Media Bias

Trump Admits that Fox News is State TV Where Democrats Like Bernie Sanders Should Not Appear

Posted by on April 16, 2019 at 11:05 am. NO Comments :

There isn’t really much dispute as to whether or not Fox News is a devoutly right-wing network that has fully transitioned into Donald Trump’s State TV propaganda affiliate. Fox News made Trump during the 2016 election by plastering their air with his rallies and endless Trump-fluffing commentaries by adoring hosts and guests. And they’ve only gotten worse as his presidency has sunk into an abyss of hateful division, idiotic policies, and legal turmoil.

Donald Trump Fox News

The one place you’ll find an argument about that is, of course, Fox News. They still desperately try to pretend that they are “fair and balanced” despite the obvious political prejudices that make up the vast majority of their programming. Their executives and on-air personalities go to great lengths to cover up the flagrant partisanship that is the core of their network’s mission.

Unfortunately for Fox, the primary beneficiary of that favoritism, Donald Trump, isn’t so careful. In fact, consistent with his bullheaded dumbassery, he is downright reckless in revealing the unsavory relationship between himself and his TV fixation. This was demonstrated definitively in his Tuesday morning rage-tweeting:

Let’s break down this presidential Twitter breakdown. First of all, Trump is lashing out at Fox News for even allowing Bernie Sanders to hold this town hall. He not only insults Sanders as “crazy,” but confesses that he finds it “weird” to be watching him on Fox News. Then Trump blasts Fox’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier, for being “so smiley and nice.” That implies that Trump was expecting him to be frowny and mean – like Trump himself is almost constantly. But contrary to Trump’s assessment, Baier and his co-host Martha MacCallum were frequently contentious on everything from Sanders’ income, to abortion, to taxing the rich, to immigration, and notably, to healthcare.

On the healthcare issue, Baier surveyed the studio audience to ask them “How many are willing to transition to what the Senator said – a government run system?” Note his framing in the question. Medicare for All is NOT a government run system for healthcare. It is a single payer system for health insurance. Doctors and hospitals remain independent. Nevertheless, the audience erupted into cheers of support for Sanders’ plan.

And that’s the sort of thing that triggered Trump and incited his angry tweet, which is really an attack on the audience (which he curiously put in quotes as if to suggest they were fake) and the majority of the American people (70%) who favor universal healthcare.

Finally, Trump sought to take one last swipe at Fox News for hiring a former DNC official as a contributor. And he carelessly gave away his belief that Fox should be an exclusively pro-Trump, Democrat-free platform by saying “now we have @donnabrazile?” We? Trump is now openly referring to Fox News as a network that he is in partnership with. So not only is he mad that his media partner hosted Sanders, and that Baier wasn’t sufficiently nasty, but he’s calling them out for being disloyal to their shared objectives.

News Corpse is on record as being opposed to Democrats lending legitimacy to Fox News by appearing on the network. It isn’t about being afraid to face Fox’s hostility, that’s a cake walk. It’s about refusing to help them sanitizing their hateful agenda and outright lies. Sanders did a good job of representing himself and standing up to Fox’s bullying, as expected. But that doesn’t mean he should have been there in the first place. He could easily out-debate Alex Jones too, but he shouldn’t go on InfoWars either. No one should be helping them fill their coffers and spread their message. There aren’t any Democratic votes to found there. And it only results in deranged outbursts like the one Trump just unleashed.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

What White Nationalists? Tucker Carlson of Fox News Acts Like the Mob Denying There’s a Mafia

Posted by on April 12, 2019 at 2:25 pm. 1 Comments :

In the early and mid 20th century, there were organized crime syndicates that terrorized much of the country with extortion, robbery, and murder as tactics to gain control of businesses, communities, and wealth. It was a well-orchestrated collective of ruthless criminals who would go to any lengths to achieve their nefarious goals.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump

One of the favorite methods that the Mafia used to avoid accountability was to simply insist that there was no such thing as the Mafia. They would assert that they were legitimate businessmen engaging in legal free enterprise. Never mind all the bodies washing up along the shores of the Hudson River, or the storefronts that were engulfed in flames with resistant shopkeepers inside, or the cops driving Cadillacs they couldn’t reasonably explain how they paid for.

That’s the same tactic that Fox News is employing to pretend that there isn’t any such thing as white nationalism in America. And the host of Fox’s primetime White Nationalist Hour is the alt-right’s poster boy, Tucker Carlson. So it should come as no surprise that he spent much of his Thursday night program gaslighting his audience into believing that white nationalism was merely a hollow insult that lefties threw around, but that no such thing really existed in any significant numbers. Carlson asserted that nobody, including himself, even knows what the term means:

“You’ll notice that none of these dumb people pause, even for a second, to explain what a white nationalist is. You probably still don’t know. And, honestly, neither do we. And that’s because there are so very few of them in this country. There are probably about as many legitimate white nationalists in America as there are Russian spies. You could live your entire life here without running into a white nationalist.”

So let’s be clear. This is white nationalist Carlson denying that there is any such thing as white nationalism. Never mind all his blustering about the supremacy of European white culture, his lamenting of how oppressed white men are in America, and his hostility toward anyone else as “dirty and divisive.” Those comments have resulted in a mass exodus of his advertisers, despite his high ratings.

To be sure, Carlson is not alone. His Fox News colleagues, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, all agree with him. What’s more, Donald Trump has fully adopted this racist philosophy as well as the dishonest technique of pretending it doesn’t exist. Asked by reporters whether he thought white nationalists were a growing threat after the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, Trump said “I don’t really. I think it’s a very small group of people.”

So the circle is complete. The President of the United States is proclaiming to the world that white nationalism is fake news. And he got that news for his State TV partners at Fox. But for the record, the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented that “The number of hate groups operating across America rose to a record high – 1,020 – in 2018 … a 30 percent increase roughly coinciding with Trump’s campaign and presidency.” Nevertheless, according to Trump and Fox News, it’s no big deal and hardly merits a sideways glance. Got it? And there’s no such thing as the Mafia either.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Tweets Fake Poll Data From Fox News with Approval Numbers that are Actually Disapproval

Posted by on April 11, 2019 at 10:37 am. 2 Comments :

It’s a glorious day of celebration for Donald Trump as he triumphantly tweets the results of a new poll from Georgetown University. His tweet proclaims with glee “Great news! #MAGA.” And below that thrilling exclamation is a graphic that Trump copied straight from Fox News.

Fox News, Poll, Trump

There must be unbridled joy right about now in the White House because these numbers are higher than almost any that Trump has ever received from any poll, including the wildly biased Rasmussen. So a little bragging by Trump for achieving a fifty-five percent approval rating would seem to be in order. There’s just one little problem.

The graphic that Trump is so proudly regurgitating from Fox News’ Lou Dobbs is terribly wrong. The poll from Georgetown actually has Trump with a forty-three percent approval rating. That’s more in line with the current average of polls by RealClear Politics (43.1%). And it’s only that high because it includes Rasmussen’s phony numbers. The fifty-five percent was actually the disapproval rating for Trump.

The rest of the poll was hardly positive for for the pitiful President. It shows that fifty-seven percent of voters overall say the country is on the wrong track. And while men polled say they will vote Republican by a margin of nine percent, twice as many women (18%), who are more reliable voters, say they will vote Democratic.

Fox News issued a brief correction (a minute into this clip) that talked more about what the graphic got right than about their massive mistake. And they never mention Trump’s dismal forty-three percent approval:

“It’s been a quiet start to the day for President Trump, though he did send out a tweet this morning from the Lou Dobbs show last night on Fox Business. That tweet featured a poll that was not entirely accurate, which Fox Business would like to correct.

“According to a poll from Georgetown University, 58 percent of respondents approved of the president’s handling of the economy. That portion of the graphic was right. However, the graphic also showed that 55 percent of the respondents approve of the president, that number is not correct. The 55 percent number was those who have an unfavorable impression of President Trump.”

This is another example of how Fox News distorts reality and disseminates lies with the help of their number one fan, Donald Trump. And six hours later, Trump’s fake poll tweet is still on his Twitter page. It’s almost like Fox produces these lies for Trump to post, and then leaves them there purposefully to continue their disinformation campaign. They would never do that, would they?

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Diamond and Silk Embarrass Themselves and Fox News (Again) with Their Ignorant Views and Demeanor

Posted by on April 5, 2019 at 4:16 pm. 6 Comments :

With all of the smarmy characters who populate Fox News, it is often difficult to focus on who stands out the most for their flagrant idiocy and boorishness. Is it Sean Hannity, personal friend and shadow chief of staff to Donald Trump? Is it the leader of Fox’s White Nationalist Brigade, Tucker Carlson? Do the Fox and Friends crew have an advantage due to the number of blowhards concentrated in one program?

Diamond and Silk, Fox News

No doubt about it, the competition is fierce. But there are a couple of less prominent players who ceaselessly strive to outperform the the big shots at Fox News. The unintentional comedy duo of Diamond and Silk bring their “A” game every time they make an appearance. So long as the “A” stands for “asinine.” They are favorites of Trump who retweets them at every opportunity. And they outdid themselves on Friday morning while visiting the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends.

The segment started off with a slur directed at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who noted that the battle over climate change was not dissimilar to the civil rights battles of the past. Both involved people struggling to change the entrenched attitudes in society and government that were suppressing necessary change. But Diamond and Silk didn’t see it quite that way. they immediately lashed out at AOC saying…

“Listen, you have to realize that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she’s reckless, she’s clueless, and she have a vacuous mindset. First of all, civil rights have nothing to do with climate change. First of all.”

OK. First of all, reckless, clueless, and vacuous are registered trademarks of Diamond and Silk Industries. But more to the point, that isn’t what AOC said. She wasn’t comparing the substance of the issues. She was comparing the struggles to educate people and effect change. However, although AOC wasn’t addressing it, there are areas where civil rights and climate change do intersect. Just ask anyone who lives in a low income community where government often places its biggest polluting industries. But Diamond (who does most of the talking while Silk nods and interjects “That’s right,” every few seconds) continued:

And then second of all, her Green New Deal is a green new scam that we must stay away from. Now, I know that she’s worried about climate change, but she need to talk to Mother Nature. Because with the Earth rotating at 1,000 miles per hour, OK, 365 days of the year, we subject to feel climate changing a little bit. But not to the tune where we have to dismantle everything and start the Earth back over again. It’s a absolutely no for us.”

It appears that she is defining climate change as the temperature variations between night and day. That’s the generous explanation for these crackpot comments. In reality, she’s just foaming at the mouth and spitting out irrelevancies that have no real meaning. They certainly aren’t descriptive of anything resembling the science of Earth’s climate. She closed this subject by somehow segueing to an accusation that Democrats are the party that opposes civil rights. Never mind that the Klan and other hate groups have universally endorsed Trump and his GOP.

Later in the segment the hosts played a clip of Beto O’Rourke pointing out the racist overtones that have been embedded in Trump’s policies and are central to his speeches. This spurred the Fox duo to declare that O’Rourke’s remarks reminded them of a slave owner because he supports humane immigration reform. Don’t even bother trying to figure that one out.

What’s most puzzling is that Fox News invites these members of their “news” contributor staff to offer an analysis of issues they obviously know nothing about. That’s something that Fox does frequently whether the topic is climate change or immigration or economics or national security. Somehow Diamond and Silk have impressed Fox’s editors and producers as experts on virtually every subject. So they are featured on multiple shows where they do their tired clown act that consists almost entirely of personal slurs and amens as if they were insult comics who became holy roller evangelists.

It’s old news that Fox is the home of bigoted hate mongers and right-wing propagandists. But it’s still somewhat surprising that they have allowed these two cringeworthy Trump-fluffers to overtake so much of their airtime. It’s a concession that they have given up any pretense as being an informational enterprise and are now openly embracing their role as a lowbrow entertainment medium. Which will make things even easier for their production staff. They never really cared much for doing research or fact-checking. And now they can dispense with it altogether.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Bernie Sanders Tells The Daily Show that He ‘Knows Fox News’ – Then Proves that He Doesn’t

Posted by on April 5, 2019 at 11:19 am. 5 Comments :

The upcoming 2020 election is going to be at least a twenty ring circus. And the media will be serving as the Master of Ceremonies. Prominently featured in this extravaganza will be Fox News, who will make it their business to defend Donald Trump at every turn, while viciously and dishonestly attacking his critics.

Bernie Sanders, Fox News

The Democratic National Committee made a wise decision not to let Fox News host any of their primary debates. Seeing as how Fox relentlessly maligns Democrats in the most despicable terms, it never made sense to consider them as debate partners. And on top of their constant smear campaigns, Fox’s audience is irredeemably hostile to the Democratic Party and its candidates.

So it was disconcerting to learn that Bernie Sanders has agreed to participate in a town hall on Fox News. There is absolutely no conceivable benefit to be realized by helping Fox News to belittle him, his ideas, and his (for the time being) party. Sanders appeared on The Daily Show Thursday night to defend his decision (video below). It didn’t go particularly well. The segment began with Trevor Noah asking why Sanders would go on Fox News after the DNC so righteously denounced them. He replied:

Trust me, I know Fox News. I know who they are and I know the role that they are playing. On the other hand, during the last campaign I did a town meeting with a fellow named Bret Baier who did it pretty fairly. He did it straightforwardly, and believe me, we went over the ground rules before and they kept their word. So to me it is important to distinguish Fox News from the many millions of people who watch Fox News.

Okay. Here’s the first problem. If Sanders really knew who Fox News is and what role they play, he wouldn’t be impressed with Baier’s pretense of fairness. No one thinks that whoever hosts the Fox town hall is going to bare his teeth and bark at Sanders like Sean Hannity or Jeanine Pirro would. But those characters would use the program as source material for their smear campaigns immediately afterward. Meanwhile, Fox News would use Sanders’ appearance to pretend they are fair and balanced and to leech credibility from him that they can’t earn on their own. And then Sanders continued:

I think it is important to talk to those people and say, ‘You know what? I know many of you voted for Donald Trump, but he lied to you. He told you, for example, he was going to provide healthcare to all people. Now he wants to throw thirty million people off the healthcare they have. He told you he was going to tax reform that would not benefit the wealthy. Eighty-three percent of the benefits go to the top one percent. So I think it is important to talk to Trump supporters and explain to them to what degree he has betrayed the working class of this country and lie during his campaign in terms of what he would do.

That’s a common sense response to the dishonest and regressive agenda that Trump and the GOP have forced onto the American people. Unfortunately, Fox News viewers have an unnatural aversion to common sense. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell them that Trump is lying, they won’t believe you. It’s the Primary Directive of cult management to insist that everyone but the cult is lying to you. Sanders would be wasting his time because the Fox audience will have predetermined that he is the liar and he’s only there to malign their messiah who is incapable of uttering a false word.

It has been established by numerous surveys that Fox News viewers are unalterably devoted to their conservative dogma, and since the advent of Trump, their loyalties are reserved for him exclusively. If Trump says that he’s already building a border wall (he hasn’t), they believe it. If he says that their taxes were lowered (they’re higher), they feel richer just listening to him. If he says that his healthcare plan (which doesn’t exist) is better and cheaper, they will rise from their Lazy-Boys and declare that they’ve been miraculously healed by his touch. They even believe that Trump was “totally exonerated” by a four page summary of the Mueller report that explicitly says there was no exoneration. Because that’s what Trump told them. And even Fox News can’t shake them from their slobbering devotion.

That’s not an audience that Sanders can have any effect on. He’s wasting his time speaking to them. They will only watch to gather reasons to hate him and the “socialist” Democratic Party more than ever. And the post-town hall analyses by Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, will inform their own hostile reactions for days to come. Hopefully no other Democrats will follow in the misguided footsteps of Sanders by subjugating themselves to Fox News.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Just Like Trump: Fed Board Nominee Herman Cain is a Sexual Harasser Made Famous By Fox News

Posted by on April 4, 2019 at 3:35 pm. 2 Comments :

Apparently Donald Trump hasn’t been ridiculed enough yet for being an ignorant, propaganda mongering, reality TV sloganeer, who is mindlessly attached to his State TV brain trust at Fox News. Fox is a network whose mission is to advance the interests of corporations and the wealthy, along with an agenda of hatred and division. In other words, the social and political platform of Trump’s Republican Nationalist Party.

Donald Trump, Herman Cain

To that end, Trump is reported to be moving forward with his expected nomination of former pizza chain executive, Herman Cain, to the Federal Reserve Board. In many ways he’s the perfect nominee for Trump. He has no relevant experience in the work performed by the Fed. But he shares an embrace of incoherent right-wing myths that have been roundly repudiated by knowledgeable economists. And the two biggest reasons that Trump is tagging him for this post are his ignorance of macroeconomics and his prominent exposure on Fox News.

However, there’s another factor that may be boosting Cain’s profile with Trump. He was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment during his failed bid for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. And if you think that isn’t part of Trump’s recruiting criteria, just remember his support for the GOP Alabama senate candidate, Roy Moore. And his fervent advocacy of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And his close friendship with Bill O’Reilly. And his partnership with former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. And his hiring of former Fox News president Bill Shine. Does there seem to be a pattern developing here?

When the sexual harassment controversies began to engulf Cain, Trump was right there to provide immoral support. He defended Cain by maligning the women accusing him of being fame seekers:

“They probably do love their names splashed across the front pages. And frankly, that’s not a good situation and I don’t think it’s a fair situation. And I think Herman should take very, very strong action, even if he has to bring a major lawsuit against the women.”

Of course. Because what do women love more than exposing themselves and their families to media circuses obsessed with their private sexual lives? Trump seems to think that this sort of intrusive scrutiny is every little girl’s dream. He also thinks that Cain was the victim of a now familiar conspiracy that he called “a very ugly witch hunt.”

Trump, of course, is himself the subject of accusations from at least sixteen women who assert that he harassed, and even assaulted them. And he has similarly defended himself by making spurious charges against his victims. But he has never taken the advice he gave to Cain by suing his accusers. Although he swore that “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.” Perhaps he doesn’t have enough lawyers to handle that as well as the problems emerging from his conspiracy with Russia and the subsequent obstruction of justice.

It’s curious that Trump would choose now to wade into these waters that are so perilous to his own reputation (or lack thereof). He has taken to mocking Joe Biden over allegations of inappropriate touching. On that subject Trump posted a disgusting video meme on Twitter intending to hurt Biden. But as these things often go, it was far more hurtful to Trump because it reminds people of his own bad behavior as well as affirms his grossly infantile approach to serious subjects.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Still, he does have Fox News trying to shield him from criticism and attacking his critics. Which they are doing with devotion, but they’re getting worse at it every day. And now they need to figure out how they will put a happy face on Trump’s nomination of a sexually harassing, failed politician, with zero credentials for the job he’s being tapped to perform. That won’t be easy, but they have lots of experience doing it.

Oblivious Fox News Hosts Attack Joe Biden but Ignore Trump’s Serial Sexual Assault

Posted by on April 3, 2019 at 1:24 pm. 4 Comments :

A few weeks ago, Fox News was bitterly offended when the Democratic National Committee declined to let them host a Democratic primary debate. But nearly every day since then they have validated the DNC’s decision by demonstrating their overt bias and determination to malign the Democratic Party and its candidates for president in 2020.

Donald Trump

The latest example came during an episode of Fox’s Outnumbered, a program that purports to feature four women against a solo male guest, but is really four conservatives against a lone alleged liberal. The topic of discussion on Wednesday morning was the controversy over whether former Vice-President Joe Biden had behaved improperly with women during his decades of public service. It’s a valid subject to debate, even though Fox News has elevated it to a level of “crisis” that places it above Russian election tampering, the record federal deficit, and even the caravans of marauding immigrants storming America’s borders from the three Mexicos.

None of the allegations against Biden assert that his actions constituted sexual misbehavior. And Biden has responded by insisting that he never intended to make anyone feel uncomfortable. But Fox, nevertheless, is treating this story like a revelation of perverse activity that merits intense scrutiny. So Harris Faulkner, co-host of Outnumbered, opened the program with a “Fox News Alert:”

“And this Fox News alert is how we will begin. More women accusing former Vice-President Joe Biden of inappropriate behavior.”

That comment set the tone for what was to follow. And it just went downhill from there with remarks by these co-hosts of the show:

Melissa Francis: The thing is he doesn’t think he did anything wrong. And he doesn’t think he has anything to apologize for. He doesn’t think what he did is inappropriate. And that’s the problem.
Katie Pavlich: If this were a Republican he’d be disqualified from running for office ever again.

Alrighty then. These Fox News hosts regard Biden as having imposed inexcusably on women who did not welcome his affectionate encounters. And even though his impositions were limited to shoulder massages or a kiss on the top of the head, they were, according to Fox, out of bounds and he should face consequences for them. What’s more, they are certain that such behavior would never be tolerated if a Republican had engaged in it.

Seriously! The president that these absent-minded shills devotedly lavish with saintly praise has credibly been charged with much worse. Donald Trump has been accused by at least sixteen women of having committed sexual harassment and even assault. Trump himself bragged about assaulting women in the infamous Access Hollywood “grab them by the pussy” video.

Remember, some prominent Fox News folks (i.e. Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes) were just as bad as Trump and lost their jobs because of it. It would be interesting to see these Fox News hosts confronted with the facts about Trump in light of their opinions about Biden. Because if Biden should be driven from contention in the 2020 Democratic primary for his indiscretions, which many on the right have suggested, then shouldn’t Trump be driven from office for his criminal abuse?

You might think that a discussion about Biden’s situation would open up to include the sitting president. But it’s hard enough to even get Fox Newsers to admit that Trump ever did anything wrong with regard to women, or anything else. They continue to falsely assert that the report by special counsel Robert Mueller (which they haven’t seen) totally exonerates Trump, even though it explicitly says that it doesn’t. But that’s just the beginning.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

They refuse to concede that there are unlawful financial entanglements with Trump’s businesses. They defend his destructive tariffs and threats of border closures. They dismiss his marital infidelities and payoffs to his mistresses. They’re cool with his support for white nationalists, his infatuation with brutal dictators, and his flagrant, shameless lying. So why would they mind if he assaulted a dozen or so women?

Rachel Maddow is the #1 Cable News Program for First Quarter of 2019 Despite Trump’s Fox News Hype

Posted by on April 1, 2019 at 3:30 pm. 2 Comments :

The Rachel Maddow Show has achieved yet another milestone in her program’s ratings surge. She has been outperforming her competition since the midterm election last November. That includes staggering routs of Fox News and its primary Trump-fluffer, Sean Hannity.

Rachel Maddow

In a press release from MSNBC, Maddow is shown to have beaten “all other FOX News and CNN shows, according to Nielsen data from December 31, 2018 through March 28, 2019.” Furthermore, “this quarter was ‘Maddow’s’ highest-rated quarter ever in total viewers, averaging 3.07M total viewers at 9pm.” It’s a record-breaking achievement that demonstrates the audience appeal for an aggressively honest brand of reporting that respects the viewer and delivers facts that are well-sourced and documented.

The success of Maddow’s program was mirrored by much of the MSNBC schedule. The network’s Monday-Friday, 9:00am-5pm, viewing grew by a larger margin (17%) than Fox News, which actually declined two percent. The same goes for total day viewing that saw a nine percent increase for MSNBC versus a two percent drop for Fox News.

Additionally, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell bested its Fox competition in its time period to be the #1 program for the quarter in both the 25-54 year old demographic and total viewers. It also outperformed Fox by growing ten percent compared to a seven percent decline for Fox. And another bright spot for MSNBC was Nicolle Wallace’s Deadline: White House, which also rang in at #1 against Fox’s long time host Neil Cavuto. And the press release notes that:

“Multiple MSNBC programs also achieved total-viewer ratings highs, including weekdays during ‘MSNBC Live with Stephanie Ruhle,’ ‘MSNBC Live with Hallie Jackson,’ ‘MSNBC Live with Craig Melvin,’ ‘Andrea Mitchell Reports,’ ‘MSNBC Live with Velshi & Ruhle,’ ‘MSNBC Live with Katy Tur,’ ‘MSNBC Live with Ali Velshi,’ ‘MTP Daily,’ ‘The Beat with Ari Melber,’ ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews,’ ‘All In with Chris Hayes,’ and ‘The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell’; and Saturdays during ‘UP with David Gura’ and ‘Weekends with Alex Witt.'”

It must be especially painful for Fox News considering how hard Trump worked to promote his State TV division. At times it was impossible to tell whether Trump was the President of the United States, or of Fox’s Marketing and PR department. At one point in March Trump posted ten Fox News videos in one flurry of weekend rage-tweeting.

This quarter also saw the publishing of an in-depth expose of the clinging embrace between Trump and Fox News by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. Trump also came to the defense of two of Fox’s most offensive hosts, Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson, whose prafane and insulting rants have cost them most of their advertisers. The Democratic National Committee made a profoundly wise decision to ban Fox from hosting any Democratic primary debates. That decision was affirmed shortly thereafter by a survey that revealed the depth of Fox’s right-wing nuttery. Meanwhile, Trump kept tweeting what he thought was good news about his favorite network.

All in all, it’s another stellar quarter for MSNBC, a network that was once written off as an also-ran that would always trail the perennial leader. And for Fox News it’s a bitter humiliation as their relentless and biased advocacy for Donald Trump, and shameless lying about his critics, proves to be a drag in the ratings race.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The Ludicrous Fox News ‘3 Mexicos’ Chyron Wasn’t Nearly as Bad as What They Actually Said

Posted by on March 31, 2019 at 11:09 am. 4 Comments :

On Sunday Morning Fox News set out reestablish their status as the supreme purveyors of rank idiocy. And they accomplished that goal with a graphic presentation of both their stupidity and racism. This feat occurred during another one of their regularly scheduled segments demonizing and dehumanizing immigrants from south of the border.

Donald Trump, Immigrant, Child

While the three co-hosts of Donald Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox and Friends rattled on about the alleged “crisis” on the border, there was a graphic that said “Trump Cuts U.S. Aid to 3 Mexican Countries.” Of course, there aren’t three Mexican countries. That’s just Fox’s way of disparaging all brown people in Central and South America as being the same undesirables. However, as bad as that careless foul-up was – and even given their hurried correction – what they actually said during the segment was even worse. And that can’t be dismissed as a mistake.

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1112352119900770305

The piece started off with Pete Hegseth summarizing everything wrong that Fox disseminates regarding immigration:

“Cutting payment – aid payment – to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras over the fact that those countries have been unable to contain the flood of migrants heading through Mexico to our southern border. So yesterday we talked about potentially shutting down the southern border … this is a big move. This is one of the few punitive measures the executive branch has still, to these countries to say ‘get it under control.'”

First of all, the migrants from Central America are fleeing the poverty and violence that threatens them and their children. Cutting humanitarian aid will only make it more difficult for these countries to resolve the problems they have with crime and scarcity. So any thinking person would understand that Trump’s actions can only exacerbate the problems he’s pretending to want to solve.

Jedediah Bila then added that Trump “came in strong” with his tweets threatening to close the border and gushed that “It seems to me he’s standing tall on this issue. He’s not backing down. I don’t blame him.” And Ed Henry chirped along in worshipful harmony saying “Yeah, it might take drastic measures.”

Trump’s notion of cutting aid is only surpassed in reckless ineptitude by his intent to close the border. That will in no way advance a solution to the problem, but it will severely harm American businesses and workers. Even Trump’s Republican allies in Congress have ridiculed the idea. And the complaint by the Foxies that the three Mexicos have been unable to “contain the flood of immigrants” ignores Trump’s own whining that it’s the U.S. that hasn’t been managing what he considers to be a national emergency. Hence his wall fetish.

When all is said and done, Fox News continues to say and do the most preposterously illogical things in their mission to frighten and disinform their audience of Deplorables. And sadly, at that they happen to be quite good.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Judge Jeanine Pirro Returned Saturday Night – on Fox News and SNL – And Both Were Hysterical

Posted by on March 31, 2019 at 8:55 am. 1 Comments :

Two weeks ago “Judge” Jeanine Pirro was suspended from her weekly perch on Fox News after she made comments so reprehensible that they even offended the suits at Fox. Pirro attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar whose Muslim faith, according to Pirro, was incompatible with the United States Constitution. Despite the nearly universal disgust for Pirro’s hate speech, she retained the fervent support of Donald Trump. who begged Fox News to return her to the air.

Jeanine Pirro Fox News

On Saturday night Trump got his wish. Pirro once again hosted her Trump-fluffing White Nationalist Hour with all the drooling ferocity she had before her brief suspension. She obviously learned nothing from her time-out, and offered no apology. Her “Opening Statement” segment addressed the release of the “summary” of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report by Trump’s plant in the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr. However, it began with a torrid tirade that might better have been directed at Trump:

“When someone lies to you, do you just say ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get over it’? Well that’s not how our system works. There has to be accountability. There has to be a consequence. Because as the President himself said ‘This should never happen again.’ And I can guarantee you it will happen again unless we make an example of the traitorous, treasonous group that accused Donald Trump of being an agent of the Russian government.”

Except for that last line that disputed accusations of Trump being a Russian agent, Pirro’s rant could have been a righteous assault on the relentless dishonesty of Trump. His flagrant lies and avoidance of accountability really is not the how system ought to work. And there definitely should be consequences for Trump and his vast army of criminal accomplices.

Pirro went on to warn that investigations like the one Mueller conducted could become “a blueprint for a future effort to overthrow the government.” But she got it completely backwards. Mueller was probing activities that included undermining our democratic election by Trump and a hostile foreign country. He was the one working to prevent government corruption. She further advised her viewers not to be “satisfied with the Mueller report,” which makes sense considering the fact that neither she nor any of her viewers have seen it. What’s more, what little we do know about the report is insufficient to vindicate the President. But what she meant was that they shouldn’t be satisfied with what she claimed was Trump’s exoneration, a conclusion that the report explicitly denied. And finally, she closed with a demand to stop all of Trump’s critics, by throwing them in jail, with what she called “behind the bars justice.”

A little later in the evening, Saturday Night Live weighed in with an appearance by Pirro (as played by Cecily Strong) during the Weekend Update news segment. It was a nearly identical portrayal of the injudicious judge who is pretty funny herself, albeit unintentionally. She made a point of thanking her superfans, the “mean, horny men laying on in-home hospital beds and white prison gangs who control the remote on Saturdays.” And I defy anyone to differentiate between Pirro’s wild-eyed raving and Strong’s satirical take on it. If anything, Strong’s impression was too understated.