“Fair and Balanced” is No One’s Property

Posted on August 12, 2003 in Censorship Journalists & Pundits

Sometimes I wish that the Little Egg Township Blob was the news that we had to worry about.

Fox News is suing Al Franken because he used the term “fair and balanced” in the title of his new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Fox believes that it owns this phrase of basic English. Tell that to the people who you find in this Google Search.

Someone was sleeping when this trademark got registered. Fox’s move is nothing more than an attempt to silence critics of the Fox style of journalism. This isn’t “Things go better with Coke”, “the Pepsi Challenge”, “Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should”: this is declaring that phrases like “liberty and justice for all” or “ham and eggs” can be owned by one person or a corporation. What’s next? Trademarking words one by one until the rest is silence?

I endorse the boycott of Fox News and the mass purchasing of Al Franken’s book. I support Penguin Books and Al Franken in their struggle to keep language from turning into property, particularly in matters of free speech such as this clearly is. Stop Fox from putting up fences around choice parts of the English language that have been with us for ages. Buy Franken’s book.

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