Commenter milo janus reacts to a Michael Calderone Politico.com piece (11/24/08) on Alan Colmes' arguably inconsequential departure from Fox News' long-running Hannity & Colmes:

Word had it some years ago that Jeff Cohen, founder of the liberal media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (who was also producer of the Donahue show on MSNBC right after he got booted from the network for being too critical of the build-up to the Iraq War), had often had spirited off-camera debates with Hannity during his years as a commentator. Jokes about a possible Hannity and Cohen show were squashed when Colmes got the spot. The logic is obvious enough. Though Colmes is a smart guy, Cohen's uncompromising style of attack would have likely overwhelmed the telegenic Hannity, and we all know that would be a serious no-no on Fox.

Though slightly garbling the sequence of events--Colmes already was Hannity's co-host at the time--janus certainly is right about Cohen's "uncompromising style"... and about Fox's strong aversion to progressive vs. conservative debates that it thinks the conservative might actually lose.

See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "An Aggressive Conservative vs. a 'Liberal to Be Determined': The False Balance of Hannity & Colmes" (11-12/03) by Steve Rendall

Tags: Fox News, Sean Hannity

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Media Criticism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.