With Fox News dispensing falsehoods and vitriol on a daily (hourly) basis, I have long thought that it is well past time for responsible media figures to respond by honestly portraying Fox as a partisan enterprise that has little to do with actual news.

By this I do not mean that partisans from the other end of the political spectrum should take on Fox’s disinformation machine. Folks like Keith Olbermann are already doing that. What I mean is that bona fide journalists should stop pretending that Fox is in the same business as they are. There needs to be a realistic appraisal of the state of the media and Fox’s role in it.

To that end, it is great to see MSNBC’s David Shuster coming forward and saying what all ethical reporters ought to be saying. In an interview with Stephanie Miller, Shuster provided an excellent example of how to tell the truth when it comes to Fox News:

[I]f Fox wants to consider themselves the GOP house organ, that’s fine. They completely backed it up. When Fox starts describing themselves as journalists or a news organization, that’s where I think it’s appropriate to describe Fox as disgraceful […] The stuff that comes out of Sean Hannity’s mouth has been infuriating. The stuff that Bill O’Reilly says has been illogical. You go up and down the schedule and it’s insanity over there.

This isn’t the first time Shuster has stepped up in this regard. Not long after he left Fox News (that’s right, he used to work there, so he knows of what he speaks), Shuster disclosed what it was like to try to practice journalism in a shop that had no respect for it:

…there wasn’t a tradition or track record of honoring journalistic integrity. I found some reporters at Fox would cut corners or steal information from other sources or in some cases, just make things up. Management would either look the other way or just wouldn’t care to take a closer look.

Seeing as how presenters on Fox are constantly bashing the rest of the media, you would think that they would stand up for themselves, particularly when they have the facts on their side. Fox is the only news organization that regularly insults the professionalism of their competitors in advertising and on the air. That is the whole point of their “fair and balanced” pretense.

Brian Williams, Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, and others in TV and print, have the right and the duty to defend their presentation of the news and to reveal the deceit that is part and parcel of Fox. David Shuster is showing them the way. Nice job, David.