(CNSNews.com) - About 22 demonstrators gathered outside the ABC News building in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to deliver a petition reportedly bearing 200,000 signatures of people who agree that "FOX News is a Republican mouthpiece" and that networks, including ABC News, should stop "parroting" the Fox News Channel's talking points.

MoveOn.org, a liberal political activism group, sponsored the demonstration and said in a press release that the petitions were delivered to major networks around the country, including CBS and CNN.

The demonstrators told Cybercast News Service that the Fox News Channel is "not a real news organization." Nonetheless, they said, major news networks use Fox, a cable station, as a source for talking points.

"We are here to say, please, at the end of this election year, engage in responsible journalism and don't parrot Fox News," Adam Greene, director of strategic campaigns for MoveOn, told Cybercast News Service.

"We say Fox should not be setting the agenda for what is news in this country," Deepa Domansky, a regional coordinator for MoveOn, told Cybercast News Service.

"Fox News is taking us away from issues that are really pressing and creating a sense that we shouldn't be focusing on these issues but should be more focused on tabloid issues. We know that Fox News is not a legitimate news organization. It is a Republican mouthpiece. Yet the rest of the media is taking its talking points from Fox," Domansky added.

But Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center, said there is absolutely no evidence to substantiate that claim. "I think the major networks would be horrified at the very suggestion," he said. (Disclosure: The Media Research Center is the parent company of Cybercast News Service.)

Isabel McDonald, communications director of the liberal media watchdog group Fairness Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), told Cybercast News Service that she has seen a clear pattern off mimicry of Fox News' apparently conservative agenda.

"The advent of Fox News Channel has had the effect of pushing other cable networks right," she said. "Other networks have begun to imitate Fox's strange mathematical notion of balance, which consists of five conservatives and one progressive weighing in on an issue."

Domansky said her reference to Fox's use of a "tabloid issue" concerned the heavy coverage given to the close affiliation between Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and his controversial pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Domansky said the coverage revealed how Fox and other news outlets are tilted to the political right.

"Fox News continues to distract from important issues by focusing on Barack Obama's pastor," said Domansky. "We feel that the rest of the media is taking their media talking points from Fox News.

"In a year of a historic election, in a time of serious problems in this country, it is time for the media to be focusing on real issues and giving those issues first priority rather than using Fox News to get their talking points and distracting the country from issues that most Americans are predominantly concerned with," Domansky added.

But Graham said "tabloid issue" is not an accurate term to describe the Wright controversy.

"The word tabloid doesn't work very well when this whole thing is on video," said Graham. "The word smear suggests it is unfair to associate Obama with Wright's comments or that the videos are lying. That's a problem for them because the videos speak for themselves, and it is not lying. It is not out of the bounds of journalism."

But McDonald said she doesn't see why it is an important story. "If I were a political journalist, I don't see why it would be such a great story," she said. "Wright's statements have been taken out of context."

Domansky said she just wants the networks to realize that "Fox News is not Reuters or the Associated Press and should not be employed in that regard."

(CNSNews.com Correspondent Lois Owen contributed to this report.)

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