Fox Nation vs. Reality: A Revealing Look Into The Fox News Community’s Assault On Truth

Posted by Mark NC on March 27, 2013 at 9:04 am. 2 Comments :

This is an excerpt from the introduction to the book Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault On Truth. The book contains more than fifty examples of Fox’s rank dishonesty with verifiable documentation of the falsehoods.

When Fox News debuted sixteen years ago, it was crafted from scratch to be a partisan outlet for right-wing propaganda and a platform for advancing a conservative agenda. Its founder, Rupert Murdoch, was already an internationally known purveyor of right-slanted newspapers and broadcasters. Murdoch’s first move was to hire Roger Ailes, a Republican media strategist, to build a network that would reflect his conservative views.

Today Fox News is the highest rated cable news network, having surpassed the innovator, and long-time leader, CNN about ten years ago. However, putting that into perspective, Fox News still draws only about half the viewers of the lowest rated broadcast news program (CBS Evening News), and about 25% of the broadcast leader’s audience (NBC Nightly News). Its ratings are lower than Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and Spongebob Squarepants too. Nevertheless, Fox has parlayed its cable success into a juggernaut of hype and hyperbole.

Complimenting Fox’s television presence is its Internet community web site, Fox Nation. The statement of purpose posted on the Fox Nation web site says that it is “committed to the core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse, and fair and balanced coverage of the news.” However, a cursory glance at the site reveals that they have fallen wide of their stated purpose by several light years.

The pretense of fairness and balance is even less true for Fox Nation than it is for their parent, Fox News. At any given time, Fox Nation is layered thickly with far-right extremist diatribes and links to disreputable articles plucked from the Internet’s fringes (i.e. Breitbart and the John Birch Society). They compose headlines that are dripping with hyperbole (i.e. O’Reilly Demolishes Liberal Hypocrisy, and Cheney’s Daughter Annihilates MSNBC Anchor). They display overt disrespect by attaching disparaging and childish nicknames to people they don’t like (i.e. “Pig” Maher for Bill Maher, or Stuart Smalley for Sen. Al Franken).

The notion that civil discourse can take place on Fox Nation is dispelled with the viewing of their user forums. When they aren’t referencing the President as Odumbo or the First Lady as Moo-chelle, they are engaging in the rankest display of racism and hatred this side of the KKK’s home page. The Fox Nationalists use the “N” word as if it were an acceptable descriptive noun. And it doesn’t take much effort to find outright advocacy of violence and even assassination.

These sorts of comments are not anomalies. Fox Nation is deliberately catering to this caliber of audience. The frequency of comments like these makes it impossible to deny that they meet with the approval of the site’s editors. Which raises another pertinent question: Who are the site’s editors?

Most legitimate news enterprises identify their principle staff – publishers, editors, etc. But Fox News treats these people as if they were covert agents of espionage. There is no masthead or bylines or any other indication of who is responsible for the repugnant content posted daily on the web page. Requests for this information from Fox corporate communications officers went unanswered. And given the dishonesty, unprofessionalism, ignorance, and immaturity of the tone and substance on the site, perhaps it is their intention to remain anonymous in order to avoid the shame that would come with an association to such puerile trash.

This first volume of Fox Nation vs. Reality is a collection of some of the blatant falsehoods found on Fox Nation. 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.

Fox Nation/Tea Party Poll
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.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Fox News Exploits Dead Rock Star To Bash Obama

Posted by Mark NC on March 22, 2013 at 2:15 pm. NO Comments :

In a particularly repulsive display of insensitivity and brazen dishonesty, the folks at Fox Nation posted a article that falsely declared “Obama Exploits Dead Rock Star For Gun Grab.”

The first and most obvious problem with that article is that it is patently untrue. The allegation is that President Obama was responsible for Tweeting a photograph of John Lennon’s bloodied glasses with a message about the tragic consequences of an armed and violent society. The message in the Tweet is:

“Over 1,057,000 people have been killed by guns in the U.S. A. since John Lennon was shot and killed on December 8, 1980.”

However, the President was not responsible for that Tweet. The message and the photo was Tweeted by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono. If anyone has a right to express outrage over the proliferation of deadly weapons, it is Yoko.

It is clear that she sent the message and the photo out with the intent that it be disseminated by her followers online. And that is precisely what someone working for the pro-Obama organization (not Obama or his White House), Organizing for America did. Re-Tweeting Yoko was not in any way exploitative. To the contrary, it was respectful because it was exactly what she wanted.

In addition, Fox misrepresented the meaning of the message by twisting it to suggest advocacy of a “gun grab.” However, it should be noted that no one – not Yoko, not Obama, not any proposal before congress – is calling for anything like the sort of confiscatory distortion advanced by Fox.

If anyone is guilty of exploiting Lennon’s murder, it is Fox. They are the ones lying about both the source of the message and the meaning of it as well. It is a disgraceful affront to Lennon’s memory (like Yoko, he was a peace activist) and to those who loved him both in his actual family and the worldwide family of his fans. So screw you, Fox. You have no standing to criticize Yoko or to speak for her late-husband.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: On Obama’s Budget The Balancing Of

Posted by Mark NC on March 13, 2013 at 11:04 am. 1 Comments :

It’s not bad enough that Fox News operates a community web site that is riddled with lies, but they also frequently demonstrate a level of incompetence that would embarrass a remedial high school newspaper.

Perhaps I’m being too hard them. Maybe their syntax here was meant to compliment Obama by portraying him as having the wisdom of Yoda. Or maybe they hired Sarah Palin to write their headlines. Or, of course, they may just be emulating their racist perception of Ebonics. In any case, the gist of their article is incontestably false.

The Fox Nationalists are characterizing Obama’s remarks as a rejection of the goal of balancing the federal budget. Now, that would be a perfectly reasonable position to take because in a recession many economists argue that economic growth has a higher priority than balanced budgets. However, it is not the position that Obama is taking,. In the interview Obama gave to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos he very clearly articulated his interest in balancing the budget:

“Balancing the budget in part depends on how fast you grow. You remember– you were in the Clinton administration. The reason that you guys balanced it was a combination of some tax hikes, some spending cuts, and the economy grew.

“And, so– you know, my goal is not to chase– a balanced budget just for the sake of balance. My goal is how do we grow the economy, put people back to work, and if we do that we’re gonna be bringing in more revenue. If we’ve controlled spending and we’ve got a smart entitlement package, then potentially what you have is balance. But it’s not balance on the backs of, you know, the poor, the elderly, students who need student loans, families who’ve got disabled kids. That’s not the right way to balance our budget.”

Any fair reading of that statement would recognize that the President is focusing on balancing the budget, but doing it in a way that is compassionate, intelligent, and doesn’t make America’s less fortunate shoulder the burden for the wealthy. It most definitely is not Obama saying that his budget won’t be balanced (or be won’t balanced either). This is just another example of Fox misrepresenting the facts in order to whip their ill-informed audience into a frenzy over a fabricated controversy.

So F**king What? Movie Producer Funds Jon Stewart’s Movie

Posted by Mark NC on March 7, 2013 at 10:18 am. NO Comments :

Due to the apparent lack of anything else that’s newsworthy, Fox Nation is reporting this bit of breaking news:

The glorified delinquents that run Fox Nation veritably drool at any opportunity to disparage President Obama and his Hollywood pals. They are also giddy about slamming allegedly liberal comedians whenever possible (note that Jon Stewart is a frequent critic of the President and Democrats, and Fox knows it). But this item sourced to the ultra-conservative Washington Free Beacon is a perfect illustration of just how deranged these hacks are by their Obama hatred. The article begins…

“Gigi Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt fortune, will finance and produce Stewart’s directorial debut, Rosewater. The film is based on the true story of a former Iranian political prisoner arrested after appearing on ‘The Daily Show.”'”

So F**king What?

Sure, Pritzker is financing and producing Stewart’s film. Perhaps it’s because she runs a production company, Odd Lot Entertainment, and was fortunate enough to snag this project that many producers in the business would covet. And as obsessed right-wingers like to remind everyone, there is an abundance of Obama supporters in Hollywood. It might be difficult to find a film producer that had not donated to Obama.

Do the cretins at Fox think that Stewart would have associated himself with Republican producer for his first directorial effort?

Oops. Wait a minute…..It seems that Stewart has, in fact, associated himself with a Republican producer. In 2012 Pritzker, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, contributed the maximum allowed donation – to Mitt Romney! So Fox could just as well have posted the headline “Romney Donor Funds Jon Stewart Movie.” I wonder why they didn’t.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Night Of The Living Tea Party

Posted by Mark NC on March 6, 2013 at 12:23 pm. NO Comments :

Get your copy of the ebook
Fox Nation vs. Reality
today. Only $2.99 at Amazon.

These right-wing dead-enders will simply never learn. After having deluded themselves into believing that President Obama’s reelection was dead in the water, that Mitt Romney was a shoe-in to take up residency in the White House, and that all the polls were the work of corrupt partisans bent on deceiving the electorate, you would think that they would have joined the rest of America in the real world. You would be wholly and hysterically wrong.

An article posted on Fox Nation declares wildly, and without rational support, that “The Tea Party Still Lives.” In one respect it is an encouraging development in that they must at least recognize that the far-right fringe of the GOP has been on life support for quite some time. However, this new diagnosis is based on the same sort of pathological denial as the claims that Obama’s presidency was terminal. The poll cited by the Fox Nationalists was commissioned by the Tea Party itself and the depth of the survey’s inquiry was astonishingly shallow.

For instance, the primary claim by the Tea Party pollsters is that “A plurality of Americans support ‘Tea Party principles.'” The principles they are boasting about include “free markets,” and “personal responsibility.” That’s a pretty vague set of principles that are held by most Americans regardless of party. Having established absolutely nothing with that inquiry, they proceed to juxtapose those results with what they consider to be the principles of everyone else: “higher taxes,” and “more spending.” At this point it should be fairly obvious that there is no credibility whatsoever in this poll.

It is interesting to note that, despite the dramatically biased construction of this poll, it could not even deliver a majority in favor of the skewed choices presented to the respondents. Only 48% said they agree with the “Tea Party principles” as described. What’s more, the actual poll results were not published on either Fox Nation or the site of their source, the ultra-conservative Washington Free Beacon. What do you suppose are they afraid of?

When credible pollsters have asked people whether they support the President’s positions on specific issues such as the budget, immigration, climate change, and gun safety, the results invariably favor Obama. And when pollsters inquire as to the level of support for the Tea Party, the results are pitifully low.

Nevertheless, the Tea Party continues to wallow in denial with fabricated polling and delusions of grandeur that defy reason. And even after being made fools of by partisan media that led them into the pits of pipe-dream propaganda, they continue to put their faith in media con artists like Fox News. Which, by the way, is all the better for Democrats and progressives who still live in the real world.

Right-Wingers Think Obama Donor Is Buying Up Gun-Related Media To Shut It Down

Posted by Mark NC on March 1, 2013 at 2:22 pm. 1 Comments :

FERCHRISSAKES!!! I just can’t take it anymore.

There have been a plethora of utterly insane notions floated by cretins on the right that make no rational sense whatsoever. They range from non-existent “death panels,” to FEMA concentration camps, to Kenyan-born presidents, and those are the least deranged among them. Recently the Tea-publicans were aghast at a ridiculous claim that the Department of Homeland Security was stockpiling munitions in preparation to wipe out large swaths of the American population. Seriously, they really believe that.

But now they are venturing further afield into territory that is unexplored by even the most severely hallucinatory meth freaks. An article published on Fox Nation cries “Obama Donor Buying Up and ‘Destroying’ America’s Top Pro-gun Media Outlets.”

The article is a re-posting from the Daily Caller web site which is run by Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson. It was written by Patrick Howley, someone they identify as an “Investigative Reporter,” despite his history as a violent right-wing activist who admitted to infiltrating OccupyDC for the purpose of undermining it. Howley asserts in his opening paragraph that…

“Employees of Obama donor Leo Hindery Jr.’s media conglomerate Intermedia Partners, which now owns most of the top gun-culture media outlets in the country, believe that Hindery plans to gut and destroy all of them.”

What a perfectly devious plot. Hindery is an investor with more than thirty years in the media business. He has been a significant figure in sports programming, cable television, telecommunications, and other properties that have made him one of America’s wealthiest businessmen. Yet the paranoia-racked brains of conservative dimwits think that he is plotting to “consolidate all of the major pro-Second Amendment media titles in this country, strip them down, and destroy them.” For some reason they think that Hindery has suddenly cast off his mantle of capitalist media baron and is willing to lose millions of dollars in a scheme to deprive magazine readers of titles like “Shooting Times” and “Gun Dog.” That’ll show the NRA. And he and Obama will have a good laugh.

The evidence presented by Howley consists mainly of testimony from anonymous employees who are afraid they are about to be laid off. Imagine that – there are magazines and media companies that are struggling in these digital times and may have to downsize or close. Who knew? Howley also cites the reduction in work at a Minnesota studio that he describes as a “beautiful” facility that had “60 employees, a massive studio, at least nine editing bays and fully-wired machine rooms and was conducting about four studio shoots per year.” Pardon me but, it doesn’t seem like four shoots a year is enough to sustain the studio he just described.

The weakness of the arguments in the article are almost irrelevant when considering that the premise is so bonkers to begin with. This is nothing more than an investment company pulling together assets and then seeking ways to mitigate expenses through operational mergers. There may be a case to be made that such consolidation negatively impacts employees and public choice, but that’s not a case that Republicans ever seem to be concerned about. In fact, they generally defend and celebrate such monopolistic corporate behavior as the workings of the glorious free market. There is nothing here, however, that any sane observer could claim is a plot to deliberately destroy these businesses in league with the Obama administration as an assault on the Second Amendment.

It is just astonishing that people will put stories like this out and expect to have any credibility. They are cognitively numb and running on the fumes of conspiracy theories and delusional psychoses. Their audience must be on feeding tubes waiting for someone to declare them legally brain-dead and pull the plug. And when their businesses fail I’m sure they will have an explanation at hand that blames it all on Obama, George Soros, and eco-terrorists.

Conservatives Struck By Epidemic Of Sequester Pychosis Syndrome

Posted by Mark NC on February 27, 2013 at 12:29 pm. 7 Comments :

As the deadline approaches for congress to take action on the indiscriminate budget cuts they themselves voted for, the wailing on the part of conservative politicians and pundits is reaching ear-shattering decibel levels. While there are credible arguments on both sides of this issue that could be put forward, it seems the right-wing Tea-publican faction has chosen instead to offer only the most deranged excuses for their negligence and absolution.

The conservative blame game is frantically pointing fingers at the Obama administration for the sequestration ordeal. But what they, and their accomplices in the press, are deliberately obscuring is the fact that majorities of Republicans voted for the bill in both chambers of congress. And even more significant is the context under which the plan was agreed to. It was intended to be something so severe that neither side could stomach the notion of its implementation and would be motivated to draft an alternative – any alternative – to avoid it. So the authorship of the original idea is entirely irrelevant because it was not proposed as something that anyone would support. To say that it was the President’s idea as something he advocated is simply a lie. It was gimmick to get a bunch of lazy, gutless politicians to do their damn jobs. And it didn’t even work.

So now Republicans who voted for the gimmick are pitifully trying to run away from the monster they helped to create. In the process they are trampling all over themselves and their own messages.

First of all, the GOP is supposed to be the party of small government and identifies strongly with budget cutting and deficit reduction. So it goes against the grain when they now bitch about the cuts that will be made due to sequestration. Logic tells us that they cannot argue for budget cutting and against sequestration simultaneously, but that is exactly what they are doing. Only in a mind ravaged by disease could that occur.

Secondly, Republicans are scrambling to shift blame from themselves to the President. They want any negative repercussions of the sequester to fall solely on his back. But since they believe that deficit reduction through shrinking federal budgets is a good thing, then shouldn’t the benefits they have been insisting would transpire be credited to Obama?

Republicans have decided that it is no longer necessary for them to make any sense. They say they want profound budget cuts, but at the same time they say it would be disastrous and all the fault of Obama. They say that sequestration is good because it will reduce the deficit, but at the same time they say Obama should be excoriated for daring to propose it.

How they can maintain their balance while their heads are spinning so furiously is a mystery. But the saddest part is that media has been so negligent in reporting the most basic facts about this situation, what led up to it, and where the GOP is trying to take it now that they got what they insist they have wanted for decades. Yet somehow, when Republicans get what they want, and it has a bad outcome, they blame Obama for giving it to them. And they do so in the most repugnant manner.

Fox’s Andrew Napolitano has suggested that Obama could be impeached for implementing the budget cuts mandated by congress. Even worse, in an op-ed in today’s “Moonie” Washington Times (republished by Fox Nation), Charles Hurt makes numerous references to the President as a terrorist. He said that Obama “began shooting hostages,” when the Department of Homeland Security announced some of the measures they would be forced to take if sequestration is implemented. Then, with regard to potentially delayed Social Security payments, he said that last year, in a “drunken stupor” “Mr. Obama threatened to start shooting seniors.”

This is the hostile (and infantile) level to which the right has sunk in their battle to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the bill they overwhelmingly backed. Their obsession with tarring the President by blaming him for their own mistakes has resulted in an acute case of mental decay. And unfortunately, the media could administer a remedy by simply reporting truthfully what is going on, but they appear to be as sickened by Sequester Psychosis as the GOP regulars.

More Racist Variations Between Fox News Latino And Fox Nation Reporting

Posted by Mark NC on February 25, 2013 at 10:55 am. NO Comments :

As has been covered here previously, Fox News is engaging in a disingenuous, insulting, and brazen attempt to deceive Latino news consumers with their Fox News Latino web site. This time they are running starkly different versions of a story involving drivers licenses for undocumented residents:

Notice that Fox Nation continues to use the epithet “Illegals” to describe undocumented residents. Then it characterizes them as complaining. However, over at Fox News Latino the subjects of the article are referred to as “DREAMers,” a reference to the DREAM Act that provides conditional residency to certain immigrants who came to the United States as minors. Furthermore, they note the program’s controversy, but do not portray the subjects as complaining.

This is the sort of bias that is typical of Fox News. The recipients of these licenses are not lawbreakers. They were brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were to young to make such a decision for themselves. Now they just want to be able to drive, attend school, and work, in the only country they have ever known. But bigots in states like North Carolina, and in media enterprises like Fox, just want to throw obstacles in their path and tag them with second-class status.

MSNBC Hires David Axelrod – Fox Nation Comes Unglued

Posted by Mark NC on February 21, 2013 at 11:52 am. 17 Comments :

It simply never ceases to amaze how Fox News can clutch to such fantastical versions of reality and attempt to pass them off as reasonable analyses of current events. Witness this item wherein they grouse about MSNBC’s hiring of a former Obama campaign aide:

First of all, do they really think that the addition of David Axelrod to the MSNBC roster of contributors is going to substantively alter the network’s programming? Considering the fact that they already regarded MSNBC as “in the tank” for Obama, how would Axelrod change that?

Secondly, The Fox Nationalists conveniently forget that MSNBC also has on its payroll the former head of John McCain’s campaign (Steve Schmidt) and the former chairman of the Republican Party (Michael Steele). Does that mean the the GOP is controlling the message at NBC News?

Finally, Fox News has been notorious for employing Republican operatives and candidates. These are people far more instrumental to the messaging of the Republican Party than Axelrod ever was for the Democrats. They include much of George W. Bush’s “brain” trust (i.e. Karl Rove, John Bolton, Liz Cheney), and party leaders like former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and their just past nominee for VP Sarah Palin.

Fox is, without a doubt, the PR arm of the Republican Party. Their anchors are as much responsible for GOP propaganda as their well-connected contributors. No one at MSNBC has anywhere near the tight relationships that Fox has with the GOP. And Fox doesn’t have any Democrats on staff that balance their reporting in an equivalent way (sorry, Kirsten Powers and Juan Williams don’t cut it). When Fox gives a former chair of the Democratic Party the air time that MSNBC gives to Steele, or when they give a three hour morning block to a liberal Democratic host (i.e. MSNBC’s conservative Joe Scarborough), then maybe Fox can talk about messaging without being so desperately hypocritical.

The Fox News Community Reveals Their Racist Vulgarity – Again

Posted by Mark NC on February 21, 2013 at 3:11 am. 6 Comments :

Those who have been paying attention are already aware of the blatantly dishonest practices of Fox News, particularly on their community web site (see Fox Nation vs. Reality) The only thing more repulsive than their disregard for the truth is the disgraceful conduct of their audience. So for anyone out there who hasn’t had the displeasure of meeting an actual Fox News viewer (a truly endangered species whose numbers are dwindling), here is a sampling of how they express themselves when informed about something as incidental and non-controversial as a new official portrait for the First Lady, Michelle Obama.

There isn’t much to add to that except to note that it isn’t a new or isolated occurrence. It is, however, important to acknowledge that there is an abundance of crude behavior and overt hatred on the Internet emanating from across the political spectrum. Most of it occurs on fringy outposts run by anonymous extremists with tiny followings. But for this sort of dialogue to be hosted by a major so-called “news” organization that seeks to present itself as reputable – even fair – tells us a great deal about the type of audience they cultivate.

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So F**king What?

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