Fox News: Unfair and Unbalanced

The Independent Media Institute ( IMI), parent organization of AlterNet, filed a legal challenge with the U.S. Trademark Office that seeks to strip Fox of its "Fair and Balanced" trademark registration on the grounds that it was "merely descriptive" (making it ineligible for trademark registration) as well as "false and misleading." AlterNet (which is a project of the Independent Media Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening and supporting independent journalism) filed its challenge with the U.S. Trademark Office on December 23, 2003, just under the wire – only hours before the clock was scheduled to run out on Fox's "contestability period," which is the legally mandated 5-year window during which a trademark registration can be challenged. After that period the right to use the trademark becomes "incontestable" and virtually invulnerable, and its holder is entitled to prevent anyone else from using it, under penalty of legal prosecution, virtually forever, and regardless of whether the trademark was legitimately registered or not. Now, for the first time, AlterNet is making that legal challenge public. We are also joining MoveOn.org in launching an international campaign to confront Fox News in its blatant efforts to use the airwaves for political gain and to promote right-wing politics. This weekend, MoveOn.org sponsored more than 2,700 house parties to view "Outfoxed," Greenwald's documentary, and included dialogue with Greenwald and MoveOn.org's leadership and this writer to announce our legal challenge to Fox. Wes Boyd of MoveOn.org told the more than 30,000 people listening and many watching over the Web: "People are steamed about the media. People get it. Washington has never seen the kind of outrage that they heard last year from citizens around the country about media consolidation. And Fox News, as Robert has shown in this film, is Enemy #1 in the undermining of democracy – they're partisan, they're bullies, they lie, they'll do anything for a buck, they don't even know what journalism is, and then they claim to be 'Fair and Balanced.' So we're going after Fox. This is just the beginning of a campaign to rebrand Fox "Unfair and Unbalanced," so that people know what they're watching. This campaign is a warning to any other media outlets, if they're thinking that the Fox model is something to copy. It isn't. Try journalism instead. Try serving the public interest."

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Who will protect us from Fox?
Censoring Al-Jazeera a double standard
U.S. cable news station abusive, openly biased

Now that its critics have ensured that Al-Jazeera will never get on Canada's digital dial uncensored, will they now fight to protect us from Fox News? Recall that, last week, the federal broadcast regulator gave a half-assed go-ahead to the Arabic-language news channel, requiring that distributors who add it to their offerings keep it free of "abusive comment." That decision, complete with onerous guilty-until-proven-innocent restrictions, was reached after lobbying by both the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith Canada who, naturally, were concerned about anti-Jewish hate speech. Many people applauded how cable operators must tape and monitor Al Jazeera 24/7 to head off possible offensive material. So, now that the cable industry has yet another application to import Fox News before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), will anyone call for Fox to be similarly muzzled to stop potentially "abusive comment" on the U.S. channel? [...] So just what is the difference between Fox and Al-Jazeera? Go see Control Room, Jehane Noujaim's revealing documentary about Al-Jazeera, and you'll hear U.S. Marine Lt. Josh Rushing, former Central Command spokesperson, say the Arabic channel is no less slanted than Fox, which "plays to American patriotism" instead of Arab nationalism.

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  thanks to Yolanda Flanagan