Here’s an amazing piece from San Francisco, of all places in the Chronicle, in which Debra J. Saunders makes precisely the point to be made about Fox News:

AS FOX NEWS celebrates its 10-year anniversary, media watchers should appreciate how Fox, which tilts right, has provided balance to major new operations such as CNN and the New York Times, which tilt left.

Many tilt without knowing it.

Go to most newsrooms and you’ll find a staff that overwhelmingly voted for John Kerry in 2004, while the rest keep their politics to themselves lest they be considered biased. A survey of the Washington press corps found that 89 percent voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. It’s true, most reporters do their level best to tell a story straight and present both sides. To use Fox-speak, most reporters I know strive to be “fair and balanced.”

But they can’t escape the presumptions that underlie their stories, and they are likely not to notice the presumptions when all the newsroom management thinks alike. That’s how illegal immigrants became “undocumented workers” and global warming became a certainty. (Italics added)

It’s the old one about what one fish said to the other: “What water?”

The worst of it is: They have no idea that they’re biased. They think their positions are neutral.

And they say Fox is the biased one.

Do I like everything on Fox? No. I hit the remote when feuding talking heads are spouting prefab talking points and I can get a real news story on CNN. (Other times, I turn to Fox to escape the same on CNN.) I also turn to Fox because its coverage on the war in Iraq takes the longer view, and its coverage on intelligence eavesdropping does not read like an ACLU press release.

As for the Chris Wallace-Bill Clinton dustup:

Bill Clinton berated . . . Wallace for a “nice conservative little hit job” — just because Wallace asked Clinton a question. In a respectful tone, Wallace told Clinton that Fox viewers wanted him to ask why the former president had not done more to stop Osama bin Laden.

A Bubba tirade followed, when an answer would have worked fine.

As Wallace told the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, the surprising thing was that he (Wallace) was the only TV interviewer among many to ask Clinton that question, even though Clinton had been complaining about an ABC miniseries that faulted his handling of bin Laden. It is amazing no one else asked. It goes to show that Fox News keeps American media fair and balanced.

It was as if Wallace broke the rules and Clinton had to hit back (even threatening jobs as he left the studio).

A fool and his money are soon parted, you say?  Bosh, in view of the Ted Turner experience.  He still has his money.

“I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere,” Turner said [in a Sept. 19, 2005, interview on CNN after meeting N. Korean officials]. “There’s really no reason for them to cheat” and use nuclear power for weapons instead of generating electricity and other civilian uses.

“I looked them right in the eyes, and they looked like they meant the truth,” he added. “I mean, you know, just because somebody’s done something wrong in the past doesn’t mean they can’t do right in the future or the present. That happens all the, all the time.” [Italics added]

On the other hand, he proves Barnum was right about suckers.

If you are tempted to resent Com Ed’s wanting to raise electricity prices, read Dennis Byrne in Chi Trib and Dan Miller in Sun-Times.  Between the two of them, you will be moved to resent the politicians who want to stop the world so we can all get off.

Byrne on “Playing politics with electricity rates” in part:

Nothing says more about the pandering, spineless nature of our current knot of politicians than their call for a special session of the Illinois General Assembly to zap one of the best deals that electricity consumers in Illinois have ever had.

The deal was made 10 years ago when ComEd, consumer groups, businesses and the politicians agreed to roll back electric rates more than 20 percent and freeze them there. ComEd customers have saved billions.

So what?  It’s close to election time, with the votes meat a-cooking.

Miller, with “New freeze would pull rug out under ComEd”:

Illinois’ electricity market for the last 10 years has been based on a complex infrastructure of laws and regulations negotiated and agreed to by all players, from the General Assembly and the Illinois Commerce Commission to the Citizens Utility Board and the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, and dozens of other special interest groups in between. Tampering with that infrastructure now threatens the reliability of Illinois’ electricity supply, the stability of every business enterprise in the state, and — make no mistake about it — the financial survival of the state’s biggest utility, Commonwealth Edison.

Look at this week-old story about Dems in pursuit of election victories and compare it with the weakness of a Chi Trib-Tackett or Sun-Times-Sweet column or so-called analysis. Nobody faults Wall St. Journal coverage, just its editorial page, as far as I know. This account of Dem strategy and strategists Schumer and Emanuel is enlightening and balanced. I can rarely say that for our local analyses.

Take on the NY Times?  Can Chi Trib do that, as this provocateur suggests? 

“Civic concerns, the long-term health of the paper and journalistic values” are losing out to shareholders’ interests, complains ex-publisher of the LA Times John Carroll. 

It’s a shame they are not more altruistic, like the Chandler family who sold the paper off for $8 billion of those shareholders’ money.

On the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, opposite the northern tip of Scotland, lines are drawn about building a wind farm that would harness the island’s natural resource — it’s a very windy place — and help the warming world.  Or would it?  Environmentalists find themselves between a rock and a hard place:

Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other groups back the project. Lining up against it, the Scottish Wildlife Trust, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, among others, argue that the turbines will cause incalculable damage to the flora and fauna of the moor. The RSPB, which has been particularly vocal, speaks of “bird genocide,” and even the developers concede that the giant rotors are not ornithologically friendly.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s right.

The story is by Chi Trib’s man in the UK, Tom Hundley, and ran Friday with a wonderful color foto on p. 16 showing three residents and an ancient shepherd’s stone shepherd’s hut.  Readers of Walter Scott take notice of such a story: his The Pirate was set in the Shetland Islands, which are north of Scotland and were settled by Norwegians long before the English came.

Omaha schools are segregated after decades of federally imposed admission guidelines, but there’s nothing to be done about it, says fed court.  One of their ideas, Howard Witt relates, was to

Divide the Omaha Public Schools into three new districts, one mostly black, one mostly Hispanic and one mostly white, so parents of each racial group can control their schools.

Can’t do that, of course.  Official blackdom (NAACP) and Hispanicdom (Chicano Awareness Center) won’t let it.  The courts are acceding to their wishes or at least delaying judgment in the matter.

However, one part of that catches the eye of one who thinks schools are stand-ins for parents, who have primary responsibility.  It’s a sticky wicket, yes, and day to day school workings ought normally be out of bounds.  Indeed, overall schools policy is decided by people elected by parents and other voters.  But is there something to be said for parental choice on an individual household basis?  Try this on for size.

Let parents choose on this basis: a white, black, or hispanic school.  Any parent could choose any one of the three.  What a way to see what the people want.  The choice would be for a year.  Official black or other-dom would stand back and watch.  Prediction: Howls would arise from the various -doms, who would see their power slipping away.  They would never allow it.

Wed. Journal column is up:

MY NAME IS JAMES, AND I’M YOUR WAITER: And have some questions. How many Oak Park trustees does it take to pass an ordinance? Four. How many meetings? Don’t ask.  . . .

. . . followed by more more more