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Nov 16 2012 2 cmnts

CEO Roger Ailes Says That Fox News “Has No Agenda”

Posted by: Mark @ 3:02 pm

Demonstrating that a fish stinks from the head, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes made some remarkably dishonest remarks in an interview with TVNewser’s Chris Ariens. Ailes was asked how he thought the next four years of the Obama administration would play out. He said…

“It’s day to day for us. We don’t — I know no one believes it — we have no agenda. If he runs into a burning building tomorrow and saves four kids, he’s gonna be the biggest goddamn hero Fox News ever saw. But if he leaves four guys behind on the battlefield but can’t explain it, then he’s gonna have a problem with Fox News.”

This is pretty good evidence that the liars on Fox News have taken their cues from the boss. The reason they are so comfortable making outrageous statements that are utterly devoid of factual basis is that Ailes has communicated clearly that it’s acceptable and he’s shown them how it’s done.

The notion that Fox News has no agenda is a fallacy that no one with a functioning brain would give credence. Even the most ardent conservatives recognize the partisan bias exercised at Fox, and they exploit it to their advantage. Sarah Palin once counseled a troubled GOP senate candidate to “Speak through Fox News.” Ailes himself has described his vision of Fox saying “I see this as the Alamo. If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we’d be fine.” The network worked feverishly to oppose President Obama’s first term and reelection.

Ailes’ suggestion that he would praise the President if he did something worthy is provably false. In the days that followed the killing of Osama Bin Laden, Fox News ran numerous stories suggesting that the mission was unlawful. Their coverage of the same issue during the presidential campaign portrayed Obama, not as a heroic and decisive leader, but as an egotistical braggart. It’s likely that Fox would handle a story about Obama saving children from a burning building in the same disparaging manner. And even though Obama did not leave “four guys behind on the battlefield,” an obvious reference to Benghazi, Ailes and Fox still characterize the story that way.

Ailes likes to pretend that he’s a “fair and balanced” journalist. But the assertion that he has no agenda is belied by what actually gets on the air. A couple of years ago he told the conservative National Review that he saw himself as merely a contrarian. “To be honest with you,” he said, “if all the media was tipped to the right, I’d be the biggest liberal in New York.” But he had plenty of opportunity to be contrary after 9/11 when the rest of the media was propping up George Bush, whose administration had failed to prevent the attack. He could have been a big liberal in 2003 when the rest of the media was jumping on Bush’s bandwagon for an unjustified and illegal war with Iraq.

Nope. Ailes is as he has always been: an unrepentant arch-conservative activist running a pseudo-news enterprise on behalf of a starkly right-wing agenda.

Tags: Chris Ariens, Fox News, Roger Ailes, TVNewser

Nov 10 2012 5 cmnts

General, Media Bias, Propaganda

FLASHBACK: Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Posted by: Mark @ 3:15 pm

With the 2012 presidential election behind us, there has been a flurry of post-election analysis by observers from all across the political spectrum. One theme that I have seen coming from both the left and right is the notion that Fox News has not been particularly helpful to the Republican Party, despite that being their primary mission. This criticism reminded me of an article I published three years ago titled “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” So I went back and read it, and to my surprise, it seems just as relevant to today’s political landscape as it did then. In fact, it’s rather frightening (and disappointing) that so little has changed. That is, unless your a Democrat, because the harm that Fox is causing to the GOP is a gift to the Democrats.

So on this lazy Saturday afternoon I thought I would reprise this article for your enjoyment. I reprint it here without a single modification.

[Purchase FreakShow stickers at Crass Commerce]

The case was made long ago that Fox News is a blight on the media map. It is bad for journalism. It is bad for Democracy. It is bad for America. A so-called “news” network that repeatedly misinforms, even deliberately disinforms, its audience is failing any test of public service embodied by an ethical press.

I, personally, have made the case for an embargo of Fox News by Democrats and progressives (see Starve the Beast: Part I, Part II, Part III), documenting via studied analysis that there is no affirmative value to appearing on Fox News – a network that has established itself as overtly hostile to the Democratic message and its messengers.

However, there is another side to this that has not been addressed previously. Republicans might be well advised to avoid Fox News as well. There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?

If all we were witnessing was the emergence of a mainstream conservative network that aspired to advance Republican themes and policies, there would not be much of note here. Most of the conventional media was already center-right before there was a Fox News. But Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). So while most Americans have never heard of actual Republican party bosses like House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, posers like Joe the Plumber and Carrie Prejean have become household names.

Fox News has descended into depths heretofore reserved for fringe characters. They are openly promoting the wackos who believe that President Obama is ineligible to hold office because he isn’t a U.S. citizen. They feature commentaries by secessionists and even those calling for an overthrow of the government and the Constitution. This explains how folks like Ralph Peters, a retired military officer who said that the Taliban captors of a U.S. Soldier would be saving us a lot of trouble and expense if they would just kill him, earn airtime on Fox. Peters previously told Fox News that he favors military strikes against media targets. This explains how Glenn Beck can agree with a guest that it would be a good thing if America were attacked again by Osama bin Laden. And don’t even get me started on Victoria Jackson, who has joined an ever-lengthening line of psycho-Chicken Littles who compare the President to Hitler.

Good Advice:
“If crazy ideologues have infiltrated the news business, we need to know about it.”
~ Bill O’Reilly, 7/16/09

The list of loonies extends to politicians like Michele Bachmann, entertainers like Ted Nugent, and of course, the talk show pundits like Rush Limbaugh, whose maniacal rantings are elevated by Fox into their version of political dialogue. It’s a dialogue that is consumed with ACORN conspiracies and Manchurian presidents. The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.

As a result, the Fox News audience is being dumbed down by a parade of paranoid know-nothings. This strategy appears to be successful for Fox in that it has attracted a loyal viewership that is eager to have their twisted preconceptions affirmed. The conflict-infused fare in which Fox specializes is a ratings juggernaut – just like any good fiction. However, this perceived popularity is having an inordinate impact on the GOP platform. By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

With the Fox network unabashedly promoting the most ridiculous rumors, myths, and nightmares of the rightist fringe, moderate and independent Americans will grow ever more suspicious of the Fox/GOP agenda. Most Americans do not believe that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist; or that FEMA is constructing concentration camps; or that we are on a march toward socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever the right is peddling this week. Most Americans do not believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a reptilian alien, or the anti-Christ. In short, most Americans think that the loopy yarns spun by Fox News are fables told by madmen – and believed by even madder men and women who wallow in their doomsday utopia.

Fox News is fond of boasting about their ratings dominance. It is a daily occurrence and the structural core of their argument that they reflect the mood of America. The GOP has bought this argument in its entirety. So it is important to note here that success in the Nielsen ratings has no correlation to public opinion polling. The ratings only measure the program choices of Nielsen’s survey participants. That is a subset of the population at large, and not a particularly representative one. It is a sample focused on consumers, not voters. And its respondents are just those willing to have their TV viewing monitored 24 hours a day, which skews the sample in favor of people who aren’t creeped out by that. What’s more, viewing choices are not necessarily an endorsement of the opinions presented in the program. There are many reasons people choose to watch TV shows, the most frequent being its entertainment value. So any attempt to tie ratings to partisan politics is a foolish exercise that demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the business of television.

As for what constitutes success in the television marketplace, due to the broad diversification of available programming, it doesn’t take much to be heralded as a hit. A mere 3 share (3% of people watching TV) will land you in the top 10. For cable news the bar is set even lower. In fact, the top rated show on the top rated cable news network (The O’Reilly Factor) only gets about 3 million viewers. That’s less than 1% of the American population. It’s also less than World Wrestling Entertainment, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the CBS Evening News (the lowest rated broadcast network news program). By contrast, America’s Got Talent is seen by 12 million viewers – four times O’Reilly’s audience.

Numbers this low ought not to inspire much excitement from political operatives. Nevertheless, Republicans are riding the coattails of Fox News as if it were representative of a booming conservative mandate in the electorate. They are embracing Fox’s most delusional eccentrics. This is leading to the promotion of similar eccentrics within the party. Which brings us the absurd spectacle of the network’s nuts interviewing the party’s pinheads.

The inevitable result of this system of rewarding those farthest from reality is the creation of a constituency of crackpots. It is an endorsement of the philosophy brewed by the Tea Baggers that espouses racism, tyranny, and armed revolt. It is enabling a frightening corps of openly militant adversaries of democracy, free speech, and Constitutional rule. It is the sort of environment that produced the murders of Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen Johns.

This is a textbook example of how the extreme rises to the top. It is also fundamentally contrary to the interests of the Republican Party. The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds. It seems like such a waste after all of the effort and expense that Fox put into building a pseudo-journalistic enterprise with the goal of confounding viewers with false news-like theatrics.

Make no mistake, Fox News is still managed by hard core party patrons. And I’m not referring just to opinion-driven commentators like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, although they are bad enough. No, I am talking about executives and editors like CEO, Roger Ailes, former Nixon and Bush media consultant. I’m talking about Washington Managing Editor and VP, Bill Sammon, an avid right-wing alum of the Washington “Moonie” Times. I’m talking about Business News Chief and VP, Neil Cavuto, antagonistic interrupter extraordinaire. And let us not forget the head hype-master, Rupert Murdoch, whose UK operations were just discovered to have been unlawfully wiretapping celebrities, politicians, and even members of the Royal Family. Augmenting that executive roster are the GOP regulars who are straight out of the just retired Republican White House: Karl Rove, Dana Perino, John Bolton, Dan Senor, and Linda Chavez. And then there are the Fox News clowns…er…“contributors” like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Bernie Goldberg, Michele Malkin, and on and on. If nothing else, Fox is a full-employment program for rightist weasels (and they also operate the Conservative Book Promotion Club).

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to be more than just a voice of opposition to Democrats. It was to utterly crush the left end of the political spectrum leaving only a teetering right wing with no counter balance. Yet, despite the torrid embrace between Republicans and Fox News, it is apparent that Fox is the source of a sort of friendly fire that is decimating the GOP by exalting its most outlandish and unpopular players. And since Republicans have not been particularly popular anyway lately, the anchor being thrown to them by Fox can’t be all that helpful – - – Except to Democrats.

The more things change, the more they get even crazier than they were before.

Tags: Barack Obama, Bill O'Reilly, Democrats, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Republicans, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch

Nov 02 2012 4 cmnts

Election, General, Media Bias

Succumbing To Desperation: Fox News’ Loony Last Days Of The Election

Posted by: Mark @ 12:24 pm

As hard as it seems to believe after an interminably long and divisive campaign, election day is upon us in just four short days. And with momentum shifting toward President Obama, Fox News is pulling out all the stops to find something – anything – to smear the President and grease the skids for Oily Mitt Romney. But this is getting ridiculous…

These articles are bordering on Dadaist absurdity in their wild flailing about for subjects of attack. If anything, this only makes Fox look more desperate and childish than they usually do.

For Fox to note that there are New Yorkers who are still struggling with the devastation of Superstorm Sandy is not exactly news. Every projection of the impact of the storm prior to its arrival made it clear that there was going to be severe damage and that recovery would take weeks, if not months. But to ask “Where’s Obama,” as if he should be delivering cans of soup from the back of a van is ludicrous. The truth is that Obama’s federal response is managing a variety of agencies working on restoration of power, cleanup, rebuilding, and rescue and medical attention. On top of that, CNN reported that…

“The federal government shipped one million meals Thursday to New York, where National Guard troops were distributing them to people in need, [New York Governor Andrew] Cuomo told reporters.”

Obama has cut red tape to declare disaster status and accelerate aid. And he has been universally praised by the local authorities, including political adversaries like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Where’s Obama? Right where he should be – in charge and showing leadership.

The other daft article by Fox was a reporting of a column from the Daily Caller, a right-wing rag run by Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson. The headline snidely asks if Obama had a grade-point average of 2.6 while at Columbia University. But as if to refute their own brash slander, the second paragraph of the story says…

“The 2.6 grade can’t be confirmed, is contradicted by some evidence, and it doesn’t say anything about the courses, professors and associations Obama was immersed in during his two-year stay in Columbia.”

They why fu heck print it? This is the lengths that the right will go to tarnish the President on the eve of the election. It has nothing to with his record, his leadership, or his vision for the future. It reaches back twenty years to speculate about something that they admit they have no evidence of. However, if they are determined to bring up Obama’s academic history they could just mention that he graduated from Harvard Law Magna Cum Laud. That’s verifiable and a clear indication of his scholastic excellence. It’s interesting that Fox continues to be obsessed with Obama’s decades old school files but isn’t the least bit interested in Mitt Romney’s tax returns, which are far more relevant to the question of fitness to serve as president.

Fox News NewsBusters This sort of reporting brings Fox down to the level of the broadly ridiculed “challenge” by Donald Trump to ransom Obama’s academic records in exchange for five million dollars. The tone of Fox’s reporting just keeps getting sillier. That may be because they have handed off their editorial duties to the uber-conservative Media Research Center and their comically inept NewsBusters. Recently Fox stacked their op-ed page with content exclusively acquired from MRC/NewsBusters. Fox seems to have outsourced their opinion pages to one of the most partisan GOP flacks in the nation. The four articles featured were by Noel Sheppard, Tim Graham, Clay Waters, and Dan Gainor, all MRC/NewsBusters hacks.

This actually isn’t too surprising considering that Fox’s former chief anchor, Brit Hume, effusively credited MRC when he retired from the anchor desk saying…

“I want to say a word, however, of thanks to Brent and the team at the Media Research Center [...] for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report, I don’t know what we would’ve done without them. It was a daily buffet of material to work from, and we certainly made tremendous use of it.”

Just four more days. Thank God. How much more preposterous do you think Fox can get in that brief window of opportunity? Will we see articles blaming Obama for extreme weather catastrophes? Will they charge him with murdering American ambassadors? Will they find his Kenyan passport in a shoebox along with love letters from Hugo Chavez? Don’t rule it out. Desperation causes strange and deranged behavior. And Fox is already exhibiting symptoms of Obama Dementia Disease (ODD).

Tags: Barack Obama, Brit Hume, Fox News, Media Research Center, NewsBusters, Tucker Carlson

Oct 31 2012 6 cmnts

General, Media Bias

Fox News: A Fundamental Threat To American Democracy And The Enemies Of The American People

Posted by: Mark @ 3:24 am

On Tuesday’s edition of the Judge Jeanine Pirro show on Fox News, Pirro hosted a discussion with celebrated media analysts Ann Coulter and Pat Caddell. The segment was predictably filled with partisan histrionics and wild-eyed hyperbole aimed at what they perceive to be the “liberal” media.

Setting aside the hysterical irony of Fox News pretending to make a neutral assessment of the bias of any other media, the Coulter/Caddell team managed to outdo themselves and the network for which they so ably shill. Caddell, in particular, articulated an emotionally unhinged rant about how fatally biased the media has been in favor of President Obama. Caddell stammered and came close to slobbering as he vented his extreme disgust for the press. And then, in a fit that seemed more like a seizure, he spilled the unvarnished truth that had been swelling his pea-brain to unnatural dimensions:

“The leading mainstream media…they have become a fundamental threat to American democracy and the enemies of the American people.”

Good Lord! That’s a striking revelation coming from a devoted Fox News flunkie. And the only logical assumption is that he is talking about Fox News itself. Since we know that the “leading mainstream media,” based on viewership and circulation, is Fox News and its corporate parent entities (i.e. the Wall Street Journal), Caddell is indicting his employer as an enemy of the American people. And not a minute too soon.

Anyone tuning in to Fox News can see an unending stream of bile spewed at President Obama and Democrats/liberals in general. They seek to blame Obama for a wide array of invented scandals. They hype survey data by disreputable pollsters who always seem to find Obama trailing. They interview a familiar cast of Obama-haters who never disappoint in lavishing insults on their perceived ideological adversaries on the left. And many of those guests are actively employed by right-wing organizations and candidates, but Fox never discloses those affiliations.

I couldn’t agree more with Caddell that such blatant dishonesty and misrepresentation is the work of America’s enemies. I just didn’t expect it to come from a Fox News wingnut who is paid to serve that enemy. The proof of their dastardly misdeeds is seen in surveys that show that Fox viewers are significantly more ill-informed than viewers of other media, or even people who watch no news at all.

What’s really funny, though, is how upset Fox gets when other media fail to jump on their bandwagon of lies. For some reason Fox can’t comprehend that legitimate reporters don’t want to tarnish their reputations by disseminating the same kind of falsehoods that are the hallmark of Fox News.

Tags: Fox News, Pat Caddell

Oct 17 2012 1 cmnts

Election, General, Media Bias

Fox News, Daily Caller, Admit That Fox News Is Not A Legitimate News Outlet

Posted by: Mark @ 12:26 pm

One of Mitt Romney’s most reality-detached comments of this campaign came when he declared that “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” The Olympian ignorance of that remark says a lot about Romney’s elitist upbringing and orientation. The truth is that thousands of people die every year due to lack of health care coverage – more than 26,000 in 2010. And it isn’t just people who get sudden illnesses in their apartments, but people who have untreated and/or undiagnosed problems that lead to more severe disorders and fatalities.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman addressed this matter in an editorial where he thoroughly demolished Romney’s preposterous theory:

“Even the idea that everyone gets urgent care when needed from emergency rooms is false. Yes, hospitals are required by law to treat people in dire need, whether or not they can pay. But that care isn’t free — on the contrary, if you go to an emergency room you will be billed, and the size of that bill can be shockingly high. Some people can’t or won’t pay, but fear of huge bills can deter the uninsured from visiting the emergency room even when they should. And sometimes they die as a result.

“More important, going to the emergency room when you’re very sick is no substitute for regular care, especially if you have chronic health problems. When such problems are left untreated — as they often are among uninsured Americans — a trip to the emergency room can all too easily come too late to save a life”

This is just common sense to everyone except Romney. But the part of Krugman’s article that is causing controversy came at the end:

Fox Nation - Krugman

“So let’s be brutally honest here. The Romney-Ryan position on health care is that many millions of Americans must be denied health insurance, and millions more deprived of the security Medicare now provides, in order to save money. At the same time, of course, Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan are proposing trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy. So a literal description of their plan is that they want to expose many Americans to financial insecurity, and let some of them die, so that a handful of already wealthy people can have a higher after-tax income.”

The outrage generated by this was expressed in a column by Daily Caller contributor, Jim Huffman. However, there is nothing in Huffman’s retort that attempts to rebut the substantive assertions by Krugman. He never bothers to counter the argument that thousands of Americans are at risk due to deficient or non-existent coverage. The entirety of his pique is aimed at a single sentence that Huffman interprets as Krugman alleging that Romney wants people to die.

First of all, Krugman’s statement actually refers to Romney’s “plan” that would have the effect of producing unnecessary deaths, not Romney’s personal bloodlust. But the more interesting part of Huffman’s article comes at the beginning where he writes…

“We all have heard, or read on the Internet, claims that President Obama is a Marxist and/or a Muslim extremist who wants nothing more than the downfall of America, and that he is willing to sacrifice American lives and prosperity to these ambitions. Maybe the few folks making those claims actually believe them, but there is not a shred of evidence they are true. In fact they are so preposterous no legitimate news outlets would report them as anything but the unsubstantiated nonsense they are.”

Apparently Mr. Huffman has never watched Fox News, or even read the web site his column appears on. Either that or he is admitting that Fox News and the Daily Caller are not “legitimate news outlets,” which would make more sense. Fox personalities from Glenn Beck to Eric Bolling to Sean Hannity, and more, have made overt references to President Obama as a Muslim, a Marxist, a socialist, a communist, a Kenyan, a racist, etc. And the Daily Caller, a web site run by Fox contributor Tucker Carlson, is every bit as bad. Huffman’s attempt to portray those ludicrous sentiments as the product of insignificant blogs backfires in the face of the truth: That the most prodigious disseminater of those vile lies is the heart of the right-wing media and the highest rated cable news network, Fox News.

The clincher is that Huffman’s article now appears st the top of the Fox News community web site, Fox Nation. So we have the unique circumstance of Fox News featuring an article that exposes Fox News as an illegitimate news source. That may be the first thing that Fox News has gotten right in sixteen years.

Tags: Barack Obama, Daily Caller, Fox Nation, Fox News, Mitt Romney, Paul Krugman, Tucker Carlson

Oct 03 2012 10 cmnts

Election, General, Media Bias, Racism

Conservative Media Hype Old Obama Video: When All Else Fails, Resort To Racism

Posted by: Mark @ 9:56 am

With Mitt Romney’s campaign flailing desperately to avoid a massive blowout next month, the conservative media that is frantically trying to prop him up are running out options. They’ve tried to turn the unrest in Libya into Obama’s Watergate. They’ve tried to transform out-of-context snippets of Obama’s speeches into scandalous gaffes. They’ve tried to dismiss all of the polls showing Obama ahead as products of a liberally biased media. None of that has worked to reverse the decline of Romney’s electoral prospects.

So what is a determined right-wing press to do when all of their best efforts to torpedo President Obama have crashed in flames?

Resort to racism, of course. Led by the Daily Caller and the Drudge Report, and buttressed by Fox News, the right is now hyperventilating over a five year old video of Obama talking about the well-documented failure to adequately respond to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. They think that people have forgotten about George Bush’s deadly neglect and his praise for FEMA crony Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown.

Contrary to claims that this is a shocking new video, Obama’s speech was covered at the time by most of the press, including Fox News. Even the Daily Caller’s publisher, Tucker Carlson, reported on this video when he anchored a program on MSNBC. The feverish presentation of this video is nothing more than a transparent attempt to manufacture controversy where none exists.

However, there is another objective here on the part of these video-hypers. Since the content of the video contains references to race, they see this as an opportunity to portray the President as obsessed with the issue. Much of the discussion in the rightist media is about whether Obama was blaming racism for the poor response to Katrina (as if that would be shocking). They are also focusing on a portion of the tape where Obama acknowledges his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who was in the audience. Glomming on to Wright is not an accidental brush with the past. Conservatives have been prodding Romney to adopt that as an issue since at least last May when I compiled these quotes:

Fox Anchor Chris Wallace: As far as Rev. Wright is concerned, I think it had a lot of relevance, and I think McCain was crazy not to bring it up.

Radio Talker Mark Levin: Why would you take any issue off the table, particularly issues that give us a look into this man’s character?

Fox Anchor Sean Hannity: I believe that the president’s relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a man that influenced him for over 20 years, inspired him, is a very important campaign issue.

Fox Host Kimberly Guilfoyle: I don’t think [rejecting the Wright issue] is the right thing to do. I think he should try to get after it.

Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft: [Rejecting the Wright issue] is certainly disappointing.

Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff: I think there may be value in talking about the Obama-Wright connection.

National Review’s Michael Walsh: Even by Stupid Party standards, [tabling Wright] was an impressive display of preemptive surrender.

Fox Contributor Charles Krauthammer: [I]n principle, if you want to [bring up Wright], it would be completely legitimate.

Herman Cain: I think it is fair if someone wants to highlight the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his relationship with Barack Obama because, quite frankly, it wasn’t highlighted enough in 2008 when he was running for president the first time.

So now, via a coordinated effort between Romney’s camp, Drudge, and Fox, this issue is being revived. Is it because the public has been clamoring for more information about it? Unlikely. Is it because it worked so well the first time? McCain lost. Or is it because it injects the theme of race into the campaign and riles up the GOP base and spurs prejudiced wingnuts to show up at the polls? Let’s just say “Fox News Reports, You Decide.”

[Late Breaking] Fox Nation is piling on with yet another “Unearthed Video” that charges Obama with “Slam[ing] ‘Violent’ Rich People.” In fact, in this 10 year old clip Obama was talking about the figurative violence of neglecting the needs of America’s less fortunate citizens. Fox is portraying these comments as literal and implying an escalation of the class war. On that subject, remember the words of Warren Buffet: There is a class war, and we are winning. Here is what Obama actually said:

Fox Nation Violent Rich

“The philosophy of nonviolence only makes sense if the powerful can be made to recognize themselves in the powerless. It only makes sense if the powerless can be made to recognize themselves in the powerful. You know, the principle of empathy gives broader meaning, by the way, to Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but rich people are all for nonviolence. Why wouldn’t they be? They’ve got what they want. They want to make sure people don’t take their stuff. But the principle of empathy recognizes that there are more subtle forms of violence to which we are answerable. The spirit of empathy condemns not only the use of firehoses and attack dogs to keep people down but also accountants and tax loopholes to keep people down. I’m not saying that what Enron executives did to their employees is the moral equivalent of what Bull Connor did to black folks, but I’ll tell you what, the employees at Enron feel violated. When a company town sees its plant closing because some distant executives made some decision despite the wage concessions, despite the tax breaks, and they see their entire economy collapsing, they feel violence.“

Once again, there is nothing objectionable in those remarks. But Fox finds a way to mischaracterize them in order to stir racial animus. It’s all they have left.

Tags: Barack Obama, Daily Caller, Drudge Report, Fox News, Jeremiah Wright, Mitt Romney

Sep 26 2012 5 cmnts

General, Media Bias

Conservative Leaders Urge Their Followers To Become Even More Stupid

Posted by: Mark @ 12:53 pm

It has been proven in multiple studies that consumers of conservative media (particularly Fox News) are significantly less knowledgeable about current affairs than those who favor other media or even those who consume no news at all.

Nevertheless, it is conservatives who whine incessantly about an illusionary liberal media bias. It is astonishing how they can convince themselves that these giant, international, multi-billion dollar, conglomerates are somehow aligned to a socialist ideology that would rob them of their wealth and independence.

As if the present ignorance of the right-wing masses were not already disturbingly severe, a group of conservative organizations and authorities just issued an open letter calling on their minions to “Tune out the Liberal Media” and cease their exposure to the evil leftist press. The letter enumerates a set of perceived grievances and concludes with this desperate appeal:

“We the undersigned – representing millions of Americans from our respective organizations – are now publicly urging our members to seek out alternative sources of political news in order to make an intelligent, well-informed decision on November 6.”

Oh great. Now the least informed segment of society is being coerced to voluntarily make themselves even more stupid by constricting their media access to a narrow and partisan assemblage of right-wing propaganda and blind conservative boosterism. That’ll help.

The aforementioned list of grievances in the letter is a tired collection of debunked conspiracy theories, misrepresentations of news events, and Republican talking points. Certainly the audience to whom the letter is directed has already been sufficiently misinformed on these matters. So what goal do the letter’s co-signers have in beseeching their readers to abstain from watching a more diverse selection of media? The only plausible purpose is to insure that they remain untainted by alternative viewpoints so that they can be more easily manipulated by their conservative masters. Obviously there is some lack of confidence in the ability of conservatives to digest broad-based information and make up their own minds.

The signers of the letter are a who’s who of right-wing disinformation, starting with the head of the uber-rightist Media Research Center, Brent Bozell. Other notables include Gary Bauer, President of Campaign for American Values; Matt Kibbe, President and CEO of FreedomWorks; Laura Ingraham, National Radio Host; Amy Kremer, Chairman of Tea Party Express; Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council; and, of course, Rush Limbaugh. These are the people who are complaining about bias in the media? And their appeal was posted as a news story on the front page of the Fox News web site where there has never been a hint of bias.

I think it’s a great idea to sequester the lunatic fringe to an asylum inhabited by their own kind. Then they won’t bother the rest of us with their delusions of Kenyan usurpers, climate science deniers, and fables of Jesus riding on dinosaurs. They can amuse each other with their shared distortions of reality, listen to Ron Paul books on tape, and swap stories about their gold coin collections and dehydrated survivalist dinner packets.

We’ll be here taking care of things while they’re gone, and tending to the problems of the real world. Should they ever decide to rejoin us they will find history, and diversity of opinion still in tact.

Tags: Brent Bozell, Fox News, Media Research Center

Sep 25 2012 3 cmnts

Election, General, Media Bias

Fox Nation Admonishes Their Faithful: Don’t Believe The Polls

Posted by: Mark @ 3:37 pm

As Mitt Romney sinks further into an abyss of electoral sludge, his Pharisees at Fox News dispense divine guidance to their disciples. The word from on high at Fox Nation is: “Don’t Believe the Polls.”

It is true that most of the recent polls show President Obama widening his lead over Romney. Even the polls from Fox News report Obama ahead by significant margins. That news is triggering a severe case of paranoia resulting in a defensive overreaction on the part of Romney’s PR team (aka Fox News).

So Fox found an article on The Hill and linked to it with a headline of their own making. The actual source was nothing more than a report on the comments by Romney’s pollster Neil Newhouse, who just happened to disagree with all the polls showing Romney behind. But Fox, in their headline, failed to attribute that opinion to a Romney operative. Newhouse, it should be noted, is the adviser who declared that “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.” To his credit, the campaign has kept that promise.

This admonition to cast out the demon polls is typical of the behavior of a cult where the first sacred lesson is to accept that anything told you by anyone outside the order is a lie. Therefore, all the pollsters are agents of the unholy and must be shunned. Never mind that all of these same pollsters were once embraced by the Foxists as prophets:

Rasmussen Poll: Romney 50%, Obama 42%
Poll: Romney Beating Obama Among Women Voters
Poll: Romney Up Double Digits With Swing State Independents
NBC-WSJ poll: On economy, Romney Opens Up Lead Over Obama
Rasmussen Poll: Romney 48%, Obama 44%
Fox News Poll: Romney Edges Obama as Approval of President Drops
Two National Polls Show Favor For Romney

You have to wonder what calamity befell these pollsters since their prior celebration by those at Fox. It must be that the mortal sin of reporting the results of surveys that show the Kenyan, socialist, anti-Christ defeating the Magic Underwear, White Horse Savior, is sacrilege to the Fox Nationalists and must not be tolerated at the risk of sacrificing your soul. So put the evil polls aside, children, and glory in the Truthiness of Fox.

Tags: Fox Nation, Mitt Romney

Sep 25 2012 21 cmnts

Election, General, Media Bias

Fox News Desperation Grows: As Romney’s Prospects Decay, Anti-Obama Attacks Accelerate

Posted by: Mark @ 4:00 am

It must be frustrating to be a Fox News producer or editor these days knowing that your professional mission is to advance the campaign of Mitt Romney for president, while Romney himself seems to be working as hard as he can to sabotage any possibility of victory.

Last week was widely considered to be disastrous for the Romney campaign, but what is most notable about the Romney Ticket’s Series of Unfortunate Events is that they were all the fault of Romney’s own missteps. Which makes it all the more curious that he appears to be so completely clueless as to his shortcomings. He told an interviewer that there is not a thing wrong with his excellent campaign and that it doesn’t require any turnaround:

Someone must not have conveyed that positive message to the rest of Romney’s staff. As Rachel Maddow noted last night, Romney’s campaign has undergone a steady stream of makeovers, resets, retoolings, reboots, and recasting of messages:

So what does poor Fox News do when faced with such a rolling calamity (as conservative columnist Peggy Noonan described Romney’s campaign)? Well, they litter their reporting with nothing but anti-Obama stories in a desperate attempt to unlevel the playing field and boost Romney’s fading prospects. Yesterday on the Fox News web site the following stories appeared:

’60 Minutes’ interview causes headache for White House
Libya latest example of Obama administration downplaying initial reports of terror?
Obama heads for taping of ‘The View,’ as UN summit begins
Romney accuses Obama of trying to ‘fool’ voters
Ryan: President Obama will let Medicare go belly up.
Ryan: If Obama ‘can’t change Washington’ we need to change presidents
Obama admits some ads go ‘overboard,’ Romney defends campaign in dueling interviews
Obama Shifts Further on Libya Strike, Says Attack Not ‘Just a Mob Action’
White House: Obama Too Busy for Side Meetings at UN
White House pressed on why Obama UN itinerary doesn’t include meetings with world leaders

That’s ten stories with obviously anti-Obama spin. And to make this unfair and unbalanced presentation of the “news” all the more apparent, there was not even one story that similarly treated Romney. Not one. Zero. Zilch. In fact there wasn’t even a single story wherein Romney was the lede. That must be because even Fox couldn’t find anything positive to say about his campaign. Therefore, they stuck to burying Obama in an avalanche of mud.

Meanwhile, on the air at Fox News, they approached their political reporting with a peculiar slant. Just about every story was framed along the lines of “What Can Romney Do To Turn Things Around?” Or “How Will Romney Respond To All The Negative Media?” Or this bit of breaking news: “Gov. Romney Revs Up 2012 Campaign.”

These are characteristic representations of Fox News’ partisan perspective. They would, of course, never lead off with a headline like “What Can Obama Do To Maintain His Lead?” The Pro-Romney editorializing at Fox News could not be more transparent. They have gone into overdrive as they recognize the near futility of pulling Romney’s ass out of the fire of his own making. It is almost painful to watch them squirming like worms on a hot sidewalk who know that it’s just a matter of time before they become so desiccated they can no longer wriggle in the sun.

The desperation of Fox News is manifest in their manic hyperactivity to pile on Obama, while virtually ignoring the hapless misadventures of Mitt & Co. And this is the sort of misbehavior that we can expect to increase in the few weeks left before the election. At this point does anyone expect to see any future headlines from Fox praising Obama’s speech at the United Nations or declaring him the winner of a debate? Don’t bet on it.

As the days grow short, so will Fox’s fuse on their rhetorical bombs. The good news is that no one but Fox’s glassy-eyed disciples will ever know there was an explosion because, more and more, Fox’s influence is confined to an insular group of fanatics who can still tolerate their brand of dishonest and disreputable pseudo-journalism.

Tags: Barack Obama, Fox News, Mitt Romney

Sep 17 2012 2 cmnts

Election, General, Media Bias, Propaganda

Fox & Friends Gets Punked – But That’s Not The Real Story

Posted by: Mark @ 5:09 pm

This morning on Fox & Friends (the stupidest ensemble, pseudo-news team on American TV), a prankster convinced the show’s producers that he was a college graduate who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but who is now disappointed and intends to vote for Mitt Romney this November. The video of this train wreck appears to be the work of a stoned slacker who got a kick out of outsmarting the bigwig TV producers. And that may be true.

However, It was not my intention address this prank at first because it doesn’t really appear to be particularly well thought out or executed. What’s more, Gretchen Carlson seemed to quickly pick up on the fact that something was amiss. However, new information has emerged that is far more interesting than the event itself.

It seems that Fox News was determined to invent a story about disillusioned young people who were abandoning the President. This was not a “fair and balanced” study of attitudes among recent college grads, it was a deliberately biased piece of propaganda that jettisoned all journalistic principles in order to deliver their preconceived result.

Max Rice, the aforementioned prankster, spoke with various reporters after the fact and revealed the shoddy quality (or lack thereof) of Fox’s research. Rice told the bookers that he was a college graduate, but that could easily have been debunked by a Google search that would have found a video from his high school graduation only two years ago. Rice also gave contradictory answers to biographical questions, telling them at first that he was an English major, and later that he majored in Engineering.

Fox News let all of this go by because Rice fit the profile of a disaffected former Obama supporter. That was all they cared about. But even worse, Rice says that Fox coached him on what to say during the interview.

“They gave me a paragraph full of bullshit talking points. … They basically gave me a speech and they thought I was supposed to have it memorized.”

Rice is not a very good prankster, but his antics have allowed us to peer into the Fox machinery and see how their phony sausage is made. And that’s worth something all by itself. The news emanating from this episode should have less to do with the stunt that was pulled on the Fox & Friends crew, than with their dishonest attempt to fabricate a story with the intent of damaging Obama’s reputation.

Fox’s determination to manipulate their viewers and spread false information was clearly more important to them than doing proper research and fact-checking. And when all is said and done, this was not a story about a news team getting punked. It’s a story about a news network punking their audience.

Tags: Fox & Friends, Fox News

Sep 15 2012 7 cmnts

General, Media Bias, Wankery

Fox News “Democrat” Kirsten Powers Accuses Obama Of Sympathizing With Terrorists

Posted by: Mark @ 12:32 pm

The next time you hear the Fox News slogan “fair and balanced,” be sure to remember that their rendering of fairness is to trot out covert conservatives and label them Democrats. Their concept of balance is to pair a right-winger with a far-right-winger.

A perfect illustration of this is the op-ed on the Fox News web site posted by Kirsten Powers. If you changed the name in the byline to Ann Coulter nobody would have blinked an eye. And the anti-Obama bile begins with the title: “President Obama, stop blaming the victim for Mideast violence.”

This characterization of the debate could not be more biased and dishonest if it had come from Sean Hannity (on whose show Powers frequently appears). Her article takes the position that President Obama has not directed enough outrage to the perpetrators of the recent atrocities in Libya and Egypt. Her evidence of this is that Obama referred to the anti-Islam film reputed to have inspired the violence as “disgusting and reprehensible,” but went soft in criticizing the rioters by saying only that he “strongly condemn[ed] the outrageous attack.”

First of all, I’m not sure that Powers understands that a strong condemnation is just as resolute a criticism as an expression of disgust. They both send a pretty clear message of unmitigated disapproval. But Powers left out of her wimp-baiting the fact that Obama also declared unequivocally that those responsible for the attacks would be brought to justice. His record on accomplishing that task is familiar to the dozens of dead Al Qaeda operatives, including Osama Bin Laden.

In an effort to bolster her liberal bona fides, Powers brags that she has…

“…defended the Obama administration against the complaints from the right that they have run an ‘apology tour’ in the Middle East because I believe the US should admit when we make mistakes.”

Of course an actual liberal spokesperson who isn’t a Fox toady would have defended the President because there never was an “apology tour.” It was a complete fabrication by rightist liars. Yet Powers has accepted the phony premise and is now complicit in propagating it.

Powers spends much of her column seemingly offended herself that the Da Vinci Code or Bill Maher have engaged in offensive utterings directed at Christians. It’s a comparison that is so absurdly misused that one has to be concerned about her mental stability. Her contention is that our response to religious insults, and the actions they provoke, be the same for American Christians as for Middle-Eastern Muslims. But she is ignoring reality with that shallow opinion. There are, after all, no Christians rioting in the streets of Tuscaloosa.

Whether we approve or not, there are distinct differences between our cultures. Most of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims have not participated in any violence, and in fact reject it. There were probably no more than a hundred protesters who have resorted to violence in the events of the past week. But the President, and the official American position, has to take into account the potential for harm to Americans at home and abroad and to mitigate such dangers. That’s a responsibility that Powers and her pundit class don’t have to labor under. And it’s the reason that Obama’s public statements exhibit a measure of diplomacy that loudmouth commentators lack.

The President is doing what presidents do. He is accumulating facts and intelligence. He is communicating with allies and his defense and security staff. He is strategizing in private so as not to alert our enemies or further inflame an already volatile situation. That’s how adults with real responsibilities, and lives in the balance, handle these matters. Already Libya has arrested four suspects in the embassy murders.

Obama doesn’t have to talk tough and thump his chest (like our last president, Bush, who achieved nothing). He just needs to get results and administer justice. With less than a week having transpired, there is no reason to believe that Obama is not progressing toward those ends. And it doesn’t help to have Fox propagandists pretending to be on the President’s side and making irresponsible statements like this:

“The condemnations are paired in with claims about respecting religious beliefs, which is implicit sympathy for the claims of some of the attackers and rioters.”

So Powers thinks that respecting religious beliefs is tantamount to sympathizing with terrorists. She cannot comprehend that the respect is offered to the vast majority of peaceful Muslims who had nothing to do with last week’s murders. If she thinks that demonstrating American principles of freedom of religion must be dispensed with because a few members of a religion are reprehensible killers, then she doesn’t have much faith in American principles.

It’s a good thing that Powers is confined to the narrow plank of conservative media that is willing to tolerate her, because her views would be tragically inappropriate in any official diplomatic post. What’s more, she is not the sort of person that liberals want representing their views on national television. She is just another Fox News phony (ala Pat Caddell, Doug Schoen, etc.) acting as an accomplice to tarnish liberals and fill the seat of someone who might otherwise take legitimately progressive positions.

Tags: Fox News, Kirsten Powers

Jul 23 2012 1 cmnts

Economy, General, Media Bias

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Who’s To Blame For Bad Economy?

Posted by: Mark @ 10:36 am

There have been numerous polls asking respondents to say who they hold responsible for the state of the American economy. In every one of them George W. Bush ranks at or near the top, with Congress and Wall Street following close behind. Usually President Obama is not the target of most of the blame.

Leave it to Fox News to come up with a poll that contradicts the others. And it should come as no surprise that the poll they’ve latched onto is the work of Rasmussen’s Pulse Opinion Research. However, even with a fixed pollster, and a rabidly partisan news outlet, Fox still finds it necessary to outright lie about the poll’s results:

The headline of this article is blatantly false. In Rasmussen’s poll 34% said that Obama is the most to blame for the slow economic recovery. Most elementary school graduates know that that is not a majority. What’s more, if you add the responses of those who said that it was either Congress, Wall Street, or George W. Bush, it comes to a clear majority of 61% saying that Obama is not to blame. Some other significant results from the poll that Fox Nation declined to report are…

The poll found almost 6-in-10 are unhappy with the actions of Republicans in Congress who have challenged the president on an array of policy initiatives.
Fifty-seven percent of voters said congressional Republicans have impeded the recovery with their policies, and only 30 percent overall believe the GOP has done the right things to boost the economy.
Centrist voters, who may well decide the 2012 outcome, tend to blame Republicans in Congress more than the president for hindering a more robust recovery.
53 percent of centrists said Obama has taken the right actions as president to boost the economy, compared with 38 percent who said he had taken the wrong steps.
Seventy-nine percent of centrist voters said Republicans had slowed the economy by taking wrong actions. Only 13 percent of centrists credited GOP lawmakers with policies that have helped the economy.

And that’s the poll that Fox Nation managed to feature on their website with a headline blaring that a “Majority Blame Obama For Bad Economy.” The Fox Nationalists must take great comfort in the knowledge that their audience is too stupid to actually look into anything themselves – or understand it if they did.

Tags: Barack Obama, Economy, Fox Nation, Rasmussen

Jul 20 2012 3 cmnts

General, Media Bias

Fox News Flim-Flam: Conning Latinos For Politics And Profit

Posted by: Mark @ 10:15 am

This article was also published on Alternet.

The reputation for Fox News as a brazenly biased, right-wing, mouthpiece for the Republican Party and a conservative agenda is well-established. From their upper-management (Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes) to their frontline anchors (Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity), they have forged a network that has entirely abandoned any pretense of impartiality.

That well-honed partisan prejudice has proven to be useful in poisoning the political discourse. Fox News has exploited their audience to favor GOP candidates and sway perceptions of complex issues like health care, economics, and the environment. Amongst the most prominent of the issues that Fox has sought to distort is immigration. Their reporting is relentless in falsely portraying immigrants as shiftless lawbreakers who steal jobs from American citizens and drain the nation of scarce public resources.

Fox viewers are accustomed to stories about “illegals” swarming across the border to take up residency in the U.S. and sponge off of our prosperity. They are vilified as criminals and blamed for everything from disease to the recession. There is hardly a mention of immigrants on Fox that isn’t associated with drunkenness, joblessness, or drug cartels.

Lately, however, someone at Fox News has recognized a major flaw in their strategy to demonize immigrants, particularly Latinos. One of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population happens to be legal Latinos who are either naturalized or natural-born citizens. The U.S. Census bureau reports that the Hispanic population grew at about four times the nation’s average growth rate between 2000 and 2010. The report notes that “the Hispanic population increased by 15.2 million between 2000 and 2010 and accounted for more than half of the total U.S. population increase of 27.3 million.”

The problem for Fox News, and their ideological benefactors, is that these are citizens who can vote and are registering in record numbers. This is particularly noticeable in states that are crucial for Republican electoral victories like Nevada, Arizona, and Florida. But the trend is evident in some measure throughout the country.

This situation poses a disconcerting problem for Fox. How do they maintain their editorial animosity toward immigrants without alienating an increasingly important voter group? The answer appears to be by developing news content specifically for this demographic and sequestering it from the rest of their viewership.

First to appear in this vein was the Fox News Latino web site. It is an English language adjunct to the Fox News site with content aimed directly at the Latino reader. However, the treatment of news events on Fox News Latino is markedly different from that on Fox News. Here are a few typical examples:

June 15, 2012: In response to President Obama’s announcement of a policy shift wherein certain young immigrants would be granted work permits rather than be deported, the Fox News Latino web site posted a story headlined, “Obama Administration Halts Deportations for Young Immigrants.” That’s a factually accurate description that treats the news in a neutral manner. The headline was accompanied by a sympathetic photo of a young Latina child draped with an American flag.

However, on Fox Nation they went with the headline “Obama Administration Bypasses Congress, To Give Immunity, Stop Deporting Younger Illegals.” In that short sentence they managed to imply impropriety on the part of the administration, infer the controversial subject of amnesty, and insult Latinos by employing the dehumanizing label of “illegals” (even though the people affected by this initiative did not break any law). The photo accompanying this article was of adult Latinos sitting up against a wall in handcuffs.

It is also notable that the Fox News Latino site posted the Associated Press article about the announcement in full. The Fox Nationalists posted only two paragraphs plus a video from Fox News of right-wing wacko Allen West expressing his outrage. This is further evidence that the Fox Nationalists want to avoid giving their dimwitted readers too much actual information, but prefer to throw up as much ultra-right-wing opinion as possible.

June 19, 2012: Bloomberg released a poll that showed that 64 percent of likely voters favor Obama’s policy on suspending deportations of certain younger immigrants. Note that this substantial majority is of “likely” voters, not just Latino voters. So the story has relevance to a wide range of news viewers and could even be an important predictor of who will win the presidency in November. Nevertheless, Fox News did not run this story. Fox Nation did not run this story. The only Fox destination where you can read this story is on Fox News Latino. So Fox is deliberately hiding from the rest of their audience the news that a substantial majority of Americans agree with this policy.

What’s more, the tone of the reporting is distinctly different from that on other Fox properties. There isn’t a hint of hostility toward immigrants. The story accurately refers to “prosecutorial discretion” as the means of carrying out the policy, rather than the false assertions of Executive Orders or dictatorial overreach that appear on Fox News. The derogatory phrase “illegals,” used routinely on Fox News, is nowhere in the story, having been replaced by “undocumented immigrant.” The story notes correctly that Congress, not the President, had dropped the ball on the DREAM Act and that it was Republicans who filibustered it out of existence. These are news insights that will never be seen by the broader Fox audience unless they happen to read Fox News Latino.

June 25, 2012: Fox News covered the Supreme Court ruling on the controversial Arizona law against undocumented immigrants in its uniquely racist way by tailoring the story differently to different audiences. On Fox News Latino the headline accurately reported that the “Court Strikes Down Most of AZ Immig Law.” However, on Fox Nation they went with the misleading, “U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Controversial Part of Tough Arizona Immigration Law.” Even Fox News was more balanced by saying that the “Supreme Court Reigns In Arizona On Immigration.”

Here we have one arm of Fox reporting that the law was struck down, and another arm saying it was upheld. So once again Fox panders to their Latino audience on the web site aimed at them, while slanting steeply in the opposite direction on Fox Nation, a community of such rancid bigotry that Fox had to close the comments section for fear of the vile postings that frequently occur. Obviously, Fox knows its audience.

July 8, 2012: The Fox News Latino web site featured an article from the Associated Press on the issue of voter suppression that was reported in a manner that respects the truth. The author correctly notes that instances of in-person voter fraud are nearly non-existent, but that the photo-ID laws advanced by Republicans will disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters.

On Fox News the typical approach to this story is the ludicrous assertion that opponents of ID laws are proponents of fraud, even though they can never cite actual incidents of fraud. The purpose is obvious. Fox News is working in concert with the GOP to purge Democrats from the voter rolls. However, on Fox’s Latino-focused web site the story is completely different. It is treated with the proper attention to the harm that would befall Latino voters.

In addition to the Fox News Latino web site, Fox recently announced that they are launching a new Spanish language broadcast television network, MundoFox. The network will feature both entertainment and news programming, but their initial press release states that they “will not have any association with Fox News Channel.” It also quotes the Senior VP of news, Jorge Mettey, describing the type of viewer they intend to attract in a particularly derogatory light:

“We are not focusing on the regular normal issues that newscasts in Spanish focus on, like immigration and that stuff. It is not our focus. We are talking to a different Latino. We are not talking to victims. We are talking to successful people eager to improve their lives.”

Apparently Mettey regards “regular normal” Latinos as victims who are uninterested in improving their lives, and he doesn’t want any of “them” watching his network. MundoFox is getting off to a great start by insulting a fair portion of their potential audience. This aggressive posturing is actually typical of the way Fox has launched all of their networks. When announcing Fox News as being “fair and balanced” they were implying that the other networks were not merely competitors, but that they were untrustworthy. When they launched the Fox Business Network they bragged that “a Fox channel would be ‘more business-friendly’ than CNBC.” Although it doesn’t really make much sense for a network that is supposed to be reporting objectively, for the benefit of people making investment decisions, to declare that they intend for their coverage to be friendly.

It is also notable that Mettey, has a somewhat checkered past. He was fired from his position as news director at KMEX in 2007, amidst allegations of ethical breaches. The Los Angeles Times reported that…

“The alleged improprieties investigated included whether Mettey had benefited financially from coverage of Puebla’s governor at a time when he was being criticized for his association with an accused pedophile and of an African-themed zoo in Puebla in which Mettey’s wife, Denise, has an ownership interest. In addition, the news division allegedly accepted free tickets on an Aeromexico flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Puebla.”

With the expansion into the Latino community, Fox is reaching out to connect with a new audience. In the process they are conducting themselves in an uncharacteristically fair and balanced manner. Make no mistake, there are good reasons for this atypical behavior on the part of Fox, and it isn’t just the immense economic opportunity (although that is certainly a factor). Roger Ailes, Fox News CEO, was a Republican strategist and media consultant before launching Fox with Rupert Murdoch. Ailes knows that Republicans have a demographics problem as Latinos continue to grow as a percentage of the population and, therefore, the electorate. The Tea Party dominated GOP can’t see past their prejudices and frothing immigrant hatred. But Ailes knows that if the party doesn’t win back some Latino support they will be a minority party for decades to come.

So with Fox News Latino and MundoFox, Ailes is doing for the party what they are too stupid to do for themselves – pandering to the Latino vote. They think they can segregate the reporting so that their Latino audience will see stories that are framed positively, while the rest of the Fox universe remains steeped in the animus of bigots and conservative partisans. It’s a cynical ploy that could only be hatched by people who think that Latinos are stupid enough to fall for it. Fortunately, that’s where Fox is most likely going to be proved wrong.

Update: Media Matters just posted a similar article with quotes from Latino leaders expressing their skepticism of Fox’s Latino news coverage and motives.

Update II: They’ve done it again. Fox News Latino published an article about emails revealed during an ACLU litigation that expose the racial hatred of former Arizona senate president Russell Pearce (author of the controversial immigration law). But a cursory search of Fox News did not turn up any reporting on this shocking story. However, I eventually found a re-posting of an Associated Press article on the subject buried in Fox’s “SciTech” section. That’s right – “SciTech,” not “News” or “Politics” – is where Fox posts an article about a legal challenge to a politician’s immigration law that is littered with racist remarks. So Fox makes this information available to their Fox News Latino readers, but clumsily tries to hide it from the rest of their audience.

Tags: Alternet, Fox Nation, Fox News, Fox News Latino, MundoFox, Roger Ailes

Jul 17 2012 9 cmnts

Economy, General, Media Bias

The Swiss Boating Of Mitt Romney: A CNN Fable

Posted by: Mark @ 10:50 am

When you hear the right complain, as they always do, about the so-called liberal media, keep in mind the fact that Fox News is the most watched cable news network, that the Wall Street Journal is the largest national newspaper, that talk radio is dominated by conservatives, and that the Internet’s most referenced site belongs to Matt Drudge. What exactly do they think the media is?

Add to that the fact that many establishment news providers bend over backwards to avoid being targeted by conservative critics for having a liberal bias. Or worse, they strive to emulate the right-wing media in hopes of duplicating their perceived success.

CNN is the worst offender in this contest of running to the right. Their aggressive shift in ideology has been well documented. They have hired numerous far-right extremists with no effort to achieve any sort of balance. And that includes the news chief, Ken Jautz. Consequently, their ratings have collapsed along with their journalistic integrity.

Swiss Mitt This past weekend CNN broadcast another example of how their sinking ethics have impacted their news judgment. The segment by Tom Foreman was centered on the absurd premise that the Obama campaign has engaged in “Swiftboating” Mitt Romney by accurately questioning his business experience, his millions of dollars in off-shore tax havens, and his refusal to release more than a year or two of his tax returns. Foreman concludes his report saying…

Tom Foreman: In ad after ad, Democrats are suggesting that Romney is a fatcat job outsourcer, an opportunistic financial predator, and an elitist out of touch with the working class. Never mind that many of those claims appear to be backed with little or no evidence. [...] Some Republican analysts fear that Mitt Romney could be the second politician from Massachusetts to be Swiftboated out of the presidency.

The problem with Foreman’s conclusion is that there is abundant evidence of the claims made in the Obama ads. And the questions they raise are those that would require answers from any political candidate. Who could deny that Romney is a fatcat? The job outsourcing by Bain entities is not even denied by Romney. He just argues that he wasn’t there at the time (despite official SEC filings that contradict him). And how could someone be more out of touch than by saying that he likes to fire people, he’s not concerned about the poor, and that corporations are people?

Foreman was not alone in raising the specter of Swiftboating on CNN. Reporter Jim Acosta misused the term when he interviewed Mitt Romney on Friday asking him whether he thought he was being Swiftboated. Talk about your softball questions. And media analyst Howard Kurtz also misused the term while promoting his Sunday program Reliable Sources. He was acutely concerned about Romney’s welfare under the intense pressure he must be suffering.

Howard Kurtz: I’ve been increasingly worried about whether the media that have been pushing a lot of these stories, “Boston Globe”, “Washington Post” on outsourcing, “Vanity Fair” on Cayman Island accounts, seem to some people to be echoing the message of the Obama campaign by raising so many questions about Romney’s business background.

Apparently Kurtz is of the opinion that if a story is getting a lot of attention the reporters should immediately stop covering it for fear of overtaxing the beleaguered subject of the story and to avoid charges of bias by “some people” on the receiving end of the bad news. How very considerate of him.

For the record, Swiftboating is a term that describes a campaign to disparage a candidate’s strengths that is based on falsehoods and lacks evidence. It is wholly improper to use the term simply to denounce ads that are critical of a candidate. Criticism that is rooted in the truth, with evidence to back it up, is not Swiftboating in any way shape or form. In fact, refraining from such relevant criticism would be campaign malpractice.

Asking Romney to account for his activities in business, which is the core of his campaign, is fair game. So is asking him to release tax returns as almost every candidate in modern times does – since his own father set the standard back in 1968. But suggesting that news coverage of such issues is Swiftboating, as CNN has done three times in as many days, is proof that the network has lost all interest in being a professional news enterprise.

Tags: CNN, Howard Kurtz, Mitt Romney, Swiftboat

Jul 08 2012 NO cmnts

Election, General, Media Bias, Racism

Fox News Latino: Voter ID Laws Could Block Thousands in November

Posted by: Mark @ 8:38 pm

In another example of Fox News pandering to Latino audiences, the Fox News Latino web site featured an article today that contradicted everything that Fox News reports to their non-Latino audiences.

This article is a reprint from the Associated Press and it covers the issue of voter suppression in a manner that respects the truth. The author correctly notes that instances of in-person voter fraud are nearly non-existent, but that the photo-ID laws advanced by Republicans will disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters:

“The numbers suggest legitimate votes rejected by the laws are far more numerous than are the cases of fraud that advocates of the rules say they are trying to prevent. [...]

“Supporters of the laws cite anecdotal cases of fraud as a reason that states need to do more to secure elections, but fraud appears to be rare. As part of its effort to build support for voter ID laws, the Republican National Lawyers Association last year published a report that identified some 400 election fraud prosecutions over a decade across the entire country. That’s not even one per state per year.

“ID laws would not have prevented many of those cases because they involved vote-buying schemes in local elections or people who falsified voter registrations.”

On Fox News the typical approach to this story is the ludicrous accusation that opponents of ID laws are proponents of fraud. Even though they can never cite actual incidents of fraud, people like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Neil Cavuto, Megyn Kelly, and the juvenile miscreants on Fox & Friends, persist in spreading falsehoods about imaginary illegal voters. Then they use their fairy tales to justify legislation that will result in valid voters being turned away at the polls. And just coincidentally, the vast majority of those turned away are seniors, students, and minorities, who are likely Democratic voters.

Republican governors and legislators are the ones pushing these discriminatory policies, with the help of Fox News. However, on Fox’s Latino-focused web site the story is completely different. It is treated with the proper attention to the harm that would befall Latino voters. This is a perspective that never appears on the Fox News mothership.

The purpose is obvious. Fox News is working in concert with the GOP to purge Democrats from the voter rolls. However, they don’t want to completely alienate the fast growing Latino population. So they segregate their news coverage in order to mollify Latino audiences who are rightfully concerned about this issue, but Fox hides this honest reporting from the dimwits who watch Fox News. It’s a cynical ploy that could only be hatched by people who think that Latinos are stupid enough to fall for it. Fortunately, that’s where Fox went wrong.

Tags: Fox News

Jul 05 2012 3 cmnts

Election, General, Media Bias

The Fox News Un-American 4th Of July Election Special

Posted by: Mark @ 9:49 am

Demonstrating their blatant hostility to fairly representing the American people, Fox News broadcast an election special on the Fourth of July that consisted of almost exclusively conservative Republicans. Out of eleven political guests there was only one Democrat (Rep. Rob Andrews of New Jersey).

Balancing out that lone voice was Supreme Wacko Allen West (who thinks that there are 80 card-carrying Democratic communists in Congress), virulent Democrat hunter Darrell Issa (who never met a Democrat he doesn’t hold in contempt), and a panel of eight all-GOP House freshmen. Even for Fox this is a strikingly unbalanced division of ideologies.

The host of the program was the GOP “Word Doctor,” Frank Luntz. Luntz is best known for developing rhetoric and catch phrases to deceive people into supporting programs they would never back if they were told the truth about them. Recently Luntz held a seminar with GOP leaders advising them on how to mislead their constituents. Luntz advised Republicans to avoid certain words and replace them with others that he had focus-group tested. For instance: “Out: Capitalism / In: Economic Freedom.” When conservative PR flacks tell Republicans not to talk about capitalism, a significant shift is taking place.

The program’s highlights included Allen West reiterating his belief about communists infiltrating Congress. No one bothered to challenge his nightmarish delusions. Darrell Issa was allowed to defend his inquisition of the Obama administration via a softball question about whether he thought he was too hard on Democrats. Did they really expect him to say “yes?” No one bothered asked him why his Committee on Oversight never held hearings on Republican malfeasance.

The program was so steeply slanted that the set was decorated with paintings of past presidents, but not a single Democratic president was on display. It was a feast of both overt and subliminal propaganda that sought to pretend that there was only one political opinion that encompassed the whole of the American population. For Fox News to schedule this brazenly partisan hour of Republican PR on Independence Day and label it an “American Roundtable” is evidence of just how far they will go to promote their benefactors in the party of the Greedy One Percent (aka GOP). They are going to be unpleasantly surprised when they discover that there are millions of Americans who do not share their self-serving, elitist views, but who aspire to a more inclusive and uplifting agenda that seeks to make “liberty and justice for all” more than just a slogan to be exploited by cynical Republicans and deceitful “news” networks.

Tags: Fox News, Frank Luntz, Republicans

Jul 02 2012 NO cmnts

Election, General, Media Bias

Even Fox Nation’s Vacation Coverage Is Blatantly Biased

Posted by: Mark @ 11:58 am

The Republican Press Release Agency known as Fox News can’t even report trivial side issues without resorting to pathetic and insulting misrepresentations. Here is how Fox Nation is portraying the news that both President Obama and Mitt Romney are taking a few days of R & R:

Notice that the President is characterized as a shiftless slacker who “Takes the Week Off,” insinuating that he is neglecting his obligations. The Fox Nationalists accompany this headline with a photo of a tropical paradise suitable for sunbathing and luaus, despite the fact that Obama is actually going to Camp David. Furthermore, he is only spending two days there, where he will also be working. This news is viewed as “Obnoxious” by the Fox Nation community.

Romney, on the other hand, is described “Recharging” at his own personal resort destination on Lake Winnipesaukee, where he has his own vacation home. His holiday is seen as a well-deserved respite from the stress of the campaign trail (which everyone knows is much more severe than being the leader of the free world). This news is viewed as “Cool” by the Fox Nation community.

Imagine for a moment if Obama had been photographed in the manner Romney is above. It would immediately have revived memories of John Kerry windsurfing, wherein he was savaged by the media for engaging in a sport that was reserved for upper-crusters (as opposed to dancing show horses). Put Obama on the back of a jet ski with his wife driving and there would be endless mockery of him as a pussy-whipped wimp. And add to that the fact that the jet ski is stalled in mid-lake and Romney is helplessly throwing up his hands, and you have the makings of a story about a clueless and out-of-touch elitist who can’t even get his jet ski started.

These sort of visuals are subtle, but they are also effective and deliberate. The problem with them appearing on Fox Nation is that they will only be seen by people who already share the puerile views of the emotionally-stunted editors at Fox Nation. So the exercise is a waste of time except for the degree to which they validate every criticism of Fox News as a brazenly biased mouthpiece for the GOP.

Tags: Barack Obama, Fox Nation, Mitt Romney

Jun 27 2012 6 cmnts

Election, General, Media Bias

The Difference Between Fox News And Actual News

Posted by: Mark @ 4:19 pm

It has been well documented that Fox News is a partisan agent of the Republican Party. They brazenly promote the interests of the GOP and employ “analysts” who split their time between appearances on Fox and guiding multimillion dollar campaigns against President Obama and other Democrats (i.e. Karl Rove). But now Fox News has demonstrated perfectly why they are not in any reasonable sense a news enterprise.

In a segment of Fox’s signature “news” program, Special Report with Bret Baier, chief Washington correspondent James Rosen gave an account of a memo circulated by Mitt Romney’s campaign that alleged that the Obama campaign had contracted with companies to employ foreign-based call centers. Rosen regurgitated the information provided by Romney’s camp as if it were irrefutably true. The impression left by the report was that Obama is a hypocrite for criticizing Romney’s business record of outsourcing American jobs to other countries, while he was allegedly doing the same thing with his campaign.

There’s only one problem with this irrefutably true allegation – it has been refuted by a real news organization. ABC reporter Devin Dwyer did what reporters do. He investigated the claims made in Romney’s memo and discovered that they originated from a four month old right-wing blog, the Washington Free Beacon, whose web site describes it as being “Dedicated to uncovering the stories that the professional left hopes will never see the light of day.”

The Beacon reported that Obama’s campaign paid several thousand dollars to two foreign firms for telemarketing services. One of the firms was Pacific East, whose headquarters is in British Columbia, Canada. However, as ABC’s Dwyer learned after inquiring, the company also has offices in Oregon. The other firm is Donor Services Group, and it is based in Los Angeles, California, with no current ties to foreign operations. The Beacon apparently found data from 2009 that referenced services provided to a specific client from a facility in the Philippines. But there was no indication that there was any ongoing business there. And in neither case was there any evidence that the work performed by either of these companies for the Obama campaign was done by anyone outside of the United States.

Fox News has once again embarrassed itself as a haven for shoddy journalism. Their chief Washington correspondent took an unsubstantiated blog posting and broadcast it, without any fact-checking, to a Fox audience already dreadfully misinformed and pitifully ignorant. And Baier, the anchor of the program, never bothered to exercise any of the due diligence that a credible journalist would do. The story went straight from an avowedly conservative blog to Romney headquarters to Fox News, without any effort to certify the allegations.

It took a reporter from ABC to make a couple of calls, get the real story, and reveal that Romney, the Beacon, and Fox News were all accomplices in disseminating a lie. This is what happens when you have pseudo-news organizations that don’t actually do any news gathering. The broadcast news networks and CNN have bureaus staffed with reporters all over the world. But Fox News only has presenters who read copy off of TelePrompters and don’t do any original reporting. You can’t expect them to actually verify things they read on blogs, can you? Especially when it’s so much easier to just go with the talking points you get from the Republican National Committee. That’s the difference between Fox News and actual news.

Tags: Barack Obama, Fox News, Mitt Romney

Jun 25 2012 1 cmnts

General, Media Bias, Racism

Graphic Evidence Of The Bigotry In Fox News Coverage Of The Arizona Supreme Court Ruling

Posted by: Mark @ 11:30 am

Today the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the controversial Arizona law against undocumented immigrants. It was a partially mixed decision, however, any objective appraisal would have to note that three of the four major components of the law were struck down, and the fourth (the most controversial part requiring law enforcement to inquire as to the legal status of people they have reason to believe are undocumented) was upheld, but severely limited.

Fox News covered this ruling in its uniquely racist way by tailoring the story to different audiences. On Fox News Latino the headline accurately reported that the “Court Strikes Down Most of AZ Immig Law.” However, on Fox Nation they went with the misleading, “U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Controversial Part of Tough Arizona Immigration Law.” Even Fox News was more balanced by saying that “Supreme Court Reigns In Arizona On Immigration.”

So once again Fox panders to their Latino audience on the web site aimed at them, while slanting steeply in the opposite direction on Fox Nation, the community of such rancid bigotry that Fox had to close the comments section for fear of the vile postings that frequently occur. Obviously, Fox knows its audience.

Tags: Fox Nation, Fox News, Fox News Latino

Jun 24 2012 2 cmnts

General, Media Bias, Propaganda, Religion

Awash In Scandal, Vatican Turns To The Pros At Fox News For Help

Posted by: Mark @ 2:28 pm

It was announced yesterday that Greg Burke, the Fox News correspondent in Rome, has accepted the position of senior communications adviser in the Vatican’s secretariat of state. The article in the Associated Press notes that the Vatican has been having a number of problems such as “a scandal over Vatican documents that were leaked to Italian journalists,” [...] “Benedict’s now-infamous speech about Muslims and violence, his 2009 decision to rehabilitate a schismatic bishop who denied the Holocaust, and the Vatican’s response to the 2010 explosion of the sex abuse scandal.”

When an institution as prominent as the Vatican requires professional guidance through a maze of public relations challenges as steep as these, it only makes sense that they reach out to experts in the propaganda arts. Conveniently, Burke was at hand in Rome and, as a member of the ultra-conservative Catholic prelature, Opus Dei, his accordance with Church dogma is not in doubt.

Presumably the Vatican is confidant that Burke will bring some measure of expertise to his new duties whitewashing the Vatican’s malfeasance. However, Fox News is better known for their prowess in inventing scandals that never occurred (i.e. Birthers, voter fraud, war on Christmas, fast and furious, etc.), rather than in quelling actual scandals. Nevertheless, Burke’s first statements after the hiring suggest that he is precisely what the Vatican is looking for:

Burke: You’re shaping the message, you’re molding the message, and you’re trying to make sure everyone remains on-message.

In other words, Burke will be doing for the church exactly what Fox News has been doing for the Republican Party for years. Which raises a question far more interesting than the one about a Fox News correspondent going to work for the Vatican: What was a member of Opus Dei doing covering the Vatican for an alleged “news” organization for the past ten years? That would be indisputably unethical. It would be fine if he were assigned to farm subsidies or Wall Street, but not the church with which he is so closely associated. That would be like having a top Republican strategist working as a political analyst at a news network.

Oh wait…Karl Rove is already doing that at Fox News. And Fox also employed four prospective GOP presidential candidates in the past year. And they also employ executives who were caught instructing their news staff to slant their reporting to favor Republicans. And they invite Republican politicians and advocates to appear on the air far more often than Democrats or liberals. Mitt Romney alone as appeared on Fox & Friends 21 times in the last year, while appearing only once on any Sunday network news program.

It may be indisputably unethical, but it’s also the Fox News business model. Whether or not it works at the Vatican remains to be seen. However, the Republican Party and the Vatican have much in common. They are both trying to sell stories on faith to ill-informed people who are motivated by fear.

Tags: Fox News, Pope Benedict XVI, Vatican