More Proof That No One Pays Attention To Fox News

Posted by on May 5, 2010 at 12:20 am. 1 Comments :

For several years now, Fox News has been trying to vilify the word “progressive” by using it disparagingly and associating it with people or policies they regard negatively.

It started with Bill O’Reilly making repeated references to what he called secular progressives. These were the folks he accused of waging a war on Christmas and weakening family values. They are the reason he became a Culture Warrior.

More recently, Glenn Beck has mounted a full-on assault against progressives, whom he has called a cancer on America. Virtually every episode of his Acute Paranoia Revue makes reference to one or another of his imaginary progressive bogeymen – from the classics like Woodrow Wilson, to the modern like SEIU and, of course, President Obama himself.

Pew WordsDespite all the firepower that Fox has devoted to this progressive bashing, America isn’t buying it. The Pew Research Center just released a study that asked respondents to say whether they had a positive or negative view of a variety of terms. About two thirds (68%) said that they have a positive reaction to the term “progressive.” That’s 16 percentage points higher than those who reacted positively to “capitalism.” Even a majority of Republicans (56%) have a positive impression of the curse of progress.

I wonder what Beck and O’Reilly would say if they were honest enough to even acknowledge that the survey exists. It would also be interesting to hear their response to the fact that 29% of Americans view “socialism” positively. On the not-particularly-surprising scale, 36% of Republican men like militias. That’s the highest favorable of any of the groups surveyed. It compares to just 21% of all respondents.

The bottom line is that Fox News may be exhausting themselves in their campaign to denigrate progressives and liberals and Democrats, but they are failing miserably as the nation proves to be smarter than the idiots at Fox had assumed. This is just their latest failure having previously been unable to thwart Democrats from taking control of Congress, winning the presidency, or passing health reform. So while they may make a lot of noise as they pump their propaganda into the atmosphere, they aren’t changing any minds. It’s rather comforting to know that instead of being effective and persuasive, they are just being annoying as hell. I can live with that.

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Glenn Beck Attacks Mother’s Day And Teddy Bears

Posted by on May 3, 2010 at 4:43 pm. 2 Comments :

I have long anticipated the mental implosion of Glenn Beck. He is an obviously disturbed individual who seems to be constantly on the brink of a psychological collapse. But I always thought it would come in the form of an Apocalyptic dissent into a religio-political abyss. Instead, it came as he was supposed to be speaking on behalf of a sponsor for his radio show. In this ad for the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, Beck tells his listeners that he hates Mother’s Day and that it was a scam hatched by Woodrow Wilson. Check it out:

    Transcript: Our sponsor this half hour is the Vermont Teddy Bear Co. Vermont Teddy Bear is getting ready for Mother’s Day weekend. Can you believe Mother’s Day week? By the way, Sarah and I were talking on Saturday and she didn’t believe me, or it was on Friday, and she didn’t believe me. And I said, Mother’s Day, it’s a scam. It’s a big business scam. And I said, I bet it was started by Woodrow Wilson.

That was the intro to the spot for Vermont Teddy Bears. They must be pleased with how their ad dollars are being spent. In the radio business, advertisers pay extra for on air testimonials by the program host. Vermont Teddy Bear is sure getting their money’s worth.

Let’s face it…..The real reason Beck went off on this Mother’s Day sponsor is that these teddy bears come from the People’s Republic of Vermont. Beck considers Vermont a socialist mecca that should be cast out of the United States. It is, after all, the home state of the socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. And if that’s not bad enough, the teddy bear got it’s name from President Teddy Roosevelt. Beck thinks that Roosevelt and Wilson are progressives and that progressives are a cancer on America.

Glenn Beck Mothers Day Scam

These subversive plush toys have to be taught a lesson. We can no longer sit by idly while they debase our mothers and indoctrinate our children with their fluffy Marxist plots. Thank God Beck is on alert to protect us from the evil of stuffed animals and to warn us of the dastardly schemes of “big businesses” like the International Vermont Teddy Bear Syndicate that controls the world economy. As long as he’s keeping watch, we don’t have to worry that small voices like his and the tiny media shop he works for, Fox News, will fade away.


Phil Griffin Of MSNBC ♥’s Roger Ailes Of Fox News

Posted by on May 3, 2010 at 12:26 pm. 4 Comments :

Roger AilesPhil Griffin, president of MSNBC, was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune and provided an outstanding example of the sort of clueless, illogical, journalistic myopia that is rotting away the American press. When asked about his rival Roger Ailes at Fox News, he gave an almost fawning response that makes one wonder if they are really rivals at all.

“He’s changed media. Everybody does news differently because Roger’s changed the world. Roger early on figured it out and was brilliant.”

Indeed. Roger Ailes changed media – for the worse! His “brilliant” idea was to transform the news into a rancorous, talk-radio style, shoutfest that manufactured conflict and spun every story as far to the right as their ideological wheel could turn. The inspiration behind Fox’s brand loyalty is talk-radio, soap operas, and tabloid news vendors like the National Enquirer, a pseudo-news enterprise that is deliberately dishonest, but enjoys the rabid devotion of an undiscerning audience that is drawn to gossip, drama, and salaciousness. Fox is an entertainment company, not a news provider, as they have said themselves:

Roger Ailes: I’m not in politics, I’m in ratings

Rupert Murdoch: I’m not averse to high ratings.

Glenn Beck: I could give a flying crap about the political process. […] We’re an entertainment company.

If Griffin really believes that his mission is to emulate Fox from the opposite end of the political spectrum, he will only succeed in further debasing the media. In addition, he will miss the opportunity to effectively compete in the cable news marketplace. He needs to realize that, not being a news network, Fox is no more his competition than is Nickelodeon (which I’ve said before is a better source than Fox for news and plays to a smarter audience).

Griffin is not the only news professional to misread the market. Almost every executive and analyst has concluded that Fox’s ratings dominance is a function of ideology. But that is a shallow analysis that fails to address the real problem. People need to stop thinking of Fox as a network of conservatives that you counter with a network of liberals. The reality is that Fox is a network of liars that you counter with a network of truth tellers.

This approach doesn’t imply partisanship to anything other than facts. It also does not swear a blind allegiance to the thoroughly misconstrued concept of balance. A responsible journalist is under no obligation to balance a set of facts with a litany of lies just so that some other perspective is represented. Furthermore, it doesn’t mean you need to resign yourself to a bland presentation of the events of the day. Important things are going on. No one can dismiss the inherent drama that is played out in the public debates over health care or immigration or Wall Street corruption. It doesn’t need to be contrived. It just needs to be told compellingly and honestly. I am convinced that there are more people in the TV audience who want useful, factual information, than there are people who want sobbing rodeo clowns drawing their divinely inspired delusions on blackboards.

If Griffin were to apply basic fundamentals of entertainment to a more journalistically ethical approach he could attract a much larger and more loyal audience. He needs to give news consumers a little more credit for being discriminating, skeptical, curious, and capable of understanding the issues that bear directly on their lives. The last thing we need is more of the cheapening of journalism that Ailes has proffered. And we certainly should not be honoring him for the damage he has already done.


Barack Obama’s Message To Glenn Beck And Rush Limbaugh Fans

Posted by on May 1, 2010 at 3:12 pm. 16 Comments :

President Obama gave the commencement speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor today. In the course of his remarks he addressed “today’s poisonous political climate” and his prescription for “a vibrant and thriving news business.” It was a refreshing alternative to the adversarial ravings that dominate contemporary media. The President was characteristically fair and balanced. He began by relating his experience with mail he received from a kindergarten class in Virginia:

“The student asked, ‘Are people being nice?’ Well, if you turn on the news today – particularly one of the cable channels – you can see why even a kindergartner would ask this question. We’ve got politicians calling each other all sorts of unflattering names. Pundits and talking heads shout at each other. The media tends to play up every hint of conflict, because it makes for a sexier story – which means anyone interested in getting coverage feels compelled to make the most outrageous comments.”

I have nothing to add to that. The President’s remarks perfectly frame a serious deficiency in today’s press. Here are some more excerpts that speak to some of the most divisive elements of the media, and particularly the cable news sector that is so riven with rancor and falsehoods.

“Throwing around phrases like ‘socialist’ and ‘Soviet-style takeover’ ‘fascist’ and ‘right-wing nut’ may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian, and even murderous regimes.”

“…this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning – since after all, why should we listen to a ‘fascist’ or ‘socialist’ or ‘right wing nut?’ It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate that we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.”

On this point, Obama may need to reflect on what he considers a “bridgeable difference.” The people calling him a fascist and a socialist are not behaving rationally and have no intention of hashing things out. They are devoted to disseminating their brand of dishonest extremism and are well aware of the potentially violent signals they are sending. This is a blind spot for the President who still believes that he can orchestrate a post-partisan political environment. As he continues he returns to more solid footing and unveils his advice for smoothing America’s ruffled feathers.

“Today’s twenty-four seven echo chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before.”

“Still, if you’re someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website.”

The interesting thing about that last quote is that while the President was able to make a contrasting comparison newspaper to newspaper (New York Times to Wall Street Journal), he was unable to do the same for the radio/TV personalities, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. He had to resort to naming a web site (Huffington Post) for contrast. That illustrates a fundamental ideological imbalance in broadcast media.

In addition to that imbalance, it is also notable that readers of the New York Times are far more likely to have a broader and more diverse range of news sources than Beck and Limbaugh fans. So the president’s advice to expand one’s range of news sources is less necessary for liberals because they probably already have exposure to conservative media. And the advice is less effective for conservatives because they aren’t likely to step out of their right-wing news bubble anyway. There was ample evidence of that in a recent study that showed that 63% of Tea Baggers rely on Fox News as their primary news source, compared to 23% of the population at large. That’s a pretty narrow scope of vision. By the way, Fox News, as it often does, chose not to broadcast Obama’s speech.

Finally, Obama touched on one of the aspects of the hostility in public debate that has long been a big concern for me:

“I understand that one effect of today’s poisonous political climate is to push people away from participation in public life. […] That’s when power is abused. That’s when the most extreme voices in our society fill the void that we leave. That’s when powerful interests and their lobbyists are most able to buy access and influence in the corridors of Washington.”

What Obama left out is that that’s one of the intentions of poisoning the political climate. Most people think that that sort of negativity is just an attempt to shape an argument, albeit a clumsy and distasteful attempt. But in reality the purpose is to turn people off and dissuade them from participating. From a strategic standpoint you can have greater influence (at less cost) if you can shrink the pool of people you are trying to manipulate. Remember that the next time you see a negative campaign ad.


The Things Rupert Murdoch Believes (Courtesy Of Glenn Beck)

Posted by on April 30, 2010 at 12:51 pm. 6 Comments :

The Mad BeckOn yesterday’s episode of Glenn Beck’s Acute Paranoia Revue, Beck wandered through his usual fairy wonderland of conspiracies against America and himself. He introduced his latest panic alert that he portrayed as a mobster-like scheme to take over the world somehow with carbon emissions trading. It’s a plot so insidious and covert that Beck never actually explained how it worked. He just spent an hour moving around pictures of people he doesn’t like on his blackboard and drawing arrows to the words Crime, Inc.

In the course of this sermon, Beck made an earth shattering admission saying, “I’m not the smartest guy in the world.” And if that wasn’t enough to alter the course of the 21st century, he also disclosed something that reflects more directly on his boss, Rupert Murdoch, and the Fox News network, than anything he’s said previously:

BECK: Who owns this network? Rupert Murdoch. Do you know how much money Rupert Murdoch is … you know he’s got all these things going on. Do you think he’s going to let a guy at five o’clock say a bunch of stuff, put this together, it’s completely wrong, and stay on the network? Do you think he became a billionaire because he’s stupid? No, so that’s not it. Because Fox couldn’t allow me to say things that were wrong.

First of all, let’s disabuse ourselves of the lunacy that Fox doesn’t allow their hosts to say things that are wrong. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re required to contractually. But the astonishing part of Beck’s assertion that whatever he says must be true or Murdoch wouldn’t let him say it, is that it implies an endorsement by Murdoch of EVERYTHING he says.

If Murdoch doesn’t disassociate himself with these remarks, then he cannot possibly claim to be unaligned with Beck’s dementia. He cannot dismiss what Beck says as “just his own opinion.” From now on, the fact that Murdoch continues to employ Beck is Murdoch’s personal certification of, and agreement with, Beck’s crackpottery. It is now officially Murdoch’s crackpottery. So let’s take a look at the some of the things that Murdoch must believe or he would have fired Beck:

  • President Obama is a racist with a deep-seated hatred for white people.
  • It is the eve of destruction in America.
  • The climate cult is teaching your children that the earth is God.
  • The current administration is full of nazis, socialists, communists, Marxists, and Maoists.
  • Katrina victims are scumbags.
  • Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution.
  • The founding of the United States, and the Constitution, were divinely inspired.
  • If your church preaches social justice you must run from it as fast as you can.
  • If we don’t face the truth right now, we’ll be dead in five years; this country can’t survive.
  • The passage of the health care bill marks the end of prosperity in America forever.
  • There are traitors in this government who are deliberately trying to destroy it.
  • The only hope left for America is for Osama Bin Laden to attack again.

Remember, these are things that Murdoch believes because, if he didn’t, he would have taken Beck off the air. And this doesn’t even touch on Murdoch’s beliefs that can be assumed by his not having ditched Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Gretchen Carlson, Dick Morris, Neil Cavuto, and Sarah Palin. And because Murdoch is fully in support of the Insane Clown Posse he employs, it is a reflection on everything his “news” organization produces, including the Wall Street Journal. He is reigning over a diseased media empire that is ravaged with bias and falsehoods. He is the archetypical unscrupulous press baron. Which makes this pronouncement by Beck all the more intriguing:

“I don’t know what happened to our media. What are you, a bunch of cowards? Is that what you are?”

I almost expected Beck to start flapping his arms, make clucking sounds, and dare the media to cross a line that he drew with his foot. In the following sentence, however, Beck confessed that it is he who is afraid – of union thugs, or Obama’s henchmen, who must be lying in wait for him in some dark alley. Beck has a long history of suggesting that his adversaries are plotting his demise. Persecution is just another symptom of his Messianic complex.

But his question is actually a good one, and one I’ve asked many times. It is remarkable to me that the non-Fox media in America permits Fox to be so overtly dishonest and to mercilessly criticize them without bothering to fight back. Clearly they are afraid, but of what? They have as much (more actually) media spectrum as Fox to get a story out. And they have far more viewers and readers in aggregate. For Fox to get away with bullying them is like Pepsi getting stared down by Harley’s Sarsaparilla and Snuff. So I’ll ask the media the same question: What are you, a bunch of cowards?


Sarah Palin And Glenn Beck Tarnish The Time 100

Posted by on April 29, 2010 at 1:31 pm. 6 Comments :

Time Magazine once again brings us their list of the 100 most influential people of the year. And once again they include some sour notes that evoke a tortured combination of laughter and groans. By naming Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck as “most influential” Time is courageously cutting against the grain. After all, Palin received the Lie of the Year award from Politifact last year. And Beck was Media Matters’ Misinformer of the Year. But perhaps the funniest part of this year’s worst honorees is the people selected to honor them.

Sarah Palin, number nine on the list, received an adoring tribute from the Motor City Jackass, Ted Nugent. Palin must be so proud to be praised by the has-been rocker whose last album featured a woman in bondage, on a platter like a pig, with a hand grenade stuck in her mouth. Also, during the last presidential campaign Nugent said this while brandishing a couple of assault weapons:

Nugent: I was in Chicago last week I said, “Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these, you punk?” Obama, he’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns. Let’s hear it for them. I was in New York and I said, “Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch.” Since I’m in California, I’m gonna find Barbara Boxer she might wanna suck on my machine guns. Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore.

Ted Nugent was obviously the best qualified person to represent the political philosophy of Palin, especially her commitment to equal rights and respect for women. In his commentary he even had the guts to praise Palin for her “herculean work ethic,” by which he must mean her decision to quit halfway through the gubernatorial post to which she was elected so that she could stuff her pockets full of cash.

Glenn Beck got an even more fitting tribute from an even bigger jackass – Sarah Palin. Beck was lauded by Palin as a “history buff,” and “America’s professor of common sense.” That’s mighty high praise coming from someone who couldn’t cite a single magazine that she read, and who thinks that the Constitution gives the vice-president authority over the Senate.

“Glenn’s like the high school government teacher so many wish they’d had, charting and connecting ideas with chalk-dusted fingers – kicking it old school – instead of becoming just another talking-heads show host.”

Excuse me, Sarah. But Glenn Beck IS just another talking-heads show host. What exactly do you think he does for a living? And I don’t know anyone who wishes they had Beck as high school government teacher. Certainly not anyone who was actually interested in learning. There may have been some who thought he would be an easy grader since he wouldn’t have known any of the correct answers himself. And if his fingers were dusted with anything, it would have been cocaine.

Nevertheless, Time has seen fit to honor both Palin and Beck. It’s hard to see what Time regards as influential when both of these people have higher unfavorable ratings than favorable, and most of the country/world pays them no attention at all. Even a majority of Republicans think that Palin is unqualified to be president and Fox News left Beck off of their new ad promoting the network as “The Most Powerful Name In News.”

But that’s Time Magazine and the liberal media for ya.

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Fox News Ratings Dive: American IQ Rebounds

Posted by on April 28, 2010 at 12:34 pm. 32 Comments :

Fox News Tea BagThe latest quarterly Nielsen ratings reveal a promising trend in cable news viewership. This has been a challenging time for all media and, while cable has been relatively stable, it has not been immune from a general advertising slump and softening audience.

While all three of the major cable news networks suffered primetime declines, MSNBC held its audience best, losing only 6% in the past quarter. By comparison Fox News dropped three times as much (-19%), and CNN collapsed (-40%).

CNN’s woes are not particularly surprising. They have utterly failed to define themselves in this era of advocacy journalism. Their approach to a middleground, news-centric broadcast is admirable, but poorly implemented. If they were truly interested in focusing on straight news, they would abandon the pretense of balancing every story on the basis of partisanship and instead balance it on the basis of truth. In other words, stop booking liars just to have a counter-argument. If one guest says the moon is a barren, rocky satellite, you do not need an opposing guest to assert that it’s lime Jello. Or if you do host the lime Jello spokesman, at least offer some post-debate analysis that makes it clear that the Jello argument is known to be false.

MSNBC has benefited in an ironic way by not having had a meteoric rise. Their numbers have been depressed by poor cable coverage and placement on premium tiers. As a result, they have had less distance to fall. Their performance appears to be better on a relative basis simply by maintaining a steady course.

More surprising is the precipitous drop at Fox News. They have been enjoying a surge in the past few years, even when their competition was hurting. For them to get hit so hard this quarter is a significant development. Fox has relied upon a fierce sense of loyalty on the part of their viewers to prop up their ratings. I have described it as something of cult (the Cult of Foxonality) wherein Fox viewers are actually more devoted to the network than to any political party of philosophy. The ratings this quarter suggest that the hold that Fox has had on its audience is weakening.

As evidence of Fox’s diminishing influence, take a look at their biggest star, Glenn Beck. He has lost fully one third of his audience since the beginning of the year. Apparently people are tiring of his redundant, hyperbolic screeds pronouncing that half of the Obama administration are communists and the other half are Satanists. He may also have lost viewers when he called the President a racist and when he insulted Christians by warning them to flee their church if it practiced social justice.

Beck has other problems as well. He has undoubtedly been hurt by an advertiser boycott that has seen a couple of hundred advertisers swear off his program. In the UK he is airing with no advertisers at all. In this environment, how long can Fox News justify keeping him on the schedule? They waved off the ad boycott by bragging about his ratings. With neither ads nor viewers, the only thing they have left is an unpopular clown act that is descending further into televangelism with every episode.

The dilemma for Fox News is complicated. From the start they have been on a mission to advance the conservative philosophy of their owner, Rupert Murdoch, and his henchman, Roger Ailes. Unfortunately for them, they have failed miserably in that regard. They threw everything they had at the Democrats and still lost control of Congress in 2006, lost the White House in 2008, and lost the health care debate in 2010. Despite their ratings dominance they have not been able to convert it to their electoral advantage. What happens when their ratings dominance is gone?

The battle within the Fox executive suites will be one that pits the accountants against the ideologues. And let’s face it, in the rarefied air of Fox News, the accountants are toast. My money is on Fox News doubling down and expanding their partisan rhetoric. That’s what they’ve done in the past. In the months leading up to and following the Obama victory in 2008, Fox didn’t bother to recognize a national trend. Instead, they fortified their conservative flank by signing new long-term contracts with Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity. They axed Hannity’s foil, Alan Colmes. They hired reinforcements like Beck, Mike Huckabee, Karl Rove, Dana Perino, Judith Miller, and Sarah Palin. They are not the sort of competitors that back down in the face of adversity – or reason.

If Fox does escalate the wingnut war, they are making a poor bet. They already own the franchise on rightist zealots and are unlikely to gain viewers in that demographic. More likely they can expect to see their ratings decline further. Americans are sick of the divisive ravings of partisan shills who have to resort to making things up in order to sway the debate.

The good news is that since the audience for Fox News has declined, the collective IQ of the country has risen. OK, I made that up, but it seems entirely plausible. Fox News viewers have been shown to be notably less informed, or more misinformed, than the viewers of other networks or the public at large. So it stands to reason that the fewer people infected with Fox lies, the more intelligent we are as a nation. And going forward that can only be a boon to the development of public policy and to democracy itself.


Fox News (Lack Of) Journalistic Standards In Practice

Posted by on April 27, 2010 at 1:02 pm. 2 Comments :

This morning on Fox News a report was broadcast revealing new revelations about the costs of the recently passed health care bill. Anchor Megyn Kelly introduced the story with obvious shock and disdain for what she characterized as an attempt to keep information secret from Congress and the public.

The thrust of this alleged scoop was that the Department of Health and Human Services had authored a report that showed the costs of health care rising as a result of the new legislation. But the shocking part was the allegation that the report was suppressed by HHS and/or the White House prior to the vote in Congress.

Kelly spent almost seven minutes discussing this would-be scandal with Fox’s chief news anchor, Bret Baier, not some opinion show host like Sean Hannity. That’s seven minutes of valuable airtime devoted to a story that was picked up from the uber-conservative American Spectator, authored by someone who calls himself “the Prowler,” and backed up by a single anonymous source. And all of this was discussed after conceding that the story was unconfirmed.

Well, half an hour later, Kelly brings Baier back for a followup and guess what? The story was completely false. The HHS denied it and provided a timeline to document the course of events.

This perfectly illustrates the inner workings of Fox News and their standards for journalism. They will not hesitate to disseminate suspect information that is not backed up in the way that a responsible press operation would consider routine. Once their dubious report is released into the media atmosphere it is almost impossible to retrieve. There will have been numerous regurgitations on blogs and other Internet news sites. Emails will have started bouncing around the web even before Kelly finished the first bogus report. And by the time the truth is revealed, the lies are a part of the common knowledge in Wingnutia.

Rather than wait until a story has been checked out and confirmed, Fox News just lets it fly and crosses their fingers. Then when the facts become apparent they laugh it off or even portray it as an asset. This is what Kelly did after Baier crushed the HHS story. She proudly told her audience that “you saw it all unfold live, right here.” Indeed we did. We saw the poorly sourced, untrue accusations of a right-wing muckraker broadcast to millions over the air as if it were news. Then, if we were still tuned in, we saw the retraction of a story that was never fit to be aired in the first place.

Nice work Fox.


Will Rupert Murdoch Decide The Outcome Of The Election?

Posted by on April 26, 2010 at 12:34 pm. 2 Comments :

The American media stands to learn something from the British. The UK is presently approaching what may be an historic election day. Their two dominant parties, the conservative Tories and the supposedly liberal Labour Party, are being seriously threatened by the surging Liberal Democrats. The possibility exists that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg could be the next Prime Minister in a coalition government. Needless to say, this is causing apoplexy within the establishment parties.

Independent on MurdochConcurrent with the political upheaval is an intriguing drama playing out in the press. It began with The Independent publishing a special election issue whose headline called out their competition by name, something that media in the UK (and the US) rarely do. That touched a nerve at News Corp, whose top executives, James Murdoch (Rupert’s son and likely successor) and Rebekah Brooks, stormed the offices of The Independent and launched a profanity-laced rant at the editor:

“What the fuck are you playing at?” Murdoch asked Independent editor Simon Kelner. Murdoch accused Kelner of insulting his father’s reputation with an advertising campaign that declared: “Rupert Murdoch won’t decide this election. You will.”

I’m not really sure what the Murdoch scion was so upset about. Was it that The Independent implied that Murdoch’s intention was to influence the election? If so, then why did Murdoch actually brag about doing so after the election in 1992 when his newspaper blasted the headline, “It’s the Sun wot won it?” Or was Jimmy upset that The Independent insulted daddy’s virility by saying that he would not have any impact over the election?

The video makes a salient and troubling point that Murdoch controls 40% of the press in Britain and that he isn’t shy about using it to advance his agenda. That’s a position that many Brits have held for years, but it isn’t often that members of the media class raise objections to such monopolistic domination within their ranks.

It doesn’t take much imagination to extend the story arc of this melodrama to the U.S. Rupert Murdoch’s grip on American media is at least as strangulating. And he, along with his network general Roger Ailes, blatantly stain their so-called news coverage with a bright red Republican hue. They feature GOP candidates repeatedly, providing them with valuable free airtime. Their anchors and contributors brazenly campaign, on the air and off, for Republican politicians and policies. And they castigate their political enemies as “despicable,” “socialist,” and even “treasonous.”

So the question is, how will the non-Fox media in this country respond? Will they challenge Fox’s unrelenting biases? Will they report that it exists? Would they ever imagine publishing a simple and reasonable question like “Will Rupert Murdoch Decide The Outcome of the Election?”

Sadly, all the evidence points to a negative answer in every instance. Either they regard the unwritten law against criticizing competing news enterprises as a mortal sin, or they are are just quivering cowards who couldn’t care less about honesty and ethics in journalism. Last year I wrote an article that asked “Who’s Afraid of Fox News?” It documented the lengths to which Fox would go to assault their media adversaries, while the rest of the press never bothered to swing back at Fox. What are they afraid of? Do they think that Ailes is going to barge into their offices and fleck spittle at them in a tempestuous tirade? Actually, that’s probably part of it, and is genuinely frightening.

One of the very few righteous counterpunches was delivered by the former editor of the New York Times, Howell Raines. He wrote an op-ed that asked a series of pointed and appropriate questions:

  • Why don’t honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News?
  • Why haven’t America’s old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration – a campaign without precedent in our modern political history?
  • Why has our profession, through its general silence – or only spasmodic protest – helped Fox legitimize a style of journalism that is dishonest in its intellectual process, untrustworthy in its conclusions and biased in its gestalt?
  • Why can’t American journalists steeped in the traditional values of their profession be loud and candid about the fact that Murdoch does not belong to our team?

Unfortunately, Raines wrote that after he was no longer working for the Times. He ought to have raised these questions when he had a platform to act on them and seek answers. Where are the working journalists now who will take Fox on and report the truth? Is there any media outlet in the U.S. with the courage of the U.K.’s Independent? Hopefully somebody here is paying attention because we have our own elections coming up later this year and the last thing we need is for Rupert Murdoch to decide the outcome.


Liberty University Taps Glenn Beck For Commencment Speech

Posted by on April 24, 2010 at 3:38 am. 7 Comments :

Glenn Beck GraduateThose lucky kids at Liberty University are in for a treat on graduation day this year. The conservative Christian institution has announced that Glenn Beck will be their commencement speaker. That should excite the student body.

What an inspiration it will be to have an alcoholic, drug-abusing, rodeo clown, college dropout up on stage advising these students on how to succeed in life by making goofy faces on TV while lying about your political adversaries. They will surely benefit from his lectures mangling history and accusing liberals of being fascists and the President of being a racist. Not to mention that Beck has just announced that God has spoken to him and revealed His plan for America. How many commencement speakers have a direct line to Heaven?

Beck’s message of unrelenting doom and destruction is a perfect fit for a school that includes Armageddon in its curriculum. Beck has prophesied that, unless we all accept his version of the truth, we’ll all be dead in five years. So why worry about not being able to find a job if the Rapture is right around the corner?

Beck will be able to relate his experiences as a suicidal failure who found redemption as a morning zoo radio shock jock. What better example could Liberty provide to these young folks as they prepare to go out into a foreboding world? Perhaps Beck will bring along his blackboard and diagram the connections between the school’s founder, Jerry Falwell, and the feminists and gays that Falwell blamed for 9/11. And he could talk about Falwell’s famous defense of segregation as “the Lord’s will.”

This will certainly be a day to remember for Liberty’s graduates. They should be grateful for their good fortune. Had they graduated in any of the previous four years they would have been stuck with adulterers like John McCain and Newt Gingrich, or Hollywood scoundrels like Chuck Norris, and Ben Stein. At least Beck will get them some media attention as the speech will likely be broadcast live as breaking news on the Fox News Channel.