Day: 2/10/2011

Fox News Reporter’s Guide: Think Like An Intolerant Meathead

Posted by on February 10, 2011 at 3:15 pm. 5 Comments :

Fox NewsMedia matters has published an interview with a former Fox News “insider” who reveals the inner workings of a modern propaganda operation. Some of the revelations have been obvious for years. Some of them will just infuriate you. Here are some highlights:

“I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”

“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats. They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”

“You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks. And God help you if you don’t because sooner or later you’re going to get burned.”

“[A]nything that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it.”

“My internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead. You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.”

“[Y]ou have to buy into the idea that the other media is howling left-wing. Don’t even start arguing that or you won’t even last your first day.”

Media Matters has much more. Check it out. It is fascinating getting this info from an insider. Very few people associated with Fox ever speak out, even after they have left. A couple of exceptions include Eric Burns, former host of Fox News Watch, and Jane Hall, former Fox News contributor. Both cited Glenn Beck as the reason for their departure. More notable was former Fox reporter David Shuster who said:

“At the time I started at Fox, I thought, this is a great news organization to let me be very aggressive with a sitting president of the United States (Bill Clinton). I started having issues when others in the organization would take my carefully scripted and nuanced reporting and pull out bits and pieces to support their agenda on their shows.”

“With the change of administration in Washington, I wanted to do the same kind of reporting, holding the (Bush) administration accountable, and that was not something that Fox was interested in doing.”

“Editorially, I had issues with story selection. But the bigger issue was that there wasn’t a tradition or track record of honoring journalistic integrity. I found some reporters at Fox would cut corners or steal information from other sources or in some cases, just make things up. Management would either look the other way or just wouldn’t care to take a closer look. I had serious issues with that.”

It’s time that more people with knowledge speak out about the damage that Fox News is doing every day to the practice of journalism. We need more people like Howell Raines who asked some pertinent questions to his colleagues about their appeasement of Fox. (Too bad he waited until after he had left the NYT). And we need more insiders like Matthew Freud, the husband of Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, who said that he was “…ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes.”

Fox News provides more proof every day that they are not a credible news enterprise. Today, as all hell was breaking loose in Egypt, Fox cut away to air their regularly scheduled broadcast of Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck!?! Is that what a news channel would do?

Now Glenn Beck Loves The New York Times

Posted by on February 10, 2011 at 12:04 pm. 1 Comments :

“We have always been at war with Eastasia…” George Orwell, 1984.

Never mind that Glenn Beck has long been a critic of the so-called liberal New York Times; set aside his frequent tirades against it as a mouthpiece for progressives and other “enemies” of freedom. Today is ValenTimes Day as Beck cites the Times as proof that his crackpot scenarios of a global Caliphate are true.

The source of Beck’s evidence is a Times story about young activists engaging in protests to remove Mubarak from power in Egypt. Beck quotes a single paragraph from the article that describes the efforts of a small coalition of protesters:

“In the process many have formed some unusual bonds that reflect the singularly nonideological character of the Egyptian youth revolt, which encompasses liberals, socialists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

This statement merely affirms that the movement to oust Mubarak is broad-based and includes many factions of disaffected young Egyptians. But it is embraced by Beck as confirmation of his inane theory that radical Islamists are working with secular leftists around the world to topple capitalism. The only thing this article asserts is that the people in the streets of Egypt have diverse reasons for being involved in the protests. The people interviewed by the Times were a tiny group of 15 young individuals who are not powerful national figures and will not participate in the formation of a new government. They are simply engaged citizens who share only the desire to bring democracy to Egypt. In fact, they said so explicitly in a paragraph that Beck neglected to cite:

“Most of the group are liberals or leftists, and all, including the Brotherhood members among them, say they aspire to a Western-style constitutional democracy where civic institutions are stronger than individuals.”

Once again Beck has cherry-picked the information that supports his delusions and ignored facts that dispute them. That’s standard operating procedure for Beck.

Side Note: As Beck was dissecting this article, news that Mubarak will step down hit the wires. Without hesitation, Beck launched into wild speculation of an imminent bloodbath, an Islamic takeover of Egypt, and the fall of more Middle Eastern nations to come. Like the rest of Beck’s predictions, these will be left floating in the ether after they fail to transpire.

I have long cast Beck as being closer to a televangelist than a political analyst. And like other supposed prophets whose promise of a Second Coming fail to occur, Beck will simply change his story or select another date. And his disciples will obediently follow.