Friday, Feb. 23, 2007 | 7:04 a.m.
Last month several Fox News anchors parroted a thinly sourced article in a right-wing magazine that claimed Sen. Hillary Clinton was getting ready to leak damaging information about her Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama. Specifically, they reported that Obama had enrolled in a madrassa as a child in Indonesia and studied a radical form of Islam there.
It was an artful lie, pinning the rising star Obama with a scarlet "I" and then attributing the whole sordid matter to Fox's bete noir, Clinton.
The story was thoroughly debunked by Fox rival CNN.
Given that sordid episode and all the other reasons they loathe Fox, many Democrats are upset that the Nevada Democratic Party has teamed up with Rupert Murdoch's news network for an August Democratic presidential debate in Reno.
Why, they ask, should the party give this valuable air time to the network that has carried Republican water since its inception a decade ago, whether on the Clinton impeachment or the swift-boat veterans who trashed Sen. John Kerry?
The answer, say some liberal activists and political scientists, is that the Reno debate will give Democrats a rare opportunity: 90 minutes of Democratic talking points aimed at TV viewers whose devotion to Fox means they usually get news about Democrats filtered through the network's conservative prism.
The dustup over Fox's involvement began earlier this week with some local liberal bloggers. It flowered when Markos Moulitsas, who's liberal blog Daily Kos is often read by 500,000 people in a single day, called Silver State Democrats "Dimwit Nevada Democrats" and called on candidates to skip the debate: "50 demerits for any Democrat who participates in a debate sponsored by the conservative machine's propaganda arm. Seriously. There's no need to further legitimize and enable the GOP's mouthpiece."
Next, the massive liberal interest group MoveOn.org got in on the act, circulating a petition that said Fox isn't a legitimate news organization, equating it with Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge.
MoveOn pointed to Fox's recent erroneous reporting on Obama.
The state party responded to the criticism about Fox with a statement Thursday: "A 50-state strategy means talking to every American. Fox is the most watched cable news network, and Democrats need to talk to these viewers in order to win. The debate in August is not an endorsement of Fox. Instead, it is an effort to reach out to Fox viewers. We will not win elections if we don't win over new people."
Karl Agne, a national consultant who has specialized in reaching voters traditionally ignored by Democrats, agreed with the party's strategy: "Especially throughout the Mountain West, Democrats made a lot of gains last year, and a lot of it is that we are getting out there, being heard and getting beyond stereotypes by talking to voters we weren't talking to before," he said.
Gary Gray, a Nevada consultant, agreed: "You want to broaden your base. And certainly the Republicans watching Fox News are having questions about Republicans right now."
The Democrats' biggest problem on Fox News and among conservative audiences generally, political scientists say, is that they have very little representation, so what viewers and listeners know about Democrats they learn from Republicans.
Marketers use the term "share of voice" to express how much of an advertising market a brand has captured, and Democrats have traditionally had almost none on the conservative airways.
To reverse this trend, former Democratic Virginia Gov. Mark Warner said last year, "You've got to show up."
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