Just got an email from Media Matters concerning the $1 million donation the News Corp, parent company of Fox News, donated to the Republican Governors Association, "to help defeat Democrats this November."

Media Matters reports that while the news of the donation was covered "extensively," by national media outlets, it was barely mentioned on Fox. Media Matters says, "Fox devoted 37 seconds of air time to the story." Media Matters figures -- because, the "Fox viewers have been left in the dark, as to the (Fox) network's direct involvement in the political races this fall," it needs to take action to remedy this. So the folks at Media Matters' solution is to put a commercial (see the video) about the Fox donation on Fox, by buying a national ad, at the cost of $35k, to air next week during The O'Reilly Factor.

My take on this: I have loads of respect for the people at Media Matters, but who ever came up with the idea to pay Fox $35, 000 needs to think again. No one should pay Fox a cent. I suspect that the Fox crowd would take the $35 K and use the paid ad as the starting point for a big joke. Besides, Fox News is marketed to the fringe. The $1 million bucks came from the News Corporation, which owns a vast media empire, most of its units market to a mass audience. If one wants the News Corporation to act more responsibly, a better use for that $35k would be to use it to inform the viewers of Fox TV's American Idol why they should skip the show next season, and why folks shouldn't go to see Fox Films, and shouldn't buy music produced or distributed. by the Fox Corporation. It's time to take the focus off the fringe and to place it on the center of the News Corporation beast and on Rupert Murdoch where it belongs.