Some quick comments on this topic.
Fox News is not credible. Never have been, and never will be. They were the network that continued to beat the drum during the endless Clinton investigations, even after he was admonished in all but one (the blowjob). They are also the network that continues to fly high cover for the Bush admin and the Republican party. There is no centerist position with these guys, you are the right, or you are wrong. Consider...
* On September 12th, 2001, Fox News chief, Roger Ailes, sent a memo to the White House encouraging the administration to go after Iraq and assuring them they would get all cooperation in promotion of the war effort from Fox News and its affiliate stations (Bob Woodward, Bush at War).
* Fox News has been caught running propaganda for the Bush White House. Just one example.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,79450,00.html
* Fox News has been caught, repeatedly, burying stories that would be detrimental to their sponsors. They actually fired two on-air reporters from Tampa over a beef hormone scandal because the reporters refused to keep the lid on the story. Something about endangerment to the public, but the network sided with the sponsor.
http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1998Q2/foxbgh.html
* Fox News has been caught fabrication quotes of Democrats and running them as actual comments, the most famous of which was a John Kerry quote.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselection...319075,00.html
And because of all of this...
* Fox viewers routinely are feed so much disinformation that they do not know truth from fiction. In PEW and PIPA studies Fox News viewers are routinely on the wrong side of the facts.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pi...t=102&lb=brusc
The Bush administration lied through its teeth. It presented faulty intelligence that the intelligence community stated was not valid. They leaked a NIE document to the New York Times, but that document had been editted and was nothing like the one submitted by the intelligence agencies. What the Bush administration left out of this leaked document, the one that was used to drum up so much support for the war, was that the intelligence presented in the NEI was still subject to much conjecture and had not been verified in any shape or form. The fact that they changed the NEI and released that to a reporter as truth, and then Bush did his State of the Union based on this same information is pretty blatant that they knew otherwise, and lied to garner the support they needed to get into Iraq.
Lastly, the media, ALL the media, was complicit with the Bush Administration after 9/11. They completely ignored their responsibility as oversight and fully engaged the administration in promoting their point of view. Only years later have the media finally started to realize their error. Some are admitting their errors and taking responsibility, some are hoping the public will forget, and others embrace it as a badge of honor in helping the war effort (shockingly, that would be Fox News). This is a great series and really lets people know how much pressure was placed on the media by the White House, politicians, corporations, sponsors and watchers. The patriotic bluster that developed after 9/11 hindered the media as much as anything. It does sound like they learned their lesson though.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html