Bill O’Reilly

Fox News FINALLY Refudiates Violent Rhetoric

Posted by on August 31, 2010 at 3:02 pm. 9 Comments :

Almost since its inception, Fox News has been a hotbed of irresponsible discourse that encouraged intolerance and hostility. They have harbored hosts, contributors and guests whose language was sometimes thinly veiled advocacy of violence, and sometimes there was no veil at all.

  • Bill O’Reilly threatened to “hunt down” and “strangle” members of the media.
  • Liz Trotta joked that “somebody knock off Osama … uh … Obama … well, both if we could.”
  • Rush Limbaugh told his listeners to start riots at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, “with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that. That’s the objective here.”
  • Sarah Palin has taken to giving her followers this advice: “Don’t retreat…Reload!”
  • Glenn Beck agreed with his guest Michael Scheuer that the only hope for America “is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”

Beck is one of the worst perpetrators of hostile rhetoric. He used to have a regular radio bit wherein he speculated about who he would like to beat to death with a shovel. He fantasized about choking Michael Moore to death with his bare hands. And more recently he frequently condemns progressives as a cancer that has to be “cut out.” So perhaps it was Beck to whom this Fox News story was referring when they said that provocative remarks “could easily incite a rabid fan to commit violent acts.” And that fans “could be influenced because of their devotion.” The article quoted Cooper Lawrence, the author of “Cult of Celebrity” saying that:

“The fear isn’t that a celebrity will influence someone to do something violent or out of character due to the sheer devotion to the celebrity, the fear is that someone who is already vulnerable, mentally disturbed, already considering something dangerous, may be encouraged to do so if it is advocated by their favorite star.”

Image consultant Michael Sands concurred saying that he “is taking his fame too seriously. He is having delusions and his anger” could “get him arrested!”

These criticisms ought to be taken seriously by anyone, left or right, who ventures into such disturbing scenarios and has the ability to influence others who may not be of particularly sound mind. Certainly that would apply to someone with the public posture of Glenn Beck. Just one little thing…The article was not referring to Beck or any of the other viscerally divisive characters above. It was referring to actor John Cusack who Tweeted…

“I AM FOR A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES ORDICK ARMEYAND NEWT GINGRICH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS”

Much of the reaction at Fox News, and elsewhere in the rightist blogosphere, is that Cusack was articulating some kind of threat. That just illustrates how deficient their comprehension skills are. Anyone with a functioning cerebrum can see that Cusack was responding to the bigoted and illogical arguments against the Islamic community center being planned near ground zero in Lower Manhattan. Cusack was satirically turning the controversy on its head by proposing a church of Satan near Fox’s offices. But the dimwits at Fox, and their ideological peers, just don’t get it.

It’s too bad that when Fox News finally gets around to making a principled statement against violent hate-speech that they direct it toward someone who wasn’t engaging in it and ignore their own complicity. It would be nice if those getting so worked up about this phony misinterpretation of Cusack’s comments would be similarly outraged by the very real violent rhetoric that is a regular part of Fox’s programming, as noted above. But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that expression of fairness and balance to occur.

Glenn Beck Drops Veterans From 8/28 Rally

Posted by on August 19, 2010 at 7:06 pm. 32 Comments :

Glenn Beck Deploring HonorIn a notice posted today at Congress.org, Glenn Beck finally got the permit for his 8/28 rally approved. It was also noted that he changed the purpose of the rally from a “demonstration to honor veterans” to simply a “restoring honor rally.”

Why would Beck alter the purpose to something so generic it that it doesn’t have any real meaning? Could it be that his little scam was revealed and he could no longer pretend that this event was for charity? It was previously revealed that the Special Operations Warrior Foundation would not receive any money until after all of Beck’s expenses had been covered. So the possibility exists that there will no donation at all.

With this more vague description of purpose, Beck can turn the affair into the evangelical revival meeting that he always wanted it to be. It can be the celebration of his “Divine Destiny” which, by the way, is the name of his event to be held the night before where he promises to “heal your soul.” We already know that he believes this event will be a turning point in history, and he said today that it will be this generation’s Woodstock (?). And don’t forget that he was told by “someone” in the Vatican that what he is doing is “wildly important.”

This isn’t the first time that Beck has changed the purpose of the event. At one time the purpose was to launch the publication of his next book, “The Plan,” a 100 year blueprint for the restoration of America. Here is how he described it in his original announcement:

“On August 28, 2010, I ask you, your family and neighbors to join me at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on the National Mall for the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.”

After that he claimed that God had chosen the date:

I believe in divine providence. It was not my intention to select 8-28 because of the Martin Luther King tie. It is the day he made that speech. I had no idea until I announced it and I walked off stage and my researchers said, New York Times has already just published that this is Martin Luther — and I said, oh, geez. We were going to use 9-12 but 9-12 is a Sunday. I’m not going to ask anyone to work on the Sabbath. I’m not going to ask anybody to honor God on a Sunday.

I have no idea what he means by not honoring God on a Sunday. And apparently he isn’t expecting any Jews to attend his rally because for them (and many Christians for that matter), Saturday is the Sabbath.

Beck’s next explanation for the event was that he was doing it all on behalf of our brave fighting men and women and their families. That didn’t last long. Now he has dropped the reference to the veterans from his permit application, though I’m sure he will continue to exploit them.

One other amendment to the permit application concerns the attendance. He raised the projected figure from 150,000 to 300,000. He must be feeling pretty confident. Which is funny because he said on his radio program today that he was discussing the event with Bill O’Reilly who guessed that between 10 and 15 thousand people show up. Beck was obviously surprised by O’Reilly’s estimate so O’Reilly asked him how many people he thought would be there. Beck said modestly, “I don’t know. Over a hundred thousand I hope.” This seems like false modesty from someone who just doubled his official projection to 300,000.

Apparently O’Reilly is not as optimistic as Beck. According to Beck, O’Reilly told him that if that many people showed up that Beck could take over the O’Reilly Factor. Now that would be fun. I bet Beck would hold O’Reilly to this. I would love to see the two of them go at it for the primetime slot. We’ll see how that unfolds in a couple of weeks.

Rachel Maddow Schools Bill O’Reilly – In Latin

Posted by on August 7, 2010 at 4:13 pm. 3 Comments :

Let’s face it, it doesn’t take much to reveal the intellectual vapidity of Fox News characters like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, or Bill O’Reilly. When their arguments are not devoid of logic, they are devoid of facts. Most of the time they manage to include neither. But leave it to Rachel Maddow to escalate a debate with a Fox Newsie to the point of employing Latin definitions to make her case.

In this video, Dr. Maddow had to correct an earlier appraisal of Bill O’Reilly’s attacks on her as “ad hominem.” To be accurate, the attacks were “ad populum.” The distinction is important, as Maddow says, because the former is an attack based on personal insult, while the later is an attack based on popularity. In this case, it was Bill O’Reilly asserting that he was right and Maddow was wrong because more people watch his show.

I made the point years ago that this was an irrelevant measure. It would be like saying that since McDonald’s is the #1 restaurant it must have the best food. In truth, McDonald’s just delivers the cheapest crap that is loaded with filler and seasoning to appeal to the largest number of consumers with the least sophisticated taste. Which, by the way, is exactly what Fox News does. Now, thanks to Dr. Maddow, I now the Latin term for it.

This segment from Maddow’s show is significant for another reason. After straightening out the rhetorical matter, Maddow went on to the substance of her debate with O’Reilly. It began when she quite correctly observed that Fox News makes a habit of presenting (or inventing) stories, the purpose of which are to incite their predominately white audience (only 1.38% of Fox viewers are black) into fearing black people. This is what O’Reilly objected to, but had no substantive response for. He merely boasted about his ratings and said that Maddow had no evidence. Of course the evidence is readily available: Van Jones, ACORN, New Black Panthers, Shirley Sherrod, etc.

At this point Maddow gets down to brass tacks. She describes O’Reilly’s assertion that she had no evidence of her claim as “…something stupid. Something stupid enough that it doesn’t even get dressed up in Latin phrasing.” Whereupon Maddow played a brilliant highlight reel of just O’Reilly’s contribution to these phony so-called news items.

Lest anyone complain that Maddow has now engaged in the very sort of ad hominem attack for which she criticized O’Reilly, just settle down. The evidence to back up calling O’Reilly’s position stupid is plentiful. And since there are millions more people that do not watch O’Reilly than do, we can also make an ad populum argument as to his stupidity. So there.

Why Fox News Is Racist

Posted by on July 26, 2010 at 8:53 pm. 9 Comments :

For the past few weeks Fox News has been ratcheting up the racial content of their tabloid fare. Megyn Kelly’s obsession with a trumped up story about the New Black Panther Party and their dozen or so members is a perfect example of the race-baiting that Fox passes off as journalism. They follow that up with the promotion of an Andrew Breitbart video that was blatantly edited to tar USDA employee Shirley Sherrod as a racist even though the opposite was evident when the video was viewed in its entirety.

Glenn Beck Deploring HonorBut these recent events are not aberrations. They are representative of an agenda that cannot be anything but deliberate. Recall Fox’s use of offensive rhetoric with reference to President Obama and his family like “terrorist fist jab” and “Obama’s baby mama.” Then there was the time that Bill O’Reilly tried to explain his reluctance to be critical of the First Lady by saying that he didn’t “want to go on a lynching party.” Or the time he attempted to praise patrons of Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem by noting that they didn’t shout for their “mother-fucking iced teas.” And who could forget Glenn Beck calling Obama a racist with a deep-seated hatred for white people? Beck is escalating his racial insensitivity by holding his self-glorifying rally in DC on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech next month.

Some people might wonder why Fox News would risk alienating a potentially significant portion of their audience. Well, we have the answer now. According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times, the African-American segment of viewers of Fox News in primetime this season is only 1.38%. That compares to 19.3% for MSNBC, and 20.7% for CNN, numbers that are much closer to the 14% of African-Americans in the population at large. These numbers also suggest that the black audience that might have been watching Fox have split evenly between MSNBC and CNN causing those networks to be over-weighted by about 6% each.

It is apparent that Fox News has little to lose by offending a segment of the television universe that doesn’t watch their programs anyway. Combine that with Fox’s political incentive to suppress Democratic votes and the strategy of inflaming racial animus doesn’t seem so bad in their warped perspective.

At the very least this explains why Fox persists in airing obviously offensive stories and why they think they can get away with it without adverse consequences. They have nothing to lose in financial terms, and much to gain by pandering to a prejudice demographic. It may be reprehensible to decent folks, but to Fox it’s just good business, and more importantly, good politics.

Glenn Beck Fears The Rise Of Obama Cannibalism Or Something

Posted by on May 15, 2010 at 12:01 pm. 8 Comments :

In an attempt to deprive Jon Stewart the opportunity to mock Glenn Beck’s paranoidal delusions, and to prevent Stephen Colbert from further exploiting Bill O’Reilly’s egotistical sanctimony, Beck and O’Reilly came together to deliver their own satirical presentation of each others psychoses. And it’s comedy gold.

While discussing Miranda and terror policy, Beck veers off into his familiar frenzied hysterics over the Obama administration and Cass Sunstein – whom he has called the most dangerous man in America – but O’Reilly doesn’t care.

Glenn Beck: You should care.
Bill O’Reilly: Tell me the reason.
GB: Because they are setting up the American people.
BO: Setting us up for what?
GB: What do you think?
BO: I have no idea. What’s the conspiracy of the day?
GB: There is no conspiracy.
BO: What is he setting us up for?
GB: There is not a conspiracy here. They are already talking about silencing free speech.
BO: Silencing free speech?
GB: They are already doing it. They already are. Did you see the President’s speech on Saturday?
BO: I’m not buying it.
GB: Bill, you didn’t buy a year ago that the guy was a Marxist.
BO: And I’m still yapping, and so are you.

When O’Reilly asked Beck what we are being set up for and Beck answered with a suggestive “What do you think?” there was a knowing tone to his voice that invoked images of the Twilight Zone’s “To Serve Man.” It’s a cookbook! Beck never actually answered O’Reilly’s question, but he did assert that Obama has already begun unraveling freedom of speech. As evidence, Beck pointed to a commencement speech that Obama gave last weekend in which he warned students about being overcome by the information glut. Beck took this to mean that Obama wanted to suppress information, an interpretation that could only make sense to Beck and his devotees. And as a measure of how removed from reality Beck is, even O’Reilly didn’t think it made sense.

Equally funny was Beck’s response to O’Reilly not buying into his dementia. As proof of his predictive accuracy, Beck threw back in O’Reilly’s face the fact that O’Reilly never bought Beck’s accusations that Obama is a Marxist. The implication being that Obama’s Marxism has since been definitively confirmed. Once again, the confirmation for that exists only in Beck’s diseased head. However, O’Reilly didn’t bother to disassociate himself with that bit of nonsense.

O’Reilly hit the nail squarely on the diseased head by making the simple declaration that both he and Beck are “still yapping.” Yapping is a pretty good description of what they do and there has been no effort whatsoever to restrict them from continuing to do so. In the end, all this segment was was an extended infomercial for their Bold/Fresh tour that is currently in progress. Both O’Reilly and Beck stand to gain by hyping the melodrama in order to boost ticket sales. And they have ample airtime with which to promote their wingnut road trip. But the unintentional comedy they provide may be the best entertainment of all, despite how frustrating it must be to the folks at Comedy Central.

More Proof That No One Pays Attention To Fox News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bill O’Reilly Needs To Fire His Research Staff

Posted by on April 15, 2010 at 4:37 pm. 3 Comments :

I just had to document this here because it so ridiculous and because Huffington Post has such a great video of it.

Bill O’Reilly confronted Sen. Tom Coburn on his show a few days ago because Coburn had the temerity to point out to his constituents that they should not believe everything they hear on Fox News. The issue specifically addressed an assertion that the health care bill had a provision that would sentence people to jail if they didn’t buy insurance. The truth is that the bill explicitly prohibits such criminal penalties.

However, O’Reilly went to the extreme of insisting that Coburn’s remarks were unfair because nobody on Fox ever said that the bill had such provisions:

O’Reilly: It doesn’t happen here, and we’ve researched to find out if anybody on Fox News has ever said “You’re going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance.” Nobody’s ever said it. So it seems to me what you did was, you used Fox News as a whipping boy when we didn’t qualify there.

Oh yeah? Tell that to PolitiFact who rated O’Reilly’s claim as a “Pants on Fire” lie. Or Media Matters who had no problem finding what O’Reilly’s researchers could not. Or the Young Turks who compiled the video evidence:

Once again O’Reilly makes an ass of himself. He even joked about Coburn’s “mistake” the following night with Dennis Miller. By that time both of them ought to have known that a multitude of people said that the bill could send non-payers to jail – even Glenn Beck said it on O’Reilly’s show! It just doesn’t get any stupider than that.

This is the network that had to issue a memo to its staff warning them of a zero tolerance policy for on air mishaps. And O’Reilly, in particular, frequently boasts that he has never made a retraction on his show. Of course not. He’s made hundreds of mistakes and told thousands of lies, but has never bothered to correct any of them. That doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. It just means that he’s comfortable disinforming his audience. And why mess up a perfect record by suddenly being honest? Although there was one prior incident of honesty for which O’Reilly deserves some credit:

Thanks for the entertainment, Bill. I won’t wait around for a retraction.

[Hilarity Update:] O’Reilly began his program tonight with a Talking Points Memo about how NBC and Media Matters are dishonestly smearing him because of this health care/jail time controversy. He tried to exculpate himself from his assholiness with a tortured argument that went something like this: He claimed that all of the examples of Fox folks clearly saying that jail would be the penalty for not having insurance were made at a time when such a penalty was in the bill. But his assertion that no one ever said it was referring to the final bill which had no such penalty. He even played video clips of Obama and Pelosi that he intended as support for his contention that the penalty existed at some prior point in time.

There are only three things wrong with that. One, O’Reilly, in his remarks, made no distinction between different versions of the bill or time periods of debate. He simply made a flat statement of “fact” using unambiguous words like “never” that pretty strongly imply not ever. Two, there weren’t ANY drafts of the bill that had a jail penalty in it. NONE! So O’Reilly’s excuse is pure bullshit. And three, in the clips of Obama and Pelosi, neither of them said anything about such a penalty. In fact, responding to direct questions about it, they both explicitly declined to confirm that any such thing was in the bill or that they would support it. It’s surprising that O’Reilly even bothered to play the clips when they in no way supported his argument.

The bottom line is that O’Reilly is now lying to cover up his prior idiocy. This is something that he has gotten pretty good at over the years due to the many times he’s had to do it.

Fox News Caught In Massive Nielsen Ratings Fraud

Posted by on April 1, 2010 at 11:44 am. 47 Comments :

Update 4/2/2010: A major development occurred overnight.
It is now April 2, 2010! (no foolin).
Update 5/10/2010: See this new analysis and addendum.

This week saw the release of the quarterly ratings performance data for television programming. Much of the reporting on this story focused on the dominant position Fox News retains in the cable news sector. As has been the case for several years, Fox News smothered the competition and experienced rapid growth while other news programmers stagnated or declined.

While most industry insiders accept the routine pronouncements from the sole ratings provider, Nielsen Media Research, without question, some observers could not help but notice a certain incongruity in the results. How is it, they wonder, that Fox News can be so consistently in the lead despite their obvious niche programming focus on a narrow segment of the viewing audience. The decidedly right-of-center bias of Fox News corresponds to a rather small portion of the national electorate. Republican favorability has been hovering in the mid-twenties for years. So how does this negligible slice of the market translate into such a disproportionate ratings advantage?

The answer may be evident in new disclosures of business relationships that call into question the integrity of Nielsen’s data. With the rollout of its People Meter methodology in the early 2000’s, Nielsen entered the high-tech era of TV market research. It was heralded as a major advancement of data collection that would vastly improve the ability of producers, programmers and advertisers to evaluate the marketplace. But as with any upheaval in the status quo, there were skeptics and dissenters. Chief amongst them was Fox Broadcasting, who argued that the new system significantly under-counted African-Americans, a key component of their audience at the time. There was also a question as to the security of the new set-top boxes that would be recording viewer choices. With the introduction of technology comes the risk of miscalculations and tampering. But eventually the complaints receded or were resolved and the new service took its place as the signature survey product for television marketing.

It was during this time, subsequent to the implementation of People Meters, that Fox News began its rapid ascent to ratings dominance. A prudent observer might wonder how this new system came to report so much more favorably for a network that had fiercely opposed its adoption. What transpired that caused Fox News to withdraw their objections and become the biggest beneficiary of the change?

It has recently been discovered that the Wegener Corporation, the manufacturer of the set-top devices that Nielsen uses, has a long association with Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation, the parent of Fox News. Wegener was founded by the former management of Scientific-Atlanta, a producer of set-top boxes for cable access and other purposes. One of the other products in Scientific-Atlanta’s line was a device used by Gemstar to provide television program listings to cable operators and their subscribers. Gemstar was an affiliate of TV Guide, which in turn was owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. So the executives who were responsible for developing and manufacturing Murdoch’s equipment for Gemstar became the principles of the company providing Nielsen with their ratings collection devices. And around that same time Fox News dropped their objections to the new People Meter service.

It would not be difficult to encode an electronic device so that it would purposefully miscalculate survey data. A simple algorithm to multiply a target by a fixed percentage could produce a result that would artificially inflate one set of figures while keeping it in proportion to a larger set, making it virtually impossible to detect. At present, their is no confirmation that such a deception has been contrived. It would require a thorough examination of Nielsen’s hardware and the ability to reverse engineer the chips inside of it. But for those who presume that it would be an outlandish notion, they would be well advised to study recent news events that uncovered similarly scandalous conduct on the part of News Corp.

One situation involves a digital recorder and satellite receiver made by NDS Group for Murdoch’s Sky network in Europe. Unlike TiVo, the Sky+ system records “personal viewing information,” which is information about your viewing practices that is tied to your contact information (i.e., it’s not kept anonymous, like TiVo’s).

In addition to that, NDS was also charged with using spies and hackers to steal Sky competitor Dish Network’s programming and make it available to viewers for free, thus undercutting Dish’s financial viability. As reported in Wired Magazine:

“The case involves a colorful cast of characters that includes former intelligence agents, Canadian TV pirates, Bulgarian and German hackers, stolen e-mails and the mysterious suicide of a Berlin hacker who had been courted by the Murdoch company not long before his death.

On the hot spot is NDS Group, a UK-Israeli firm that makes smartcards for pay-TV systems like DirecTV. The company is a majority-owned subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corporation. The charges stem from 1997 when NDS is accused of cracking the encryption of rival NagraStar, which makes access cards and systems for EchoStar’s Dish Network and other pay-TV services. Further, it’s alleged NDS then hired hackers to manufacture and distribute counterfeit NagraStar cards to pirates to steal Dish Network’s programming for free.”

On yet another occasion Murdoch’s news group engaged in some sleazy and illegal behavior to get stories about celebrities and politicians. The Guardian reported that Murdoch paid substantial sums of money to keep this scandal under wraps:

“Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists’ repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public ­figures as well as gaining unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.”

And if that’s not enough, check into the incestuous and disturbing web of connections Murdoch has to the communists in China. Glenn Beck tried to pull the veil off of this one but was censored by his own employer.

Given the history of sleazy conduct and nefarious associations, is it really that far-fetched to conclude that something similar has taken place with regard to Murdoch’s relationship to Nielsen and the firm that manufactures their ratings collection devices? It would explain how Fox News could wind up with such a dominate lead in the ratings despite catering to a relatively small potential audience. It would explain why Fox suddenly halted their objections to a new process that they previously considered inaccurate and biased against them.

It would also explain a deep discrepancy between the allegedly broad viewing of Fox News and their nearly invisible impact on the political landscape. If Fox were as ubiquitous as they (and the ratings) claim, then why, during the years of their strongest growth, did they fail to move the country to their positions. With a sustained 24/7 propaganda effort, Fox failed to stop the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress. They failed to stop the 2008 election of Barack Obama despite incessant and false allegations of him being a Muslim, a radical leftist, and a pal of terrorists. They failed to stop the 2010 passage of a health care bill despite charges of socialism, death panels, and national bankruptcy. Does this sound like a network that holds a commanding majority of America’s television viewers under its sway?

To be sure, I am not the first to question the legitimacy of Nielsen’s numbers. Many people in the industry quietly accept what they regard as a flawed methodology simply because there is no alternative – or because proposed alternatives are even less acceptable. When it suits their purpose, even Fox News complains about the ratings. And I’m not talking about simple complaints concerning minor numerical inconsistencies, but allegations of rampant fraud that warrant federal investigation. After basking in the glow of Nielsen’s data, Bill O’Reilly turns around and castigates them as having “major problems…that have benefited MSNBC,” and asserts that…

O’Reilly: “The bottom line on this is there may be some big-time cheating going on in the ratings system, and we hope the feds will investigate. Any fraud in the television rating system affects all Americans.”

Of course the “feds” don’t have any jurisdiction over private market research firms. And it’s rather hypocritical for O’Reilly to suddenly advocate for big government intruding on the free market. But conservatives like O’Reilly are not averse to hypocrisy when it furthers their agenda. And in this case the agenda is to work the refs at Nielsen and suppress any notion that Fox is not the king of the television hill.

In conclusion, if we are to have any certainty as to who the real king of the hill is, we will need to get to the bottom of this lingering controversy surrounding Nielsen’s systems and procedures. The connection to Murdoch’s covert operations and his history of unlawful corporate espionage cannot be dismissed. Nielsen must investigate their equipment providers and perform intensive examinations of the devices they place in viewers’ homes. Anything short of this would leave them open to charges of complicity and render their survey data useless.

Karl Rove Confesses: Most Of Fox News Is Unfair

Posted by on March 14, 2010 at 2:25 pm. 11 Comments :

Today on Meet the Press, Tom Brokaw (sitting in for David Gregory) interviewed Fox News contributor Karl Rove. In the course of the discussion Rove spewed the routine misrepresentations and falsehoods that one one might expect of him. But there was one exchange that was surprisingly honest:

TOM BROKAW: You’re now at Fox News. Do you think that Fox News is fair to President Obama?

KARL ROVE: I think they – on the news side, absolutely. I think that they’ve got first-rate individuals at the White House who – do their job. And in an objective, fair, and balanced way, yeah, absolutely.

Notice the qualification Rove inserts into his answer: “on the news side.” His assessment of fairness explicitly excludes those portions of the Fox schedule that are designated as opinion programs. Now recall that Michael Clemente, senior vice president of Fox News, defines the hours of 9am to 4pm, and 6pm to 8pm, as the dayparts that air straight news. So by their own calculation, that’s just nine hours of “news” programming. But the Fox & Friends morning block, plus the afternoon Cavuto/Beck double bill, plus the primetime fare (which is repeated) and the late night Red Eye, all add up to 13 hours. So the majority of their schedule is what they themselves regard as editorial content. Which means the majority of their schedule is deliberately unfair in the view of Karl Rove, who went out of his way to say so.

Taking into consideration the fact that what they do call “news” is heavily infested with opinions straight out of Beckville and Hannityland, it’s clear why Fox has zero credibility when it comes to authentic journalism. Former New York times editor Howell Raines noted this absence of objectivity in a recent op-ed. And Bill O’Reilly, never one to miss an opportunity to demonstrate the thinness of his skin, fired back back at Raines saying…

“The Factor is the signature broadcast of the Fox News Channel and we have covered the Obama-care debate carefully and with fairness, as have most of my colleagues.”

So O’Reilly is contradicting both Rove and Clemente. First he asserts that his show is fair (notwithstanding Rove’s contrary assessment). Then he describes it, not just as a “news” broadcast, but as the network’s “signature” example of one (despite not complying with Clemente’s definition).

In the end, O’Reilly’s ego confirms Rove’s confession. Fox News is utterly unfair throughout most of its broadcast day and its hired goons can’t tell the difference.

Glenn Beck vs. Martin Luther King On Social Justice

Posted by on March 14, 2010 at 3:06 am. 2 Comments :

Glenn Beck is feeling the heat from his repulsive commandment that his you should leave your church if it advocates social justice. Church leaders from across the religious spectrum are renouncing the ravings of His AssHoliness™. But there is another factor in this affair that ought not to be ignored.

When it suits his purpose, Beck will not hesitate to embrace Martin Luther King. Beck has even included King’s picture and words in the opening credits of his TV show (but no more). On the many times that Beck is accused of being racist he will cite King in an attempt to inoculate himself from the invariably correct criticisms. But that hasn’t prevented him from also calling King a radical and questioning whether there should be a day honoring him. And on the subject of social justice, which Beck is currently castigating as some sort of Da Vinci coded proxy for Marxism, King once said…

“[W]e will be able to go this additional distance and achieve the ideal, the goal of the new age, the age of social justice.”

Contrast that with Beck’s twisted view on the matter. It begins with a warning that when you see the words social justice you should…

“Run, and don’t listen to anyone who is telling you differently. […] It is a perversion of the Gospel.”

I’m not sure where Beck acquired his theological training. Perhaps it was when he was an alcoholic drug abuser. Or maybe it was after he sobered up and became a Mormon because, as he admits, if he didn’t his then-girlfriend wouldn’t sleep with him. In any case, he now considers himself so authoritative on spiritual matters that he, and only he, warrants your attention and observance.

The distinction between Beck and King is important because Beck has appropriated an anniversary that is cherished by Americans who revere King and his works. Beck is holding a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on the anniversary of King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, which was delivered at the same location. The dark irony of Beck pontificating on that platform, on that day, is purely revolting. As is the prospect of his all-white army of paranoids desecrating the historical significance of King’s oratory there almost half a century ago.

Beck demonstrated his commitment to his version of social justice when he appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show last week. The discussion turned to whether the government could regulate unhealthy behavior like excessive consumption of junk foods. Setting aside the fact that no one in government is proposing that, O’Reilly nevertheless asked Beck how he would deal with someone who had a heart attack due to such a lifestyle and who did not have insurance. Beck’s prescription? “Sucks to be him.”

Beck continued by saying that he would not pay for this person’s health care or treatment in an emergency room. O’Reilly, acting in the unfamiliar role as the voice of reason, told him that he was already paying for that. Whereupon Beck changed his tune and came out as an advocate of government regulation of personal behavior. Not just once, but three times:

“If you don’t want to work, or if you can’t work, well then you are on government assistance, well then I can now regulate your life.”

“If you are taking money. . .if you want to be a slave to the government, then they have every right.”

“So here is the deal, if you don’t have insurance and you need to take the government insurance, then the government has the right to regulate every aspect of your life. But leave the rest of us alone.”

To which O’Reilly responded, “I like that.”

There is so much wrong with this that it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s start with the cruel insensitivity of Beck’s initial response that it “sucks” to have a heart attack and that’s just too bad for you. Go away and die. That isn’t just a denunciation of social justice, it’s sociopathic.

Then Beck mentions something about a “need to take the government insurance.” Of course, there is no such thing. When a patient is unable to pay for emergency treatment the cost is transferred to the medical facility and eventually to future patients in the form of higher rates for treatment and insurance. The current debate over health care reform has proposed a “public option,” but Beck opposes that (and everything else in the pending legislation) as socialism. What’s worse, he takes the utterly detestable position that anyone on public assistance surrenders his liberty to the state. He even uses the word “slave” to describe the status of such a person. Somehow, I don’t think that was an accidental racial reference.

What makes this particularly disgusting is that Beck has fiercely criticized the federal bailouts of banks and auto companies. Then, when the administration tried to assert some control over how those funds can be used (for instance, prohibiting the banks from using the taxpayers’ money for extravagant, undeserved bonuses), Beck complained that the government was interfering with a private business. So in Beck’s warped mind it is wrong to tell troubled corporations how to spend money they get from the government, but if you’re a private citizen undergoing an economic hardship the government can take ownership of you and “regulate every aspect of your life.”

I really can’t fathom how Beck justifies his contemptible callousness and hypocrisy. Corporations get billions in tax credits, trade subsidies, development incentives, etc., and all of that was before the bailouts. But they have no obligation to the taxpayers who provide it. Your Uncle Andy gets a few bucks for groceries and shoes for the kids and he is obliged to be the government’s slave. And even then he gets no medical care for himself or his family. Of course not. How could the government afford it after giving all those billions to the corporations and trillions more to pay for illegal and unnecessary wars?

That’s Glenn Beck’s version of social justice. It’s compassionless, hollow, and inhumane. Beck doesn’t deserve to walk the same earth as Martin Luther King, much less desecrate King’s memory by usurping the anniversary of his historic address. It was an address that spoke specifically of the obligation America owes to its citizens as promised in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It was an address that foresaw liberty and justice for all:

King: “[W]e refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

That’s the difference between King’s full-hearted grace and Beck’s hardhearted arrogance. King had a positive vision of the goodness in humanity and a belief in what we can achieve together. Beck has faith only in self-interest and the privilege of the fortunate. Let’s hope that King’s vision prevails.

Addendum: Beck has generously supplied us with his definition of Social justice:

“Forced redistribution of wealth with a hostility toward individual property rights, under the guise of charity and/or justice.”

That explains a lot. If I defined kittens as blood thirsty killing machines, you can bet I would lead the opposition to kittens. Of course, I would be insane to have that definition, right Glenn? Glenn?