Fox News makes it official - they're here to help the Republican Party

No, it's not exactly shocking news to anyone who has followed the mainstream media for the last couple of decades, but up until now, they had tried to maintain at least the pretense of being "fair and balanced."

From the Washington Post -

Rupert Murdoch, who has never been shy about making his political views known, has voted with his sizable checkbook.

Murdoch's News Corp. has made a $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association, triggering swift criticism from Democrats that a contribution of that magnitude casts a shadow on his media properties, particularly Fox News.

"For a media company -- particularly one whose slogan is 'fair and balanced' -- to be injecting themselves into the outcome of races is stunning," Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, said Tuesday.

The RGA's financial filing with the IRS shows the contribution (page 54). (link courtesy Politico's coverage)

OpenSecrets.org coverage here.

Fox News' parent company also owns the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, hardly bastions of jounalistic neutrality.  Now that News Corp is officially out of the partisan closet, don't expect any improvement on that front.

It's one thing for an MSM organization to have a theme in its commentary shows (MSNBC definitely leans left, Fox News definitely leans right, and CNN is pretty much neutral) because those are supposed to have an opinion, but when an MSM organization openly chooses a side, with both its financial resources and by using its credibility as a news organization to push false stories to inflict political damage on those they view as opponents, they lose all credibility as a news organization.

While Fox News had no credibility with me personally, they still had the support of some of the other members of the MSM (witness their promotion to the front row at in the White House press briefing room).

The next few days and weeks will show whether or not this direct financial support of a partisan organization will undermine that support.

Later...