Every few weeks someone on a major national news show makes a comment that the “extremists on both sides” are wrong or equates MSNBC with Fox.  It happened again on Meet the Press this week when David Gregory took a middle-of -the-road view on the tone of our national political debate and Republican strategist Mike Murphy referred to MSNBC as a “liberal network” and dismissed it as the anti-Fox.  He also argued that to hear a liberal questioning the patriotism of those who cheered when America failed to get the 2016 Olympics was ironic, as if criticizing Bush for sending thousands to their deaths in Iraq equated to rejoicing over failure.

Typically, a commentator or panelist will make this comparison to either portray themselves as above the fray or neutralize an attack against a news organization or a political group they support.  But there are major differences between MSNBC and Fox:

1.  MSNBC’s hosts realize that violence as a political tactic has been discredited.  No MSNBC host has ever fantasized on the air about killing a political opponent.  Glen Beck has fantasized about murdering House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on his television show and doing the same to Michael Moore on his radio show.  Bill O’Reilly repeatedly referred to Dr. Tiller as “Tiller the baby killer” and made several ominous comments before Tiller’s killing earlier this year.  Various Fox hosts gave credence to Sarah Palin’s “terrorist” attacks during last year’s campaign and Glen Beck has said that President Obama has deep seeded racism within him.

2.  MSNBC sticks to facts and corrects factual errors.  Fox generally doesn’t.  And Fox has a lot of factual errors.  Fox viewers to know less about current events than viewers of any other network and Fox is by far the most one-sided of news networks.  Most recently, Fox estimated the crowd at the conservative march on Washington at almost 15 times its actual number of about 60,000.

3.  MSNBC doesn’t cater to racism, sexism or those who use violence or the threat of violence to achieve political ends.  Fox does, consistently portraying Obama as “the other” or applauding those who threaten violence to achieve political goals.

4.  A Fox producer was recently caught whipping up a right-wing demonstration as Fox cameras rolled.  MSNBC doesn’t manufacture the news – that’s a job for propagandists.

As for the supporters, which side lied about “death panels”, health care for illegal immigrants, and funding for abortion in the health care debate?  Which side lied about Iraq from 2001 to 2008?  Which side brought loaded guns to political events to intimidate others?  Which side has killed politicians, doctors who perform abortions, churchgoers attending a religious service, and homosexuals?  Which side lied about tobacco for decades?  Which side continues to lie about greenhouse gases and climate change?  Which side told us that Bill Clinton’s 1993 Recovery Act would kill the economy only to have the longest economic expansion in our history, 22 million jobs created, rising median wages and a surplus during Clinton’s tenure to prove them wrong?  It isn’t and wasn’t the liberals.  There is something different about the fringe right that makes it unable to accept facts they don’t like or even the normal functioning of a civil democracy.

Murphy and others have a double standard.  Neither Maddow nor any other liberal nationally known commentator has said the Republicans were unpatriotic for criticizing the President.  They have said you’re unpatriotic when you cheer for America to fail, as Rush Limbaugh, Americans for Prosperity, Glen Beck and The Weekly Standard did in the case of the Olympics this past week.

Rush Limbaugh has repeatedly said he hoped Obama would fail.  Democrats criticized Bush, but I never heard anyone wish for his failure in Iraq, on the economy or on any issue of importance to the nation.  We wanted his policies to be stopped, but when he supported the Olympics in Utah (a red state, no less), spoke to Congress after 9/11 or if had a policy that worked (only the Do Not Call list comes to mind), the Democrats were with him.  That’s what patriots do: support the country and the Constitution always and the elected government when it deserves it.

Here’s more from the Great Krugman on the tenor of the national debate.

I have no problem with any network’s editorializing as long as its not misleading or factually inaccurate and as long as it’s clear enough for the news consumer to realize that it is editorializing.  I have no problem with journalists having opinions or a political philosophy and worry about those who don’t.  It means they’re not thinking about what they’re covering.

But I object to phony posturing.  If there’s a flower and a piece of solid bovine waste in a field, I expect anyone in media to be able to tell which is which, to say which is which, and to not reject those views that contradict the clear evidence.  Any media outlet without a b.s. detector is no better than what it can’t detect.

Balance gives the networks and some commentators the illusion of objectivity.  Except Fox, they don’t care about balance or objectivity since they’ve cornered the screaming white middle-aged conservative fringe market, which thinks CNN’s say-nothing-t0-offend-anyone approach creates too much cognitive dissonance.

The problem is that relevant facts are never neutral and sometimes one side is right and the other is wrong.  Real objectivity isn’t pretending that every debate is a 50-50 deal where no one knows the real truth.  It’s getting to the real truth and reporting it as fact as accurately as possible.  It’s cutting through the red herrings, the fog machines and the b.s.  Every time you hear the “both sides” “or the “above the fray” take, know that somebody is probably self-aggrandizing again.