Election

Rupert Murdoch Proves That A Fish Stinks From The Head

Posted by on July 2, 2012 at 5:52 pm. NO Comments :

The CEO of News Corp, parent company of Fox News, has been tweeting up a storm lately. Much of it was silliness about Tom Cruise’s marital troubles and his view of Scientology as “creepy, maybe evil.” But some of it was revealing and noteworthy.

Rupert Murdoch on Mitt Romney

The first tweet above is interesting because it is so openly disparaging of Mitt Romney’s campaign team. He does not disguise his opinion that they are amateurs who came to their posts by being Romney cronies. More interesting is the vague introduction wherein he says that he “Met Romney last week.” That’s a news bite that had not previously been disclosed.

As it turns out, Romney met with 40 to 50 fatcat supporters at a secret meeting in Manhattan including Murdoch, investment banker Ken Langone, Goldman Sachs head Lloyd Blankfein, and other business barons and political operatives. It’s somewhat disturbing that a meeting with this kind of firepower went unreported until after Murdoch let it slip on Twitter. One thing we learned from the meeting was why Romney has been so hesitant to take an actual position on immigration. He told the group that…

“I know I took some positions in the primary that are” hard to contend with in a general, Romney said, according to two sources. “I am not going to be a flip-flopper,”

He is admitting that, were he to take a position, it would be contrary to what he told conservative audiences during the GOP primaries, so he says nothing instead. The Etch-a-Sketch has spoken. He believes that he can get by with Latino voters by relying on surrogate Marco Rubio and one of his sons who speaks Spanish. Yeah, right.

The second Tweet above is even more revealing. It was Murdoch’s response to all of the flack he got after criticizing Romney. It’s bad enough that he openly states that he wants Romney to win, but what goes farther over the line is his reasoning. He says that he wants Romney to “save us from socialism.”

After years of hearing Fox News anchors and guests making delusional comments about President Obama being a socialist, you sort of grow accustomed it. It’s easy to dismiss (and ridicule) wingnuts like Eric Bolling, Sean Hannity, and Sarah Palin. But now we know where they get their marching orders. Rupert Murdoch himself believes that Obama is a Manchurian candidate bent on delivering America into the arms of our commie adversaries. The conspiracy obsessed right-wing media has a leader and a hero in Murdoch. That little tweet explains a lot.

Even Fox Nation’s Vacation Coverage Is Blatantly Biased

Posted by on July 2, 2012 at 11:58 am. NO Comments :

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:

Fox Nation Vacation

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.

Fox News Covers Up Mitt Romney’s Lies As Exposed By PolitiFact

Posted by on June 30, 2012 at 9:16 am. 5 Comments :

Mitt Romney - Pathological LiarAnother example of the myriad means by which Fox News distorts reality on behalf of Republicans are the choices they make in what not to report as well as what to report dishonestly (which are the only two options considered by Fox reporters).

The truth detectors at PolitiFact are a favorite source of newsmaker evaluations to the folks at Fox Nation. In the past few months they have referenced the site repeatedly when seeking to defend the right and bash the left. After reading a few of the articles post by the Fox Nationalists, it would be fair to conclude that they hold PolitiFact in high regard:

  • Politifact Annihilates Harry Reid
  • Fact Check Destroys Pres. Obama’s Claim He Didn’t Raise Taxes
  • Fact Check Nails Maddow…Again
  • Pelosi Jobs Claim Skewered by Truth-o-Meter
  • PolitiFact Rates Jon Stewart’s Fox News Claims … False!
  • PolitiFact: Perry Did NOT Say Texas Wanted to Secede
  • Politifact: Perry Was NOT Al Gore’s TX Campaign Manager
  • Watchdog: Obama’s List of Kept Promises Is a Stretch
  • Politifact’s Lie of the Year 2011: ‘Republicans Voted to End Medicare’
  • Politifact Shreds MSNBC ‘Lean Forward’ Ad
  • PolitiFact: Debbie Wasserman Schultz Is a Liar

Like many things in the political realm, the conclusions reached in some of those articles were debatable. PolitiFact has made its share of tortured appraisals that miss the mark. But, if nothing else, the list above proves that they are not the sort of knee-jerk leftists that conservatives think dominate the media.

Nevertheless, the Fox Nationalists are shamelessly selective in their use of material from PolitiFact. The day after the Supreme Court ruled that ObamaCare is constitutional, Mitt Romney spoke out against the decision in a litany of lies. PolitiFact posted reviews of a couple of points in Romney’s remarks and rated them both as false.

Romney's Lies

So despite a long track record of publishing PolitiFact’s findings, for some reason the Fox Nationalists declined to report on these obvious and deliberate falsehoods. It’s probably the same reason they have neglected to inform their audience of dimwits that Romney has been rated as untruthful 54 times by PolitiFact, and 13 of those were “Pants-on-Fire” lies. In fact, 40% of PolitiFact’s findings on statements by Romney are rated as untruthful.

If Fox actually had even a hint of aspiration to be fair and balanced, they would be reporting that Romney is as close to a pathological liar as anyone who has ever run for president. However, there is nothing stopping the rest of the media from reporting the truth about Romney’s compulsive dishonesty. But that’s another problem altogether (Liberal media my ass).

The Difference Between Fox News And Actual News

Posted by on June 27, 2012 at 4:19 pm. 6 Comments :

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.

Not So Breitbart: The Idiot’s Guide To Obama’s Fundraising

Posted by on June 25, 2012 at 10:43 am. 1 Comments :

The intellectual reputation (or lack thereof) at Breitbart News took another hit this weekend with an embarrassingly moronic article that attempts to analyze a fundraising appeal from the Obama campaign. It’s remarkable how one’s brain can turn to mush when consumed by an irrational hatred for one’s adversaries.

Breitbart Article

The article, by William Bigelow, was headlined, “Obama Campaign E-Mail: ‘We’re Falling Behind.'” It revealed the contents of an email seeking donations from Obama supporters. Breitbrat Bill surmised from this that…

“The Obama campaign is so frightened at this point that they have taken an unprecedented step. They’re telling the truth.

In the latest of the ‘personal’ e-mails that the Obama campaign is sending out, they don’t sugarcoat their appeal for money with saccharine stories about Obama shoveling snow for his wife, or working hard late into the night. They panic.”

There you have it. The Breitbrat’s proof that Obama is panicking is that his campaign refrained from soliciting donations the way all other candidates do: with stories about shoveling snow. I’m sure you’ve seen a million of them. Instead, Obama’s request focuses on the need for donors to pitch in because…

“For the first time in modern American history, the incumbent (that’s us) will get outspent in a re-election campaign — by some estimates as much as 3-to-1. Over the last 10 days of this month alone, GOP outside groups will spend $20 million attacking President Obama on TV.”

See how desperate they are? They have adopted an approach that warns supporters about the risks of being outspent in an election. They also remind people of the dangerous repercussions of the Citizen’s United ruling that allows wealthy donors and corporations to anonymously give unlimited amounts of money. And they are abandoning the traditional solicitation that Breitbrat Bill must think goes something like this:

“We are up to our armpits in cash and are trouncing our opponents in the fundraising race. Our side has already accumulated a 3-to-1 advantage over the other guy and we have plastered the media with advertising. So even though we have taken to spending our excess campaign funds on gold watches and 4-star hotels, please dig deep and send us more money with which to line our pockets.”

The stupidity of Breitbart’s complaint is nearly pathetic. All campaigns appeal to donors by impressing them with the need to raise funds in a competitive contest and the necessity of staying ahead of your opponent. But this simple truth strikes Breitbrat Bill as evidence of panic. Is this really the best they can do?

Also, here’s a bonus bit of boob-headedness. Breitbrat Ben Shapiro Tweeted this morsel of wisdom yesterday: “And yes, what is happening in Egypt IS largely Obama’s fault.”

Breitbart Egypt Tweet

Of course, Obama, the consummate community organizer, was able to motivate millions of Egyptians to take to the streets in protest against a dictator who had clung to power for 40 years. Then Obama succeeded in forcing Mubarak from office, leading the way to the first free elections in decades for the Egyptian people.

Thanks for giving Obama credit for all of that, Ben. Even though you obviously prefer the former state of tyranny to the free choice of democracy, you are big enough to grant the President the credit he is due.

Mitts And Hisses: Rupert Murdoch Has Lost All Touch With Reality

Posted by on June 25, 2012 at 4:37 am. 3 Comments :

The allegedly “fair and balanced” Fox News Channel’s patriarch, Rupert Murdoch, has revealed his preference in the presidential contest, as if it was ever in doubt. Yesterday, however, he made it clear that he favors Mitt Romney, even though he’s concerned that Romney isn’t being sufficiently dickish. Murdoch Tweeted:

“Easy for Romney to spell out restoration of the American Dream and bash incompetent administration. But not a word.”

Rupert Murdoch Tweet

There is so much wrong with that brief belch of bluster that it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s start with the fact that the man who runs the company that hacked into the phones of thousands of people, including politicians, celebrities, and a murdered schoolgirl, has no business calling anyone else incompetent. Especially when that horrific and criminal activity, which has already resulted in dozens of arrests and resignations, was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of the company’s management.

Secondly, Murdoch doesn’t bother to define his notion of the American Dream. Presumably it involves being made a citizen by an act of Congress so that you can buy a television network, rather than having any affinity for the values of the country you are merely exploiting for profit. It certainly does not involve the patriotic principles of shared sacrifice, equality, and justice for all.

Thirdly, It is thoroughly inappropriate for the head of a so-called “news” enterprise to advocate “bashing” a political candidate. Murdoch is, in effect, offering campaign advice to the candidate he supports. But his advice is purely style over substance. He is not helping to shape policy or strategy. Rather he’s pushing the candidate toward more hardball tactics. And for anyone who thinks this is reaching too far, note that this morning on Fox & Friends the cast of cartoon characters who host the show took exactly the same position in a segment that promoted White House critics goading Romney into taking a more aggressive posture against the President. That coordination of themes was just a coincidence, right?

Finally, Murdoch complained that Romney has said “not a word” with respect to the American Dream or bashing the President. Is Murdoch in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s? That’s pretty much all that Romney has talked about. Can anyone forget his dreamy exaltation of America that nearly made the wrod lose all meaning?

Romney: I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I believe in.

Romney has perfected a sort robotic America worship that can only appeal to an emotionally stunted Tea Partier. His campaign slogan is Believe in America (well, that and We’re not Stupid) And when he isn’t salivating over America, he is berating Obama. Romney has hardly been gentle in his assaults. He routinely castigates the President as a failure, in over his head, and a hater of free enterprise.

All of this makes you wonder how Murdoch would have Romney alter his approach. Romney already avoids substantive policies like the plague – at least those he isn’t flip-flopping around. Does Murdoch want Romney to adopt the dementia of birthers, or the paranoia of those convinced that Obama is a Manchurian Muslim bent on delivering America to the communists? Romney’s entire campaign is already composed of nothing but obsequious pseudo-patriotism and pummeling Obama. Yet somehow Murdoch doesn’t see any of it – or enough of it. That should be a troubling sign to his doctors, his family, and his colleagues at Fox News.

When Will The Media Report That Mitt Romney Is A Pathological Liar?

Posted by on June 22, 2012 at 3:15 pm. 1 Comments :

Steve Benen, writing for the Maddow Blog, has compiled a list of 30 flagrant lies told by Mitt Romney this week alone. It’s an eye-opening collection of falsehoods so egregious that it’s mind-boggling that he has been permitted to get away with it. All Al Gore had to do was be misquoted about his participation in promoting the Internet and his name became synonymous with “stretching” the truth. But Romney seems to have no limit for deliberate deception and he is still taken seriously by the press who should be holding him accountable.

Here are just the first 10 items on Benen’s list:

  1. In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Romney claimed it’s fiscally responsible to eliminate the entirety of the Affordable Care Act: “It saves $100 billion a year to get rid of it.”


    That’s the opposite of the truth. According to the CBO and other nonpartisan budget estimates, killing the law would make the deficit go up, not down, and would cost, not save, the country hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.

  2. In the same interview, Romney said, “I think a lot of people forgetting is there is only one president in history that’s cut Medicare by $500 billion and that is President Obama.”


    Romney says this a lot. He’s not telling the truth.

  3. Romney also said, “I see people holding up signs, ‘Don’t touch my Medicare.’ It’s like, hey, I’m not touching your Medicare.”


    Romney endorsed Paul Ryan’s House Republican Budget plan, which ends the Medicare program and replaces it with a private voucher scheme.

  4. In the same interview, Romney said President Obama has “never had the experience of working in the private sector.”


    Actually, that’s not true. Obama worked at a private-sector law firm before entering public service.

  5. Romney also told Hannity Obama went on “an apology tour” in his first year.


    As Romney surely knows by now, he’s lying.

  6. Romney, trying to talk about foreign policy, said Syria is Iran’s “route to the sea.”


    Iran doesn’t share a border with Syria, and Iran already borders two bodies of water.

  7. At a campaign event in Stratham, New Hampshire, Romney claimed, “Bill Clinton and so many other mainstream Democrats are revolting against the backward direction President Obama is taking his party and our country.”


    In reality, Bill Clinton supports the president’s re-election and recently said a Romney presidency would be “calamitous for our country and the world.”

  8. At an event in Cornwall, Pennsylvania, shared an anecdote about a local optometrist who was forced to fill out a “33-page” change-of-address form — several times — at the post office.


    There is no such change-of-address form.

  9. At the same event, Romney said Obama is “taking away” scholarships and charter schools for “kids in Washington, D.C.”


    This has become a line in Romney’s stump speech, but it isn’t in any way true.

  10. Romney also claimed, “This president has put together almost as much public debt as all the prior presidents combined.”


    That’s a lie.

There are 20 more lies like this in the past week, and Benen has chronicled 22 weeks of further fabrications. This is not the typical behavior of a politician, who can be expected to “interpret” information in self-serving ways, or to waver from veracity from time to time. This is evidence of a clinical psychosis. Romney has been rated as untruthful 54 times by PolitiFact, and 13 of those were “Pants-on-Fire” lies. Is it just me, or shouldn’t this be newsworthy?

Mitt Romney

Politico Reporter Suspended For Telling The Truth: Romney Is More Comfortable Around White Folks

Posted by on June 22, 2012 at 11:18 am. 9 Comments :

Yesterday on MSNBC’s Martin Bashir program, Politico reporter Joe Williams participated in a discussion about Mitt Romney’s tendency to restrict his public appearances to carefully choreographed events and friendly media outlets. It was noted that he has appeared on the widely reviled Fox & Friends 21 times in the last year. Fox & Friends is an avowedly right-wing mouthpiece for the GOP and a program about which even Fox reporters, producers and executives “roll their eyes” when asked about.

Williams noted that Romney’s preference for Fox & Friends, and similarly partisan settings, was interesting because it was “unscripted and it’s the only time they let Mitt off the leash.” He made the point that for Romeny to be successful he needs to broaden the range of people with whom he interacts.

Williams: Romney is very, very comfortable, it seems, with people who are like him. That’s one of the reasons why he seems so stiff and awkward in some town hall settings, why he can’t relate to people other than that. But when he comes on Fox and Friends, they’re like him, they’re white folks who are very much relaxed in their own company.

That is an objectively true statement. Fox & Friends are indeed white folks and they appear to be very relaxed with one another. It is also true that Romney does appear to be more comfortable with people like himself, and he does exhibit noticeable awkwardness when he tries to connect with average Americans. It is that discomfort that has resulted in his embarrassing himself by saying that he likes to fire people, that his friends are NASCAR team owners, that his wife drives two Cadillacs, that corporations are people, and that he’s not concerned about the poor.

Nevertheless, Politico has suspended Williams for these comments. This is another example of the media punishing people for telling the truth about conservatives. It seems that the only people that are ever held to account are those to whom conservatives object. Earlier this year I documented a list of the “10 People Fox News Should Fire, But Haven’t.” Media suspensions have been handed out liberally (so to speak) to Roland Martin, David Shuster, Mark Halperin, and many others. While right-wing malfeasance is ignored or even rewarded. People like Liz Trotta, Juan Williams, Don Imus, and Lou Dobbs, have managed to escape any repercussions from their bad behavior.

A recent incident involving a reporter from Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller illustrates this blatant unfairness perfectly. Neil Munro rudely shouted out questions in the middle of a presidential address. His inappropriate behavior was widely condemned, even by some staunch conservatives. However, rather than suspension, he was defended by Carlson and held up as an exemplary model of journalism. That’s the difference between the right and the left in the media. The right admires and rewards rudeness and dishonesty, and pays tribute to those who engage in it. The left punishes any hint of impropriety, even when there is no substance to it. All that has to happen is for some right-winger to complain.

As for Romney’s reputed comfort amongst his own people, I defy you find a person of color in this photograph taken from his website (click to enlarge), and then explain who he means by “us.”

Romney's White Folks

Fox News Latino Reports Favorable Poll On Obama Immigration Policy, But Not Fox News

Posted by on June 19, 2012 at 8:17 pm. 1 Comments :

Fox News has commenced a new routine wherein they sequester any news of interest to Latinos to their Fox News Latino web site. They do this even for news that is of interest to a broader audience. For example, a Bloomberg poll was released today that showed that 64 percent of likely voters favor Obama’s policy on suspending deportations of certain younger immigrants.

Fox News Latino

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. However, Fox News has not run this story. Fox Nation has not run this story. So far, the only Fox destination where you can read this story is on Fox News Latino.

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. Take, for example , this excerpt:

“The Obama policy orders immigration authorities to use prosecutorial discretion to freeze deportations for undocumented immigrants who arrived before the age of 16, have lived in the United States for five years, have clean criminal records and who are younger than 31.

The decision was prompted by congressional inaction on the DREAM Act, a proposal that would provide a path to citizenship for some undocumented youth who attend college or serve in the military.

The House of Representatives passed the DREAM Act in December 2010, but came up five votes short of the 60 votes needed to break a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate.”

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 “illegal immigrant,” 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.

None of these treatments of the news item will appear on Fox News. They can segregate the reporting so that their Latino audience will see stories like this one, while the rest of the Fox universe remains steeped in the animus of bigots and conservative partisans. And in this case, the whole story has been excised from the Fox universe outside of the Latino orbit.

Make no mistake, there are good reasons for this uncharacteristic behavior on the part of Fox. 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. 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, Ailes is doing for the party what they are too stupid to do for themselves – pandering to the Latino vote. But now they’ve created a new problem by treating Latinos as if they are too stupid to notice they’re being played.

HYSTERICAL! Fox News Says Another Network Is Unfair, Uses Dirty Tricks

Posted by on June 19, 2012 at 4:26 pm. 6 Comments :

Psychological Projection: A psychological defense mechanism whereby one “projects” one’s own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else.

For an alleged “news” network whose entire business model is misrepresenting facts, disparaging ideological adversaries, and deliberately twisting the truth beyond all recognition, to brazenly attack a competing network with allegations of similar behavior, is the textbook definition of “projection.” It is also unethical and uproariously funny.

Fox News dedicates its entire broadcast day to unfair distortions and dirty tricks. In recent weeks they have falsely accused President Obama of waging a war on religion for supporting women’s access to contraceptives; weakening the institution of marriage by voicing support for same-sex couples to wed; and unconstitutionally altering immigration law for exercising prosecutorial discretion to prevent young immigrants who broke no law from being deported.

Fox News has been caught airing Republican National Committee talking points as if they were news items, complete with the original RNC typos. They have distributed memos instructing anchors and reporters to use specific language that was advantageous to the GOP. Just a few weeks ago Fox aired a four minute campaign-style video that was an open attack on the President. Fox received so much criticism from the public and their peers that they tried to surreptitiously dispose of it, but not before it was captured and posted online for all to see. That’s the nature of the beast that we are dealing with here.

Yesterday MSNBC broadcast a video that accurately portrayed Mitt Romney as shocked by the technology at a convenience store sandwich counter. The video showed Romney describing his adventure ordering lunch, and using that experience to advocate for the ingenuity of the private sector. Fox News is now alleging that MSNBC inappropriately edited the video to unfairly create an impression of Romney as out of touch with average Americans. Fox said…

Fox News Projection

“To MSNBC viewers, it appeared to be a 49-second video clip introduced by veteran anchor Andrea Mitchell to illustrate her contention that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is ‘out of touch’ – what viewers didn’t know was that MSNBC had selectively edited the clip, manipulating viewer perception and keeping them from hearing Romney’s full message.”

First of all, Romney doesn’t need MSNBC’s help to create that perception. The man known best for saying that he likes to fire people, that his friends are NASCAR team owners, that his wife drives two Cadillacs, that corporations are people, and that he’s not concerned about the poor, is more than capable of demonstrating his own obvious alienation from the huddled masses who don’t happen to have a quarter of a billion dollars.

More to the point, however, the quote attributed to Romney is precisely how MSNBC portrayed it. Here is the whole thing with the part that was edited out in bold at the the end:

“I was at WaWas, I went in to order a sandwich. You press a little touchtone keypad – you touch this, touch this, go pay the cashier – here’s your sandwich. It’s amazing. People in the private sector have learned how to compete. It’s time to bring some competition to the federal government.“

It’s plain to see that the editing in no way changed the context or meaning of Romney’s remarks. With or without the extended segment, Romney was expressing his surprise that such sandwich assembly technology exists. And as if to underscore Romney’s unfamiliarity with the common touch-screen device, he referred to it as a “touchtone” keypad, reminiscent of old telephones from his youth.

Also, in his remarks Romney was making a comparison between a form required for a medical provider’s compensation, and a sandwich order at a convenience store. That is a stupendously inapt analogy. One involves an over-the-counter purchase of a cheap sandwich, while the other involves perhaps thousands of dollars and the need to insure correct administration and to prevent costly fraud. To be sure, there is plenty of room for improvement in how the government operates, but processing health care applications for doctors’ services is not the same as ordering a turkey on rye with mayo.

Fox News simply has no moral authority to judge the reporting on other networks. They have abandoned all pretenses of journalistic integrity and made it clear that they only exist as a propaganda tool for conservative corporations, politicians, and wealthy power elites. For a more accurate impression of the Fox News brand of fairness and balance, watch this video complied by Talking Points Memo.