Yesterday on Fox News's Special Report, senior national correspondent John Roberts did a segment on the controversy surrounding gay marriage.  A version of his report also appears on the Fox News Web site.  In it, Roberts interviewed a gay marriage proponent saying that young Republicans "overwhelmingly support the freedom to marry." And then:

Roberts:  It isn't just young Republicans who are changing their minds. Conservative David Blankenhorn fought fiercely for Prop 8, California's measure to ban gay marriage.  In June, he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times with the headline: "How My View On Gay Marriage Changed".  Blankenhorn is now fully in favor of same-sex marriage.

Blankenhorn may have "evolved" on gay marriage, but he cannot fairly be described as a conservative.  In a September, 2008 opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, Blankenhorn starts: "I'm a liberal Democrat." A 2007 USA Today article noted ". . .Blankenhorn says he's a liberal Democrat."  A few weeks ago in The Nation, Richard Kim wrote Blankenhorn is "a self-described liberal and Obama voter. . ."

Perhaps Roberts just assumes that anyone opposing gay marriage must automatically be a conservative. Years at CNN must have had its impact.        

The Obama Administration isn't the only government-funded entity campaigning against Fox News.  "NPR reporter pressured over Fox role" headlines an article by Josh Gerstein on Politico's Web site.  It begins:

Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias, two sources familiar with the effort said.

According to a source, Liasson was summoned in early October by NPR’s executive editor for news, Richard Meyer, and the network’s supervising senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. The NPR executives said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.

At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue appearing on the network, the source said.

NPR’s focus on Liasson’s work as a commentator on Fox’s “Special Report” and “Fox News Sunday” came at about the same time as a White House campaign launched in September to delegitimize the network by painting it as an extension of the Republican Party.

One source said the White House’s criticism of Fox was raised during the discussions with Liasson. However, an NPR spokeswoman told POLITICO that the Obama administration’s attempts to discourage other news outlets from treating Fox as a peer had no impact on any internal discussions at NPR.

Later in the article, an NPR spokeswoman is quoted:

"There’s no relationship between the White House’s criticism of Fox and any discussions about Fox that we’re having.”

Liasson has appeared on Fox News for a dozen years.  Has the concern over her relationship with  Fox News been building over all this time and did it take this long for NPR executives to take action?  And possibly a bigger question: When did NPR become so concerned about media bias?    

And they say a woman scorned can be merciless.  Eric Burns once served as the host of Fox News Watch.  It's reasonable to assume he won't be working there again any time soon.  In a December 2 Huffington Post article, "If I Still Worked at Fox News...," he describes it as "the right-wing partial-news-but-mostly-opinion network."

A great deal of his bile, however, is directed at Glenn Beck:

Actually, Beck is a problem of taste as well as ethics. He laughs and cries; he pouts and giggles; he makes funny faces and grins like a cartoon character; he makes earnest faces yet insists he is a clown; he cavorts like a victim of St. Vitus's Dance. His means of communicating are, in other words, so wide-ranging as to suggest derangement as much as versatility.

He is Huey Long without the political office.

He is Father Coughlin without the dour expression.

He is John Birch without the Society.

He is an embarrassment to all true conservatives, men and women who believe sincerely, thoughtfully and sensibly that the role of government in American life should be limited.

Of course, Beck does not call himself a conservative; he is, rather, a libertarian, which may be defined as a conservative-squared, a person who wants the feds to collect no money in taxes, spend no money on programs, but make available all services that the libertarian deems necessary for his own convenience and safety.

Along the way, Burns gets in a few jabs at Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and even MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.  He praises CNN's Campbell Brown, who "every night. . . stages an exhibition. . . of honorable pugnacity."  He admires Jane Hall, who left Fox "for other reasons as well, but Beck was a particular source of embarrassment to her."

Burns ponders if, were he still at Fox, he would have been as principled as Hall.  He concludes he'd have kept taking a check from the network, but would be "searching avidly for other employment."

Fortunately for Eric, he never faced that dilemma.  He was fired by Fox News almost two years ago, a fact overlooked in his piece.

Want some sour grapes with that whine, Eric?