Christian Broadcasting Network v. News Corpse

Posted by on June 15, 2010 at 1:48 pm. 15 Comments :

The Christian Broadcasting Network, home of The 700 Club, has notified News Corpse of a defamatory posting on this web site. I received an email from their legal team that included an attached letter (pdf) from Louis Isakoff, Vice President and General Counsel of Pat Robertson’s Regent University. Isakoff is representing Pat Robertson’s son (and CBN’s CEO), Gordon. The letter said in part:

“It has recently been brought to our attention that your internet site, newscorpse.com, has posted comments from Cheryl Spencer which are false, misleading, and defamatory. A copy of that post is included with this letter. The posting accused Mr. Robertson of adultery. Obviously this accusation is inaccurate.”

The letter goes on to demand that I “remove the posting immediately” to “avoid legal action” against me. The posting in question is over two years old and it did not address Robertson in any way. It was about the hiring of the late Tony Snow, former Fox News host and Bush press secretary, by CNN. The offending material was contained in a comment made by a reader. Cheryl Spencer, whom I do not know, made a comment, that I did not endorse, concerning Robertson’s marital fidelity. News Corpse, as an advocate for higher standards in the media, respects free speech and provides an open forum for opinion from all ideological perspectives.

CBN and Robertson are demonstrating a rare measure of sensitivity by bringing down the hammer on a small Internet publisher of opinion over an old article that didn’t even mention their client. Isakoff may be a Yale lawyer and the head of the legal division of a big university and media enterprise, but he is woefully uninformed on matters of new media publishing and free expression. Had he taken the time to research the matter, he would have quickly discovered that US Code Title 47, Chapter 5, Sub-Chapter II, Part I, § 230(c) provides immunity from any cause of action related to comments posted on blogs:

(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

There is an abundance of case law affirming the protection for bloggers from lawsuits stemming from comments made by readers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Citizen Media Law Project have extensive documentation of this. And that protection even applies when a blogger is notified of an allegedly defamatory comment and declines to remove it.

I can’t say whether this misunderstanding of the law is typical of Regent University lawyers, but there are certainly curious circumstances associated with that crowd. The Bush administration hired some 150 of them, including White House counsel Monica Goodling, who took the fifth before a congressional committee investigating the potentially illegal firing of U.S. Attorneys by the Bushies for partisan political reasons. And the presence of 150 lawyers in the Bush Department of Justice from a single Christian law school that was less than thirty years old is startling and unprecedented.

I have no intention of removing the comment posted on my site. I believe that the demand by CBN is without merit and is deliberately intended to harass me and to stifle free expression. This sort of bullying tactic has a chilling effect on individuals and organizations who seek only to exercise their Constitutional rights and provide forums for others to do so as well. It’s disappointing to see a religious institution, who’s rights are protected by the very same Constitutional amendment, exploit their power by threatening innocent authors and publishers.

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Glenn Beck Admits He’s A Fraud – Again

Posted by on June 14, 2010 at 1:09 pm. 13 Comments :

In the past Glenn Beck has revealed that he takes seriously his self-appraisal as a “rodeo clown.” He often describes himself as an entertainer. He tells his audience that “if you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.” He has been exposed for shedding less than sincere tears on camera. He even admitted that there is a legitimate case for global warming despite his frequent mockery of it.

It’s hard to find anything that Beck actually stands for. His hypocrisy is legendary. And in today’s USA Today Beck adds to the list of his adventures in artifice. In the interview he was asked about the writing of his upcoming novel The Overton Window. This is what he said:

“There’s clearly no way that I’m sitting behind a typewriter or word program and pounding this out. … I have my vision and need someone to make sure that vision stays there.”

On the title page of the book, Beck cites three “contributors” with whom he shares credit. It’s rather surprising that anyone would consent to being saddled with credit for writing what appears to be an unintentionally hilariously piece of literary garbage. But it is not surprising that Beck couldn’t have written this book by himself.

Beck’s schedule already includes a daily three hour radio show, another hour on his TV program, numerous guest spots on other Fox News shows, and live personal appearances around the country. Where would he find time to write this, or any other book, and still be the devoted family man and father of four that he claims to be?

Beck’s admission that he doesn’t sit behind the typewriter makes no distinction between his new novel or his many other published works. This means that all of his frenzied fans who gobble up his nonsense in printed form are being ripped off because Beck is clearly not the author of the tomes he peddles with his name on it.

It’s unlikely, however, that his fans will hold it against him. They obviously are not the most discerning consumers to begin with. And as long as the final product affirms their previously held misperceptions of this fragile, tyranny-destined world, they’ll be happy – if you can call that kind of paranoid, doom-laden mindset happiness.


WSJ: The Alien In The White House

Posted by on June 9, 2010 at 12:37 pm. 6 Comments :

The right-wing media long ago cemented its status as a shrill, extremist platform for failed conservative positions, pundits, and politicians. Often it melded all three into its version of super-troopers, peddling partisan rhetoric and propaganda. Fox News, not surprisingly, is the best example of this with their employment of media-politico crossovers like Sarah Palin and Karl Rove.

However, to the extent that some of the more sober purveyors of news sought to maintain an image of seriousness and thoughtful analysis, even that boundary has been breached.

When Rupert Murdoch purchased the Wall Street Journal it was a respected news organization that, at least outwardly, aspired to adhere to established journalistic principles. Murdoch insisted that he was committed to preserving that heritage and that he would not impose his views on the paper’s editorial process. But this morning any aspiration toward ethical journalism was abandoned and replaced with an embrace of the most deranged lunacy straight off of the supermarket tabloid rack.

Dorothy Rabinowitz composed a screed for the Journal that is so devoid of rationality it makes an argument for her family to invoke conservatorship and have her confined to an institution for her own protection. It begins with the title The Alien In The White House. Despite a disclaimer at the end of the fourth paragraph that it has “nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe,” Rabinowitz has to know that the imagery in her words plants the very message she claims not to be espousing. The demented fringe will devour it with relish. She wants her readers to conjure up thoughts of a foreign, illegitimate, usurper to power.

Fox Nation Obama AlienIn support of this promotion of birtherism, Murdoch’s web site, Fox Nation, republished Rabinowitz’s column with a graphic exclamation point. The visual cues employed here escalate the routine insanity of those who believe that Obama was born in Kenya, to an even more absurd insinuation that he is not even from this planet. At this rate the Weekly World News may sue Murdoch for infringing on their fringiness.

But even the message to which Rabinowitz is laying claim distastefully casts President Obama as something other than a patriotic public servant. In fact, she paints him as borderline treasonous. In her view the President aligns himself with foreigners and pursues their interests and not those of Americans.

“A great part of America now understands that this president’s sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class.”

Never mind the fact that it was a majority of Americans, not foreigners, who elected him. Rabinowitz imagines that the country has a perception of the President as having a “distant relation to the country.” However, the truth is that she is the one who feels a distance from the mainstream citizens who rejected the policies of her ideological class; the policies that drove the nation into a financial ditch and embroiled it in two costly wars.

Ironically, the first example Rabinowitz offers of Obama’s other-worldliness is that, upon moving into the White House, he failed to find a place for a bust of Winston Churchill. She is literally arguing that by removing the bust of a foreigner Obama is aligning himself with foreigners. That is the level of cognitive disconnect the right suffers from in general. And, of course, had he placed Churchill’s bust on the mantle in the East Room, he would have been criticized for glorifying a foreigner and harassed about why an American didn’t get that spot of honor on the mantle.

It is to be expected that broadsheets like the Weekly World News publish stories about presidents meeting with Venutians, but it represents a devastating collapse of integrity to see the Wall Street Journal treading that territory. And the fact that this nonsense is plastered across multiple Murdoch properties proves that it is his initiative. He cannot pretend to be removed from the hysterical madness that has permeated his enterprise. He is responsible for Rabinowitz’s incoherent daftness, just as he is responsible for Glenn Beck’s fascist evangelism, and Bill O’Reilly’s arrogant racism, and the rest of the crackpot conspiratorialists at Fox.

If Rupert Murdoch ever hoped that by acquiring the Journal he would rehabilitate his reputation, he has fouled that up entirely. Rather than having the Journal’s respected history rub off on him and polish his legacy, he has rubbed off on the Journal and stained it forever. Nice work, Rupe.

ADDENDUM: With regard to the bust of Churchill, Rabinowitz was even more off base than I thought. First of all, Churchill’s bust was on loan from the British embassy and was returned before Obama was inaugurated, so he had nothing to do with it not being displayed. What’s more, Obama put a bust of Martin Luther King in the place where Churchill’s had been. And this is what Rabinowitz is asserting is somehow un-American?


Glenn Beck’s Campaign For American Supremacy

Posted by on June 7, 2010 at 4:05 pm. 3 Comments :

Over the years that Glenn Beck has been a public figure there have been numerous representations of him as a rabid, right-wing, conspiracy-obsessed, extremist. All of which were true. In his inimitable way, and despite all the corroborating evidence, Beck countered such portrayals as smears and sought to cast his critics as Nazi sympathizers or worse. To that end he embraced Jonah Goldberg’s absurd fabrication of what he called “Liberal Fascism” – about as oxymoronic a word pairing as there ever was.

Last week, however, Beck sealed the deal. He let his true colors show by taking to the air and promoting the writings of Elizabeth Dilling, an avowed racist, anti-Semite, and Nazi supporter, who praised Hitler and called President Eisenhower “Ike the Kike.” With this testimonial Beck joins the likes of David Duke and the Stormfront crowd as admirers of Dilling’s commitment to hate.

This is really nothing new for Beck or the rightist faction from which he evolved. Beck and other conservatives have lately been advocating a distinctive philosophy they call “American Exceptionalism.” While its original definition had more to do with a unique quality that was attributed to a new nation of immigrants who were committed to forming a democratic republic, it has been twisted into something much uglier by modern conservatives. Whereas it once referred to a nation and people who were different, the New Exceptionalists define it as a nation and people who are better. It has undergone a transformation from American Exceptionalism to American Supremacy. In this form, America is considered to be entitled to a superior status among nations. It is stronger, more virtuous, and favored by God. And it is exempt from the moral boundaries within which other nations must abide.

No one embodies this doctrinal mutation more fittingly than Beck. In recent months he has blurred the lines between political pundit and religious cult leader. He has declared that the Constitution was the result of divine inspiration and is as immutable as holy scripture. He regards the nation’s founders as saintly. One of those founders, Thomas Jefferson, expressly disagrees with Beck. On the matter of Constitutional immutability, Jefferson wrote that “…with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.” That’s hardly an argument for strict constructionalism. And with regard to the divinity of himself and his contemporaries, Jefferson spoke disparagingly of the arrogance of one generation dictating the terms of existence to their heirs, castigating those who would “…ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.”

Of course, Beck could hardly be expected to understand that sort of ego-less self-awareness and humility. He is far to busy canonizing repugnant figures like Dilling and his political mentor, Cleon Skousen, another Nazi sympathizer. And he is also preoccupied with exalting himself as the only mortal with the transcendent vision to see the dastardly schemes being perpetrated by President Obama, unions, environmentalists and progressives.

Beck’s campaign for American supremacy is as bigoted as Hitler’s doctrine of a Master Race. The notion that one group of people, on the basis of their nationality, are better than others, is as repulsive as one group asserting superiority on the basis of skin color. Yet this is Beck’s unabashed position, and he promulgates it daily.

There is a glaring irony in the right’s promotion of American supremacy. Their delusion that they are better than everyone else contradicts their affinity for American Averagism. They abhor those they portray as elitists. If you graduated from Harvard you are automatically out of the mainstream. If you dedicate your life to public service you are out of touch with ordinary working Americans. And the highest standard by which a leader is judged is whether you would like to have a beer with him, as if the souse at the end of the bar sucking on a Budweiser is the best qualified person to negotiate a nuclear arms treaty.

So, in fact, the people who claim to be superior actually have an aversion to the real character traits that signify achievement. At the same time, they revere traits that are decidedly lowbrow. Yet these ignorant dullards have an absurdly high, and undeserved, impression of themselves and believe that they are best suited to lead the world.

Rightist theocons like Beck are hypersensitive to charges of racism or fascist leanings. They have spent many years trying to shield themselves from such connections, mostly by accusing their critics of the very same thing. But now Beck has come out of the Nazi closet with his endorsement of Dilling. It is the most blatant admission of his true bigoted self to date. And he can no longer hide from it. Neither can his enablers at Fox News And News Corp. If these people don’t want to be called Nazis, they ought not to praise them and promote their views.


Glenn Beck Blames 9/11 On Major Fox News Shareholder

Posted by on June 4, 2010 at 11:21 am. 24 Comments :

Glenn Beck BlackboardI wonder how this one is gonna go over at the next News Corp board meeting.

On his program yesterday, Glenn Beck embarked on another of his famously illogical rants. This one had something to do with the Israeli encounter with activists seeking to break the blockade in the Persian Gulf. Somehow Beck segued into a discussion of 9/11 and an offer made by a Saudi prince to help with restoration efforts.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal approached New York’s then-mayor Rudy Giuliani and offered $10 million to help the city recover. Giuliani, in a fit of intolerance, refused the money. In the retelling of these events, Beck hypothesized that the money was tainted and that the Saudi donor was aligned with the terrorists who flew the planes into the World Trade Center towers:

“Do you remember what happened right after 9/11 with Rudy Giuliani? Do you remember Saudi Arabia came and said, we want to help. This guy [pointing at Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud] came over and said ‘I want to give you a $10 million dollar check.’ Rudy Giuliani said, ‘you see that over there? I don’t think we want your help. You already sent us help. And you flew that help into … the trade centers.‘ The same prince later blamed the U.S. policy for the attacks. Giuliani said, take your check, we don’t want your money.”

I’m not sure how any of that related to the incident in the Persian Gulf. Beck is notorious for constructing incoherent scenarios that reflect nothing more than his hallucinatory imagination. But the real problem here is that the Saudi Prince who Beck explicitly accused of being part of the Al Qaeda gang who attacked Manhattan on 9/11, is actually the largest shareholder of Fox News’ parent, News Corp, other than Rupert Murdoch and members of his family. That makes him Beck’s boss. Prince Alwaleed is also a close friend of Murdoch and former President Bush.

Set aside for the moment that Alwaleed is an international financier who has never been implicated in terrorism or affiliated with terrorists. Thus, Beck’s accusation is the most vile sort of slander. It’s typical of Beck’s hypocrisy that he would fiercely reject the notion of taking any money from this person that he regards as a terrorist, yet Beck is taking money from him every day as an employee of the company that Alwaleed owns a significant portion of. It’s also typical that Beck’s appreciation for facts is so limited as to not even acknowledge this relationship.

So what consequences will there be for Beck calling Alwaleed a terrorist? Beck has survived calling President Obama a racist. He has survived the loss of millions of dollars due to an advertiser boycott. He has survived equating social justice to Marxism and telling his viewers to leave their churches if they practice it. He has survived hosting (and agreeing with) Michael Scheuer, who said that the only hope for America is for Bin Laden to attack us again with weapons of mass destruction. Can Beck survive calling the owner of his network a terrorist?

Murdoch and his henchman, Fox CEO Roger Ailes, are in a difficult position. If they do nothing they risk Alwaleed punishing them by dumping his stock. That would likely result in a plunging value for News Corp shares. If they fire Beck they could unleash a backlash from the Beck Confederacy of Dunces that could result in a massive exodus of their core viewers. Even more troublesome is the potential for violent responses from the aggrieved BeckPods.

If I were forced to make a prediction, I would lean toward everyone doing nothing. The past tells us that Fox News is disinclined to ever acknowledge flaws or wrongdoing. And the major players are all business people who may regard their financial prospects as their highest priority – even Alwaleed. Beck may get a stern talking to, and he may have to promise to be more careful in the future, but I think it is unlikely that he would be terminated over this if he wasn’t terminated over advocating more terrorist attacks on our country.

Perhaps the effect of Beck’s cumulative transgressions may lead to a more severe response, but there’s been no evidence of that in the past. It’s possible that Murdoch may be itching to ditch Beck. He has been attempting to polish his legacy as a serious newspaperman in his golden years. But he could easily be dissuaded from taking action by Ailes and by his fear of the Becklash.

If I’m wrong, and Beck is set adrift, it would be to the credit of News Corp’s management. Although why they didn’t act sooner will still remain a blot on their managerial record. But if I’m right, it would just further affirm Fox’s status as wholly unethical, utterly unprofessional, thoroughly dishonest, and blatantly self-serving. It would reinforce their position that disseminating propaganda is more important than respect for the truth or responsible journalism. Now, which side of that equation do you think Fox would come out on?


Fox News Ratings Plummet In May

Posted by on June 4, 2010 at 7:54 am. 12 Comments :

The latest ratings report for cable news networks reveals a sharp decline for America’s #1 provider of right-wing propaganda. Fox News is leaking more than the BP oil rig in the gulf. According to TV By the Numbers:

In May, all of Fox News’ primetime programs posted their worst 25-54 demo deliveries in a year or more. May represents The O’Reilly Factor’s worst performance since January 2009, Hannity’s lowest delivery to date since taking over the time period in January 2009 and On the Record’s lowest since May 2009. Fox Report with Shep Smith had its lowest demo delivery since December 2008.

Even worse for Fox, their ratings have dropped about 20-35% in almost every hour of the day from their numbers at the beginning of the year. Fox’s stars were all particularly hurt in the key advertising demographic of 25-54 year olds. Neil Cavuto was down 29%, Bill O’Reilly dropped 30%, and Sean Hannity sunk 35%. Glenn Beck was not immune either. Despite his claim on his program last week that his numbers had risen, the truth is that he suffered a 23% drop in the demo and 26% in total viewers.

To be sure, the cable news market was fairly soft last month. The only network that posted increases was CNN, and that was likely due to the favorable comparisons over their previous dismal performance. This ratings report is nothing to brag about for any of the big players. But Fox hit some milestone lows that need to be put in perspective considering their proclivity for lying about their market position. Beck has already made ludicrous claims about his numbers, and O’Reilly spends half his time boasting about himself.

While Fox remains in the top spot for cable news, we need to remember two things: 1) Cable news is a small market that in total draws about half the audience of the broadcast news providers. And 2) Being #1 is not a validation of quality. Just ask anyone who’s ever eaten at McDonalds.

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James O’Keefe May Be Heading Back To Jail

Posted by on June 1, 2010 at 3:10 pm. 33 Comments :

Fox News Investigative TeamAndrew Breitbart’s pet pimp impersonator, James O’Keefe, was just sentenced last week to three years probation, 100 hours of community service, and a $1,500 fine for having trespassed the offices of a United States senator in Lousiana under false pretenses. He pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges in order to avoid prosecution for a felony. But this experience has apparently failed to moderate his proclivity for criminality.

O’Keefe’s latest adventure in psuedo-journalism was revealed today on Breitbart’s BigGovernment, as well as ABC’s Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos. The new effort was aimed at alleged waste and/or corruption at the Census Bureau. O’Keefe, armed with a camera, and a smug disregard for ethics, set off to embark on a career in the federal bureaucracy where he says that…

“What I found were census supervisors systematically encouraging employees to falsify information on their time sheets.”

First of all, it’s kind of funny that O’Keefe has been reduced to investigating incorrect time cards (his own). It’s not as if there aren’t other scandals percolating (I heard something about some oil in the gulf). At least he isn’t railing about Census Bureau concentration camps in Idaho.

O’Keefe only worked for the census for two days of training. He never actually performed any census field work. In the new video he says that a census crew leader told him to use a false time sheet as a template for filling out future time sheets. However, it was not a “false” time sheet. It was a practice time sheet used for training. But O’Keefe characterized the crew leader’s instructions during a training session as a directive to falsify the later forms. Never mind that the crew leader in the video said explicitly to use the practice form as a template. So when the crew leader said to fill the form out the same way every day, he simply meant to follow the instructions, not to input the same hours and other data. That would be obvious to most people, but O’Keefe has a blind determination to mislead, which he continues to do as the video proceeds.

In the portion where O’Keefe “confronts” the crew leader at a Dunkin’s Donuts, he asks whether it will be a problem that he quit working at 3:30 or 4:00. The implication is that his time sheet reflected something different. But we can’t see the time sheet that the crew leader is reviewing, so for all we know it said 3:45. A bigger problem is that if you watch the time code on the video, almost a full minute was edited out between the time O’Keefe asked his question (3:59:04) and the time the crew leader responded (4:00:00). So when the crew leader responded saying “No, that’s not a problem,” he could have been responding to a different question entirely. And given O’Keefe’s history of deceptive editing, the last thing he should be given now is the benefit of a doubt.

But there’s another revelation in this video that ought to attract the attention of the authorities. O’Keefe noted that the time sheets contain a warning at the bottom just above where they are signed that says:

Employee’s Certification – Under penalty of fine and/or imprisonment, I certify that the information on this form is true and correct to the best of my knowledge.

In the video, O’Keefe sought to portray that as applying to his supervisor. But the actual time sheet shows that this is only applicable to the employee. The supervisor has a somewhat lower standard of certification that relies on representations made by the employee:

Supervisor’s Certification – I certify that I have reviewed the entries made and they appear to be reasonable and accurate.

So what we have here is O’Keefe confessing again to a crime. He knowingly signed the time sheet despite his having lied on it about the hours he worked. He knew that it was unlawful to do so, yet he did it anyway. This couldn’t be a more clear cut case. What’s more, there are laws against interfering with the conduct of the census. Since O’Keefe never intended to provide the services to which he agreed upon on employment, he could be liable for additional charges in that regard. And that’s not all. The Washington Post reports that O’Keefe may also have broken laws relating to surreptitiously recording Commerce Department conversations. Stephen Buckner, a Bureau spokesman told the Post that…

“In his video, Mr. O’Keefe, an admitted criminal, does not disclose that he previously worked for the Census Bureau for nearly two months in 2009 without incident, allegation or complaint.

“That employment with us was well before his indictment and prior to his conviction of a federal crime last week. The Census Bureau obviously does not condone any falsifying of or tampering with time sheets by its employees.”

In his appearance on Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos asked O’Keefe if he regretted having broken the law in the affair at the senator’s office in Louisiana. While fudging on the matter of regret, he did concede that he would be more “careful” in the future. But his actions in this new episode show that he is an incorrigible criminal with no intention of respecting either the law or the standards of ethical journalism. And on top of all of that, he is an arrogant SOB who considers himself a victim. In his article at BigGovernment he whines that…

“The government took our camera, so I bought another. The government put us in jail and deleted our tapes, but we got out and we’ll just make more.”

It’s pathetic that O’Keefe needs to be reminded that the government didn’t put him jail. He put himself there by breaking the law. I’m sure Charles Manson has the same position on his incarceration as O’Keefe does, but it doesn’t make sense for either one of them. O’Keefe belongs in jail for his unrepentant criminal behavior. And the terminally choleric Andrew Breitbart ought to have a nearby cell for his role in facilitating O’Keefe’s crimes. And remember, this latest crime was committed while O’Keefe was on probation. So he is not only liable for the new violations of the law, but he could have violated his probation as well.

Finally, it would be a huge mistake for other media outlets to give these charlatans any additional exposure. Breitbart is already bragging about having been on GMA and is touting that appearance as opening the door to more press. The media was fooled before by these phonies. They were duped into thinking that they had “missed” the ACORN story, but when the whole story was revealed, it was clear that Breitbart’s crew had deceptively altered their video, and the only crimes were those committed by O’Keefe and company.

These people are confessed criminals, exposed liars, and they do not deserve to be treated as legitimate producers of news. Which is why they will probably be all over Fox News for the next couple of weeks. O’Keefe and Breitbart are already promising more videos, and O’Keefe says that he is assembling an “army” of citizen journalists. I guess we’ll have to assemble an army of debunkers. And Jon Stewart’s writing staff is going to have their hands full.


Fox News: Nothing But Sestak

Posted by on May 28, 2010 at 4:27 pm. 10 Comments :

Idiot FoxAnyone with a functioning brain stem is aware of the multitude of problems facing our country and world in these “interesting” times. We are currently struggling to deal with what may be the worst man-made environmental catastrophe ever. We are still in the midst of perilous economic conditions. There are two wars raging and another more amorphous terror threat that has not receded. And in addition to those critical and extraordinary affairs, there are the routine events of life that demand our attention, like jobs, crime, government, even sports and entertainment. In short, there is a flood of information that goes into the news and the editorial decisions shaping it.

However, for Fox News today it was a pretty easy decision. Their prime directive is, as always, is to keep the people as stupid as possible. Therefore, despite all of the crises facing the country, Fox chose to focus on a single issue that has almost no significance to the average American. Fox turned over much their schedule to the trifling and phony pseudo-scandal circulating around a senate race in Pennsylvania.

Joe Sestak had previously asserted that the White House offered him a job if he would decline to challenge Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary for senator in PA. Sestak turned down the offer and eventually defeated Specter. Now Fox News is trying to blow this up into a Watergate-style controversy despite there being no evidence of wrongdoing. Their tactic to escalate this story is to run it incessantly with sly aspersions to criminality that they fail utterly to support.

Perhaps the worst offender is Megyn Kelly. Her two hour program was consumed by over an hour and a half of Sestak. When she did break away from Sestak it was to report on the restoration of a religious monument in Illinois, a scholarship for an illegal immigrant, a comment by Hillary Clinton about whether the rich pay their fair share, and a woman suing an airline for not waking her when the flight landed. She never brought up the gulf oil spill, Afghanistan or the economy once.

That was no accident. That was an exercise of editorial discretion as practiced by Fox News. It wasn’t that there wasn’t any other news occurring, it was that they had already decided to make Sestak the primary story for the day. Never mind that there was very little to report, which resulted in Kelly repeating the same trivialities over and over again as she waited for something of substance to report.

During the course of her Sestak-fest, Kelly interviewed three guests in her pursuit of Fox’s fabled fairness and balance: Dana Perino, George Bush’s press secretary, Michael Mukasey, Bush’s Attorney General, and Republican congressman Darrel Issa, who has been hammering on Sestak and President Obama, and even asserted that an impeachable offense may have been committed.

Despite Kelly’s badgering, Mukasey would not indict Sestak or the White House. He repeatedly said that there doesn’t appear to be any criminal act. He even pointed out that Kelly had misrepresented the law when she supposedly quoted the U.S. code that prohibits promising “any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit…” Mukasey provided the additional context that the code only applies to positions created by Congress, which was not the case in this matter. And even as he said this, Kelly nodded and agreed, which means that she knew of her deceit from the start.

Perhaps the most disturbing segment of her show came when she was discussing the matter with Fox News correspondent Major Garrett. During this conversation Kelly asked Garrett why this is such a big story, with reporters asking about this instead of the Deep Horizon oil spill? Of course the obvious answer is that it is reporters like her who are doing the asking. How absurd is it for her to wonder why so much attention is being given to the story when she has just given 75% of her own program to it? The funny/pathetic part is that when she was wrapping up the segment with Garrett she praised him for being the only reporter who asked a question about this at the President’s press conference. In effect, she admitted that this isn’t a big story that all the reporters are asking about – it’s just Fox!

The whole Sestak affair is a fabrication invented by Fox News. There are no legal authorities or experts who believe that anything untoward occurred – even Bush’s Attorney General. This is just another attempt by the right and the right’s mouthpiece, Fox News, to smear the President and other Democrats. And they will pursue these smears to the detriment of the news product to which they they pretend to be so committed. Even to the detriment of Americans who end up being inadequately informed about the real crises that face them. And there are plenty of those.

It’s too bad that Fox isn’t in the business of reporting. It’s too bad that they would rather engage in defamation than journalism. But ultimately it will really be too bad for the country when they realize that they were deceived and made some seriously faulty decisions based on the omissions and lies they were fed by Fox News.


Glenn Beck Thanks God For Fox News

Posted by on May 27, 2010 at 8:00 pm. 4 Comments :

In the past year Glenn Beck has lost over a hundred advertisers. In the last four months he has lost about a third of his viewers. He is being boycotted by African Americans for calling President Obama a racist, Christians for calling social justice Marxism, and union members for incessantly insulting workers who seek to organize in order to defend themselves from the abuses of industrial barons.

As his show becomes less profitable, and reaches fewer viewers, Beck must surely be worrying about how committed his bosses are to keeping him on the air. After all, what motivation would there be to do so if he were bringing in neither cash nor ratings?

Beck’s response to these circumstances has thus far has been to dial the crazy up another couple of degrees. His ravings have become less tethered to reality than ever, and his paranoid layering of conspiracies aimed at him by innumerable covert enemies has escalated to Apocalyptic proportions.

He is palpably afraid, but not of progressives or Muslims or community organizers under the bed. He is afraid that his empire is at risk of collapsing on top of him. And so he has taken the next illogical step in his descent by clutching desperately to his sugardaddies at Fox.

On his radio program today he winced at the thought of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, or News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch, getting hit by a newspaper truck. He imagined that with them gone Fox News would would be a “scary” place. And then he commenced his holy benediction:

“Those two hold off the outside world. The beating that those guys take, the pressure that those guys are under, not just from me but almost every voice in Fox, is incredible. […] Fall to your knees and thank God for Fox News. Pray for Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Pray for them. Pray for strength and spine, and pray that everybody involved has chicken salad for lunch so it doesn’t clog anybody’s arteries. Keep them going.”

This outbreak of syncophantism has but one purpose for Beck: to plant a slobbering wet kiss on the mugs of the two people who hold his fate in their greedy hands. Beck knows that he is dead weight. After becoming anathema to advertisers, his saving grace was that he could deliver viewers to his leadout and jumpstart the primetime schedule. But now he is somewhat less than reliable in that role.

So what else is left for Beck? He is isolating himself from his colleagues who are often embarrassed by him. Former Fox contributor Jane Hall cited Beck as one of the reasons she left the network. Former Fox News anchor Eric Burns expressed gratitude that he doesn’t “have to face the ethical problem of sharing an employer with Glenn Beck.” He has also lost much of what remains of the sane conservative community. Right-wing blogger Charlses Johnson castigated Beck as “an alcoholic, weeping, ranting, creationist talk show host.” Respected conservatives David Brooks and David Frum have both been veering from the ideological excesses of Beck, with Frum lamenting the “reckless defamation” practiced by Beck.

For many of these conservative reprobates, Beck and Fox News have strayed so far into loony territory that they are harmful to the cause of conservatism. I composed a detailed analysis on that very subject almost a year ago: Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party. The question is, will Ailes and Murdoch come this realization, or will they succumb to Beck’s worshipful flattery?


News Corpse Software Upgrade

Posted by on May 27, 2010 at 8:09 am. 2 Comments :

I just completed an upgrade of the software on this site. At this point there should be no visible difference to visitors, but the background technology is more current and will permit some innovations in the future.

In the next few weeks I’ll be working on enhancing some site features, both functional and aesthetic. I hope you all will appreciate the improvements. And if you encounter any glitches, please let me know.

This would be a good opportunity to thank you all for your continued support and for your concerns about the role of media in the world.