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Because the existence of a dissenting point of view completely trashes the concept of "objective" reporting. Anyone who reports on news brings his or her experience to the job--or else why not just have ANYONE report on a story?--and the Big Three networks have simply tiptoed around this fact for years--they all share the same bias, so it looks like "the objective truth" to someone who has no access to an alternative point of view.

Let's say for the sake of argument that FOX is biased--then how come its straight reporting agrees with that of the Big Three? Answer: Because the hard facts ("Mr. X was shot today") are not in dispute, its interpretation that is in dispute (ABC will lean toward Maxine Waters's interpretation of the killing, FOX toward a conservative politician's). What the Big Three have been shopping around has been biased coverage but it's like an experiment without a control--you can't SEE it's biased until you see a DIFFERENT bias to compare it to.

The liberals hate FOX because it knocks their legitimacy out from under them--a legitimacy built on tainted news getting to the public without any dissenting view. We think FOX is a big deal now, but years from now, when they can stand back and better see the media landscape before and after its arrival, people will see just HOW revolutionary FOX is.

At the DU they seem to hate pretty much all news organizations. The key to liking a news organization seems to be not news accuracy but news that is politically aligned with their ideology. What I like about FOX is they challenge my beliefs with data. I'm a data driven guy and I've had to correct myself several times.