Bad news from the frontline of global capitalism.

Every year the Davos World Economic Forum puts the corporate world on the psychiatrist's couch where business leaders fuss about why they remain unloved in a cruel world. One of the reasons as I found out last week may be their diminishing sense of values, particularly in media.

I took part in a future of journalism session at Davos where I raised concerns over the new businesss model of Fox News -- biased, provocative and loud-mouthed journalism.

Fox is the money-spinning flagship of Rupert Murdoch's global empire and a survey last week showed that more than 50 per cent of people polled in the US found Fox their most trusted media, compared with 39 per cent for CNN, down in 22nd position.

Fox is a brilliant commercial success, but it makes money at the expense of ethical reporting. It is openly partisan and has developed its appeal on being the media attack-dog for Republican politics. It has no regard for objective reporting. Far from it. It has led the backlash against liberal politics and particularly those of Barack Obama. The Fox model thrives on bias and populism and is making a pile of money, but in the process it is shredding the fabric of ethical journalism.

Pointing out this challenge to traditional values in media to a Davos audience produced an uncomfortable silence and then, shockingly, a couple of contributions that suggested perhaps the days of ethical and balanced journalism were over. As someone said, much of the world's media is heavily biased one way or another, so why not just accept it and move on.

Can they be serious? If so, the thousands of people fighting for press freedom in distant and dangerous corners of the world who are committed to democratic principles are in danger of being cut adrift. It's more important than ever for us to assert that journalism is a public good that must not be sacrificed by bean-counting managers.