Month: April 2013

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Constrained By The Constitution?

Posted by on April 4, 2013 at 3:11 pm. 9 Comments :

One of the favorite methods of misinforming the public employed by Fox Nation is to pinch a snippet of text from an Obama statement and misconstrue it to suggest a meaning it never actually had. One famous of example of this was the phony “You didn’t build that” controversy. Today Fox Nation adds to this legacy with this contrivance: “Obama Complains He’s Constrained By the Copnstitution.”

Fox Nation

As you might already suspect, that is not at all what happened. While discussing the concerns of gun worshiping radicals that new legislation was going to result in widespread confiscation of all weapons, Obama noted that their nightmares could not possibly come true because they are constitutionally prohibited. This is what he said:

“You hear some of these quotes: ‘I need a gun to protect myself from the government.’ ‘We can’t do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away. Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you. They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place. It’s a government of and by and for the people.”

Obama was plainly attempting to ease the irrational fears of a few conspiracy nuts. His remarks were not the least bit controversial and were not anything that hasn’t been expressed before. For instance, this guy:

There is nothing in Obama’s statement that could be plausibly interpreted as a “complaint.” Nevertheless, the Fox Nationalists (with help from Glenn Beck’s site which they used as their source) presented it that way while neglecting to publish the entire quote so their readers would have the full context. The only part they posted was their bastardized headline. But since that fit their mission to misconstrue everything the President says in a derogatory manner, they leaped at the opportunity.

More Fox Nation vs. Reality

If you’ve ever longed for a collection of documented examples of the dishonesty and hostility of Fox News presented with facts, insight, and humor, here it is: Fox Nation vs. Reality

Fox Nation

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Fox News Advocates Insulting Latinos While FoxNewsLatino Panders

Posted by on April 4, 2013 at 1:00 pm. 5 Comments :

There have been numerous incidents where Fox News posted articles that were overtly derogatory toward Latinos, presenting them as criminal, drug-abusing, freeloaders. At the same time their web site aimed at this market would publish an article on the same subject that was fair and accurate. The clear intent on the part of Fox is to pander to Latinos on the site where they segregate them, and insult them to the rest of the Fox audience of bigots and nativists. It’s a practice handed down from the highest echelons of Fox News. Yesterday Fox gave us another example of it:

Fox News

The Fox News Latino web site topped their article with a descriptive and straightforward headline regarding the decision by the Associated Press to refrain from using the term “illegal immigrant.”. The headline on Fox News, however, highlights a manufactured controversy that diverts from the actual news. The AP explained the new policy saying…

“The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that ‘illegal’ should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

Rather than simply reporting that perfectly reasonable clarification, Fox set out to find objections to the policy and subsequently reported that…

“The Associated Press is being accused of trying to influence the immigration debate following a decision to stop using the term “illegal immigrant” in its coverage — despite the fact it is still being used by U.S. government officials. […] [S]ome are wondering why the AP decided to nix the phrase when high-ranking government officials don’t seem to have a problem with it.”

It is unclear how changing the guidelines so that instead of saying “illegal immigrant” authors say something like “entered the country illegally,” will influence the immigration debate. But that isn’t the point. Because Fox is wedded to their bigotry (and that of their audience), they are insistent that terms regarded by the subjects as epithets be used unreservedly.

What’s more, Fox employs the old “some say” dodge to infer that the press ought to embrace the phrase because someone in government used it. So apparently Fox wants the press to parrot whatever people in the government say. That’s a peculiar stance considering they spend so much time faulting the press for parroting whatever people in the government say.

So in this one incident Fox has affirmed their racial prejudices and demonstrated their trademark hypocrisy. Nice work, Fox.

Cable News Viewers Are Getting Smarter – Dumping Fox News

Posted by on April 3, 2013 at 9:54 am. 7 Comments :

In the first quarter of 2013 the trends for cable news viewership are affirming past performance. And once again, Fox News is losing viewers at a faster rate than its competitors.

Cable News Ratings

While remaining on top overall, Fox lost nearly 20% of its total audience as compared to the same period last year. Even worse, in the critical advertising demographic of 18-54 year olds, Fox scared off a full third of their viewers. Only MSNBC managed to stay relatively flat, holding onto most of their audience.

On specific programs, Fox’s top rated show, The O’Reilly Factor, dropped by 26%. His primetime colleagues, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren, similarly flopped by 28% and 35% respectively. That contrasts sharply with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show that increased 5%, the only program in its time period to rise.

These numbers attest to the downward spiral that Fox has been experiencing since last year’s election. They recognized the serious disconnect between them and the public as they scrambled to make personnel changes and ditch some of their most alienating personalities. That overhaul saw the departure of Sarah Palin and Dick Morris, and it resulted in far fewer appearances by Karl Rove and Donald Trump.

Those adjustments do not seem to have turned the ebbing tide that saw Fox sink to its lowest point in twelve years in January. Which is not surprising since their window-dressing alterations simply exchanged their past losers with characters like Scott Brown, Erick Erickson, and Mark Levin, who seem unlikely to have a positive impact.

Furthermore, MSNBC’s steady performance is poised for future gains as demonstrated by the debut of All In with Chris Hayes. The new Hayes program improved on the numbers of the Ed Schultz Show that it replaced (+45% in the demo), and fell just 10,000 short of O’Reilly’s numbers. Also notable is that the younger demo for Hayes represents about a third of his total audience, while O’Reilly’s demo viewers are a mere 14% of his total. That certifies the strength MSNBC has with the next generation of news consumers, and the weariness of the long-in-the-tooth O’Reilly/Fox fans.

Hopefully this is evidence that America’s television viewers are evolving to become a more discriminating audience that values truth, integrity, and intelligent discourse. The Fox model of leading viewers around by the nose, misrepresenting the facts, and aiming for the shallowest, most inflammatory slapfights on the air, may be losing its appeal (except on the Fox Nation web site). That would be a positive step forward and proof that humans are advancing in the passage of time. Thanks, Darwin.

Breitbart Bear Hugs Fake Democrat Kirsten Powers Of Fox News

Posted by on April 2, 2013 at 10:00 am. 16 Comments :

This weekend the Fox News farce “News Watch” featured its customary panel of four slobbering ultra-rightists and one alleged Democrat. This week’s lefty lamb was Kirsten Powers, who did her job of pretending to be a liberal while denigrating everything liberals stand for.

In a segment about an NPR story on wasteful spending for disability programs, the discussion suddenly veered off course to attack Media Matters with the program’s host, Jon Scott, calling it “that liberal media watchdog group funded by George Soros.” Scott complained that Media Matters had “a problem” with NPR’s report because “it has become fodder for the right wing.”

Right off the bat it should be noted that Jon Scott, whom Fox inexplicably installed as host of a media analysis show, is the Republican Party’s man at Fox News. He was caught red-handed (by Media Matters) reading “news” copy that had been cribbed, word for word, from an RNC press release.

Scott also suffers from a malady that has infected most of Fox News that could be called “Soros Tourettes Syndrome.” Its primary symptom is the uncontrollable shouting out of the name George Soros whenever some organization is mentioned that he might have made a donation to in the past five decades. Given that he is a well known billionaire philanthropist, that’s a pretty long list. In this case. Soros did make a donation to Media Matters exactly one time two years ago, which hardly puts the organization in his pocket. What Scott failed to report was that NPR, whom Scott is alleging was attacked by the Soros-funded Media Matters, also received a hefty donation from Soros. In fact, it was nearly twice what he gave to Media Matters. So Scott seems to think that Soros is attacking one of his front groups with another.

Which brings us to fake Democrat Kirsten Powers. When asked about the NPR affair, she detoured to make this baseless observation: “I just want to say first of all, Media Matters is not a legitimate organization. And they do not exist to be a media watchdog group.” She provided no support whatsoever for her allegation, however, it was enough to attract the adoring gaze of Breitbart’s John Nolte. He posted a short item fawning over Powers for her “honesty” and gushed “I disagree with Powers on almost everything, but she’s good people.”

The assertion that BreitBrat John had substantive disagreements with Powers struck me as peculiar given her overt conservative leanings. So I looked up some previous references to her on the Breitbart web site for evidence of how starkly their opinions differed. This is what I found:

  • Liberal Kirsten Powers Fights Back Against Obama’s War on Fox News
  • Kirsten Powers: Obama Nominating Rice As Secretary Of State ‘Would Be His Undoing’
  • Kirsten Powers: Obama’s ‘You Didn’t Build That” Comments Offended Me Too
  • Kirsten Powers: What Did Obama Know and When Did He Know It?
  • Kirsten Powers: ‘Obviously, There’s A Bias Behind’ Cable News Not Covering Catholic Lawsuit Against Obama
  • Liberal Pundit Powers: Obama Removing Work Requirement From Welfare Huge Issue For Romney
  • Liberal Columnist: Double Standard In Media’s Attack On Rush

These were just the articles that referenced Powers in the headlines. There were many more plaudits for her on the site within various articles. So all of this admiration and accord raises an obvious question. When Nolte says that he disagrees with Powers on “almost everything,” what the hell is he talking about?

Kirsten Powers

Powers is plainly another right-wing plant in the Fox News garden. She consistently rips the President and other Democrats and rarely offers enthusiastic praise or defense for progressive policy or people. She is only on Fox representing the left because Fox couldn’t get Ann Coulter to do it believably. But Powers is in the same conservative bag as Coulter, even going so far as to outrageously accuse Obama of sympathizing with terrorists. No wonder BreitBrat John is so infatuated.

Fox News Hypocrisy Raises Its Ugly Head At Church

Posted by on April 1, 2013 at 2:42 pm. 8 Comments :

At some point you would think that the mind-control mavens at Fox News would stop and ask themselves if their overtly contradictory messages were going too far. You would, however, be wrong to have such a naive thought.

President Obama and his family spent Easter Sunday this year at their neighborhood St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. By most accounts it was a pleasant outing that celebrated the holiday in a conventional manner. So leave it to Fox News to abandon convention and find something nefarious with which to attack the President.

Fox News

It seems that Rev. Luis Leon offended the Fox martinets of virtue by including in his sermon a message that just happens to comply with the church’s beliefs:

Leon: “I hear all the time the expression ‘the good old days’. Well, the good old days, we forget they have been good for some, but they weren’t good for everybody. You can’t go back, you can’t live in the past. It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling people back. For Blacks to be back in the back of the bus; for women to be back in the kitchen; for gays to be in the closet; and for immigrants to be on their side of the border.”

Standing up for the oppressed in society is something that many churches regard as obedience to the teachings of their Savior. But to Fox News it is an affront to their Teabaggery and they simply will not have it. Consequently, they set out to disparage Rev. Leon, his church, and even the President (who had nothing to do with the sermon). On Fox’s America Live, Megyn Kelly hosted a panel that deemed the affair a “Controversial Easter Sermon,” and criticized the Rev. Leon for “blasting conservative Christians.” Over at the lie-riddled Fox Nation, it was characterized as “Another Obama Pastor Problem,” a stale reference reaching back to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Oddly enough, Fox had no problem when a conservative doctor named Ben Carson took to the podium at the National Prayer Breakfast and abandoned the spiritual theme of the event to rattle off a right-wing diatribe about taxes and debt. To the contrary, Fox glorified him as a hero of liberty and began laying the groundwork for his presidential campaign, and/or canonization. Fox described him as “Stealing the Show,” while Fox Nation gushed “Amazing Conservative Speech Upstages Obama At Prayer Breakfast.”

The divergence in presentation of these two events is more than hypocritical. The comments by Dr. Carson were totally inappropriate at a public religious event that for decades was respected as a gathering of harmony where partisanship was set aside. Carson breached that tradition to foist his views on the audience and was exalted for it by Fox News and other conservative outlets.

On the other hand, Rev. Leon was speaking in his own church to his own congregation whom he knows well. The Episcopal Church is regarded as a comparatively liberal denomination that advocates for gay rights and has ordained women and gays as ministers. Leon’s sermon was in keeping with the values of his church and parishioners.

Nevertheless, Fox News chose to exploit this private service to advance their political agenda. And by complaining about the content of the sermon they are effectively conceding that Leon was correct in criticizing “the captains of the religious right [who] are always calling people back.”

Well, as Jesus told Mary “You can’t go back.” And as much as Tea-publicans may pray for it, African-Americans are not going back to the back of the bus; women are not going back to the kitchen; and gays are not going back into the closets. As for immigrants, if they were all to go back there would be no one left here but Native Americans – a scenario that some may regard as preferable.

Pope Emeritus Benedict Joins Fox News: ‘Pope Culture’ To Debut In The Fall

Posted by on April 1, 2013 at 3:36 am. 6 Comments :

For the first time in 600 years there is a living former Pope. However, Pope Emeritus Benedict does not plan to retire quietly to the Vatican’s back porch and tend to gardening and meditation. He has other plans and they are leaking out along with a wisp of white smoke from the chimney atop 1211 Avenue of the Americas.

Fox News insiders report that a deal has been reached to bring Benedict to the Fox News family with a new program to air on Sunday mornings. Tentatively titled “Pope Culture,” sources say that it will premiere this fall and is slated to be a forum for many of the values issues that dominate the dialogue in the media and at dinner tables across America.

Pope Culture

Discussions to draft the papal free agent began shortly after the selection of Pope Francis, Benedict’s successor. Those meetings were helped along by some influential Vatican insiders with media connections. Greg Burke, the current Senior Communications Adviser in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, was previously the Fox News correspondent covering the Vatican, a position he held for ten years. Burke, a member of the ultra-conservative Catholic prelate Opus Dei, left Fox in the summer of 2012 to head up the Vatican’s PR efforts to quell the uproar over a series of embarrassing scandals.

Burke was instrumental in introducing Benedict to Fox CEO Roger Ailes who was immediately intrigued by the prospect of signing a popular figure in the world of religion with international name recognition. Ailes was said to be looking for a new hot property to bolster a stale line-up that was recently roiled by controversy and incompetence. This year he had to jettison or bench familiar Fox faces like Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, and Dick Morris, due to their humiliating failures as commentators and analysts. Since God has anointed Benedict as infallible, Ailes can relax and won’t have to worry about the sort of mistakes that caused his network to suffer historic declines in ratings and credibility.

Sources inside Fox, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter, said that contract negotiations included some unique concessions. The show would not be modeled after the other Sunday news programs that feature sometimes raucous debates. Benedict insisted that his program be a more deliberative hour interspersed with inspirational segments and profiles of charitable organizations and volunteer opportunities. The theme of promoting “service” was said to have been brought up repeatedly by Benedict’s representatives. They briefly encountered some resistance at Fox by hardliners who regard such talk as coddling freeloaders who refuse to accept personal responsibility. In the end, Benedict prevailed by agreeing that the type of service that he advocated was of the private variety and not that provided by bloated government agencies. That was enough to win over the Fox holdouts.

Benedict further requested and received assurances that he would have editorial control and would not be subject to either fairness or balance with regard to his topics or guests, a demand Ailes had no problem with since he never took that seriously anyway. There is also a provision for Fox to build a TV studio at Benedict’s residence which, sources say, will be accomplished on the cheap by repossessing the one they built for Sarah Palin at her home in Wasilla, Alaska. As of this writing there is no confirmation of rumors regarding the brown M&Ms.

When Benedict arrives at Fox in the fall he will be joining a roster already heavily weighted with Roman-Catholics, including: Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier, Bill Hemmer, Brian Kilmeade, Andrew Napolitano, Jeanine Pirro, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Kucinich, and the in-house priest, Father Jonathan Morris. Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Fox News parent News Corp was himself inducted into the “Knights of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great” by Pope John Paul II.

Pray for Fox NewsSo Benedict ought to feel right at home in the midst of a College of (Media) Cardinals. His prior experience as spokesman for a vast assembly of true believers is the ideal preparation for a career as a Fox minister. Fox viewers exhibit a fierce loyalty that is consistent with the behavior of religious devotees and cults. They voluntarily separate themselves from the heresy of other news sources that might infect their pious souls. They make a point of disassociating with apostates and blasphemers who might divert them from the true path. Cult leaders demand strict obedience, and that is precisely what Fox News gets from their disciples. They even have an adjunct site, Fox Nation [see Fox Nation vs. Reality], that implores its adherents to “Join Us” with the promise that they will never be alone – a promise that is familiar to churchgoers.

Fox Nation - Join

The pairing of Fox and Benedict appears to be almost preordained. They have striking similarities in their principles and agendas. And at the root of their shared mission is the fact that they are both trying to sell stories on faith to ill-informed people who are motivated by fear. This relationship has the potential to be beneficial for everyone involved and is being greeted with unanimous approval from the Fox hierarchy. Oh Happy Day.