campaign.

More than 100 journalists and executives at major media companies, from NBC's top executive to a Fox News anchor to reporters or editors for the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, CBS and ABC, have made political contributions in recent years.

A Washington Post examination of Federal Election Commission records for the past five years showed that many of the contributors were violating their own company rules. But the rules vary widely, reporter Howard Kurtz added, noting that some media firms "allow political donations, others bar them for newsroom employees but not business staffers, and still others restrict only those covering politics."

Fox managing editor for business Neil Cavuto gave $1,000 to a fund-raising dinner for President Bush in 2002, a move that didn’t elate Fox executives.

It should be no surprise Cavuto was caught given money to President Bush, the guy has supported nearly every one of the President's policies over the last three years. Former FOX News Sunday host Tony Snow didn't appear in the report, but we can assume where his alliances camp as before joining Fox he worked directly for the current president's father's administration.

Cavuto isn't just a political conservative, on his business program he's very conservative fiscally, and when he anchors "Your World" he also plays the 'moral crusader', recently lambasting Billy Bob Thorton's Christmas hit, "Bad Santa," a crude and vulgar comedy I rated a "B-". Is anybody really surprised Cavuto dished out four-figures to Team Bush?

"I wish he hadn't," Fox News Vice President John Moody, who responded by circulating a policy Friday that discourages such contributions. "I hope our people will follow the advice I've given to them voluntarily. The potential perception is that they favor one candidate over the other." But he told Kurtz he wouldn't ban the practice.

You wonder if the producers at FOX get overtime pay for working the election season. They always seem to busy "circulating policies" and forwarding "e-mails" telling their staff including editors to be on their best non-partisan behavior. Last year the staff at FOX was told to no longer refer to then-candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Governator or anything else that had to do with his movie career in fear that it might jeopardize the legitimacy of his campaign. Yet there seems to be no problem at Fox with the headline "Wacko Jacko" masking the television screen during the Michael Jackson trial coverage.

Griffin Jenkins, a Fox producer for Oliver North, gave $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney re-election committee. As with Cavuto, it shouldn't shock you that anybody at War Stories with Oliver North would donate to Bush. North is just one of many journalists at FOX News who've written books over the last few years slamming either former President Bill Clinton or the Democratic Party.

As I pointed out, the report shows that journalists gave money to both parties. However no one individual from a mainstream news source donated as much as Melanie Kirkpatrick, associate editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. She gave a personal donation of $20,000 to the Republican National Committee along with another $1,000 to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.

So the next time you tune into The O'Reilly Factor and hear Bill complain that the Democrats have George Soros and Moveon.org as weapons, let him know that Bush has allies to, and the burrow inside the Fox News studio.