Top Ten Ways Fox News Made An Ass Of Itself And/Or Its Viewers In 2010

In a year of transformational events that included a divisive debate over health care, environmental devastation in the Gulf of Mexico, a tragic Haitian earthquake, and a power shift in Congress, Fox News still managed to manufacture more trauma and fables than any other “news” source, with the possible exception of the Cuckoo’s Nest Weekly Gazette.

After reviewing the cornucopia of crazy from 2010 that best exemplifies the brand of journalistic malpractice perfected by Fox News, I have compiled the year’s top ten ten ways Fox News made an ass of itself and/or its viewers. It is a list that also reveals Fox News to be the go to source for disinformation and the champion of phony hysteria. So without further ado, the winners are…..


 
Ashamed And Sickened By Roger Ailes
Even Rupert Murdoch’s own family can’t stand Roger Ailes. This is what Murdoch’s son in law has to say about him: “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”

 
Has It Really Come To This: Boob Bombs?
The Fox paranoia machine was running overtime when they reported as fact that “Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain’s leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives. […] Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery.”

 
Fox Nation Scare Tactics: Armed IRS Agents To Enforce Obamacare
In a fit of psychotic bluster, the folks at Fox Nation posted an article with a headline that was manufactured from whole cloth. There is nothing in their reporting, or the column to which they linked, that remotely implied the message in the headline which, of course, was not true. The source for the Fox Nationalists was a column in the ultra-rightist Daily Caller, published by Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson.

 
Crime Inc: Glenn Beck’s Corrupt Advertisers
Beck spent several shows diagramming on his blackboard a cabal of evildoers he dubbed “Crime Inc,” an alleged conspiracy contrived by the climate change gang, which includes everyone from Al Gore to General Electric to the United Nations. However, it appears that the real Crime Inc is the assembly of advertisers who sponsor Beck’s show (minus those who fled in disgust). As it turns out, many of them are running less than reputable operations that have run afoul of the law.

 
Fox Alert! The Taliban Is Recruiting Monkey Mercenaries
This story, sourced to the People’s Daily in China, was published by at least two Murdoch properties, Fox Nation and the New York Post. And if you weren’t frightened by the prospect of terrorists sneaking into the country with explosive breast implants, then maybe the thought of radical Islamic macaques and baboons armed “with AK-47 rifles, machine guns and trench mortars” will set you to squirming.

 
The Lord Smites Glenn Beck With Blindness
Glenn Beck broke down again as he revealed to his congregation that he may or may not go blind in the next year. As a devout Mormon and Christian, he might want to look up Deuteronomy 28:27-29, which describes the plagues God will inflict upon sinners, most of which Beck is already suffering from – including hemorrhoids and madness.

 
Why Fox News Is Racist
Well, we have the answer now. According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times, the African-American segment of viewers of Fox News in primetime this season is only 1.38%. That compares to 19.3% for MSNBC, and 20.7% for CNN, numbers that are much closer to the 14% of African-Americans in the population at large.

 
Shocking Glenn Beck Expose: The Puppet Master
In three horror-filled episodes of Beck’s program on Fox, Beck made good on his promise to reveal the “Puppet Master” behind every diabolical scheme orchestrated by America’s enemies. Except that Beck’s profile fits his boss Rupert Murdoch, much better than his intended target, George Soros.

 
Election Flawed: Rupert Murdoch Plays Politics For Profit
After it was disclosed that Rupert Murdoch had contributed a million dollars each to the Republican Governor’s Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an analysis reveals that Murdoch actually earned a tidy profit on his donations when his beneficiaries turned around and spent that money on advertising on his network. This is a thinly disguised kickback scheme that would have landed any other businessman in jail.

 
Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid
Yet another study has been released that proves that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. Researchers at the University of Maryland conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation. The more you watch, the less you know.

In retrospect, it strains credulity to imagine that so many people still take Fox News seriously. This is the network that subjects its viewers to the apocalyptic sermonizing of a weeping conspiracy theorist; the network that dispenses invented crises from the New Black Panthers stealing elections to Islamic extremists constructing victory mosques in Manhattan; the network that twists medical advance directives into death panels and cold weather forecasts into proof that global warming is a hoax; the network whose owner makes million dollar contributions to Republicans and still says it is fair and balanced.

Nevertheless, we can all look forward to 2011 with the certainty that Fox will attempt to fill it with the same sort lies and propaganda that they have made their hallmark. And, consequently, conscientious news consumers, and all patriotic citizens, will have their hands full correcting the record and repairing the damage done to the gullible victims of Foxification.

Have a Happy and Delirium-Free New Year.


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2 thoughts on “Top Ten Ways Fox News Made An Ass Of Itself And/Or Its Viewers In 2010

    • I covered that story along with Fox’s smear of the financiers of Park51. But I couldn’t possibly list every stupid thing Fox did without using up all of the Internet’s bandwidth.

      By the way, the reporter who posted the Park51 smears (Charles Leaf) is presently in jail, having been arrested on charges of sexual assault on a four year old girl.

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