From what I've seen, O'Reilly is pretty fair, though I might be biased because he has the same last name as my best friend. Overall, I agree with myself when I said that most of the programming on Fox, like most of the programming on CNN and MSNBC, is formatted like a newstalk station, with opinionated commentators/personalities taking up most of the time and occasionally being interrupted by brief news headlines. The main difference is that Fox mostly has conservative/libertarian commentators, with a couple of exceptions that FG pointed out, and the other two have mostly liberal/progressive commentators (there's probably some exceptions there too, but I don't watch them, so the only one I know of is Lou Dobbs); for me, the question is which ones you think are right. Personally, I like how Fox seems to embrace the opinionation of their opinionated guys. Yes, their slogan is 'fair and balanced,' which might seem to contradict that, but the other networks imply the same promise, not in so many words, and are just as opinionated, just more subversively. The opinion on Fox shows is so over-the-top that you can't miss it, while CNN's opinions look enough like objectivity that you might miss them. MSNBC is a bit closer to the over-the-top end, especially Olbermann, who's pretty much insane. Also, Weegee is right, Fox's bias stands out more because conservative biases are less common on news stations. CNN and MSNBC and HLN and most newspapers and lots of school textbooks sound the same as each other, while Fox sounds different, so they're more noticeable.
I think on principle I prefer more opinionated news, maybe in a kind of pragmatic way. I don't think we can ever be truly objective, so I'd prefer it if they're unobjective in a way that people will notice. Walter Cronkite certainly wasn't neutral, and though he didn't show his opinion outright as often as the average Fox or MSNBC host, he showed it enough to be very influential. Since everyone lets their opinions slip into their reporting whether they try to or not, I'd rather have news guys that people instantly recognize as being opinionated, so they can critically think about whether they're right or wrong instead of just outright accepting it.
Ann Coulter can be pretty funny if you don't take her too seriously, but she usually can't hold a candle to the cast of Red Eye (3 AM EDT on Fox News). If you're going to do conservative shock comedy, you might as well go all the way. It's basically like the Daily Show, except conservative, more open-ended, and pronouncedly edgier (into
CrossesTheLineTwice/
RefugeInAudacity territory).
