New York Post

Fox News Cancels New York Times

Posted by on October 20, 2008 at 4:22 pm. 4 Comments :

This past weekend, the New York Times published a profile of John McCain’s wife, Cindy. Included in the article were facts relating to Sen. McCain’s adulterous relationship with his future second wife, as well as Ms. McCain’s troubles with drugs. These are simply factual episodes that any responsible biographical piece would have to address.

Predictably, the McCain campaign was outraged and immediately began shouting about media bias and tabloid journalism. Whereupon the masters of tabloidism, Fox News, came to McCain’s aid by parroting his complaints and even helping to punish the Times by providing viewers with a telephone number they could call to cancel their subscriptions. This all occurred during a “news” broadcast, not the O’Reilly Factor.

The hubris of Fox News never seems to find it’s peak. It would be one thing for them to report on the controversial article and McCain’s response. They might even follow that up with their own views as to the presence of bias in the article. At this point everyone knows that Fox shamelessly inserts their opinions into their reporting, and since McCain has already declared war against the Times, it’s only natural that Fox, the network of the Republican National Committee, would follow suit. However, by participating in a effort to encourage the cancellation of subscribers to the paper, Fox is crossing a new line that is much further out in the sand than was previously drawn.

Aside from the obvious advocacy on the part of Fox News for the McCain candidacy, and their staking out a position on the paper’s coverage, Fox News has a vested financial interest in harming the Times. Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. which also owns Times competitors the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. So this partisan interference in political affairs is also a brazen attempt to damage a competitor in the marketplace.

The many tentacles of the Murdoch empire continue to raise questions about monopolies and anti-trust. Is it proper for one News Corp. property to openly advocate that customers abandon a competitor of another property? If so, could NBC, which is owned by General Electric, broadcast appeals to their viewers to stop purchasing light bulbs or refrigerators made by their competitors? Could ABC, which is owned by Disney, run stories that advise people not to attend Six Flags Amusement Parks in an effort to boost attendance at Disneyland?

These are some of the easily anticipated problems with the sort of unregulated consolidation that has been rampant in the recent past, particularly in Republican administrations. If anti-trust laws aren’t taken seriously and vigorously enforced, the corporate chieftains end up controlling and manipulating markets to the detriment of competition and consumers. Barack Obama is on record in opposition to the Bush policy of ignoring, or advancing, corporate collusion, consolidation, and other anti-competitive activity:

“We’re going to have an antitrust division in the Justice Department that actually believes in antitrust law. We haven’t had that for the last seven, eight years.”

If Obama follows through on that pledge, we might begin to see some progress toward a truly open, diverse, and fair marketplace in the media and elsewhere. Regulations will need to be refined and some conglomerates will need to be broken up. Real reform in this area will be difficult to achieve, but it is essential if we want a system that provides a level playing field for everyone.

The Fox News War On News

Posted by on July 7, 2008 at 3:31 pm. 3 Comments :

David Carr of the New York Times seems to finally have noticed what has been obvious for years to any objective news analyst. Fox News has a long-standing scorched Earth policy when reacting to other media who dare to report on Fox News.

In his column titled, “When Fox News Is the Story,” Carr confesses that just the thought of having to deal with Fox News as a subject in a story makes him and his peers nervous:

“Once the public relations apparatus at Fox News is engaged, there will be the calls to my editors, keening (and sometimes threatening) e-mail messages, and my requests for interviews will quickly turn into depositions about my intent or who else I am talking to.”

The key tactic in Fox’s PR strategy is to intimidate reporters and editors, and by Carr’s own admission, it’s working. Carr goes on to profile the Fox news PR machine as an operation modeled on political warfare, as directed by CEO Roger Ailes, a veteran of campaigns going back to Richard Nixon. He describes it as “a kind of rolling opposition research” effort intended to cause material harm to their perceived enemies. Carr cites the recent example of the hosts of Fox & Friends taking out their revenge on two Times reporters who wrote about how the competition is gaining on Fox. Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy displayed altered photographs of the reporters that were at best unflattering, at worst anti-Semitic.

While Carr’s revelations are interesting, they don’t go nearly far enough to provide an historical context for Fox’s behavior. This is not a recent phenomena. Three years ago David Folkenflik wrote about how Fox bears its fangs when it doesn’t like what’s being said. And the AP’s David Bauder documented what has become known as Fox’s “Wishing Well,” a back-handed slap at anyone who says anything about Fox News that isn’t complimentary:

  • Because of his personal demons, Keith [Olbermann] has imploded everywhere he’s worked. From lashing out at co-workers to personally attacking Bill O’Reilly and all things Fox, it’s obvious Keith is a train wreck waiting to happen. And like all train wrecks, people might tune in out of morbid curiosity, but they eventually tune out, as evidenced by Keith’s recent ratings decline. In the meantime, we hope he enjoys his paranoid view from the bottom of the ratings ladder and wish him well on his inevitable trip to oblivion.
  • Ted [Turner] is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network and now his mind. We wish him well.
  • Tim [Russert]’s sour grapes are obvious here, but at least he’s not using his father as a prop to sell books this time around. That said, we wish him well on his latest self-promotion tour.
  • We are disappointed that George [Clooney] has chosen to hurt Mr. O’Reilly’s family in order to promote his movie. But it’s obvious he needs publicity considering his recent string of failures. We wish him well in his struggle to regain relevancy.
  • We wish CNN well in their annual executive shuffle. We wish Jon [Klein] well in his battle for second place with MSNBC.
  • We can understand David [Shuster]’s disappointment in being let go by Fox News Channel, but he’s too young to be so bitter. We wish him well in getting his career back on track.

It’s not just PR flacks volleying in this debate. The big dogs at News Corp. are fully engaged. Rupert Murdoch’s spokesperson delivered an ultimatum to GE, saying that if they reined in Keith Olbermann, Fox would call off Bill O’Reilly. Roger Ailes stepped into the fray personally, threatening…

“…that if Olbermann didn’t stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.”

In the weeks that followed, Ailes made good on his threat. Bill O’Reilly, Steve Doocy, Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, Gretchen Carlson, and others at Fox News all laid into NBC/GE with renewed vigor. O’reilly even has his own Media Hall of Shame. The New York Post’s gossips on Page Six initiated a week-long assault on Olbermann’s personal life, alleging tax evasion, calling him unstable, and even publishing his home address – a vile act whose only purpose could be to cause him harm.

The risks faced by reporters who merely want to do their jobs is very real. Fox News will throw whatever they can at you to derail your reporting and/or tarnish your reputation. Carr relates horror stories from his colleagues who have dared to cross Fox News:

“…they have received e-mail messages from Fox News public relations staff that contained doctored photos, anonymous quotes and nasty items about competitors. And two former Fox employees said that they had participated in precisely those kinds of activities but had signed confidentiality agreements and could not say so on the record.”

~

“…few were willing to be quoted. In the last several years, reporters from The Associated Press, several large newspapers and various trade publications have said they were shut out from getting their calls returned because of stories they had written. Editors do not want to hear why your calls are not being returned, they just want you to fix the problem, or perhaps they will fix it by finding someone else to do your job.”

That’s an old tactic practiced by political operatives and office holders. They know that if they deny you access, your editor is going to have to get someone else who doesn’t have that problem. In effect, they get you fired. It is unprecedented, however, for a media company to employ such hardball tactics against other media companies. But that is the way Fox does business, and their peers had better develop strong stomachs if they hope to endure.

The impression left by Carr is that many in the media have already given up fighting. They will either decline to report on anything having to do with Fox News (if it’s critical), or they will simply adjust their reporting to be more positive. That is the danger of letting bullies get away with their bad behavior. Once again, it will be up to the people to insist that they get honest, responsible journalism from the Conventional Media. It is up to us to force them to do their jobs. If we succeed then it won’t matter what Fox’s attack dogs do. Their vacant yelping will disperse like a fading echo. We wish them well as they collapse from the fatigue of chasing their own tails.

Gawker has more on Fox News PR Priestess, Irena Briganti.

Murdoch Unleashes O’Reilly, NY Post On Keith Olberman

Posted by on June 2, 2008 at 10:51 am. 8 Comments :

The ongoing melodrama featuring MSNBC and Fox News is heating up again and reaffirming Fox’s status as the scum suckers of news.

Two weeks ago, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post gave readers an insiders view of the conflict that centers around the blood feud between Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly. The battle lines have extended all the way up to News Corp. executive offices, including Rupert Murdoch’s. In the Kurtz column he quoted Fox chief Roger Ailes threatening his counterpart, Jeff Zucker, at NBC:

“Ailes warned that if Olbermann didn’t stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.”

Since then, as promised, Bill O’Reilly has devoted his Talking Points Memo to an assault on NBC/GE, calling them biased, dishonest, disgraceful, and responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. Without a hint of irony, he said that NBC “has violated just about every journalistic standard.”

The New York Post has also been answering the call. On May 19, their Page 6 gossip monger, Richard Johnson, asked if Olbermann was “on the verge of yet another professional meltdown?” Today the same Ailes apple polisher flatly asserts that Olbermann has not paid his taxes. Johnson’s source is the utterly disreputable attack dog site, OlbermannWatch. This allegedly factual assertion is made despite the fact that it is contradicted a few lines down in the very same paragraph. But that doesn’t stop Johnson from raising additional questions about other similarly resolved tax disputes. The only purpose imaginable here is to slander with innuendo and outright falsehoods.

What’s worse is that Johnson took the opportunity to engage in an act so despicable it even reflects badly on a rag like the NYPost. Without any justification or connection to the bogus tax story, Johnson published what appears to be Olbermann’s home address. The irrelevance to the rest of the column is so stark that it jumps off the page in a fit of superfluosity. This can only be regarded as an intentional and hostile attempt to bring discomfort, and perhaps harm, to Olbermann. And coming so soon after the Ailes threat, it is difficult to arrive at any other conclusion.

Let Johnson and the Post know that this is unacceptable from both journalistic and moral perspectives:

NYPost email:
Page Six: Richard Johnson
Letters to the Editor

Fox News On O’Reilly vs Olbermann: If You Stop, We’ll Stop

Posted by on May 19, 2008 at 10:17 am. NO Comments :

Howard Kurtz has a revealing backgrounder on the battle between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann. O’Reilly, who has a superstitious aversion to saying Olbermann’s name, has directed his attacks at NBC, calling its chairman, Jeffrey Immelt, “a “despicable human being.” He even blames Immelt for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. The sad reality is that Ailes, O’Reilly, and Fox News are far more culpable for the tragedy that is Iraq via their persistent disinformation and cheerleading for the war.

Kurtz reports on conversations between Fox News president Roger Ailes and NBC CEO, Jeff Zucker. Ailes is reported to have jumped in swinging at Zucker:

“Ailes warned that if Olbermann didn’t stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.”

Unleash O’Reilly? Wouldn’t they need a permit from the Department of Animal Control for that? It’s interesting that Ailes openly asserts that he exercises editorial control over both O’Reilly’s program and the New York Post, for which he has no executive responsibility. NBC is to be lauded for their refusal to similarly impose such controls on Olbermann.

While Ailes is violating every tenet of journalistic independence, O’Reilly is behaving like the bully he is known to be. And worse, he is rapidly spinning into the Delusions of Grandeur Zone:

“That Immelt man answers to me. . . . That’s why I’m in this business right now, to get guys like that.”

O’Reilly’s claim to domination of GE’s CEO is both pathetic and laughable. The Factor averages about 2.5 million viewers a day. NBC Nightly News does three times that. The Today Show more than doubles O’Reilly’s numbers. The idea of Ailes and O’Reilly pushing NBC around makes no sense. But that never stopped O’Reilly before.

Now it appears that Ailes is already making good on his threats. The New York Post’s gossipy Page Six is asking whether the “notoriously odd” Olbermann is “on the verge of yet another professional meltdown?” That’s funny coming from the notoriously disreputable Post, and particularly Page Six, which has a history of publishing false items and hiring corrupt columnists.

New York Post Bashes/Endorses Obama

Posted by on January 30, 2008 at 4:22 pm. NO Comments :

NYPost Endorses Obama

The New York Post has given its endorsement for the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama. However, after reading the article you’d have to ask yourself, “With friends like that, who needs enemas?” Some examples of what the Post considers an endorsement:

  • “…an untried candidate, to be sure…”
  • “Obama is not without flaws.”
  • “For all his charisma and his eloquence, the rookie senator sorely lacks seasoning…”
  • “Regarding national security, his worldview is beyond naive…”
  • “His all-things-to-all-people approach to complicated domestic issues also arouses scant confidence”
  • “…he is not Team Clinton…That counts for a very great deal.”
  • “…we don’t agree much with Obama on substantive issues.”

That’s what they say about the candidate they like! Here’s what they say about Hillary and Bill:

  • “…a return to the opportunistic, scandal-scarred, morally muddled years of the almost infinitely self-indulgent Clinton co-presidency.”
  • “…self-centered campaign antics conjure so many bad, sad memories…”
  • “…wore thin a very long time ago.”
  • “A return to Sen. Clinton’s cattle-futures deal, Travelgate, Whitewater, Filegate, the Lincoln Bedroom Fire Sale, Pardongate – and the inevitable replay of the Monica Mess.”
  • “…don’t forget the Clintons’ trademark political cynicism.”
  • “…reeks of cynicism and opportunism.”
  • “…Clinton stands philosophically far to the left of her husband…”

Let’s face it, this endorsement from Rupert Murdoch’s NY mouthpiece was really just an excuse to bash both of the remaining Democrats in the race. It’s conclusion is that Clinton is so awful, that we have to go with her almost equally as bad opponent.

This might sting Clinton a bit because she has been cozying up to Murdoch – attending fundraisers, appearing on Fox News, refraining from criticism, etc. And this is how he repays her. Do you think she’ll learn her lesson?

In the end, the Post’s opinion will probably have negligible effect on this race. It may even have a contrary effect because New Yorkers know exactly where the Post stands. Consequently, an endorsement of Obama may send them running to Clinton. Still, it is pretty pathetic when one of the city’s major newspapers uses the occasion of an endorsement to brazenly insult both candidates. Let’s see how they handle the Republican endorsement.

Update 2/18/09: New York Post publishes racist and violent cartoon.

Idiots At The New York Post

Posted by on November 26, 2007 at 10:09 am. NO Comments :

Does anybody at the New York Post read the New York Post?

This weekend Rupert Murdoch’s Post published the results of a survey that found that…

“Sixty-two percent of those polled thought it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that federal officials turned a blind eye to specific warnings of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.”

Accompanying that statistic was this blaring headline:

‘BLAME U.S. FOR 9/11’ IDIOTS IN MAJORITY
But just eight months after the World Trade Center attacks, the Post printed on their front page a story declaring that “Bush Knew” about warnings directed at U.S. civil aviation.

The following day White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters that Bush had indeed received…

“…vague warnings from intelligence agencies about possible hijackings last summer…”

Despite that admission, Fleischer called the headline “irresponsible” and “a poster child for bad journalism.”

So after publishing an article that alleged that federal officials knew about, but did not respond to, warnings about terrorist attacks, the Post now calls Americans who are aware of that fact “idiots.” Of course the real idiots are the editors at the Post who don’t even know what their own paper reports. But it’s even worse than that. After the “Bush Knew” issue hit the streets, Post editor Col Allen defended the headline saying…

“I reject the notion that the headline suggests that Bush knew about 9/11. . . . ‘9/11 bombshell’ was there to tell people this was a story about terror.”

Oh really? What was “Bush Knew” there to tell people if it wasn’t to suggest that Bush knew? Apparently, even when someone at the Post reads the Post they can’t understand what it’s saying – even its editor.