Day: 7/8/2012

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

Posted by on July 8, 2012 at 8:38 pm. NO Comments :

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.

Fox News Latino

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.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Happy DNC Chair

Posted by on July 8, 2012 at 4:29 pm. 2 Comments :

On today’s Fox News Sunday, fill-in host John Roberts appeared to be filling in for Mitt Romney’s press secretary. Roberts conducted an interview with Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz that was more debate than journalism. He countered her remarks as if he were making the case for Romney rather than merely asking challenging questions. Some of his reactions to her comments were not even questions at all, but rebuttals.

But that doesn’t even compare to how Fox Nation mangled their presentation of the interview. The Fox Nationalists posted a 32 second clip of the segment with the headline: “DNC Chair “Happy” With 8.2% Unemployment.”

Fox Nation

There was only one small problem with that characterization. It is contrary to the truth in every aspect. Even worse, the video that Fox Nation posted to support their headline proves that the headline is a lie. Here is the transcript of the segment:

Wasserman-Schultz: I’m pretty happy about 28 straight months of job growth in the private sector.
Roberts: But are you happy about 80,000 jobs last month, 69 the month before that? Are you happy with those numbers?
Wasserman-Schultz: Like I’ve said, and President Obama has said, we need to continue to improve, and we need to do more, and we need to work together.

Wasserman-Shultz never said that she was happy with the unemployment rate. In fact, she wasn’t even asked about it. She did say that she was happy with job growth, which has produced over 4 million jobs in the past two years, but reiterated her position that it wasn’t enough and that more needs to done. At no time in the entire segment did she say that she was happy with the 8.2% unemployment rate.

Fox Nation is so wedded to their mission of dishonesty that they will even post videos that disprove their own lies. Now that’s commitment.

Bonus Item: Also appearing on Fox News Sunday was RNC Chair Reince Priebus (whose name spells “RNC PR BS” if you remove the vowels). In a discussion about Romney’s record of eliminating American jobs and replacing them with labor in foreign countries, Priebus dropped what he must have thought was a clever soundbite: “The only job we’re going to outsource is Obama’s.”

So Priebus is suggesting that the Republican Party is planning to nominate a president based in India or China or some other off-shore location. That would fit perfectly with the GOP agenda of free market capitalism. I bet you could get someone to serve as president much cheaper by going off-shore. But where would that leave Romney? I suppose he could join his bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and then qualify as an outsourced candidate.