Fox News Fux Up: The 12 Worst Wrongs Of 2012

Posted by Mark NC on January 2, 2013 at 4:30 am. 10 Comments :

2012 was a dismal year for Fox News. The PR arm of the GOP (Greedy One Percent) failed to fulfill its prime directive: advancing the interests of Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. They spent much of the year constructing an alternative reality that left millions of their flock in shock when President Obama won an overwhelming reelection. They refused to accept the facts on the ground and denigrated polls (even their own) when the results conflicted with the fictional narrative they were peddling. And perhaps most painful of all, they surrendered their ratings lead to MSNBC. Two-thirds of their primetime lineup (Hannity and Van Susteren) dropped to second place behind the competition on MSNBC (Maddow and O’Donnell).

However, Fox’s travails did not occur for lack of effort. They were clearly operating at the top of their capacity to distort and deceive. They carefully aligned all of their resources in the battle against honest discourse, including the Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, the Wall Street Journal, and the abhorrent and vulgar Fox Nation web site (see Fox Nation vs. Reality). In the process they unleashed some of the most feverishly biased reporting, even for Fox News. But what’s worse is that these examples of media malpractice constitute a fundamental debasement of journalism and democracy.

1) Romancing Petraeus: Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Tries To Recruit For The GOP

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward revealed that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes had dispatched a Fox News defense analyst, to Kabul, Afghanistan, to recruit Gen. David Petraeus as a GOP candidate for president. The notion of a news network soliciting candidates for political office is a perversion of the role journalists play in society.

In response, Ailes claimed that it was “a joke” and that he “thought the Republican [primary] field needed to be shaken up.” Where Ailes got the idea that it was his right and/or duty to shake up the GOP primaries is unexplained. News people are supposed to report the news, not make it. Woodward’s story affirms that Fox News is a rogue operation. Their intrusion into the political process debases journalism by breaching all standards of ethical conduct. And they debase democracy as well by exploiting their power and wealth to manipulate political outcomes.

2) Fox News Produces Their Own Anti-Obama Video

Last May on Fox & Friends, the program’s hosts introduced a video that purported to examine “Four Years of Hope and Change.” What it was in reality was a four-plus minute campaign video that presented a variety of soundbites by President Obama accompanied by ominous graphics and eerie music that falsely implied that his campaign promises were unkept. The video (which Media Matters thoroughly debunks here) could not have been a more pro-Romney, anti-Obama attack had it been produced by the Republican National Committee.

Apparently Fox News also recognized the gross inappropriateness of their anti-Obama attack ad. Minutes after the video was posted online it was removed from every place it had been posted. Later, an edited version of it was re-posted, and then that too was removed. Eventually, Fox EVP Bill Shine issued a statement scapegoating an “associate producer” and concluding that the matter “has been addressed.” But it’s difficult for Fox to absolve itself of responsibility for this atrociously unethical affair. By now it is so obvious that Fox exists only to promote Republicans and bash Democrats that this video fits squarely within their twisted mission.

3) Question For Fox News: How Much Rape Is Too Much Rape?

In a discussion of the role of women in the military, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta expressed an opinion about new rules from the Pentagon that would permit women to serve closer to the front lines. Trotta’s take on this centered on the problems faced by servicewomen who are sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers whom she regards as whiners because they won’t shut up accept the fact that if they work closely with men they should expect to be assaulted.

And if that weren’t bad enough, Trotta went on to complain about the expensive military bureaucracy set up to “support women in the military who are now being raped too much.” I would really like to know precisely how much rape is acceptable before it crosses Trotta’s line. Is there any context in which she might have meant that that isn’t unfathomably repulsive?

4) Fox News Conning Latinos For Politics And Profit

Fox viewers are accustomed to stories about “illegals” swarming across the border to take up residency in the U.S. and sponge off of our prosperity. There is hardly a mention of immigrants on Fox that isn’t associated with crime, joblessness, or drug cartels. Lately, however, someone at Fox News has recognized a major flaw in their strategy to demonize immigrants, particularly Latinos, who are a growing constituency of both consumers and citizens who can vote and are registering in record numbers. So how does Fox maintain their editorial animosity toward immigrants without alienating an increasingly important voter group?

The answer appears to be by developing news content specifically for this demographic and sequestering it from the rest of their viewership. This has resulted in a flurry of disparaging articles on the Fox News flagship, while the same story is presented on their new Fox News Latino in a far less bigoted fashion. And the pinnacle of this hypocrisy occurred during a Fox report on the election when they displayed video of illegal border crossers with a caption reading “The Hispanic Vote.”

5) Fox News Lies About Military Access To Voting In Ohio

This year Republicans engaged in a widespread and blatant effort to suppress voting by Democratic-leaning constituencies such as seniors, minorities, students and low income citizens. In the state of Ohio they sought to amend a law that granted early voting to everyone so that only members of the military would be permitted to vote early in the three days prior to the election. Democrats objected to this as it discriminates against certain voters, and they filed suit to preserve the right of every Ohio citizen to vote early.

Fox News picked up the story advancing the premise that Democrats were seeking to take something away from our military. Anchor Shannon Bream falsely declared that “If President Obama gets his way, the special voting rights of some of America’s finest will be eliminated.” The truth however, is that Democrats in Ohio were suing to insure that nobody’s rights were eliminated. The Ohio GOP was deliberately attempting to suppress the votes of citizens they presumed would vote Democratic. And Fox News helped them in that mission by brazenly lying about the substance of the debate and pushing the GOP opinion as if it were fact.

6) Graphic Evidence Of The Racism Of Fox News: Racial Photoshopping

Coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting was handled by Fox News in a manner that is revealing and offensive. On the day that Florida law enforcement authorities planned to file charges against George Zimmerman, Fox ran a story that featured a photo of Zimmerman with a beaming smile alongside one of Martin that looked foreboding and was obviously darkened. This was nothing less than a journalistic lynching. The editors at this alleged “news” network were demonstrating their overt hostility to both African-Americans and journalistic ethics.

Later in the day a more impartial photo was inserted that was not as overtly disparaging of the victim. You think they got a few complaints about the previous photo? Fox had numerous pictures from which to choose of both Martin and Zimmerman, and they chose the most negative picture of Martin which they paired with the most positive picture of Zimmerman. That was not an accident. It was the result of deliberate editorial judgment. And it tells us everything we need to know about Fox’s editors.

7) The Polling Schizophrenia At Fox News

Throughout the year Fox News led their audience on a roller coaster ride of propaganda and censorship as they shifted from celebrating what they regarded as positive electoral news to suppressing the negative. They persistently sought to cloister their audience in a bubble that filtered out any facts that might upset their viewers or political patrons. Fox was so determined to shut out anything that might challenge their narrative that they even failed to report their own Fox News polls if Obama was ahead.

This was a part of a broader effort to deceive their audience by castigating or ignoring polls when they didn’t like the results and praising the same pollsters when their numbers were more favorable. They launched a campaign to demean professional pollsters and prop up disreputable charlatans with their “unskewed” versions. Not surprisingly, this led to the unprecedented post-election state of shock experienced by those who were foolish enough to rely on Fox for information.

8) Fox News Psycho Analyst: Newt Gingrich’s Adultery Means A Stronger America

The in-house Fox News psychiatrist, Keith Ablow, has offered his embarrassingly ridiculous diagnoses on a number of occasions. Without ever having examined (or even met) the President, Ablow has declared him to be contemptuous of the judiciary and devoid of all emotion. He further assessed that Obama has “got it in for this country” and doesn’t like Americans. These are, of course, the delusional ramblings of a quack who is more preoccupied with his own animosity for the President than with credible psychiatric analysis.

During the GOP primary, Ablow chimed in on criticism of Newt Gingrich for his serial marriages that ended when his wives became ill or failed to serve his political purposes. Ablow’s astonishing diagnosis was that Gingrich as president would make America stronger specifically because of his multiple infidelities. Ablow actually thinks that three wives and two extramarital affairs (that we know about) enhance Gingrich’s qualifications to be president. His reasoning had something to do with the fact that multiple homewreckers found him to be marriageable material and that that was a mark of character. This is what passes for family values in today’s GOP.

9) Fox News Airs An Hour Long Commercial For An Anti-Obama Film On Hannity

In the heart of the presidential campaign season, Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News devoted the full hour to a blatant infomercial promoting an anti-Obama movie by the people who brought us Citizens United. The program featured lengthy clips from the film as well as interviews with the film’s creators, David Bossie and Steve Bannon. Bossie is the head of Citizens United, the organization that prompted the abhorrent Supreme Court decision that made it possible for individuals and corporations to donate unlimited sums of cash to political candidates and causes. Bannon is chairman of Breitbart News and was the director of the monumental flop, “Sarah Palin: Undefeated,” a movie that managed to fail miserably despite millions of dollars in free publicity courtesy of Fox News.

What’s particularly disturbing about this is that the producers freely admit that their purpose is not so much to promote the film, but to let their ads serve as disguised political messages aimed at disparaging the President and affecting the outcome of the election. The reason that they chose October to release the film was so their advertising would appear during the campaign season and they could pretend that it was merely marketing for the movie. And I repeat, this is not a conspiracy theory, it is something they specifically admit to and boast about. Fox News was merely the first stop on their media blitz.

10) Fox News “Democrat” Kirsten Powers Accuses Obama Of Sympathizing With Terrorists

The next time you hear the Fox News slogan “fair and balanced,” be sure to remember that their rendering of fairness is to trot out covert conservatives and label them Democrats. A perfect illustration of this is alleged Democrat Kirsten Powers, who took to Fox News to attack President Obama in an article titled: “President Obama, stop blaming the victim for Mideast violence.”. If you changed the name to Ann Coulter nobody would have blinked an eye.

Powers was addressing the violence at American facilities in Libya and Egypt when she wrote that respecting religious beliefs “is implicit sympathy for the claims of some of the attackers and rioters.” So Powers thinks that respect for the diversity of faith is tantamount to sympathizing with terrorists. She cannot comprehend that such respect is offered to the vast majority of peaceful Muslims who had nothing to do with the violence. And allowing her to spew that bile while posing as a Democratic analyst is part of how Fox distorts their presentation of fairness and balance.

11) Fox News Spinning Furiously On Unemployment Rate

Behaving entirely consistently with a network that harbors politcos who want to see President Obama fail, Fox News cavalierly dismissed the October unemployment report showing a drop to 7.8 percent. Heaven forbid anything good happens in this country while a black, socialist, Muslim from Kenya is in charge. So while having the unemployment rate drop from 8.1 to 7.8 will bring the rest of the country some solace, it just creates headaches for the doomsayers at Fox.

Fox spent the whole morning trying to hatch skeptics. They brought in former General Electric CEO Jack Welch to explain his delusional Tweet: “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.” Fox’s Stuart Varney concurred along with Donald Trump and a bevy of correspondents and guests. None of them could explain why an independent agency of career economists, without a single Obama appointee, would fudge the numbers for a president to whom they owed nothing.

12) Fox News Opposes Ban On Assault Weapons But Imposes Ban On Talking About It

The most heartbreaking news of 2012 was surely the massacre in Newtown, CT, that saw twenty schoolchildren and six adults senselessly murdered. The resultant outcry from concerned Americans about the easy access to weapons that are capable of such carnage was met by Fox News as an unspeakable attack on the Second Amendment and free enterprise. Their response was to slaughter the First Amendment by prohibiting any discussion of gun safety on the network.

Sources told Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine that “David Clark, the executive producer in charge of Fox’s weekend coverage, gave producers instructions not to talk about gun-control policy on air.” This is how Fox directs the editorial content of the network. They have a heavy hand enforcing what people may, and may not, say on the air. It’s also worthwhile to note that while Fox banned all talk of gun control, they did not similarly banish talk of other explanations for the atrocity in Connecticut. For instance, they had no problem with laying the blame on mental illness, movies, or video games. And Fox host Mike Huckabee was permitted to go on the air and blame the killings on the absence of God in the classroom (which does nothing to explain similar shootings that have taken place in churches).

While Fox News broadcasts flagrant distortions of reality on a daily basis, the examples above transcend the conventional dishonesty and bias that is their hallmark. These assaults on ethical journalism demonstrate how dangerous it is to permit a political enterprise to disguise itself as a news network in order to shape an extreme political agenda. It is evidence of social programming and manipulation at its worst. And the sad part is that we can expect much more of this in 2013. Happy New Year!

Fox News Opposes Ban On Assault Weapons But Imposes Ban On Talking About It

Posted by Mark NC on December 17, 2012 at 4:28 pm. 13 Comments :

Never mind that Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of the Fox News parent company, supports taking “bold leadership” to restrict access to assault weapons, executives at Fox News have dictated that the subject of gun control is forbidden on their network. Sources told Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine that…

“David Clark, the executive producer in charge of Fox’s weekend coverage, gave producers instructions not to talk about gun-control policy on air. ‘This network is not going there,’ Clark wrote one producer on Saturday night, according to a source with knowledge of the exchange.”

This is the sort of overt bias that is practiced at Fox News on a regular basis. There is nothing new about Fox demanding that their anchors and contributors follow the marching orders from the executive suites. They receive a morning memo informing them on the topics of the day and what their positions will be. Even loyal Fox associates like pollster Frank Luntz have revealed that failing to “comport with the outlet’s orthodoxy” will result in getting you blacklisted. Sherman’s sources went on to say that…

“During the weekend, one frustrated producer went around Clark to lobby Michael Clemente, Fox’s executive vice-president for news editorial, but Clemente upheld the mandate. ‘We were expressly forbidden from discussing gun control,’ the source said.”

Sherman noted that there was a bit of discourse on gun control on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. However, he did not mention that the program airs on the Fox Entertainment Network, not Fox News (although it is repeated later in the day on Fox News).

This is how Fox directs the editorial content of the network. They have a heavy hand enforcing what people may, and may not, say on the air. It is not a coincidence that nearly everyone on Fox spews the same talking points throughout their broadcast day. It is by design and it is imposed by an editorial politburo that monitors the dissemination of their propaganda.

Since Fox CEO Roger Ailes is against gun control, then everyone at Fox must be. And if they think that discussing a subject is not in the interests of their agenda, then discussion is shut down. In this case, the network’s censorship is in lock step with the NRA, who have been maintaining media silence ever since the tragedy on Friday. The NRA’s Facebook and Twitter accounts have gone blank. And so has free speech on Fox News, not that it was ever there in the first place.

It’s also worthwhile to note that while Fox has banned all talk of gun control, they have not similarly banished talk of other explanations for the atrocity in Connecticut. For instance, they had no problemn with laying the blame on movies and video games. And Fox host Mike Huckabee was permitted to go on the air and blame the killings on the absence of God in the classroom. That’s is a particularly idiotic theory when you consider that other mass killings have taken place in churches where there presumably was no shortage of Godliness.

Has Roger Ailes Seized Fox News From A Senile, Incompetent Rupert Murdoch?

Posted by Mark NC on December 16, 2012 at 12:37 pm. 3 Comments :

One thing that has been well established through decades of media domination by Rupert Murdoch is that his will was supreme in the organizations he ran. He made virtually every decision of significance with regard to management, economics, and personnel. And he was never shy about imposing his worldview to slant the editorial content of his properties, whether dealing with opinion or hard news.

Politicians around the world were once obliged to pay their respects to the “Dirty Digger” if they hoped to succeed electorally. When he purchased a newspaper or television network his ultra conservative bias would replace whatever he found when he got there. Believe it or not, the New York Post was once a liberal publication (which would make more sense in New York City than the right-wing, money-losing rag that Murdoch transformed it into). The once revered Wall Street Journal always had a conservative opinion page, but since Murdoch’s acquisition the news section has abandoned its thoughtful, long-form journalism in favor of something more of the “yellow” variety.

However, in recent months the Murdochian monarchy seems to have been sapped of its power. There has been none of the reverential genuflecting to the man whose anointment was once compulsory. There has been scant evidence of his presence in the political backrooms where influence is administered. Part of the reason for this apparent weakening of his reign may be the fact that he continues to be embroiled in a consuming scandal in the U.K. that began with the discovery that his reporters were hacking into the phones and computers of hundreds of people, including celebrities, politicians, and even a murdered schoolgirl. The scandal has expanded to include charges of bribery and corruption in Murdoch’s newsrooms as well as British government and police operations.

But those affairs, as troubling as they are, do not fully explain Murdoch’s receding influence. The GOP candidates for president all but ignored Murdoch in 2012. And his presence amongst opinion makers has been negligible. More significant is the fact that his own news enterprises are openly rejecting his counsel. The most recent example is his Tweet following the Newtown school massacre. Murdoch wrote:

“Terrible news today. When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons? As in Oz after similar tragedy.”

Technically, fully automatic weapons are already fairly strictly regulated. It’s the semi-automatic types that are all too easily acquired, sometimes without any registration or background check required. But it’s clear that Murdoch was addressing the access to the sort of weapons and large-capacity ammunition clips used in Newtown and other recent scenes of carnage.

However, Murdoch’s advocacy of legal action to constrain the availability of these weapons is not shared by his most prominent news vehicle, Fox News. Fox has not disguised its opposition to reasonable regulations, nor its support for extremist groups like the NRA and the politicians who carry their message. Fox has not only advanced the gun rights movement on their air, but they have contributed to disseminating the most absurd conspiracy theories that circulate in the media fringes. And all of this goes on despite being contrary to the views of Fox’s alleged master, Rupert Murdoch.

Another example is Murdoch’s support for a liberal immigration policy. Murdoch even initiated a campaign with New York mayor Michael Bloomberg for immigration reform that would include a path to citizenship for currently undocumented workers. However, his Fox News is one of the most virulently anti-immigrant news operations in the country. They repeatedly use the dehumanizing slur “illegals” to refer to undocumented immigrants, and they portray them as criminals and low-life parasites on society. That editorial bias directly contradicts Murdoch’s personal and public position.

There is also the subject of Climate Change, which Fox News regards as a hoax aimed at exerting some sort of tyrannical control over businesses and individuals. They provide a platform for unsavory characters with no scientific expertise who rail against the volumes of peer-reviewed studies that have affirmed the dangerous warming of the planet. Fox hosts like Sean Hannity frequently mock as ignorant anyone who buys into what he believes is a global warming scam. But you have to wonder whether he is including Murdoch in that group. Murdoch has explicitly acknowledged that Climate Change is real and is caused by human activity. He has directed his company to take decisive steps to mitigate its carbon footprint and he created a division to manage these efforts. Nevertheless, his view is ridiculed on his cable news network.

These examples demonstrate a stark difference between the powerful Murdoch of the past and the more impotent version of the present. This is not the same Murdoch who once declared that he had tried to shape the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq. It is not the same Murdoch who called off his journalists in France at the request of his business partner Prince al-Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia (the largest shareholder of News Corp outside of the Murdoch family).

The frequency with which Fox News contradicts Murdoch is astonishing for an enterprise whose editorial personality has been so closely associated with that of its leader. It no longer appears that the Fox bias leans so strictly toward Murdoch. However, it does lean stridently towards Murdoch’s lieutenant, Roger Ailes, the CEO of Fox News. Ailes, a former Republican media consultant, has succeeded in turning Fox into the biggest source of revenue for Murdoch’s News Corp. He has also succeeded in turning Fox into a reflection of his own politics. The GOP candidates who brushed off Murdoch all paraded into Ailes’ office to get his blessing. And while Murdoch seemed to have little influence over the slate of candidates, it was Ailes who openly courted figures like Gen. David Petraeus and Gov. Chris Christie.

What might have been the impetus for this apparent transfer of power? Murdoch is not the sort of person to let go of the reins voluntarily. But at this time in the life of News Corp, there is an abundance of uncertainty. The phone hacking scandal has not only diminished Murdoch, but it has left the company without an obvious heir. Murdoch’s son James is as tainted by the scandal as Rupert. This leaves a power vacuum into which Ailes can insert himself. That objective may also be aided by Murdoch’s advanced age and possible infirmity.

The result is that Fox News continues to lean into far-right extremism, so much so that it openly contradicts the views of its chairman. It will be interesting to watch as this morality play proceeds. Should Murdoch decide to retire and pass the baton on to his children, Ailes may find himself in a bind. The only Murdoch in the company who is unscathed by scandal is his daughter Elizabeth. But she was an Obama supporter and her family viscerally hates Ailes. Her husband was quoted saying…

“I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”

Ailes may be trying to consolidate his power within the organization, but without Murdoch’s support he is helpless. The Murdoch family has outright control of the company in their stock portfolio. In a Rupert-less News Corp it is likely that Ailes will decide to retire himself. Where the network would go from there is anyone’s guess.

However, this year there was plenty of chatter about how destructive Fox was to the goals of its patron, the Republican Party. The network took positions that alienated much of the public, including a growing Latino community, younger, more moderate voters, and women incensed by the overt insults and advocacy of legislation that regressed women’s rights by fifty years or more. That is not the way to win elections. Many in the conservative punditry for the first time criticized Fox as an obstacle to their agenda. That’s something that was done here long ago (see Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party).

The usurpation of the Fox News agenda is obvious and disturbing. Roger Ailes is installing himself at the top of the pile in opposition to his boss on some of the most important issues of the day. This can only lead to trouble. Visceral, personal, gut-wrenching, back-stabbing, explosive trouble. In other words: FUN!

In a second Tweet on the subject of guns, Murdoch called on the President take “bold leadership action.” That’s something that Murdoch hasn’t asked Ailes to do, nor has he done so himself. As the head of the top-rated cable news network Murdoch could arguably have more impact on this debate than the President. After all, anything Obama says about this is going to be dismissed by conservatives without even listening to it. However, Fox News speaks to them directly and they take their cues from the network’s stars. Therefore, Fox has a real opportunity to affect the debate and guide public opinion toward sensible legislation.

Ordinarily, I would not advocate that a news organization impose its views on their audience, but Fox is doing this already – only in the wrong direction. What they should do now, with Murdoch’s leadership, is correct their course. But don’t hold your breath. Ailes still appears to be in control, and Murdoch still seems to be incapacitated. If Obama does take “meaningful action” as he has suggested he would do, count on Fox News to bash him mercilessly for threatening to confiscate all guns and undermining the Constitution.

Romancing Petraeus: Why Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Debases Both Journalism And Democracy

Posted by Mark NC on December 4, 2012 at 2:59 pm. 6 Comments :

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward just published a story revealing that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes dispatched a Fox News defense analyst to deliver a personal request to Gen. David Petraeus. Ailes sent K.T. McFarland to Kabul, Afghanistan, with the message that Ailes wanted Petraeus to run against Barack Obama for president.

The notion of a news network soliciting candidates for political office is a repulsive perversion of the role journalists play in society. Ailes heads a network that pretends to be “fair and balanced” while brazenly campaigning on behalf of the Republican Party and conservative policies. But taking that a step further into the jurisdiction of GOP candidate recruitment is a violation of the core tenets of journalistic ethics.

In the audio that Woodward posted, McFarland can be heard discussing particulars of a Petraeus candidacy including the possibility of it being run by Ailes himself, and bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch has already contributed untold millions of dollars to GOP campaigns via free airtime and unconstrained support from Fox anchors, contributors, and guests. Their advocacy was so overwhelming this year that it resulted in a stunned electorate on the Republican side who believed, due to Fox coverage, that their victory was in the bag.

The conversation between Petraeus and McFarland was rife with ethical breaches on the part of McFarland. For instance, she began her message from Ailes saying “What I’m supposed to say directly from him to you, through me, is first of all, is there anything Fox is doing, right or wrong, that you want to tell us to do differently?” No self-respecting reporter would ever take orders from an interview subject on how to shape the coverage of their news. And it’s an even worse offense when it comes from the head of the operation.

What’s more, McFarland’s behavior should disqualify her from appearing on Fox as an analyst. How can she be trusted to be objective after gushing that she and “everyone at Fox love” the General? That bit of sycophancy notwithstanding, McFarland did return from Kabul and appeared on Fox with praise for Petraeus as “one of the greatest generals in American history.”

Petraeus responded to McFarland by expressing his distaste for certain criticisms of the Afghan war effort, which he said may have just been attributable to the headlines. So McFarland accommodated him by saying that it was “easy to fix” because she sits next to the woman who writes them. For McFarland to promise to insure more flattering headlines in articles about the general would be cause for termination from a reputable news organization.

Then McFarland hit Petraeus with Ailes’ advice that he reject any appointment offered by the President other than Chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff. She said that Ailes specifically singled out the CIA as a post Petraeus should not accept. Her characterization of the machinations of the White House involved some sort of plot to dump Petraeus at the CIA where he wouldn’t be heard from and would not pose a threat to Obama’s reelection. Again, where do McFarland and Ailes get off politicking like this?

Despite the advice of Ailes, Petraeus told McFarland that he regarded the CIA and intelligence as a growth industry where he felt he could make a significant contribution. Obama later did offer him the job, but he was not as silent in that role as he might have hoped. The disclosure of his marital infidelity ended his career at the CIA and much of the speculation about his future.

When Woodward contacted Ailes to get his response to the McFarland/Petraeus tapes, Ailes admitted that he sent McFarland on this mission, but attempted to play down the candidate recruitment aspect of it:

“It was more of a joke, a wiseass way I have. I thought the Republican [primary] field needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate.”

Anyone who believes that dodge is sorely in need of a transfusion of healthy skepticism. It is highly unlikely that Ailes sent McFarland to Kabul to tell Petraeus a joke. He clearly wanted the General to run for president, just like he also wanted Chris Christie to do so after Petraeus declined. It was Ailes’ objective, and that of Boss Murdoch, to bring about the defeat of Obama.

But it is also notable that Ailes felt it was his right and/or duty to shake up the GOP primaries. News people are supposed to report the news, not make it. Where does this sort of chicanery end? If Ailes thought the debate over the budget should be shaken up, might he send a hooker to the hotel room of the House Budget Committee chair? If he thought the Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare needed a jolt of excitement would he plant some cocaine on a wavering justice? If he needed additional ammo with which to attack Obama, would he manufacture a phony controversy about the President being responsible for the murders of U.S. diplomats in Benghazi? Oh, wait a minute, Ailes actually did that last one already.

The revelations contained in Woodward’s story affirm that Ailes is a Machiavellian scoundrel and that Fox News is a rogue operation. Their intrusion into the political process debases journalism by breaching all standards of ethical conduct. And they debase democracy as well by exploiting their power and wealth to manipulate political outcomes. Roger Ailes has now provided verification for every criticism of his villainy that has been directed at him. And Fox News continues to lack any moral standing to be considered a legitimate news enterprise.

[Addendum 12/20/12] The media has largely ignored this story, an omission that has now been noticed and pointedly analyzed by Woodward’s former partner, Carl Bernstein, in an article for The Guardian.

CEO Roger Ailes Says That Fox News “Has No Agenda”

Posted by Mark NC on November 16, 2012 at 3:02 pm. 2 Comments :

Demonstrating that a fish stinks from the head, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes made some remarkably dishonest remarks in an interview with TVNewser’s Chris Ariens. Ailes was asked how he thought the next four years of the Obama administration would play out. He said…

“It’s day to day for us. We don’t — I know no one believes it — we have no agenda. If he runs into a burning building tomorrow and saves four kids, he’s gonna be the biggest goddamn hero Fox News ever saw. But if he leaves four guys behind on the battlefield but can’t explain it, then he’s gonna have a problem with Fox News.”

This is pretty good evidence that the liars on Fox News have taken their cues from the boss. The reason they are so comfortable making outrageous statements that are utterly devoid of factual basis is that Ailes has communicated clearly that it’s acceptable and he’s shown them how it’s done.

The notion that Fox News has no agenda is a fallacy that no one with a functioning brain would give credence. Even the most ardent conservatives recognize the partisan bias exercised at Fox, and they exploit it to their advantage. Sarah Palin once counseled a troubled GOP senate candidate to “Speak through Fox News.” Ailes himself has described his vision of Fox saying “I see this as the Alamo. If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we’d be fine.” The network worked feverishly to oppose President Obama’s first term and reelection.

Ailes’ suggestion that he would praise the President if he did something worthy is provably false. In the days that followed the killing of Osama Bin Laden, Fox News ran numerous stories suggesting that the mission was unlawful. Their coverage of the same issue during the presidential campaign portrayed Obama, not as a heroic and decisive leader, but as an egotistical braggart. It’s likely that Fox would handle a story about Obama saving children from a burning building in the same disparaging manner. And even though Obama did not leave “four guys behind on the battlefield,” an obvious reference to Benghazi, Ailes and Fox still characterize the story that way.

Ailes likes to pretend that he’s a “fair and balanced” journalist. But the assertion that he has no agenda is belied by what actually gets on the air. A couple of years ago he told the conservative National Review that he saw himself as merely a contrarian. “To be honest with you,” he said, “if all the media was tipped to the right, I’d be the biggest liberal in New York.” But he had plenty of opportunity to be contrary after 9/11 when the rest of the media was propping up George Bush, whose administration had failed to prevent the attack. He could have been a big liberal in 2003 when the rest of the media was jumping on Bush’s bandwagon for an unjustified and illegal war with Iraq.

Nope. Ailes is as he has always been: an unrepentant arch-conservative activist running a pseudo-news enterprise on behalf of a starkly right-wing agenda.

FLASHBACK: Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Posted by Mark NC on November 10, 2012 at 3:15 pm. 5 Comments :

With the 2012 presidential election behind us, there has been a flurry of post-election analysis by observers from all across the political spectrum. One theme that I have seen coming from both the left and right is the notion that Fox News has not been particularly helpful to the Republican Party, despite that being their primary mission. This criticism reminded me of an article I published three years ago titled “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” So I went back and read it, and to my surprise, it seems just as relevant to today’s political landscape as it did then. In fact, it’s rather frightening (and disappointing) that so little has changed. That is, unless your a Democrat, because the harm that Fox is causing to the GOP is a gift to the Democrats.

So on this lazy Saturday afternoon I thought I would reprise this article for your enjoyment. I reprint it here without a single modification.

[Purchase FreakShow stickers at Crass Commerce]

The case was made long ago that Fox News is a blight on the media map. It is bad for journalism. It is bad for Democracy. It is bad for America. A so-called “news” network that repeatedly misinforms, even deliberately disinforms, its audience is failing any test of public service embodied by an ethical press.

I, personally, have made the case for an embargo of Fox News by Democrats and progressives (see Starve the Beast: Part I, Part II, Part III), documenting via studied analysis that there is no affirmative value to appearing on Fox News – a network that has established itself as overtly hostile to the Democratic message and its messengers.

However, there is another side to this that has not been addressed previously. Republicans might be well advised to avoid Fox News as well. There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?

If all we were witnessing was the emergence of a mainstream conservative network that aspired to advance Republican themes and policies, there would not be much of note here. Most of the conventional media was already center-right before there was a Fox News. But Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). So while most Americans have never heard of actual Republican party bosses like House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, posers like Joe the Plumber and Carrie Prejean have become household names.

Fox News has descended into depths heretofore reserved for fringe characters. They are openly promoting the wackos who believe that President Obama is ineligible to hold office because he isn’t a U.S. citizen. They feature commentaries by secessionists and even those calling for an overthrow of the government and the Constitution. This explains how folks like Ralph Peters, a retired military officer who said that the Taliban captors of a U.S. Soldier would be saving us a lot of trouble and expense if they would just kill him, earn airtime on Fox. Peters previously told Fox News that he favors military strikes against media targets. This explains how Glenn Beck can agree with a guest that it would be a good thing if America were attacked again by Osama bin Laden. And don’t even get me started on Victoria Jackson, who has joined an ever-lengthening line of psycho-Chicken Littles who compare the President to Hitler.

Good Advice:
“If crazy ideologues have infiltrated the news business, we need to know about it.”
~ Bill O’Reilly, 7/16/09

The list of loonies extends to politicians like Michele Bachmann, entertainers like Ted Nugent, and of course, the talk show pundits like Rush Limbaugh, whose maniacal rantings are elevated by Fox into their version of political dialogue. It’s a dialogue that is consumed with ACORN conspiracies and Manchurian presidents. The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.

As a result, the Fox News audience is being dumbed down by a parade of paranoid know-nothings. This strategy appears to be successful for Fox in that it has attracted a loyal viewership that is eager to have their twisted preconceptions affirmed. The conflict-infused fare in which Fox specializes is a ratings juggernaut – just like any good fiction. However, this perceived popularity is having an inordinate impact on the GOP platform. By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

With the Fox network unabashedly promoting the most ridiculous rumors, myths, and nightmares of the rightist fringe, moderate and independent Americans will grow ever more suspicious of the Fox/GOP agenda. Most Americans do not believe that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist; or that FEMA is constructing concentration camps; or that we are on a march toward socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever the right is peddling this week. Most Americans do not believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a reptilian alien, or the anti-Christ. In short, most Americans think that the loopy yarns spun by Fox News are fables told by madmen – and believed by even madder men and women who wallow in their doomsday utopia.

Fox News is fond of boasting about their ratings dominance. It is a daily occurrence and the structural core of their argument that they reflect the mood of America. The GOP has bought this argument in its entirety. So it is important to note here that success in the Nielsen ratings has no correlation to public opinion polling. The ratings only measure the program choices of Nielsen’s survey participants. That is a subset of the population at large, and not a particularly representative one. It is a sample focused on consumers, not voters. And its respondents are just those willing to have their TV viewing monitored 24 hours a day, which skews the sample in favor of people who aren’t creeped out by that. What’s more, viewing choices are not necessarily an endorsement of the opinions presented in the program. There are many reasons people choose to watch TV shows, the most frequent being its entertainment value. So any attempt to tie ratings to partisan politics is a foolish exercise that demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the business of television.

As for what constitutes success in the television marketplace, due to the broad diversification of available programming, it doesn’t take much to be heralded as a hit. A mere 3 share (3% of people watching TV) will land you in the top 10. For cable news the bar is set even lower. In fact, the top rated show on the top rated cable news network (The O’Reilly Factor) only gets about 3 million viewers. That’s less than 1% of the American population. It’s also less than World Wrestling Entertainment, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the CBS Evening News (the lowest rated broadcast network news program). By contrast, America’s Got Talent is seen by 12 million viewers – four times O’Reilly’s audience.

Numbers this low ought not to inspire much excitement from political operatives. Nevertheless, Republicans are riding the coattails of Fox News as if it were representative of a booming conservative mandate in the electorate. They are embracing Fox’s most delusional eccentrics. This is leading to the promotion of similar eccentrics within the party. Which brings us the absurd spectacle of the network’s nuts interviewing the party’s pinheads.

The inevitable result of this system of rewarding those farthest from reality is the creation of a constituency of crackpots. It is an endorsement of the philosophy brewed by the Tea Baggers that espouses racism, tyranny, and armed revolt. It is enabling a frightening corps of openly militant adversaries of democracy, free speech, and Constitutional rule. It is the sort of environment that produced the murders of Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen Johns.

This is a textbook example of how the extreme rises to the top. It is also fundamentally contrary to the interests of the Republican Party. The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds. It seems like such a waste after all of the effort and expense that Fox put into building a pseudo-journalistic enterprise with the goal of confounding viewers with false news-like theatrics.

Make no mistake, Fox News is still managed by hard core party patrons. And I’m not referring just to opinion-driven commentators like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, although they are bad enough. No, I am talking about executives and editors like CEO, Roger Ailes, former Nixon and Bush media consultant. I’m talking about Washington Managing Editor and VP, Bill Sammon, an avid right-wing alum of the Washington “Moonie” Times. I’m talking about Business News Chief and VP, Neil Cavuto, antagonistic interrupter extraordinaire. And let us not forget the head hype-master, Rupert Murdoch, whose UK operations were just discovered to have been unlawfully wiretapping celebrities, politicians, and even members of the Royal Family. Augmenting that executive roster are the GOP regulars who are straight out of the just retired Republican White House: Karl Rove, Dana Perino, John Bolton, Dan Senor, and Linda Chavez. And then there are the Fox News clowns…er…“contributors” like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Bernie Goldberg, Michele Malkin, and on and on. If nothing else, Fox is a full-employment program for rightist weasels (and they also operate the Conservative Book Promotion Club).

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to be more than just a voice of opposition to Democrats. It was to utterly crush the left end of the political spectrum leaving only a teetering right wing with no counter balance. Yet, despite the torrid embrace between Republicans and Fox News, it is apparent that Fox is the source of a sort of friendly fire that is decimating the GOP by exalting its most outlandish and unpopular players. And since Republicans have not been particularly popular anyway lately, the anchor being thrown to them by Fox can’t be all that helpful – – – Except to Democrats.

The more things change, the more they get even crazier than they were before.

Fox News Flim-Flam: Conning Latinos For Politics And Profit

Posted by Mark NC on July 20, 2012 at 10:15 am. 3 Comments :

This article was also published on Alternet.

The reputation for Fox News as a brazenly biased, right-wing, mouthpiece for the Republican Party and a conservative agenda is well-established. From their upper-management (Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes) to their frontline anchors (Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity), they have forged a network that has entirely abandoned any pretense of impartiality.

That well-honed partisan prejudice has proven to be useful in poisoning the political discourse. Fox News has exploited their audience to favor GOP candidates and sway perceptions of complex issues like health care, economics, and the environment. Amongst the most prominent of the issues that Fox has sought to distort is immigration. Their reporting is relentless in falsely portraying immigrants as shiftless lawbreakers who steal jobs from American citizens and drain the nation of scarce public resources.

Fox viewers are accustomed to stories about “illegals” swarming across the border to take up residency in the U.S. and sponge off of our prosperity. They are vilified as criminals and blamed for everything from disease to the recession. There is hardly a mention of immigrants on Fox that isn’t associated with drunkenness, joblessness, or drug cartels.

Lately, however, someone at Fox News has recognized a major flaw in their strategy to demonize immigrants, particularly Latinos. One of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population happens to be legal Latinos who are either naturalized or natural-born citizens. The U.S. Census bureau reports that the Hispanic population grew at about four times the nation’s average growth rate between 2000 and 2010. The report notes that “the Hispanic population increased by 15.2 million between 2000 and 2010 and accounted for more than half of the total U.S. population increase of 27.3 million.”

The problem for Fox News, and their ideological benefactors, is that these are citizens who can vote and are registering in record numbers. This is particularly noticeable in states that are crucial for Republican electoral victories like Nevada, Arizona, and Florida. But the trend is evident in some measure throughout the country.

This situation poses a disconcerting problem for Fox. How do they maintain their editorial animosity toward immigrants without alienating an increasingly important voter group? The answer appears to be by developing news content specifically for this demographic and sequestering it from the rest of their viewership.

First to appear in this vein was the Fox News Latino web site. It is an English language adjunct to the Fox News site with content aimed directly at the Latino reader. However, the treatment of news events on Fox News Latino is markedly different from that on Fox News. Here are a few typical examples:

June 15, 2012: In response to President Obama’s announcement of a policy shift wherein certain young immigrants would be granted work permits rather than be deported, the Fox News Latino web site posted a story headlined, “Obama Administration Halts Deportations for Young Immigrants.” That’s a factually accurate description that treats the news in a neutral manner. The headline was accompanied by a sympathetic photo of a young Latina child draped with an American flag.

However, on Fox Nation they went with the headline “Obama Administration Bypasses Congress, To Give Immunity, Stop Deporting Younger Illegals.” In that short sentence they managed to imply impropriety on the part of the administration, infer the controversial subject of amnesty, and insult Latinos by employing the dehumanizing label of “illegals” (even though the people affected by this initiative did not break any law). The photo accompanying this article was of adult Latinos sitting up against a wall in handcuffs.

It is also notable that the Fox News Latino site posted the Associated Press article about the announcement in full. The Fox Nationalists posted only two paragraphs plus a video from Fox News of right-wing wacko Allen West expressing his outrage. This is further evidence that the Fox Nationalists want to avoid giving their dimwitted readers too much actual information, but prefer to throw up as much ultra-right-wing opinion as possible.

June 19, 2012: Bloomberg released a poll that showed that 64 percent of likely voters favor Obama’s policy on suspending deportations of certain younger immigrants. Note that this substantial majority is of “likely” voters, not just Latino voters. So the story has relevance to a wide range of news viewers and could even be an important predictor of who will win the presidency in November. Nevertheless, Fox News did not run this story. Fox Nation did not run this story. The only Fox destination where you can read this story is on Fox News Latino. So Fox is deliberately hiding from the rest of their audience the news that a substantial majority of Americans agree with this policy.

What’s more, the tone of the reporting is distinctly different from that on other Fox properties. There isn’t a hint of hostility toward immigrants. The story accurately refers to “prosecutorial discretion” as the means of carrying out the policy, rather than the false assertions of Executive Orders or dictatorial overreach that appear on Fox News. The derogatory phrase “illegals,” used routinely on Fox News, is nowhere in the story, having been replaced by “undocumented immigrant.” The story notes correctly that Congress, not the President, had dropped the ball on the DREAM Act and that it was Republicans who filibustered it out of existence. These are news insights that will never be seen by the broader Fox audience unless they happen to read Fox News Latino.

June 25, 2012: Fox News covered the Supreme Court ruling on the controversial Arizona law against undocumented immigrants in its uniquely racist way by tailoring the story differently to different audiences. On Fox News Latino the headline accurately reported that the “Court Strikes Down Most of AZ Immig Law.” However, on Fox Nation they went with the misleading, “U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Controversial Part of Tough Arizona Immigration Law.” Even Fox News was more balanced by saying that the “Supreme Court Reigns In Arizona On Immigration.”

Here we have one arm of Fox reporting that the law was struck down, and another arm saying it was upheld. So once again Fox panders to their Latino audience on the web site aimed at them, while slanting steeply in the opposite direction on Fox Nation, a community of such rancid bigotry that Fox had to close the comments section for fear of the vile postings that frequently occur. Obviously, Fox knows its audience.

July 8, 2012: The Fox News Latino web site featured an article from the Associated Press on the issue of voter suppression that was reported in a manner that respects the truth. The author correctly notes that instances of in-person voter fraud are nearly non-existent, but that the photo-ID laws advanced by Republicans will disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters.

On Fox News the typical approach to this story is the ludicrous assertion that opponents of ID laws are proponents of fraud, even though they can never cite actual incidents of fraud. The purpose is obvious. Fox News is working in concert with the GOP to purge Democrats from the voter rolls. However, on Fox’s Latino-focused web site the story is completely different. It is treated with the proper attention to the harm that would befall Latino voters.

In addition to the Fox News Latino web site, Fox recently announced that they are launching a new Spanish language broadcast television network, MundoFox. The network will feature both entertainment and news programming, but their initial press release states that they “will not have any association with Fox News Channel.” It also quotes the Senior VP of news, Jorge Mettey, describing the type of viewer they intend to attract in a particularly derogatory light:

“We are not focusing on the regular normal issues that newscasts in Spanish focus on, like immigration and that stuff. It is not our focus. We are talking to a different Latino. We are not talking to victims. We are talking to successful people eager to improve their lives.”

Apparently Mettey regards “regular normal” Latinos as victims who are uninterested in improving their lives, and he doesn’t want any of “them” watching his network. MundoFox is getting off to a great start by insulting a fair portion of their potential audience. This aggressive posturing is actually typical of the way Fox has launched all of their networks. When announcing Fox News as being “fair and balanced” they were implying that the other networks were not merely competitors, but that they were untrustworthy. When they launched the Fox Business Network they bragged that “a Fox channel would be ‘more business-friendly’ than CNBC.” Although it doesn’t really make much sense for a network that is supposed to be reporting objectively, for the benefit of people making investment decisions, to declare that they intend for their coverage to be friendly.

It is also notable that Mettey, has a somewhat checkered past. He was fired from his position as news director at KMEX in 2007, amidst allegations of ethical breaches. The Los Angeles Times reported that…

“The alleged improprieties investigated included whether Mettey had benefited financially from coverage of Puebla’s governor at a time when he was being criticized for his association with an accused pedophile and of an African-themed zoo in Puebla in which Mettey’s wife, Denise, has an ownership interest. In addition, the news division allegedly accepted free tickets on an Aeromexico flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Puebla.”

With the expansion into the Latino community, Fox is reaching out to connect with a new audience. In the process they are conducting themselves in an uncharacteristically fair and balanced manner. Make no mistake, there are good reasons for this atypical behavior on the part of Fox, and it isn’t just the immense economic opportunity (although that is certainly a factor). Roger Ailes, Fox News CEO, was a Republican strategist and media consultant before launching Fox with Rupert Murdoch. Ailes knows that Republicans have a demographics problem as Latinos continue to grow as a percentage of the population and, therefore, the electorate. The Tea Party dominated GOP can’t see past their prejudices and frothing immigrant hatred. But Ailes knows that if the party doesn’t win back some Latino support they will be a minority party for decades to come.

So with Fox News Latino and MundoFox, Ailes is doing for the party what they are too stupid to do for themselves – pandering to the Latino vote. They think they can segregate the reporting so that their Latino audience will see stories that are framed positively, while the rest of the Fox universe remains steeped in the animus of bigots and conservative partisans. It’s a cynical ploy that could only be hatched by people who think that Latinos are stupid enough to fall for it. Fortunately, that’s where Fox is most likely going to be proved wrong.

Update: Media Matters just posted a similar article with quotes from Latino leaders expressing their skepticism of Fox’s Latino news coverage and motives.

Update II: They’ve done it again. Fox News Latino published an article about emails revealed during an ACLU litigation that expose the racial hatred of former Arizona senate president Russell Pearce (author of the controversial immigration law). But a cursory search of Fox News did not turn up any reporting on this shocking story. However, I eventually found a re-posting of an Associated Press article on the subject buried in Fox’s “SciTech” section. That’s right – “SciTech,” not “News” or “Politics” – is where Fox posts an article about a legal challenge to a politician’s immigration law that is littered with racist remarks. So Fox makes this information available to their Fox News Latino readers, but clumsily tries to hide it from the rest of their audience.

Fox News Latino Reports Favorable Poll On Obama Immigration Policy, But Not Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on June 19, 2012 at 8:17 pm. 1 Comments :

Fox News has commenced a new routine wherein they sequester any news of interest to Latinos to their Fox News Latino web site. They do this even for news that is of interest to a broader audience. For example, a Bloomberg poll was released today that showed that 64 percent of likely voters favor Obama’s policy on suspending deportations of certain younger immigrants.

Note that this substantial majority is of “likely” voters, not just Latino voters. So the story has relevance to a wide range of news viewers and could even be an important predictor of who will win the presidency in November. However, Fox News has not run this story. Fox Nation has not run this story. So far, the only Fox destination where you can read this story is on Fox News Latino.

What’s more, the tone of the reporting is distinctly different from that on other Fox properties. There isn’t a hint of hostility toward immigrants. Take, for example , this excerpt:

“The Obama policy orders immigration authorities to use prosecutorial discretion to freeze deportations for undocumented immigrants who arrived before the age of 16, have lived in the United States for five years, have clean criminal records and who are younger than 31.

The decision was prompted by congressional inaction on the DREAM Act, a proposal that would provide a path to citizenship for some undocumented youth who attend college or serve in the military.

The House of Representatives passed the DREAM Act in December 2010, but came up five votes short of the 60 votes needed to break a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate.”

The story accurately refers to “prosecutorial discretion” as the means of carrying out the policy, rather than the false assertions of Executive Orders or dictatorial overreach that appear on Fox News. The derogatory phrase “illegal immigrant,” used routinely on Fox News, is nowhere in the story, having been replaced by “undocumented immigrant.” The story notes correctly that Congress, not the President, had dropped the ball on the DREAM Act and that it was Republicans who filibustered it out of existence.

None of these treatments of the news item will appear on Fox News. They can segregate the reporting so that their Latino audience will see stories like this one, while the rest of the Fox universe remains steeped in the animus of bigots and conservative partisans. And in this case, the whole story has been excised from the Fox universe outside of the Latino orbit.

Make no mistake, there are good reasons for this uncharacteristic behavior on the part of Fox. Roger Ailes, Fox News CEO, was a Republican strategist and media consultant before launching Fox with Rupert Murdoch. Ailes knows that Republicans have a demographics problem as Latinos continue to grow as a percentage of the population. The Tea Party dominated GOP can’t see past their prejudices and frothing immigrant hatred. But Ailes knows that if the party doesn’t win back some Latino support they will be a minority party for decades to come.

So with Fox News Latino, Ailes is doing for the party what they are too stupid to do for themselves – pandering to the Latino vote. But now they’ve created a new problem by treating Latinos as if they are too stupid to notice they’re being played.

Are You Braindead And Biased Enough To Work At Fox News?

Posted by Mark NC on June 3, 2012 at 1:31 pm. 3 Comments :

This week Fox News revealed what they regard as the professional and personal attributes to secure and maintain employment at their enterprise. What it comes down to is having a commitment to distorting the news, swinging hard to the right, and focusing like a laser beam on anything negative about President Obama and the Democrats.

The example was set by Chris White, the Fox producer responsible for the now famous four minute anti-Obama campaign-style video that was broadcast on Fox & Friends. In the wake of that shoddy exercise of pseudo-journalism, White was thrown onto a roller coaster that first sent him up a steep track of praise from Fox & Friends’ idiot hosts. That was followed by criticism and ridicule from many of his peers in the press and a vaguely critical statement from his boss, Fox News EVP of programming, Bill Shine, who said…

“The package that aired on FOX & Friends was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network. This has been addressed with the show’s producers.”

The video itself appeared and disappeared from Fox’s web sites, finally falling into an abyss from which it never returned. White was reported to have been offered a new job at CNN prior to this controversy, but that offer was subsequently rescinded. With his fate up in the air, another statement emerged from Shine saying that…

“Chris White will remain employed with FOX News. We’ve addressed the video with the producers and are not going to discuss the internal workings of our programming any further.”

So Fox pulled White’s carcass from the fire. And why not? He represents everything the network reveres. No doubt he will soon get a promotion and additional responsibility so that he can slap together some more partisan GOP propaganda in advance of the election in November. That’s what Fox pays him to do. That’s what they pay Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, and the rest of their staff to do.

However, Shine’s statement was notable for more than just his support for the disgraced producer. Shine’s arrogance in declining any further discussion of this matter is emblematic of the arrogance of Fox News overall. There is much left to discuss, and Fox News would be the first to demand more discussion and transparency from their competitors were they to be embroiled in a similar scandal. For instance, White was not the only person involved in the broadcast of that video. There were others who participated in its production including the Fox & Friends gang who were so openly effusive in their praise, yet they have not commented on it at all.

Where is the accountability for this abuse of ethics? Fox is determined to keep hidden any repercussions or, more likely, rewards they may have administered. And that is true to form at Fox. They have a history of hiring disgraced rejects. For example, Juan Williams, Don Imus, Doug McKelway, and Lou Dobbs were all put on the Fox payroll after having been terminated for cause at other networks. And as for their management of in-house malfeasance, here is a list of Fox personal who ought to have been fired for their brazenly inappropriate and unprofessional behavior, but who are still cheerfully plying their partisan trade at Fox (from my article last February):

Todd Starnes: Unsurprisingly, Fox News has smeared the Occupy Movement from its inception. They have disparaged them as everything from unfocused to unclean to un-American. But it took Starnes, the host of Fox News & Commentary on Fox Radio, to equate them to mass murderers by asking, “What should be done with the domestic terrorists who are occupying our cities and college campuses?” By comparing Occupiers to the likes of Timothy McVeigh, Starnes is engaging in rhetorical terrorism and insulting hundreds of thousands of concerned Americans.

Cody Willard: This Fox Business reporter brazenly exposed his bias when he attended a Tea Party rally and feverishly barked at the camera this call to arms against the U.S. government, “Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country?”

Andrew Napolitano: The “Judge” is a notorious 9/11 Truther who believes that the attack on the World Trade Center towers was an inside job, orchestrated by agents of the United States government. That’s a position considered so crazy by Fox Newsers that it was instrumental in their campaign to get Van Jones fired from his post as a green jobs adviser to President Obama. But, in typical Foxian hypocrisy, it has no impact on the employment of Napolitano. [Note: The entire primetime schedule of the Fox Business Network, including Napolitano, Eric Bolling and David Asman, was recently canceled. But it was due to poor ratings, not content. And all remain active Fox News contributors.]

Bill Sammon: The Fox News Washington managing editor was recorded admitting to a friendly audience on a conservative cruise that he would go on air and “mischievously” cast Obama as a socialist even though he didn’t believe it himself. In other words, he lied to defame the President and rile up his gullible viewers. That would be cause for termination at most news networks, but probably earned Sammon a bonus at Fox.

Eric Bolling: Hoping to sustain Fox’s leadership in inappropriate Nazi references, Bolling accused President Obama of engaging in class warfare that was “forged in Marxist Germany.” And if that wasn’t asinine enough, he sided with Iran against the U.S. by accusing the American hikers who were held in an Iranian prison of being spies and said that Iran should have kept them.

Bill O’Reilly: Dr. George Tiller, a family physician in Kansas, was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist who may have been incited to violence by rhetoric like this from O’Reilly: “Now, we have bad news to report that Tiller the baby killer out in Kansas, acquitted. Acquitted today of murdering babies.” O’Reilly regards the acquittal of a doctor for performing legal medical services “bad news,” and the services themselves “murder.” But he never took any responsibility for fanning the flames of violent incivility that led to the actual murder of Dr. Tiller.

Col. Ralph Peters (Ret): In a rant that argued that the United States should fight back against our enemies with the same tactics they use against us, Peters turned the media into military targets: “Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. And like Bolling, Peters also took the side of our foes by suggesting, without evidence, that a missing American soldier was a deserter and that “the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills,” presumably by killing him.

Michael Scheuer: This former CIA analyst was concerned that the American people were not sufficiently afraid of future terrorist attacks. He regards that absence of fear as dangerous complacency. But he has a solution: “The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”

Roger Ailes: The CEO of Fox News proves that a fish stinks from its head. In response to NPR’s firing of Juan Willimas for bigoted remarks about Muslims, Ailes let loose a tirade wherein he viciously attacked the NPR executives saying that… “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism.”

Liz Trotta: What started out as a verbal stumble became a call for assassination when Trotta said, “Now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, umm, Obama. Well, both if we could.” Trotta followed that up with a commentary berating women in the military for complaining that they get raped too much (she did not define what an “acceptable” amount of rape is).

So if you’re looking for work at Fox News, you now have an idea of how you need to present yourself. Just go in breathing right-wing fire and hostility for liberals, along with a petulantly defiant attitude toward any criticism. Never back down, and remember that even conceding an error is a sign of fatal weakness. The CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes, exemplified this trait masterfully when he hysterically insisted that “in 15 years we have never taken a story down because it was wrong.” Hmm. Then what happened to the anti-Obama video?

But also keep in mind that a successful career at Fox may not translate into success more generally in the media. Once associated with the disreputable network you may become tainted goods and damage your prospects elsewhere. In response to the Chris White affair, the Baltimore Sun’s television critic David Zurawik told Media Matters that…

“I wouldn’t hire anybody who worked at Fox even if I knew them, because I believe they’ve been compromised.”

It’s a safe bet to presume that he’s not alone. So work for Fox at your own risk, and only if you’re pretty sure that you’ll never want to work anywhere that isn’t a right-wing disinformation center. And, of course, be sure that you have an all-consuming passion for twisting the truth to advance conservative dogma. If you’re willing to be steadfastly dishonest, insulting, and obnoxious, you have a promising career awaiting you at Fox News. Good luck.

Not So Breitbart: This Web Site Smells Worse Than Its Decomposing Founder

Posted by Mark NC on May 23, 2012 at 1:43 pm. 5 Comments :

At Breitbart News they are apparently beginning to feel the heat as they continually come up empty in their faux investigations. The site has become a parody of a right-wing disinformation center that produces more laughter than news. Consequently, they are steeping in the stench of desperation which only results ever more pathetic excuses for journalism. Yesterday they posted three standout hysterical failures that only prove what a bunch of losers Andrew left behind to sour his legacy.

Breitbart-Obama's SAT 1) Exclusive: The Vetting – Did Obama Have Lower SAT Scores Than George W. Bush?
This article by Charles C. Johnson may be exclusive because no one else would run a story so thoroughly devoid of substance. The fact that the question in the title is never answered is consistent with the rest of the phony series allegedly “vetting” President Obama. The article opens by bragging that…

“Breitbart News has established that Obama’s grades and Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores may have been even lower than those of his supposedly less capable predecessor, George W. Bush.

Breitbart News has learned that the transfer class that entered Columbia College in the fall of 1981 with Obama was one of the worst in recent memory, according to Columbia officials at the time.”

Unfortunately, Breitbrat Charlie established nothing with regard to Obama’s grades. He merely engaged in wild speculation based on flimsy data that doesn’t affirm his contention. He provided zero evidence that Obama’s grades were low, or that his class was “the worst in recent memory.”

Based on his own source it is entirely possible that Obama’s grades were far higher than the average for his class. There is no stipulation that he was average or below. That is completely made up by the Breitbrats. And the claim that the class was “the worst” is equally false. The only thing their source said was that “On paper at least, the quality of the students accepted [as transfers] has declined.” It does not say that it declined to the worst and it says nothing about Obama’s placement.

This feverish attack on Obama’s intelligence by the morons at Breitbart News culminates in an absurd comparison between Obama and George W. Bush. At Harvard Obama held the prestigious post of editor of the Harvard Law Review and he graduated Magna Cum Laude. Bush barely graduated with a C- from Yale, and that was probably due to his father being a legacy and U.S. Congressman. There is simply no comparison of intellectual capacity between an accomplished honors student like Obama and a slacker riding his family coattails like Bush.

Breitbart-Ailes/Stewart 2) Roger Ailes: Jon Stewart Told Me He’s a Socialist
The headline in this article is a rehashing of scurrilous insults that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes first threw at the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart back in December of 2010. At that time Ailes told interviewer Howard Kurtz that the executives at NPR were Nazis, that there was a cabal of left-wing rabbis, and that Stewart was both an atheist and a socialist. It was an utterly unhinged tirade that exposed Ailes as borderline psychotic. And now, Breitbrat John Nolte posts this screed attacking Stewart as an “elitist millionaire socialist” who…

“…would like to be the ‘benevolent’ overlord who tells us what’s best for us, especially in areas of speech, an area Stewart is desperate to control.”

Is Jon Stewart really a tyrant-in-waiting who, perched on his throne at the all-powerful Comedy Central, is desperate to control free speech? One shudders at the omnipotence of this unholy overlord. But how can this be if, as Breitbrat John says, he is also an “establishment toady” protecting Obama/Goliath? There aren’t very many historical examples of toady dictators.

Nolte goes on to describe Stewart as “talented, but … pathetic.” His hatred of Stewart goes back a long way. He has posted numerous disparaging articles about him, some of which take aim at his ratings, even though Stewart’s late night program beats the highest rated shows on Fox News in prime time.

Like the rest of the delusional right, Breitbrat John suffers from a sort of wingnut tunnel vision that causes him to think that Stewart is a liberal mouthpiece who never employs his satire to take down Obama or other Democrats. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I previously documented, Fox has posted at least 29 articles praising Stewart’s segments that bash the President and liberals. So the schizophrenic right still manages to shovel hate-filled screeds at Stewart, even as they celebrate his satirical bipartisanship.

Breitbart Vetting Journalists 3) Their Rules, Not Ours: Time to Vet Private Lives of Journalists?
This may be the most ignorant and disturbing thing I have seen yet on Breitbart News. They are overtly threatening journalists with a campaign of slander and personal attacks on reporters who they don’t happen to like. Their razor-thin justification for such abhorrent behavior is that some reporters have published stories about ultra-wealthy Romney supporters who are trying to buy the election. Breitbrat John Nolte accuses reporters of trying to “intimidate and frighten” poor, defenseless, right-wing millionaires, so in retaliation he threatens to dig into the personal lives of journalists that have no relevancy to their work. He warns…

“What should we know about their personal lives, their finances, their personal mistakes, their traffic violations, and any run-ins with the law?”

The obvious answer is: Nothing! None of that information has any relevance to what reporters publish. If Breitbrat John has a problem with the content of an article he might try rebutting the assertions it presents. However, when you have no case to make against the substance, you attack the messenger. Nolte clearly does not have the mental acuity (or facts) to defend his positions, so he is launching a personal campaign against journalists who have a constitutional right to publish. If anyone is engaging in intimidation, it is Nolte and his fellow Breitbart thugs.

Nolte argues that the wealthy subjects of some news pieces are private citizens and exempt from scrutiny. In fact, they are openly public and taking prominent roles in bankrolling the campaigns of politicians and issues in an attempt to steer government in the direction of their conservative agenda. What could be more public than that? What’s more, the Breitbarts have no problem whatsoever attacking supporters of liberal politicians like George Soros and Bill Maher, so that just highlights their brazen hypocrisy.

To top it all off, the Breitbrats posted an item today at the top of their page (which real news organizations reserve for important stories) that features a photo of President Obama wearing colonial attire. The occasion was a 4th of July Celebration and parade where participating office-holders were requested to dress up. The Breitbrats virtually wet themselves with glee as they spun this “vetting” into some sort of expose of Obama as “The First Tea Partier.”

First of all, I think the first Tea Partiers were in Boston about 240 years ago. And they were a decidedly unruly bunch who occupied the property of the one-percenters and destroyed their private assets in a protest over the unfair control of powerful business interests.

The article accompanying the photo went to great lengths to imply that Obama was hypocritical for criticizing the Tea Party for their costumes and symbols. Except for one thing: Obama never criticized the Tea Party for their costumes or symbols. To be sure, many liberals did so, but there is a stark difference between the left’s mockery of Tea Partiers and what the Breitbrats are attempting to do here. Obama made a public appearance in costume one time at a special event that requested it. The Tea Partiers do it every weekend for no particular reason. So the complaint on the part of the Breitbrats is like complaining if someone showed up at an annual Halloween party in costume, as opposed to a pack of nuts that spend every weekend dressing up in the park.

I won’t pretend to guess what Andrew Breitbart might have thought about these matters, but I can’t imagine that anyone would be proud of the sloppy and juvenile ravings that are emanating from the web pages he used to oversee.

1) Romancing Petraeus: Fox News CEO Roger Ailes Tries To Recruit For The GOP

2) Fox News Produces Their Own Anti-Obama Video

3) Question For Fox News: How Much Rape Is Too Much Rape?

4) Fox News Conning Latinos For Politics And Profit

5) Fox News Lies About Military Access To Voting In Ohio

6) Graphic Evidence Of The Racism Of Fox News: Racial Photoshopping

7) The Polling Schizophrenia At Fox News

8) Fox News Psycho Analyst: Newt Gingrich’s Adultery Means A Stronger America

9) Fox News Airs An Hour Long Commercial For An Anti-Obama Film On Hannity

10) Fox News “Democrat” Kirsten Powers Accuses Obama Of Sympathizing With Terrorists

11) Fox News Spinning Furiously On Unemployment Rate

12) Fox News Opposes Ban On Assault Weapons But Imposes Ban On Talking About It

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