They also noted a few memos pushing themes Fox editors wanted to play up, not that anything like that ever happened at CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN – or the New York Times, for that matter.

What's more, the Los Angeles Times isn't exactly a disinterested observer. Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on his show "The O'Reilly Factor" has lambasted the paper as one of the most biased in the nation.

The Los Angeles Times coverage against Fox may be payback. Fox News, including O'Reilly, took the paper to task for dredging up groping allegations against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger during the California recall election.

The paper chose to wait until the last minute to report the allegations, and did so over several days with a minimum of vetting of the allegations, in an apparent effort to influence the recall election.

But facts show that Fox is a lot more balanced than its critics claim.

Short Shrift

For example, these critics do not note that Rupert Murdoch, who heads the parent company of Fox, financially supported uber-Democrat and former vice president Al Gore.

In September 2000, for instance, the global press baron served as vice finance chairman for a big-bucks Gore fund-raiser in New York City – and personally contributed thousands of dollars to Gore's presidential bid.

In a Web exclusive, Newsweek.com reported at the time:

"Rupert Murdoch, the global media mogul, has been a longtime darling of political conservatives on practically every continent. ... These days, though, Murdoch is backing a candidate of a different sort: Democratic nominee Al Gore.

"Perhaps hedging his bets post-November, Murdoch served as 'vice chair' for the Vice President's Sept. 14 fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall and contributed $50,000 himself. Moreover, Newsweek has learned, Murdoch had a secret meeting with Gore last spring, at which they apparently discovered common ground on several unspecified issues."

And that's not all. Murdoch's support for Gore included lending a helping hand a month before, in a move that reportedly amounted to a multimillion-dollar in-kind contribution to the veep's Democrat Party.

The 2000 Democratic convention was held in Los Angeles in part because owners of the Staples Convention Center agreed to allow the party to use the facility at no charge. As a co-owner of the arena, Murdoch had to sign off on that deal, which, according to the Los Angeles Times, saved Gore and his fellow Democrats up to $10 million.

That's a pretty hefty helping hand, especially coming from someone the "OutFoxed" folks no doubt view as the Darth Vader of the Republican right.

The friendship between the top Democrat and the NewsCorp CEO continued even after Gore lost the 2000 election.

When the ex-veep taught journalism the next year at Columbia University, he chose a select handful of guest speakers to address his class – Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, TV host David Letterman and – you guessed it – Rupert Murdoch.

FNC Hurt Bush in 2000

Something else the "OutFoxed" folks aren't likely to remember: Without Murdoch's Fox News Channel, George W. Bush likely would have won the 2000 presidential race in a walk.

It was FNC's political correspondent Carl Cameron who took an ancient police report documenting Bush's 1976 DUI encounter with Maine cops and broke the story on the eve of the 2000 election.

The allegedly pro-GOP news editors at Fox decided to spotlight the anti-Bush story even after reporters for the Associated Press and other news outlets had taken a pass on the information.

It turned out Fox News’ judgment was right – the DUI story was huge. It rocked the Bush campaign as well as the voting public, 25 percent of whom said in exit polls that the story impacted their voting decision.

With 2000's presidential race as close as it was, there's no question that FNC's decision to run with the DUI story robbed Bush of a clean victory and probably single-handedly turned Gore into the winner of the popular vote.

Rather than complain about the Fox News Channel, "OutFoxed" should detail some of these facts in a "fair and balanced" presentation of the network.