On the New Year’s Eve edition of Special Report on Fox News, the matter of media bias was raised by anchor Jim Angle, sitting in for the retiring Brit Hume. It was a simple question, really. He merely remarked that it was “a big year for the media” and tossed it to panel member Bill Sammon, Deputy Managing Editor of Fox News. Sammon replied…

“The year that journalism died, to borrow a phrase I first heard from Roger Ailes. I never thought the press could become more biased until I saw what happened during the coverage of the Obama campaign.”

“Unbelievable that The Washington Post ombudsman admitted afterwards that they were basically in the tank for him. We had people talking about thrill up my leg when they heard Obama’s speech.”

What’s unbelievable is listening to a senior Fox News reporter quoting Roger Ailes, the most partisan news executive in history, and complaining about the existence of bias in the news. As his example of bias, Sammon cites the allegedly favorable press treatment of Barack Obama, whom Fox and other news organizations relentlessly smeared as a radical, Socialist, Muslim-raised, inexperienced, unpatriotic, elitist, who palled around with terrorists. Just because Sammon could recall a notably stupid comment about Chris Matthews’ leg, doesn’t undo all the vile character assassination directed at Obama for months.

What’s more, Sammon’s commitment to objectivity was somewhat diminished by his company. He was sitting on a panel that displayed a diversity of political views that spanned from Jeff Birnbaum of the Moonie-Con Washington Times to conservative icon Charles Krauthammer. Sammon specifically singled out the Washington Post for criticism as biased, which is interesting because that’s the deplorable liberal rag that employs and syndicates his panel pal Krauthammer.

Sammon’s obtuse obliviousness is a rather typical Fox characteristic. They assert press bias without even a hint of ironic recognition that they are a prominent part of the mainstream media. All that matters is that they cast aspersions on anyone who is not them. Yet by the end of the program, Sammon said something that was impossible to deny:

The media really had a bad year in 2008. It will take a long time to recover.

I couldn’t agree more. And it was mostly due to the sort of dishonesty and disinformation propagated by people like Sammon and Fox News.