Saturday 8 March 2008

Is Foxtel playing dirty with McCain presidential campaign?

This little snippet from Chilling Effects makes for interesting reading.

"Associated Press, October 26, 2007
Abstract:
The Associated Press reports that presidential candidate John McCain has rejected Fox's call to "cease and desist" from using Fox debate footage in a campaign ad.
Fox is apparently claiming infringement by the use of 18 seconds from a 90 minute debate, in which Sen. McCain is the speaker. Political argument, even in the heated sound-bite form of campaign ads, is at the core of First-Amendment protected speech. This kind of commentary use, of newsworthy material available only from Fox, suggests that not only McCain, but the general public should have greater access to debate footage."

The fight received wide media coverage at the time, but does not appear to have been completely resolved as just last month Fox "We Report You Decide'" News was labelling the Republican McCain as a 'Democrat' in its news footage, and early this month McCain was only rating as a main news maker in about 18% of campaign stories across the media generally.

All of which leads me to wonder exactly who Rupert Murdoch will finally come close to endorsing as the next US President, because supporters of almost every presidential hopeful who started out in the primaries race have accused Fox and Murdoch of bias.

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