Background
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation had founded Fox News Channel in 1996, in part to counter what it contended was systemic liberal bias on the part of other U.S. news outlets. To bolster this perception, Fox used "Fair & Balanced" and "We Report. You Decide." as slogans, and obtained federal trademark registrations for each. Critics such as FAIR and Media Matters for America have accused Fox of having a pervasive conservative bias; on many Web sites and blogs, "fair and balanced" became widely used as an ironic euphemism for perceived right-wing media bias on Fox and other media outlets.
On May 31, 2003, the cable network C-SPAN2 broadcast a panel discussion on political books that was taking place at BookExpo America, a trade show for the book publishing industry. The panel included Franken, whose Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them was scheduled for release in the autumn, and Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly, who was promoting his own book Who's Looking Out For You?, which was due for release at about the same time as Franken's. Saying that he felt the need to explain why a fellow panelist's face was on the cover of a book entitled Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Franken told a story about O'Reilly's incorrect statements that his former program Inside Edition had won two Peabody Awards, when it in fact won a Polk Award after O'Reilly left the show. The two then engaged in a heated confrontation, which culminated in O'Reilly shouting "Shut up! Shut up!" after Franken interrupted him. A link to footage of the program quickly circulated among blogs, which had the effect of providing valuable publicity for Franken's upcoming book.
Read more about this topic: Fox V. Franken
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