I think we must start by discussing two actually OPPOSED concepts that are often confused with each other, BIAS and PROPAGANDA: One is an unavoidable mild coping mechanism of human nature, while the other is a malevolent, scientific mass manipulation.

Being fallible human beings with a limited amount of time to make up our minds, and a limited ability to access and to completely process information, we are of course ALL subject to bias. All of us use a variety of short-hand, generally benign techniques to decide where we stand on any given matter: We cheer for the 'home' team at sports events, we may prefer the underdog to the established, traditional favorite (or visa versa), we 'bias' ourselves into all kinds of more or less unconscious decisions about brands of toothpaste, where to bank or buy insurance, cross the street now or later, and hundreds or thousands of other issues. Life is too short to decide most things in any more deliberate or comprehensive way. BIAS is normal, and in a sense essential to conducting an efficient life. Even our political choices are to some degree determined by our backgrounds and personalities, and the assumptions we tend to make based on those characteristics.

If Fox were simply 'biased' in the normal way we use that term, we wouldn't have a problem as I see it. After all, I'm willing to admit for argument's sake that, say,  MSNBC, (less so CNN or the networks), and several of the more prominent 'national' newspapers have a sort of unspoken (perhaps even unconscious) historical lean toward the 'Democratic', the 'progressive', the 'academic', the _____ (enough said, the general point is clear). They tend somehow to end-up with a lot of people working there who share that same vague slant about life, in much the same way that corporate executives, military officers, actors, writers, farmers, or hunters, likewise tend in general to find much upon which to unconsciously 'agree'. Most of us are somewhat AWARE that we don't always process things entirely fairly or entirely objectively, but we tend to accept the premise that we should at least ASPIRE to that elusive but worthy goal. 

This is NOT what Fox is about: Fox is a blatant, self-conscious PROPAGANDA operation from top to bottom, and all the way thru. It has no more interest in being FAIR than does the Ad agency who tells us that X toothpaste is better than Y. It has only a secondary and somewhat marginal interest in what we traditionally think of as 'news' (ie, who? what? when? how? how many? where? and the other traditional factual questions that make-up a NEWS STORY). Like all propaganda functions (ie, the Ad agency above), it has no interest in expanding knowledge per se, but only in creating BEHAVIOR - 'news' is nothing more than the HOOK that encourages you thru the door. Creating the prescribed ACTION in the consumer is the main (the only?) real objective of everything it does, essentially 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. I've never seen anything like it in the higher realms of American journalism, and I think it is really silly to justify what IT does by citing (for example) CBS or NBC.