Media Matters

Who Says Glenn Beck Isn’t Funny?

Posted by on March 25, 2011 at 3:38 pm. 2 Comments :

Glenn BeckOn his TV program yesterday, Glenn Beck launched into a hilarious routine that simply has to be shared with the world. It concerned his paranoid perception that an army of George Soros soldiers are advancing on him and his motley crew.

Beck: And please, enough, George Soros. He’s got 86 people now on staff at Media Matters. Eighty-six! And the CEO of Media Matters said, “Oh, we need to hire some more.” He was fundraising. “We need to hire some more because it takes a lot of people to correct Glenn Beck’s nonsense.” There are ten people. Ten that work on this program. Ten that put it together. TEN! It takes 86 to try to tear us down.

That’s hilarious. I could hardly…oh wait. He was serious. Beck actually thinks that every employee at Media Matters is assigned to watching and fact-checking his program. That includes the accountants and receptionists. And who does that leave to monitor Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly and, well, everybody else at Fox? Not to mention Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and Andrew Breitbart and everybody at every other television or radio station, or newspaper or Internet site.

Nope. Beck believes that all of Media Matters is wholly dedicated to bringing him, and only him, to ruin, and that George Soros is personally staked out in front of a wall of TVs directing the effort.

I don’t know how many people are actually monitoring Beck’s program, but I can safely assume that it takes at least a few focused researchers to run down the actual facts associated with his wild proclamations, because I do it myself with some frequency.

The advantage Beck has over those of us who rely on facts is that it takes considerable time and effort to confirm or negate information with documentary evidence of your conclusions. However, all it takes is a good imagination if you’re going to make stuff up.

For instance, it takes only a few seconds for me to claim that Beck once hired Monica Lewinsky as an intern on his old Morning Zoo radio show, and that the show’s producer admitted that they sent Lewinsky to Washington as a prank. It would take a legitimate researcher much longer to look into this assertion, acquire documents, compare dates, seek statements from witnesses, etc.

That’s why it only takes ten people to put together Beck’s show. They really don’t have much to do other than keeping the blackboard clean. And they aren’t distracted with pesky little concerns about honesty or proof. In fact, ten people seems a little high to produce the garbage that Beck puts on the air every day. I could probably do myself with an intern and a box of chalk.

Fox News Producer Won’t Deny That Fox Makes Things Up

Posted by on February 13, 2011 at 10:20 am. 11 Comments :

This is classic:

Last week Media Matters published an interview with a former Fox News “insider” who revealed, among other things, that Fox News is a “propaganda outfit” that “makes things up.” So ThinkProgress sent Ben Armbruster to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) where he ran into O’Reilly Factor producer and “ambush” interviewer, Stuttering Jesse Watters. The result is this video that shows Watters completely unresponsive in his smarmy effort to evade a simple question: Do you think that Fox News just makes stuff up?

Watters weaved and dodged without even approaching a coherent response. Rather, he attempts to school Armbruster on the finer points of ambushing. But what’s truly hilarious is that Watters can’t even muster a denial that Fox News makes things up. That’s about as close to an admission as we’re likely to get.

Equally funny is the spin that Fox Nation puts on this event:

Yesterday at CPAC in Washington DC, a liberal blogger from a Soros-funded smear site attempted to “ambush” Fox News’ Jesse Watters, who was covering the conservative conference for FoxNation.com and whose “ambush” interviews are frequently featured on The O’Reilly Factor. It was an embarrassing disaster for the little left-wing blogger. We’re surprised he posted the video because it was such a failure, but thrilled he did. Watters, who’s been “ambushing” judges, politicians and journalists for years, playfully mocked the “ambush attempt” while it went down, critiqued it “you can’t ambush with a camera phone”) and breezed away smiling.

The Fox Nationalists are actually proud of Watters performance, calling it “an embarrassing disaster for the little left-wing blogger.” That approaches a new level of oblivious for the Murdoch-funded smear site. How can they view this as a victory when their hero is seen in full retreat, ultimately ducking into an elevator to escape? And he couldn’t even defend the accusation that Fox manufactures lies and presents them as news? All he had to say was “No.” Perhaps he has a little integrity after all and couldn’t bring himself to deny the truth?

Nah, he’s just a douchebag.

Fox News Reporter’s Guide: Think Like An Intolerant Meathead

Posted by on February 10, 2011 at 3:15 pm. 5 Comments :

Fox NewsMedia matters has published an interview with a former Fox News “insider” who reveals the inner workings of a modern propaganda operation. Some of the revelations have been obvious for years. Some of them will just infuriate you. Here are some highlights:

“I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”

“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats. They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”

“You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks. And God help you if you don’t because sooner or later you’re going to get burned.”

“[A]nything that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it.”

“My internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead. You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.”

“[Y]ou have to buy into the idea that the other media is howling left-wing. Don’t even start arguing that or you won’t even last your first day.”

Media Matters has much more. Check it out. It is fascinating getting this info from an insider. Very few people associated with Fox ever speak out, even after they have left. A couple of exceptions include Eric Burns, former host of Fox News Watch, and Jane Hall, former Fox News contributor. Both cited Glenn Beck as the reason for their departure. More notable was former Fox reporter David Shuster who said:

“At the time I started at Fox, I thought, this is a great news organization to let me be very aggressive with a sitting president of the United States (Bill Clinton). I started having issues when others in the organization would take my carefully scripted and nuanced reporting and pull out bits and pieces to support their agenda on their shows.”

“With the change of administration in Washington, I wanted to do the same kind of reporting, holding the (Bush) administration accountable, and that was not something that Fox was interested in doing.”

“Editorially, I had issues with story selection. But the bigger issue was that there wasn’t a tradition or track record of honoring journalistic integrity. I found some reporters at Fox would cut corners or steal information from other sources or in some cases, just make things up. Management would either look the other way or just wouldn’t care to take a closer look. I had serious issues with that.”

It’s time that more people with knowledge speak out about the damage that Fox News is doing every day to the practice of journalism. We need more people like Howell Raines who asked some pertinent questions to his colleagues about their appeasement of Fox. (Too bad he waited until after he had left the NYT). And we need more insiders like Matthew Freud, the husband of Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, who said that he was “…ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes.”

Fox News provides more proof every day that they are not a credible news enterprise. Today, as all hell was breaking loose in Egypt, Fox cut away to air their regularly scheduled broadcast of Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck!?! Is that what a news channel would do?

The Stupidest Man On Fox News Is Spooked By George Soros

Posted by on November 8, 2010 at 1:11 pm. 9 Comments :

Steve DoocySteve Doocy, unquestionably the stupidest man on Fox News (which is no easy achievement), expressed his astonishment that George Soros might be executing an insidious plot to Jiu-Jitsu Fox News by turning its own wealth against them. Here are excerpts of an exchange this morning between Doocy and right-wing crank/author Ron Arnold:

Doocy: Did you know that George Soros made over $2.3 million by investing in News Corp, which is our parent company? So, is he using those profits to attack Fox News? Some people are wondering that.

By “some people” Doocy means himself and his producers. Arnold took up Doocy’s question and responded precisely as he was expected to when they invited him into the studio:

Ron Arnold: That’s absolutely true. Over a period of about four years the Soros Fund Management had about $4 million at one time, ended up with about $2.3 million when they sold it off. And now they’re simply using the cash to try to get rid of News Corp’s Fox News. And that’s exactly what’s happening.

Just to be clear, Soros is being accused of parlaying a $4 million bit of a $20 billion fund (that’s 0.002%) into a windfall with which he could blow away Fox News. That’s not much more than a rounding error. The accusation also implies that the fund itself is bankrolling the Fox attacks and not Soros personally (who could write a million dollar check on his own account like most of us pick up a Venti Latte with extra foam). There is no evidence that Soros’ Quantum Fund, or any other investment, has engaged in any such partisan expenditures, and probably would not be permitted to do so. What’s more, the $2.3 million cited as the proceeds from the sale of News Corp stock appears to represent a loss of principle, not a profit as Doocy stated. But Doocy’s Fox & Friends have no use for trivialities such as facts while they are trying to fabricate a scandal. Doocy continues…

Doocy: It looked like George Soros was trying to control the media.

Saints preserve us! An international billionaire financier might actually be trying to wield tyrannical control over our free press. I wonder if Doocy has ever met his boss, Rupert Murdoch, an international billionaire who actually does run a media empire and sits on the board of the Associated Press. Soros, on the other hand, has no management interests in any media concern. He has made some charitable donations to NPR and Media Matters, but has no executive role or even a seat on their boards. However, even if he did, is it Doocy’s contention that NPR and Media Matters constitute a mortal threat to News Corp, AP, and the rest of the Corporate Media cabal? Apparently so.

Arnold: Well, he certainly was. And you’ve got to remember he’s got a very good friend in the Tides Foundation’s CEO whose name is Drummond Pike. They go back a long way, Soros and Pike. And I’m pretty sure that the only reason that that million dollars went to Media Matters was because Drummond Pike stepped in. Because Media Matters has been trying to get money out of Soros for years. He said no.
Doocy: It just seems incredulous [sic] that he would be making money in News Corp stock and then turning around and taking the money to try to run a division of News Corp out of business.
Arnold: Yes, it does seem incredible but you have to remember, cash trumps hypocrisy. It’s all about the money as far as he’s concerned.
Doocy: That is a crazy story.

Now follow this logic: Soros didn’t even want to fund Media Matters. He was persuaded to do it by his pal Drummond. Yet he is still portrayed as seeking to control the media despite his lack of interest. And while Doocy and Arnold find it incredible, they explain it away by asserting that “It’s all about the money,” which contradicts their whole theory as to Soros’ obsession to dominate the media. That is indeed a crazy story.

Of course I didn’t expect any of this to make sense from the beginning. Doocy’s Olympian ignorance pervades every subject he approaches. The truth is that this just a teaser for Glenn Beck’s upcoming “Puppetmaster” special on Soros. Fox News is a focused and effective marketing machine and they always go to great lengths to promote their own phony stories. Doocy is like the teaspoon of Aspertame before the full-on dose of poison that Beck will dispense tomorrow.

Shameless Right-Wing Hypocrisy On Media Funding

Posted by on October 22, 2010 at 2:52 pm. 23 Comments :

There has lately been an excess of rage expressed over a couple of charitable donations by George Soros. Both NPR and Media Matters were beneficiaries of Soros’ generosity. These are both media-related entities that play no direct role in politics.

But the same rightist critics of donations don’t seem to have any problem with Rupert Murdoch giving millions of dollars to overtly political enterprises: the Republican Governor’s Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That money is used to buy ads against Democrats on Fox News, so the money Murdoch donated ends up right back in his pocket. And another big difference in these donations is that Soros was open and honest about announcing his largesse, while Murdoch gave in secret and even remarked that he had anticipated that his donations would remain secret.

A fair observer would have to wonder why the munificence of Soros is problematic but the fact that Right-wingers are just as generous to their ideological allies isn’t worthy of discussion. They will never mention, for instance, that uber-rightist Richard Mellon Scaife has given millions to the conservative Media Research Center (which runs several right-wing operations like NewsBusters). And while Soros remains outside of the organizations to which he contributes, Murdoch has moved inside as a board member of the Associated Press.

The hypocrisy demonstrated by the right is world-class. While the left is taking heat for being totally transparent, the right takes pride in enforcing silence about its clandestine activities. Since they have admitted that they aspire to fund their friends in secret, we have no way of knowing what other donations have been made by folks like Murdoch and his billionaire comrades. Murdoch confessed that he gave the RGA money due to his friendship with John Kasich, a candidate for governor in Ohio and a former employee of Fox News. Karl Rove is presently an employee of Fox News. Is he also receiving financing from Murdoch? We don’t know because they are not required to disclose it and they keep it obsessively private.

What we do know is that Fox News has a record of shilling for the right. Their daytime anchor Jon Scott (who, ironically, is also the host of their Fox News Watch) once read an RNC document on the air as if it were his own research. He even displayed a graphic on screen that contained the same typo that was in the original RNC memo.

We also know that Fox News relies heavily on the work of the Media Research Center and NewsBusters. We know this because their top news anchor at the time, Brit Hume, said so in public:

Hume: I want to say a word, however, of thanks to Brent and the team at the Media Research Center […] for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report, I don’t know what we would’ve done without them. It was a daily buffet of material to work from, and we certainly made tremendous use of it.

The left has nothing to compare with the media domination of the right. Only the right has their own cable news network. They rule talk radio in part because of conservative broadcasters who deliberately shut out liberal programming. Independent studies show that even the supposedly liberal segments of the press actually lean more to the right in their editorial positions, their guests and sources, and their staffing.

So it seems curious that all of sudden we have right-wingers going bonkers over a couple of donations that will certainly help those organizations, but will have little impact on the broader media landscape. It just proves that the right is focused on maintaining their competitive advantage, that they know the value of “working the refs,” and that they have no shame when it comes to acting out their hypocrisy.

Sign The DROP FOX Petition From Media Matters

Posted by on October 19, 2010 at 4:07 pm. 5 Comments :

Glenn Beck - There Will Be BloodMedia Matters is partnering with People for the American Way to apply some of that free market pressure on the companies who are sponsoring Glenn Beck’s crusade of terror.

Petition to tell major advertisers to DROP FOX!

This petition is in response to a recent event wherein a Beck fan, Byron Williams, was taken into custody after a shootout with police. Williams told the officers that he was on his way to kill people at the ACLU and the Tides Foundation after having been “informed” by Glenn Beck of their evil, un-American activities.

Subsequent to Williams’ arrest Beck has actually escalated his attacks on the Tides Foundation and others despite the obvious risk that his rhetoric poses. As David Brock of Media Matters says…

“Instead of recognizing the danger and taking appropriate action, Fox News is allowing and encouraging Beck’s violent rhetoric, abdicating the responsibility the public expects of a powerful broadcaster. That is why targeting Glenn Beck’s advertisers is no longer enough — we need to hold the entire network accountable.”

It is time to tell major advertisers to DROP FOX!

Please take a moment to sign the petition and then tell your friends. The campaign to get advertisers to stop placing ads on Beck’s show has been phenomenally successful with respect to persuading almost 300 advertisers to pull their ads. He is now sponsored by a motley crew of Gold peddlers, senior services, disaster profiteers, and other News Corp enterprises (who, of course, don’t pay).

However, there has not been much effect on Beck’s bosses at Fox News and News Corp who are arrogantly ignoring the voice of their viewers and their advertisers in order to persist in broadcasting irresponsible and dangerous content on their programs. That’s why it is so important now to make our voices heard in the upper floors of the Fox hierarchy. Don’t put it off. Sign the petition now. It could literally save lives.

Olbermann Features News Corpse On Countdown

Posted by on August 18, 2010 at 9:44 pm. 9 Comments :

On yesterday’s broadcast of Countdown on MSNBC, host Keith Olbermann featured a story about News Corpse. I couldn’t be more proud.

Actually, it was a story on the $1 million donation from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to the Republican Governor’s Association. Although I did report on this unprecedented bankrolling of GOP candidates by a major pseudo-news organization, Countdown’s segment was an interview of Media Matters’ Eric Burns on the subject.

It was an informative and entertaining discussion that hit on most of the salient points. I would have liked it if they had also pointed out that some of the funds received by the RGA would likely be stuffed right back into Murdoch’s pocket via ads they purchase on Fox News and in the Wall Street Journal, but in the end I was just jazzed to see my web site name on the screen for several minutes.

Keith should be grateful that I am not as litigious as Murdoch, whose company is presently harassing the folks at Skype because they think the name is “confusingly similar” to their Sky satellite television service. I’m still waiting for Murdoch to come after me.

The Fox News Primetime Haitian Earthquake Blackout

Posted by on January 15, 2010 at 9:38 am. 8 Comments :

Yele Haiti Earthlink FundMedia Matters published an interesting study that reveals just how dismissive Fox News is of professional journalistic standards. On the day after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Fox News practically ignored it on its most watched programs.

While this isn’t particularly surprising, at this difficult time it is definitely disturbing. This is not just another sad disaster on foreign soil. There were reportedly 40,000 Americans in Haiti at the time of the earthquake. But even that isn’t enough for Fox to take it seriously.

“On January 13, Fox News’ three top-rated programs for 2009 — The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, and Glenn Beck — devoted a combined total of less than 7 minutes of coverage to the earthquake in Haiti, instead choosing to air such things as Beck’s hour-long interview with Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly’s discussion of Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, and Sean Hannity’s advocacy for Massachusetts candidate Scott Brown’s Senate campaign. By contrast, the content of MSNBC’s three top-rated shows underscored the significance of the Haiti disaster; Countdown, The Rachel Maddow Show, and Hardball devoted a total of more than two hours to the earthquake.”

So when Fox isn’t exploiting the tragedy for political gain, they try to ignore it altogether. At Fox News, if a story can’t be twisted to attack liberals or promote conservatives, it isn’t news. By making an editorial decision to feature Sarah Palin and Tea Bagger Senate candidates, rather than breaking news on urgent events in a neighboring country, Fox is admitting that their purpose is to proselytize for an agenda – not to inform.

For a network that spends so much time boasting about their ratings, they are abusing their position in the market by keeping their multitude of viewers in the dark on this important matter. But that is nothing new for Fox, whose mission has always been to advance the ignorance of their audience. And they get better at that every day.

Glenn Beck: 2009 Misinformer Of The Year

Posted by on December 21, 2009 at 1:19 pm. 4 Comments :

On the heels of the announcement that Sarah Palin had edged out Glenn Beck for “Lie of the Year,” Beck has bounced back to nab the Media Matters honor of 2009 Misinformer of the Year.

This award caps a year of distinguished prevarication by an acknowledged master of the art. Beck has broken records for dishonesty with creative use of insinuation, hyperbole, conspiracy, insults, exaggeration, and paranoia induced hallucination.

Congratulations Glenn. You earned it.

Media Matters: A Tale Of Two Networks

Posted by on November 12, 2009 at 5:59 pm. NO Comments :

I was going to write a piece similar to this one that I found at Media Matters. However, Simon Maloy has so perfectly articulated everything I had to say on this subject that I just copied and pasted his article. I hope he doesn’t sue me.

Consider for a moment the circumstances surrounding Lou Dobbs’ abrupt departure from CNN, announced last night and effective immediately. Dobbs had been going increasingly far afield in
his programming, from spinning North American Union conspiracy theories, to indulging the Birther nonsense, to claiming that his opponents had taken to shooting at his house (the police said it was likely an errant bullet from a hunter’s rifle). Notably, CNN itself debunked each of these stories. According to the New York Times write-up of Dobbs’ exit, Dobbs’ on-air behavior was apparently too much for the network to bear: “Months ago the president of CNN/U.S., Jonathan Klein, offered a choice to Lou Dobbs, the channel’s most outspoken anchor. Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN.”

Now, contrast CNN’s Dobbs situation to Fox News and its handling of Glenn Beck. In terms of delusional conspiracy-mongering and spittle-flecked invective, Dobbs is a stripling compared to Beck. Fox News’ steady transition from untrustworthy cable news network to conservative political action committee can largely be attributed to Beck, whose 9-12 Project is wrapped up with the Tea Party movement. Except for those that buy into his fevered shtick, Beck is an embarrassment, an embodiment of everything that is wrong with cable news, and there is no greater example of this than when he called the President of the United States a “racist” who has “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” The network lost scores of advertisers over that remark, and, as NBC’s First Read pointed out, “[t]here was a time when outrageous rants like this would actually cost the ranters their jobs.”

But what happened to Beck? He got a pat on the head from NewsCorp president Rupert Murdoch, who said Beck “was right” to call the president a “racist.”

CNN’s movement on Dobbs was long overdue, but they eventually decided that their credibility as a news network outweighed Dobbs’ (rapidly dwindling) ratings. Fox News, on the other hand, shows no such concern with Beck, maybe because they didn’t have a whole lot of credibility to sacrifice in the first place.

Well said, Simon.