Fox Nation vs. Reality: The White House Did Not Edit CIA Talking Points

Posted by on November 19, 2012 at 9:33 am. 10 Comments :

Earning a place at the top of the Fox Nation web site this morning is story that complies perfectly with the non-existent journalistic standards of Fox News. The article cites the uber-conservative blog FreeBeacon and features the headline “White House Deleted Al Qaeda From CIA Talking Points.”

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Fox Nation

As usual, the Fox Nationalists only got one thing wrong with their story: the whole story. As it turns out, there is no evidence that the White House deleted Al Qaeda from the CIA talking points. What’s more, there is nothing in the article that affirms the falsehood in the headline.

This story hinges on the latest effort by the right and Fox News to malign President Obama and to politicize the tragic deaths of Americans in Benghazi, Libya. There has been a well coordinated smear campaign seeking to blame Obama not only for attacks perpetrated by terrorists, but also for a cover-up of information about those attacks. The GOP is also exploiting the affair to derail the possible appointment of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to be the next Secretary of State.

However, the partisan outrage has been woefully short of any substance. The right has been clamoring for answers from the White House, but when they get the answers they pretend that they didn’t hear anything. The official White House response from Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor, stated clearly that…

“This question came up as to whether the White House had edited Susan Rice’s points and the points that were provided to Congress and the administration — the only edit that was made to those points by the White House, and was also made by the State Department, was to change the word “consulate” to “diplomatic facility” since the facility in Benghazi had not — was not formally a consulate. Other than that, we worked off of the points that were provided by the intelligence community.”


And if that weren’t clear enough, recent testimony by Gen. Petraeus backed up the White House’s version of events in closed-door testimony before congress. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), a harsh critic of the President, spoke with reporters after the testimony and said that Gen. Petraeus told the committee that the CIA approved the talking points after they were edited and said it was “Okay for it to go.” When asked if he was upset about Al Qaeda being removed, he said that he was not, according to King.

Ordinarily that would suffice to quell speculation about some far-ranging conspiracy to murder American diplomats and sweep the scandal under the rug. But Fox News was never interested in the facts in the first place. They have latched unto this invented controversy to damage the President and they don’t intend to let go merely because the truth contradicts their narrative.

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Rupert Murdoch Tweets His Blatant Anti-Semitism

Posted by on November 18, 2012 at 10:45 am. 5 Comments :

If you’ve ever wondered where Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and other News Corp properties get their tone of division and hatred, you need look no further than the corporation’s head, Rupert Murdoch. On Saturday Murdoch sought to express his disagreement with coverage of the escalating violence in Israel. But his tweets on the subject reveal more about him than anything else.

Rupert Murdoch

Murdoch began by criticizing CNN and the Associated Press for what he called “bias to the point of embarrassment.” It was difficult to ascertain what he meant because he offered no examples of the alleged bias. However, he later seemed to make clear what he regarded as the problem when he tweeted his complaint that the “Jewish owned press [is] so consistently anti-Israel.”

The outrageous offensiveness of that remark is its obvious link to derogatory, anti-Semitic assertions that the media is run by Jews. It’s a demonstrably false assertion that is commonly used by hate groups and was exploited to tragic effect in Nazi Germany. For Murdoch to use this sort of language against his competitors is further evidence that he is unfit to lead an international news enterprise.

In between the tweets mentioned above, Murdoch inserted an equally offensive tweet aimed at President Obama wherein he attributed the shelling of Israel to Obama’s “friends” in Egypt. For Murdoch to suggest that the Hamas terrorists (who, by the way, are not in Egypt) are friends of the President goes far beyond what can be considered civil discourse. Murdoch is effectively accusing Obama of complicity with the attacks on Israel. That is the sort of repulsive and delusional opinion one would expect to hear at a KKK rally.

There are some who believe that Murdoch has been a stalwart defender of Israel, however, there is a big difference between pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. Murdoch, like many neo-con right-wingers, is only supportive of Israel in connection with the right’s strident Islamophobia. They hate Muslims so much that they embrace Israel to the extent that they can exploit its conflicts with the Muslim world, and particularly Iran, with whom they are itching to go to war. But there is nothing remotely pro-Jewish about that stance. It is similar to the apocalyptic Christians who pretend to support Jews, but only because they are a necessary component of the End Times prophesies, after which they will burn in Hell.

On Sunday morning Murdoch became aware of the criticism of his tweets and posted another that entirely missed the point saying: “Jewish owned press” have been sternly criticised, suggesting link to Jewish reporters. Don’t see this, but apologise unreservedly.

There are two glaring problems with that absurd attempt at a public relations fix. First, the criticism had nothing to do with reporters, but with his reference to Jewish “owners” of the media. Secondly, how can he claim to “apologise unreservedly” when he admits that he doesn’t see any reason for the criticism? It is an utterly disingenuous apology that doesn’t even address the insult.

Rupert Murdoch is a vile man filled with hatred and greed. He should do himself, his business, and the world a favor by stepping down as CEO and Chairman of News Corp and fade ignobly into history.


[Reprise] The REAL Job Creators: Share This Infographic To Undo GOP Fallacy

Posted by on November 17, 2012 at 11:18 am. 2 Comments :

With the presidential election behind us, the public discourse turns once again to more substantive matters, first of which is the fearful prospect of the so-called “fiscal cliff.” Setting aside the fact that the cliff itself is a figment of media imagination, it is nevertheless necessary for congress to address tax policy.

As the debate heats up in advance of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, conservatives are trotting out their tired rhetoric about the risk of allowing tax cuts for the rich to expire and the allegedly detrimental impact it would have on what they call job creators. However, they are deliberately distorting facts in order to benefit their wealthy patrons. Last year I published an analysis of the right-wing effort to confuse the issue along with an infographic that laid out the case for who the real job creators are. This seems like a good time to re-publish it and direct credit for creating jobs to those who actually deserve it.

Occupy Messaging: Who Are The Real Job Creators?

December 13, 2011

For too long now, right-wing propagandists like Frank Luntz have been manipulating language to distort the real issues that impact so many lives of American citizens. They engage in dishonest wordcraft that disguises their true meaning in order to shape public opinion and deceive voters. It’s time to counter that rhetorical offensive by restoring definitions that actually reflect reality.

One of the most recent and insidious examples of this practice is the conservative effort to replace references to “the rich” with the phrase “job creators.” It is of no interest to these hacks that no evidence exists to validate the claim. In fact, NPR’s congressional reporter, Tamara Keith, asked members of congress and representatives of conservative business groups to refer her to business people who could substantiate the assertion that tax cuts for the wealthy would induce them to increase hiring. They were unable to come up with a single name or example to affirm their half-baked theory. However, Keith found several examples of her own that utterly refuted it. This caused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to note that “Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They are impossible to find and don’t exist.”

The agenda that Republicans have adopted has literally no popular constituency. Every poll taken on the subject reveals that majorities of Americans (including majorities of Republicans) favor increasing taxes on the rich. Even polls of the rich show that they believe that they are not presently sharing the sacrifice required to restore the nation’s economic health. An independent group of Patriotic Millionaires released a video beseeching Congress to raise their taxes.

So the next time you hear some GOP flunky whining about the plight of the rich whose only desire is to be unburdened from the shackles of what are the lowest taxes in decades, remember that they have not, and cannot, certify any claim that lower taxes will spur hiring. In fact, the evidence is all to the contrary. And whenever possible, we need to recapture the phrase “job creators” and use it in a manner that is more in line with reality. Here is a handy, shareable chart that illustrates who the real job creators are:

(click to view larger)
Job Creators

Some conservatives are beginning to admit that lavishing benefits on those who are already wealthy does nothing to stimulate the economy. Bill Kristol recently said that “It won’t kill the country if Republicans raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.” Ben Stein, with some apparent reluctance, told Gretchen Carlson that “With all due respect to Fox…” “We’re going to have to raise taxes on very, very rich people.”

This is the beginning of the wall crumbling down. The right knows that they cannot continue to be seen as only fighting for the welfare of the rich. They know that they have already lost this argument and that now it is only a matter of finding a way to concede without losing face (or Tea Party support).


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

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

Roger AilesDemonstrating 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.


YOU’RE FIRED! Mitt Romney To Replace Donald Trump On NBC’s “The Apprentice”

Posted by on November 15, 2012 at 4:36 pm. 7 Comments :

NBC: Mitt Romney To Replace Donald Trump On NBC’s “The Apprentice”
[New York, NY, November, 15, 2012] NBC Entertainment announced this afternoon that the upcoming season of The Apprentice will feature former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the role of the corporate boss previously played by Donald Trump.

The Apprentice - with Mitt Romney

Eric Fehrnstrom, the newly appointed NBC Entertainment president of alternative and late-night programming, praised Romney’s business background and experience at Bain Capital as an ideal prerequisite for the corporate-themed reality game show.

“The Governor has a great deal of business experience,” Fehrnstrom said, “And he was in a position to evaluate employee performance and make decisions regarding their future. That’s a core function of the Trump role on Apprentice that Mitt will be assuming.” For his part, Mr. Romney reminded reporters that his remarks during the campaign that he “likes to fire people” make him the perfect successor to adopt Mr. Trump’s signature phrase, “You’re fired.”

At Bain Capital, Romney was indeed closely involved with establishing whether or not businesses were fit for continued investment or were better subjects for liquidation and bankruptcy. And Romney is no stranger to terminating people on a broad scale due to outsourcing their jobs to foreign countries or closing domestic plants.

NBC appreciates Mr.Trump’s contributions to the Apprentice over the years, however, his usefulness may have waned. The program debuted twelve seasons ago in 7th place with more than twenty million viewers. The audience has declined significantly in every subsequent season with last year’s audience dwindling to just seven million and a ranking of 73rd in the ratings. With that downward trend NBC decided that it was time to freshen the franchise.

Programming executives at NBC have reiterated their respect for Mr. Trump. They deny rumors that his departure had anything to do with his declining reputation amongst the American public due to his political activities and birtherism. NBC does not believe that Mr. Trump’s pursuit of evidence that President Obama was not born in the United States has anything to do with The Apprentice’s ratings downfall. Likewise, they do not regard his allegations that the President is a Muslim, a socialist, and a poor student, as contributing to the program’s loss of viewers.

Mr. Trump is well known for his outspoken personality and NBC has always regarded that as an asset, even after the election when he tweeted that, due to the President’s reelection, “We should have a revolution in this country!” Neither was NBC concerned when Trump was universally ridiculed for what he promoted as “very big news” but turned out to be a clownish challenge to donate $5 million to charity in exchange for Obama’s college transcripts.

More recently Trump engaged in a public argument with NBC News anchor, Brian Williams. Responding to Trump’s post-election call for revolution, Williams said that he “has driven well past the last exit to relevance and peered into something closer to irresponsible here.” Trump fired back at the top-rated news anchor saying that “his newscast has become totally boring,” and that “Williams was never a smart guy.” According to NBC insiders, this slanderous insult to a top NBC asset also had nothing to do with Trump’s departure.

Nevertheless, NBC still wishes Mr. Trump well in his future ventures, insisting that none of the aforementioned controversies contributed to the decision to fire television’s most famous pink-slipper. NBC is confidant that he will succeed with his many business activities, including his lucrative marketing deal with Macy’s. Although a petition demanding that Macy’s sever their relationship with Trump has acquired more than 500,000 600,000 signatures, NBC believes that they will continue to be mutually beneficial.

The all new Apprentice with Mitt Romney will debut next year and is expected to return with more of the drama, humor, and personal struggles for excellence that have made the program a hit for so many years. The new star is anxious to assume the role of a fake corporate bully who likes to fire people and has some ideas of his own to bring to the show. For instance, some of the contestants may be voted off to China when they fail to perform their assigned duties. With ideas like these, and other innovations yet to be revealed, the Apprentice is certain to surprise and entertain audiences for many years to come.


Bill O’Reilly Inadvertently Tells The Truth About Fox News Promoting Ideology

Posted by on November 14, 2012 at 8:55 pm. 11 Comments :

Last night Bill O’Reilly engaged in a particularly obtuse and angst-ridden defense of himself. His pique was inflamed by critics who brought attention to the commentary he gave on election night when he slammed voters who “want stuff” and seemed nostalgic for a majority white, “traditional America.”

O’Reilly: “The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things? The demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore.”

That’s fairly typical for an O’Reilly rant and isn’t newsworthy in and of itself. what’s interesting is that he had the gall to wrap this screed in an attack on left-wing critics who merely reported what he said. This led to him saying even more things for which he surely will be remembered. For instance:

O’Reilly: “There are entire media operations that exist solely to promote ideology.”

Bill O'Reilly - Ideology

Indeed there are. And O’Reilly should know. He is the kingpin host for just such an operation. Fox News was built from scratch to promote the ideology of a lizardly old Australian and is run by the former media guru to Richard Nixon and the Republican Party. There was never any intent for Fox to be anything other than a conservative propaganda machine. So this makes O’Reilly’s remarks drip with irony. And it isn’t the first time he has obliviously wandered off the reservation. A few years ago he was candid enough to make this observation:

O’Reilly: “There are few journalistic standards left these days, as we’ve proven on this broadcast again and again.”

Bill O'Reilly - Journalistic Standards

Yes, bill, you have certainly proven that many times over. I can’t think of another program that proves it more conclusively.

O’Reilly’s homage to a bygone era of a “traditional” nation that was predominately white and never asked for handouts is remarkably similar to Mitt Romney’s vision of an America where 47% of the people are moochers who won’t take responsibility for themselves. Romney even reiterated that thought post-election when explaining to his fleeced donors that he lost because “the President’s campaign focused on giving targeted groups a big gift.” To Romney, the race was determined by loafers whose votes could be bought by promises of federal swag – inconsequential things like health care and food. It’s funny that Romney neglected to note that his own campaign also promised big gifts to targeted voters, except the voters he targeted were wealthy folks who yearned for lower taxes and federal subsidies.

I suppose we should be grateful that O’Reilly has come forward to admit the existence of ideological media enterprises. If only he knew what he was actually talking about and recognized his own complicity for slinging the most biased hunks of pseudo-journalistic gruel ever broadcast.

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Dick Morris Hopes People Aren’t Mad At Him For Lying About The Election

Posted by on November 13, 2012 at 11:30 am. 8 Comments :

The undisputed champion of political idiocy is still Dick Morris of Fox News. In a play to solidify his standing, Morris visited with Sean Hannity to commiserate about their monumentally incompetent analysis of the presidential election. Attempting to defend his fatally flawed punditry, Morris told Hannity…

“Sean, I hope people aren’t mad at me about it … I spoke about what I believed and I think that there was a period of time when the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic, nobody thought there was a chance of victory and I felt that it was my duty at that point to go out and say what I said.”

So Morris abandoned all the reality-based data that had driven Mitt Romney’s campaign into despondency in order to raise their spirits and to deceive the public into believing that Romney still had a chance to pull it out, contrary to what the actual numbers said in the most credible surveys, including those within the campaign. And now conservatives wonder how they could have been caught so off-guard by Romney’s decisive loss. It wasn’t skewed polling. It was the fact that they were deliberately lied to.

Dick MorrisThis shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with Morris’ prior work. This is the guy who said that Bill Clinton was going to vote for Romney. This is the guy who said that the Todd Akin “legitimate rape” controversy was a “big plus” for Romney. And most significantly, this is the guy who confessed last year that he intended to be a political hack on Romney’s behalf:

“I decided a couple of – a month or two ago to stop dumping on Mitt Romney, for example … Not because I approve of Romneycare, not because I approve of his flip-flops, flip on abortion, but because I may have to be one of those who carries this guy for a couple of months when he’s running against Obama and I don’t want to make my own task harder.”

You see, it doesn’t matter what his actual opinion is about anything, he is only going to comment in a manner that benefits his GOP clients. That’s what Fox News is paying him for.


National Papa John’s Depreciation Day – Or How To Buy Health Care For 14 Cents

Posted by on November 12, 2012 at 3:43 pm. 13 Comments :

Well, here’s a bad idea, if there ever was one. “National Papa John’s Appreciation Day.” This is brought to you by the folks who supported Chick-Fil-A’s bigotry with an assist from Fox News.

Let’s say there is a nationwide pizza franchise that earns $1.2 billion annually, and whose owner is worth about $350 million. And this cheesy enterprise decides that providing health care for the employees who are central to its success is just too expensive, despite the fact that it would produce healthier, more productive employees and release the federal government and all other insured Americans from the burden of picking up the tab. Never mind that the company gives away millions of pizzas in promotions with the NFL, or that the total additional cost of the health care is only about $0.14 per pizza, or that the owner’s projections are that the program will only cost about $5-8 million a year (less than 1/2 of 1% of earnings)

Then let’s say that this pizza vendor announces that, rather than reducing his profit margins fractionally, or finding other ways to cut costs (like the exorbitant executive salaries), he’s planning to layoff already struggling, low-income employees or reduce their hours so that they don’t qualify for health care – not to mention making it harder for them to buy groceries or pay rent.

Who in their right mind would promote a campaign to support this fiendish and greedy scheme? Fox News of course. Today they are featuring two stories that directly benefit a social media effort to “Stand With Papa John.” The plan is to get people who are in favor of exacerbating the hardships of workers and their families to patronize the pizza parlor on November 16. No doubt they’ll find a few tasteless schmucks who will participate. But screwing your employees to avoid offering them health care over just 14 cents is nobody’s idea of fatherly.

Papa John - Deadbeat Dad

John Schnatter has officially became America’s Deadbeat Dad. And Fox News is his enabler. Just like the Chick-Fil-A affair earlier this year, it is so disappointing to see people rallying around businesses that make hatred and greed the prime ingredient in their product. That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing decent people would turn into a cause celebre. And since that isn’t a particularly good idea, here’s a better one: Print out copies of the “coupon” above and take them to a Papa John’s on Appreciation Day. Leave a few around for other customers so they know exactly how immoral the owner of this pizzeria is.


Fox Flunky Frank Luntz Says “Fox News Viewers Ought To Be Outraged”

Posted by on November 11, 2012 at 12:17 pm. 2 Comments :

If you were to look for a political pollster or analyst who spent more time manufacturing a false narrative about the presidential election than Frank Luntz, you would probably give up in despair.

Luntz is a Fox News fixture who appears on numerous programs flaunting his phony focus groups that invariably swayed to favor Mitt Romney. He was also called upon to review campaign ads, some of which were produced by his Fox colleague, Karl Rove. Those reviews always seemed to rate the GOP ads better, which further affirmed his assessment that Romney was the favorite to win. And to top it off, Luntz is a consultant for hire to the Republican Party, so anyone expecting anything like objectivity from him is terminally naive.

Now that President Obama has decisively won reelection with an electoral landslide, Luntz has crawled out from beneath his wretched rightist rock to make what may be the most hilarious, deceitful, and self-serving statement of the whole campaign season:

“The published polls that the Romney campaign and the Republican establishment were trashing day after day turned out to be accurate. […] This is a bad day for establishment pollsters and it’s something they should be held accountable for. You have to tell your clients the truth. And you have to be accurate. And to miss so many states and to be this far off – Your Fox News viewers ought to be outraged, because day in and day out they were told that Mitt Romney was going to win.”

Indeed, Fox News viewers should be outraged – At Luntz and Fox News! After all, that is where conservative voters were fed the most conspicuously dishonest misinformation about the election and the projected outcome. They are the reason that Romney and his supporters were described as “shell-shocked” when they realized that he had lost. They are the ones who promoted nonsense like “Unskewed Polls” that ironically sought to skew published polling so that Romney came out ahead.

Fox News was so brazenly hypocritical in their reporting of election surveys that they chose to only publish polls that had Romney in the lead. They ignored or disparaged any poll that put Obama on top – even their own Fox News commissioned polls.

Fox News Polls

If election day was “a bad day for establishment pollsters,” it was a bad day for Luntz, because you don’t get more establishment than him. He was as much a part of the problem as anyone. Just a couple of weeks before the election he appeared on Fox to say that it was time to “take Florida off the swing state list,” because it had swung clearly and irreversibly to Romney. Of course, Florida went for Obama, as did all but one of the so-called “swing states.”

The disingenuous babble on Fox News has only one purpose: advance the political interests of conservatives and Republicans. That fact was illuminated by none other than Luntz himself when he told the Los Angeles Times that his airtime has previously been cut on Fox because “his findings didn’t comport with the outlet’s orthodoxy.” That’s an admission that Fox requires their contributors to toe a partisan line, and Luntz has obviously complied.

For Luntz to come out now and tell Fox viewers that they should be outraged is typical behavior for a propagandist who calls himself the “Word Doctor.” He is a professional flack who counsels his clients to lie by distorting language. It was Luntz who coined the term “government-run health care” as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act (or ObamaCare). It didn’t matter that the legislation was only aimed at health insurance and was not in any way a government takeover of medical services. The phrase itself was awarded the “Lie of the Year” from PolitiFact.

Frank LuntzIt’s what Luntz does. In one of his more infamous efforts to distort public discourse, he delivered a speech before a group of Republicans wherein he offered a series of rhetorical replacements for words he thought were damaging to the GOP cause. Words like “capitalism, compromise,” and “middle-class.” This screed was served up after first declaring his abject fear of the Occupy Wall Street movement, saying that he was “so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death. They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” And his approach to countering it was not to formulate a policy response, but to change the wording of the GOP rebuttal in the hopes of confusing the public.

So, should Fox News viewers be outraged? I’ll say. But, sadly, they will probably just sink back into their stupor and continue to believe whatever falsehoods Fox throws at them going forward. Fox is already trying to sell the myth that Obama’s victory was insignificant and comes without a mandate. They are soft-peddling an electoral blowout and the fact that Democrats won even more seats in both the House and the Senate in a year where they were expected to lose seats. They are fostering the notion that the GOP should resist tax increases on the wealthy, despite the fact that Obama ran (and won) on that platform and exit polls show that 60% of voters favor it.

This further demonstrates that Fox is doing precisely the same things that ought to have enraged their viewers, and when they lose these arguments as well, their audience will be similarly shell-shocked. But they are getting exactly what they deserve by being foolish enough to keep watching a network that deliberately lies to them.


FLASHBACK: Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Posted by 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.