Fox Food Fight!

Rupert Murdoch, Monday:

If we weren’t fair and balanced, we wouldn’t have the number one network in news — by a very wide margin. People believe we’re fair and balanced, and they love us.

Charles Krauthammer, Tuesday:

What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.

Shep Smith, Wednesday:

I read a lot of email around here, and the email to me has become more and more frightening. It’s not a new thing — it’s been happening over the past few months. It’s been happening to some degree since the election process went along. I mean we had a woman, we had a black man, we had a lot going on… I read it, and they are out there — I mean out there in a scary place.

And there we’d leave it, except that Shep seems to have touched a nerve with our golddigging friends at WorldNetDaily, who have been raising money (and spending at least part of it) to buy billboards questioning Obama’s birth certificate. Shep mentioned “birthers” in passing, calling them “crazies out there who want to pretend [Obama's] not a citizen of the United States.”

Shep didn’t mention WND by name, but WND took it personally, firing back with a blast from the past: “Ironically, Smith himself allegedly engaged in activity some might deem ‘out there in a scary place.’”

As WND reported in November 2000, during the Florida presidential election fiasco, Smith was arrested for allegedly driving his Mazda Millenia into another reporter who was standing in a parking space she attempted to save for a friend.

Hey, fair’s fair. We’re looking forward to the day WND gets pissed at O’Reilly.

Shep Smith attacks right-wing ‘crazies’ [WND]