Yesterday was another election day in this seemingly never-ending primary season. And, true to its nature, Fox Nation has managed to mangle reporting of what took place. Here is the headline they went with this morning: “Democrats Pick Jailed Felon Over Obama.”
There are only two reasons that Fox would run with this story: 1) It makes Obama look bad. 2) They had funny pictures of Obama and a pony-tailed felon. The decision to publish this obviously had nothing to do with truthful reporting because, contrary to the sensationalistic headline, the Democrats did not pick a jailed felon over Obama. The felon lost. Nevertheless, Fox posted this story at the top of their web page indicating that they considered it more important than any other election news, such as the defeat of veteran senator Dick Lugar in Indiana and the victory for homophobes in North Carolina.
More to the point, however, the Fox Nationalists failed to provide any context for this item. They never mentioned that in West Virginia Independents are permitted to vote in any primary. What’s more, all voters are permitted to declare and/or change their party affiliation in the voting booth. Consequently, there is a pretty good chance that the votes for the felon were actually made by Republicans seeking to cause mischief. Since Obama was not being challenged by any serious candidate, the turnout for Democrats was probably quite low. And since Romney’s opponents had all quit, GOP voters could safely cast their votes for a joker on the Democratic ballot.
In any case, the tendency for some portion of West Virginians to align themselves with a white criminal over the President says more about them than it does about Obama. And a closer look at the felon reveals a decidedly Republican mindset. His FEC filings resemble the mission statements of Tea Partiers that rant about gun rights and the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. That affirms the likelihood that his voters are predominantly right-wingers.
Another bit of context that was left out is that 30% of Republicans voted against Romney in the GOP primary. That means that 30% of West Virginian GOP voters preferred people who were not even in the race to their presumptive nominee. And more West Virginians overall cast ballots for Obama (70k) than for Romney (54k). But don’t expect to hear any of this from Fox News.
Republicans picked an idiot over Lugar in Indiana.
True, but the good news is that Lugar would have been a shoe-in in November. Mourdock is running neck-and-neck with Democrat Joe Donnelly. This opens up the possibility of taking a seat from the GOP that wasn’t otherwise possible.
Nice try. Maybe if you actually spent a few minutes researching (conducting journalism) you would have seen its not just ‘Fox Nation’ who published these facts. Also MSNBC has a headline “with 20-pointmargins-and a big showing by a jailed felon…Democrat voters send a clear message” . Not to mention the Washington post as well. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/why-felon-keith-judd-did-so-well-against-obama-in-west-virginia/2012/05/09/gIQA7GwtCU_blog.html
Of course we all know how conservative they are over MSNBC.
If your point is that other media outlets also posted stupid articles on this subject, I’m happy to concede that. But how does that contradict anything I wrote? I never said that it was just Fox Nation that reported this.
However, for the record, Fox Nation is the only one who put the article at the top of their home page.
If nothing else, it shows again that you really have no desire to call out any other News media than Fox News (ie conservative media). If you cared so much about the state of our news media today, you would broaden your criticisms to all news media that take a biased approach.
Even your criticism of CNN centers around them hiring some former Fox News person.
Of course this isn’t really about biased news, it’s about conservative news only and how to silence it.
Boy, I can’t get anything past you, Stevo. You actually figured out that I am a critic of conservative news (which I think is almost all of it). Nice work, Einstein.
If you’re looking for criticism of liberal news then you’re on the wrong site. That’s not what I do, and this is my web site where I get to express myself. Why don’t you go over to NewsBusters and bug them about why they never criticize conservatives or Fox? And leave me alone. I wouldn’t mind you being here but you never engage in intelligent discourse, so I find you boring.
and, Mark, don’t forget about the part in Steve’s comment insisting that you are TOO trying to suppress free speech.
Yeah, I must have gotten too bored before I got down that far in his comment.
“…and leave me alone…”
“Whaaah! Those conservatives are picking on me!”
Yeah, I’m crying. I admit it. But it’s mainly because I’d like to have an intelligent discussion but I’m plagued with dimwits like you who can’t seem to form a coherent thought.
nah, that’s not what it shows.
Since when has Mark tried to “silence” conservative news? There is a difference between pointing out inconsistencies, lies, hypocrisy and fallacies and trying to censor that point of view.
Did the other new outlets falsely (as in lying) imply that the felon “won” the election? And did the Fox Nationalists bother to mention that West Virginia has an open primary, allowing Republicans to vote in the primary and, in effect, stuff the ballot box for the opponent?