Five Years Old And Acting Like It: Happy Birthday, Fox Nation

Posted by Mark NC on April 8, 2014 at 3:03 pm. NO Comments :

The Fox News community website, Fox Nation, is celebrating their fifth birthday. That’s five years of lies and propaganda in their signature juvenile style.

Click here to see this ebook on Amazon.

Like the Tea Party, Fox Nation is turning five and behaving very much like any other five year old. They whine when they don’t get their way. They throw tantrums if they are denied. They invent their own reality and dismiss facts that don’t validate their delusional world view. They exaggerate their victories and insult their perceived enemies. It’s a truly pathetic display of childish egoism.

However, this day of celebration is the perfect time get yourself a copy of the acclaimed ebook “Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault On Truth.” This book is a compilation of more than fifty documented examples of outright lies published on Fox Nation. As the introduction says…

“These are not mere differences of opinion or discussions that might have varying degrees of perspective. They are obvious, provable, out and out lies. They are manifestations of a disconnect with the real world. But they are not the result of psychosis or mistake. They are deliberate and purposeful. They are aimed at an ill-informed audience that is only interested in having their prejudices affirmed. And Fox News is only too happy to accommodate them.”

As an example from the book of one of the blatant departures from reality employed by Fox, take a look at this article where Fox Nation published an item with the headline “Obama More Unpopular Than Tea Party.” However, the New York Times poll cited in the article actually reported Obama’s favorability at 48% and the Tea Party at 20% – a complete reversal of the declaration in the headline.

That’s typical of the way Fox Nation distorts the real world for the benefit of readers who prefer fantasy. And now Fox Nation is bragging about how they have been providing these tales for half a decade. So let’s wish them a happy birthday, but continue to keep an eye on their falsifications and deception as they endeavor to defend the wealthy individuals and corporations they were created to support.

[Update] Joining Fox Nation’s birthday celebration is Breitbart News who interviewed the website’s editor, Jesse Watters (who is rarely identified as the editor in public). Watters revealed that “Matt Drudge and Andrew Breitbart were inspirations” for the site, removing all doubt that it was designed as a right-wing propaganda outlet from its inception. Watters also admits that he is unconcerned with truth-telling:

“If there were any stories his Fox Nation promoted that turned out to be less than factual, Watters won’t dwell on such things. ‘Everyone has regrets about things that are posted. You learn from mistakes and move on,’ he said.”

Of course, what Watters means by “learning” is not taking care to be more truthful, but taking care to avoid getting caught when lying. He also expressed his pride in the site’s followers whom he described as “vibrant, engaged and fiercely loyal.” He left out fiercely racist – like this, or this, or this.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The ObamaCare Honor System Deadline

Posted by Mark NC on March 27, 2014 at 3:17 pm. 8 Comments :

Conservative politicians and pundits have been unrelentingly negative about the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) from the outset. There have been some 50 attempts by Republicans in congress to repeal, defund, or rollback the law. And Fox News has devoted thousands of hours of airtime trying to scare people away from signing up.

Given that determination to throw obstacles in the way of the law’s implementation, it is curious that these same people are so infuriated when elements of the law are delayed by the administration. That is, after all, a goal that ObamaCare’s critics have been trying to achieve themselves. Apparently they only want delays that are are imposed by their own hand. If Obama does it, it’s an outrage.

Case in point: The administration just announced that people who have had problems signing up for insurance through the new exchanges will have until mid-April to complete the enrollment process. This is a delay of only two weeks, but it gives those who have started the process a little extra time to finish it in the event that they have had technical or other impediments to completion. That modest modification has caused an uproar in conservative circles generally. But in the case of Fox Nation, the lie-riddled website run by Fox News, they have gone a step further and brazenly misreported the news to say that the “WH Eliminates ObamaCare Sign Up Deadline. Will Use ‘Honor System’ Instead”

For more examples of documented Fox News lies…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

There is absolutely no reasonable way to interpret the facts that would result in an assertion that the deadline has been eliminated. This extension is only available to people who have begun the process prior to the deadline. No one else will get an extension. Just like shoppers who are generally permitted to finish their shopping and checkout past closing time, even though no new shoppers are allowed into the store. What’s more, those who receive the extension would then have only two weeks to finish up or they, too, will be regarded as having exceeded the deadline and be subjected to penalties.

Adding to the absurdity of Fox’s distortions is their blatant hypocrisy. Despite being downright apoplectic over the falsely reported ObamaCare deadline extension, Fox was never even slightly irked when George W. Bush delayed the deadline for signing up for the Medicare prescription drug benefits that his administration passed. And in that case the delay was from May until December 31, of 2006. So Bush delaying a program’s deadline for seven months is perfectly fine, but Obama giving a two week extension to a narrowly defined group of people is tyranny – even if the conservative critics favor an extension.

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Why does Fox even bother to pretend to report the news? If they would invent a headline that says a two week extension is an elimination, then why don’t they just let loose and say that Obama has ordered everyone without insurance to be rounded up and incarcerated in those FEMA camps we’ve heard so much about? It would make just as much sense and have the same disconnect from reality. Plus they could throw in that the camps would be staffed by gay, Muslim, abortion doctors who would be the only Americans permitted to own guns. I mean, if you’re gonna lie, you might as well have some fun with it.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: ObamaCare Enrollment Lagging In (Red) States

Posted by Mark NC on March 15, 2014 at 4:06 pm. 2 Comments :

The Anti-ObamaCare Action Squad at Fox News has been disparaging the program from its inception. (Well, not from its inception when it was a Republican initiative promoted by the Heritage Foundation, but from the time it was adopted by President Obama and congressional Democrats). However, to the extent that it has been falling short of its goals, much of the credit can go to Republicans who have made it their mission to bring about its failure.

In a demonstration of a self-fulfilling prophecy, Fox News is now bragging that their efforts to prevent the program from succeeding have achieved some measure of success.

For more examples of Fox’s departures from reality…
Get the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality at Amazon today

A featured article on the lie-riddled Fox Nation website declared with some glee that “Obamacare Enrollment Lagging In States With Highest Uninsured Rates.” It’s an uncharacteristically accurate assessment, but it leaves out the critical context that makes it useful.

What the Fox Nationalists are not telling you is that the states with the highest rates of uninsured residents are mostly red states run by right-wing Republican governors and legislatures. Those same states have done everything possible to prevent their citizens from benefiting from ObamaCare.

For instance, they have declined federal assistance to expand Medicaid, which would cover millions of Americans who cannot afford insurance and who do not qualify for subsidies under ObamaCare. Some of these states have also put in place obstacles that prohibit organizations from offering assistance to people who want to get insured. The “navigators” who can guide people through the complexities of the law are subject to expensive and burdensome certification tests that result in many of the organizations having to scrap the program.

Of the ten states with the highest uninsured rate, seven of them are run by Republicans. And with the exception of Florida, it is those same states that are lagging in enrollment in ObamaCare. The eighth and ninth states on the list are governed by Democrats and, not surprisingly, they are in the top five of states with the highest rate of residents signing up for ObamaCare.

So what we have here are Republicans purposefully sabotaging ObamaCare where they can, and then complaining that the plan doesn’t work. Except that it’s working great in states where the people’s representatives support it and where Republicans aren’t able to undermine it. It’s a reminder of why Republicans ought not to be given power anywhere. They are a party that is openly hostile to government, so when they hold its reins they intentionally cause it to fail and later point to that failure as proof that government doesn’t work.

Voting for a Republican is like selecting a faith healer to perform brain surgery. After the fake surgeon deliberately kills the patient he tells the family “See? You should have put your faith in Jesus.”

Attorney General Eric Holder Hospitalized: And The Fox Nation Hopes That He Dies

Posted by Mark NC on February 27, 2014 at 3:34 pm. 26 Comments :

This afternoon it was reported that Attorney General Eric Holder was admitted to a Washington, D.C. hospital after feeling faint and short of breath. Subsequent reports say that he is resting comfortably and conversing with his doctors.

From News Corpse

Available at Amazon

However, in yet another example of the repugnant and hateful community that Fox News fosters on their Fox Nation website, comments posted there openly express their hope that his ailment results in suffering and eventual death. These sentiments are nothing new for a community that has also prayed for the death of Sen. Harry Reid, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and, of course, President Obama. And these are the so-called “patriots” who claim to be guided by the compassion and tolerance of their alleged Christian faith.

Here is a representative selection of the comments posted with the article announcing Holder’s condition. The vile nature of this congregation of haters is self-evident.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: You Don’t Have To Defend Laws That Are Unconstitutional

Posted by Mark NC on February 26, 2014 at 10:07 am. 16 Comments :

Whenever Fox News encounters an issue that offends their rightist ideological biases, their automatic response is to construct a deliberately misleading campaign to distort the facts. But sometimes the facts make it too difficult for them to refute in terms simple enough for their dimwitted audience to grasp. And in those times of difficulty, Fox simply decides to make up arguments that have no basis in reality.

For more examples of Fox’s rank dishonesty, read Fox Nation vs. Reality.

The Fox Nation website is often the first place that these rhetorical concoctions show up. Take for example the article they posted claiming that Attorney General Eric Holder advised the nation’s state attorneys general that “You Don’t Have to Enforce Laws You Don’t Agree With.” Anyone who knows how Fox works has already figured out that Holder said no such thing. What he said, as reported by the New York Times, was that, “[S]tate attorneys general are not obligated to defend laws that they believe are discriminatory.”

Notice the difference in these quotes between the words “enforce” and “defend.” What Holder was talking about was whether or not state officials are obligated to defend the constitutionality of laws that are being challenged in the courts. He never suggested that the laws as enacted should not be enforced by local police agencies while they are in effect. Holder was merely pointing out, quite correctly, that no state is required to mount costly and time consuming defenses of laws that it believes do not pass constitutional muster.

The Fox Nationalists, however, were incapable of presenting a valid argument against Holder’s actual remarks, so they altered them to create the appearance that Holder was advocating that states neglect any laws that they don’t like. And rather than linking to the original source in the New York Times, Fox linked to the ultra-conservative blog Townhall, whose assessment of the controversy was utterly false:

Townhall: Attorney General Eric Holder is taking the lawless attitude of the Obama administration and passing it down to state attorneys general. Yesterday during an interview with The New York Times, Holder said state attorneys general do not have to enforce laws they disagree with, specifically when it comes to the issue of gay marriage.

Once again, that is not even remotely what Holder said. Enforcing the law as enacted in the state is an entirely different matter than defending the law against constitutional challenges in federal courts. Holder himself demonstrated the principle behind this position last year when he declined to defend the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The Supreme Court later struck it down as unconstitutional. So Holder was right, and his position prevented the waste of scarce resources on a vain mission to defend the indefensible. Nevertheless, the law was fully enforced up until the Supreme Court issued its ruling.

The editors and producers at Fox News know the difference between the concepts of enforcing and defending a law. They are intentionally misrepresenting the facts in order to disparage Holder and the Obama administration. And they are exploiting the fact that their viewers are too partisan and incurious to discover or understand the truth. That is not how ethical journalism is done. But then, Fox News has never been much of a proponent of ethical journalism.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: ObamaCare Is NOT Recruiting Undocumented Immigrants

Posted by Mark NC on February 15, 2014 at 3:08 pm. 7 Comments :

Fox News has labored vigorously to establish its reputation as America’s whites-only cable news channel. Simultaneously they have distinguished themselves as the nation’s foremost purveyor dishonest and politically biased “reporting.” But every now and then they manage to score extra points by melding these two achievements into a single story. That goal was realized today by Fox’s community website, Fox Nation, with help from their disreputable pals at Breitbart News.

Read Fox Nation vs. Reality for more documented lies from Fox World.

The headline declaring that “ObamaCare [is] Recruiting Illegal Immigrants” is absolutely, provably false. As is the content of the article that says in the opening paragraph that “Covered California–the flagship of state Obamacare exchanges–is recruiting illegal (“undocumented”) immigrants to sign up for the program, regardless of their eligibility.”

There is no truth whatsoever to that claim. But adhering to factual reporting has never been the mission of Fox News. It’s especially humorous that Joel Pollak, the BreitBrat author of the article, attempts to align his bogus assertions to Republican congressman Joe Wilson who, you may recall, shouted out “You lie,” during President Obama’s 2009 State of the Union speech when the President stated that the Affordable Care Act would not cover undocumented immigrants. Pollak believes that Wilson is due an apology based on his deeply misconstrued interpretation of a page on the Covered California website.

The shoddy news sleuthing by BreitBrat Pollak turned up a page that informed readers that they did not need to worry if they were “undocumented and want your family to enroll in health insurance. That was the spark that set fire to Pollak’s active imagination. Without wasting any effort on reading further or trying to understand the context, Pollak concluded that this was an attempt to enroll undocumented immigrants in ObamaCare, which the law explicitly prohibits. This is what the very first paragraph on the page actually said:

“According to the laws and implementing regulations, the information provided by individuals for coverage can not be used for purposes other than ensuring the efficient functioning of the insurance market (Covered California) or administration of the program, or to verify certain eligibility determinations including verification of the immigration status of these people.”

If Pollak had the comprehension skills to grasp this, he would have noticed two things: 1) The page is assuring applicants that the information they provide will not be shared with immigration agencies. And 2) That verification of immigration status will be a determinant condition of their eligibility.

The importance of the first item is to reassure people that an application will not result in an investigation or potential deportation. Many Latino families have mixed immigration statuses and they are sensitive to the possibility that their families could be separated. Consequently, they refrain from enrolling in benefits programs like ObamaCare. That means that many people who are actually citizens (i.e. children who were born here, or naturalized adults) would be deprived of services to which they are entitled because of their concern for other family members who may not be documented. This assurance allows them to apply without having to fear unrelated consequences.

The second item should be an assurance to bigots like Pollak that no undocumented immigrants would receive health care benefits under ObamaCare. It is an explicit declaration that citizenship is required for eligibility. And it is what makes Pollak’s assertion that illegal immigrants are being recruited regardless of their eligibility such a blatant lie.

It’s interesting to note that the Fox News Latino website does not have a story on this matter. Fox News Latino often takes positions that sharply contrast with those of the Fox News mothership. It is their way of trying to lure in the fastest growing demographic in the country without alienating them the way Fox News does. Although, there is a story that addresses the administration’s efforts to reach out to Latinos. And in that story they correctly point out the dilemma of mixed immigration status families who worry about separation, saying that “One big issue is that the law requires that those seeking coverage provide the immigration status of members of their household to determine eligibility.” That is what the page on Covered California is there for – to alleviate that concern.

It is remarkably dishonest and unethical to portray the information provided on Covered California as attempting to recruit undocumented immigrants to enroll in ObamaCare. Yet that is precisely what Breitbart and the Fox Nationalists did. And they did this despite the fact that the correct information was plainly in front of them on the same page. Therefore, it can only be assumed that they knew the truth and deliberately chose to ignore and/or distort it. But that’s the one thing that is not surprising about this. That is, in fact, standard operating procedure at Fox News.

ABC, CBS, NBC Criticized By Fox News For Being Just Like Fox

Posted by Mark NC on February 13, 2014 at 1:18 pm. 4 Comments :

From it’s very inception Fox News has been the most adversarial news network that ever took to the air. Even it’s slogan taunted competitors by inferring that they were not “Fair and Balanced.” Whenever they see an opportunity to criticize other media, they leap on it with the ferocity of ravenous jackal. Such is the case with a report today on the Fox Nation website. The headline indicted the broadcast news programs for partisan bias saying that “ABC, CBS, NBC Report Ray Nagin Conviction, Neglect To Mention His Political Party.”

For more Fox falsehoods, read Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available at Amazon.

Oh My God! That is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. Any so-called “news” enterprise that would so brazenly distort the facts of a story in this manner should be ridiculed and ostracized from the community of reputable journalists. They should surrender their credentials and slink away in shame.

The only thing worse than neglecting to note the political party of a convicted former mayor would be to neglect to note that the network making the criticism did the very same thing. That’s right…When Fox News reported on the conviction of Nagin they also left out any mention of his party affiliation (video below). Shepard Smith broke into Gretchen Carlson’s program with a two and a half minute “Breaking News” alert that covered just about everything else that is known about Nagin, complete with graphics and video. So it would be difficult to argue that they didn’t have enough airtime or time to prepare.

The Fox Nationalists sourced their story to the ultra-rightist media bashers at the Washington Free Beacon who wrote that…

“CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC World News broadcasts gave brief mention to the conviction of former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin Wednesday on 20 federal counts, including bribery and conspiracy, but all three omitted the fact that he was a Democrat.”

It says something about the research skills (or the rank dishonesty) of these supposed media analysts that they managed to monitor the big three nets for what they regard as flawed reporting, but failed to catch the same omission by the top-rated cable news network that shares their ideological bias. They would certainly never bother to complain about Fox when it, on multiple occasions, misidentified Republican scoundrels as Democrats without ever correcting the record.

On a more substantive note, the complaint that network news failed to mention that Nagin is a Democrat may not be a particularly serious oversight. When Nagin was indicted, the news spinners at NewsBusters made a similar complaint about network news reporting. What none of these stories mention is that Nagin’s party designation was a fairly fluid matter. As I wrote at the time…

“The right’s panic over whether or not the media should have identified Nagin as a Democrat ignores the fact that his association with the Democratic Party was a matter of political opportunism. Nagin had been a registered Republican for most of his adult life. He only switched parties when he decided to run for mayor of the heavily Democratic city of New Orleans. Even after his election he associated with, and behaved as, a Republican. As mayor he routinely favored the interests of his business constituents over the people. He was an avid supporter of George W. Bush prior to his election, and GOP governor Bobby Jindal afterwards.”

So it isn’t really much of a blunder to leave out the party affiliation of a slippery character like Nagin. In fact, if identifying his party were considered integral to the story, a responsible journalist would note that Nagin was more of a Republican than a Democrat. But if Fox is going to go out of their way to make their competitors look bad for leaving this information out, then they ought to include themselves in their criticism if they really want to be fair and balanced.

Fox News Wants Some Examples Of Tea Party Racism They Say Does Not Exist. So…

Posted by Mark NC on February 11, 2014 at 1:12 pm. 63 Comments :

Last Saturday more than 80,000 people in North Carolina gathered to march in protest of the Republican mission to strip minorities of their civil rights and gut the social safety net for low-income citizens. It was the largest protest march since the peak of the civil rights movement in 1965.

So how does Fox News cover this news-making event? By having Sean Hannity send an African-American Tea Party leader to ambush and embarrass the marchers. How else would Fox do it?

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Hannity’s “correspondent” was David Webb, founder of TeaParty365, Fox News contributor, and Breitbart News columnist. Webb landed at the protest with a bag of questions that had nothing to do with the agenda for the march. He harangued the protest’s organizers with off-topic questions (the video of which cut out most the answers). Then he asked a few participants if they thought Obama is a successful president. Most answered correctly that he has been obstructed at every turn by Republicans committed to blocking anything he proposes, even if it was originally a GOP initiative.

However, the feature of the video was Webb asking marchers to give examples of racism by the Tea Party. This is the sort of ambush tactic that serves no purpose other than to create a negative impression of the respondents. First of all, Webb’s video showed him interviewing only four people out of the more than 80,000 who attended the march. Without the uncut footage we have no idea if there were forty others who supplied Webb with bona fide examples of Tea Party racism that he left on the cutting room floor. It’s easy to splice together just the remarks that make his point and discard the rest.

From News Corpse

Available at Amazon

Furthermore, the respondents were not official spokespeople for the protest and they did not come prepared to have answers for Webb’s loaded questions. It’s unreasonable to expect that random citizens participating in a march to protest specific policies of North Carolina’s ultra-right Republican administration will be carrying documentation of Tea Party racism to an event that isn’t related to that subject. Yet that is precisely what was expected of the four victims of Webb’s inquisition. Fox Nation even placed a story about this at the top of their website with a sensationalized headline that implied that liberals as a group were unable to cite examples of bigotry in the Tea Party. Maybe they should ask more than four liberals before making such a ludicrous assertion.

That said, I wouldn’t want Fox News, Sean Hannity, and David Webb to be disappointed by not getting a substantive response to their inquiries. Therefore, they might want to look into the Tea Party agenda for evidence of racism. For instance, their reactions to the recent commercials for Cheerios (with a biracial family) and Coke (with a multilingual rendition of America the Beautiful) revealed a thinly disguised prejudice for anything not purely of Euro-Caucasian descent. Then there were the infamous Birthers whose allegations are inherently racist. The Tea Party’s opposition to social safety net programs is often portrayed as a response to the lazy moochers in the inner city they regard as the beneficiaries. Then there is their advocacy of voter ID laws that largely impact minorities, as well as seniors and the poor. And they continue to refer to undocumented residents as “illegals,” even if they broke no laws. The Tea Party’s legislative and social agenda is rife with this sort of bigotry.

For more evidence, note the frequency with which Tea Party leaders are caught saying out loud things that are overtly racist. For instance this Arkansas Tea Partier, or this one in California, or this former chairman of the Tea Party Express.

And if that isn’t enough, take a look at these images gathered from Tea Party rallies and websites:

Of course, Hannity and Webb would never address these examples that they disingenuously requested. Their intent from the outset was to let the question hang out there unanswered to leave the false impression the charges of racism were unwarranted. But any paying attention knows the truth about the Tea Party, and a little research confirms it. Too bad Fox News viewers will never see it.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Voter ID Photo Fallacy

Posted by Mark NC on February 9, 2014 at 7:15 pm. 2 Comments :

With a weekend full of legitimate news stories like the Olympics or immigration reform, Fox Nation reserved the top spot on their web page to post a blatant lie: “NAACP Requires Marchers Protesting Voter ID Law To Show Photo ID.”

Read the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality for more of Fox’s blatant lies.

One of the favorite tactics of propagandists is to expose alleged hypocrisy on the part of their foes. And when they can’t find any actual hypocrisy, the more unscrupulous among them will simply invent some. That’s the case with this article on Fox Nation. Sourcing the information from the Daily Caller, a right-wing webloid run by Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, the article states flatly that…

“North Carolinians marching to protest voter-ID laws must present a valid photo ID to participate in an NAACP-hosted protest against voter-ID laws in Raleigh on Saturday.”

The evidence of what would be an embarrassing misstep is a tweet by a conservative blogger that showed a portion of a flyer promoting the protest. The flyer had a list of “do’s and don’t’s” for the marchers. One of the “do’s” said to “bring a photo identification (driver’s license, passport or other valid photo ID) with you and keep it on your person at all times.” So there you have it. Except that what you have is something completely different than what the headline and story alleged.

There was absolutely no requirement by the NAACP, or anyone else, that a photo ID be shown in order to participate in the march. No one would be checking for them, and no one would be refused without one. The Fox Nationalists apparently can’t tell the difference between a requirement and a suggestion. The advice to carry a valid ID is one that is commonly given to people who participate in public protests. Occasionally such events encounter police interventions, and having your ID handy can smooth the process. That is the only reason that the flyer recommended that participants carry an ID. It was in no way a prerequisite for participating.

Even if there were a requirement to have an ID for the protest, there still wouldn’t have been any hypocrisy. Conservatives like to make irrelevant analogies when defending their voter suppression plans. They point to the need to show an ID when boarding a plane or buying alcohol. However, flying and drinking are not in the same category as voting, which is regarded as right and a duty in our democracy. Any attempt to depress turnout, particularly in a way that is so transparently prejudicial, is undemocratic.

What’s more, the incidence of fraudulent voting is practically nil, so they are proposing to disenfranchise thousands of citizens in order to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. But that’s how they operate. And they don’t care any more about fair elections than they do about honestly representing the facts in a story like this one.

FYI: The “Moral Mondays” protest march, that Fox was so brazenly lying about, drew upwards of 80,000 people – in North Carolina!It was the largest civil rights march in the South since 1965.

Koch Brothers Take Their Campaign To Kill Net Neutrality To Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on February 5, 2014 at 8:27 pm. 2 Comments :

Last month the corporate-friendly majority on the Supreme Court struck down FCC rules that required Internet service providers (ISP) to treat all content equally. Known as “Network Neutrality,” these rules prevent companies like AT&T from providing fast service for Internet sites it favors, while impeding content from those it does not. Without Net Neutrality, you might try to access Dominoes Pizza, but your ISP could refuse that request and direct you to Papa John’s, who paid them to do so. Or they could simply slow down the connection to Dominoes so that you would give up and try some other pizzeria.

Net Neutrality insures that you are able to access any site on the Internet that you want without interference from your provider. Unfortunately, the big ISPs (i.e. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc.) oppose that freedom. They want to control your access and make either you, or the destination sites, pay them to open the highway to free-flowing traffic. Theoretically, they could just as easily obstruct your access to content they find objectionable politically, morally, or economically (i.e. their competitors).

Read the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality for more brazen Fox lies.

In response to the Supreme Court ruling, Democrats in Congress drafted the “Open Internet Preservation Act of 2014,” with the stated goal of…

“…restor[ing]the Open Internet Rules struck down by the D.C. Circuit in January 2014 prohibiting broadband Internet service providers from engaging in discriminatory behavior or blocking content altogether.”

Within hours the conservative opposition to the bill cranked up on behalf of the corporations that bankroll them. Prominent among them was the Koch brothers who have long been aggressive opponents of an open Internet. Their fake news wire service, Watchdog.org, quickly published an article that thoroughly mischaracterized the facts and featured a deceitful headline saying “Democratic federal lawmakers really want the FCC to regulate Internet.”

By casting this as an issue of regulation, the Koch brothers seek to marshal support for their anti-Internet agenda. To the extent that this bill can be portrayed as regulation, it is a regulation that guarantees more freedom for all users of the Internet. Granted, there is somewhat less freedom for ISPs to gouge consumers and inhibit free speech. Despite the fact that the legislation was drafted by Democrats, the only member of Congress that the article quoted was arch-rightist Marsha Blackburn who said…

“It’s more than ironic that the same Administration that can’t figure out how to make Healthcare.Gov work now thinks that regulating the Internet like China and Russia will make things better for American consumers.”

Clearly Blackburn doesn’t understand either Net Neutrality or the nature of Russian and Chinese censorship. It is Net Neutrality that actually makes the Internet more open, and the lack of it that permits government and corporate interference. But she is just another Republican who is doing the bidding of her well-heeled corporate donors.

True to form, Fox News picked up the story from Watchdog and ran it on their lie-riddled, community website Fox Nation with the headline “Dems Pushing FCC To Regulate Internet.” Fox News regularly publishes articles from the fake Koch brothers wire service that always seem to advance the interests of wealthy industrialists like the Kochs. It’s one of the perks of being rich enough to create your own “news” distribution outlet that can feed propaganda to friendly publishers like Fox.

In this case, Fox News is doing a disservice to their audience by failing to disclose the partisan interests of their source. But more seriously, they are feeding them disinformation about net neutrality that could result in a severe reduction in the freedom that has always been a part of the open Internet if Fox and the Kochs are successful.

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