Fox News Is Preparing A Special Report On An Already Debunked Hillary Clinton Book

Posted by Mark NC on April 22, 2015 at 9:43 pm. 3 Comments :

If you aren’t doing anything this coming Friday, and you have an hour to devote to becoming more ignorant, Fox News is airing special report based on a book that makes wholly unsubstantiated allegations against Hillary Clinton.

The book “Clinton Cash” has been getting a great deal of promotion from Fox News and other right-wing media outlets, although it won’t be released for another couple of weeks. The author, Peter Schweizer, is one of the most widely discredited writers working today. His past is replete with criticisms from across the political spectrum and his books have been ridiculed for sloppy investigations and sources who don’t exist.

Schweizer is now the president of the Government Accountability Institute, an organization that is bankrolled by the Koch brothers and was founded by the head of Breitbart News. The GAI has previously embarrassed itself by publishing studies that brazenly misrepresented (or invented) the facts related to their bogus reporting. News Corpse covered one such incident involving an alleged foreign fundraising scandal that supposedly “rocked” the Obama reelection campaign. However, the study didn’t cite a single example of a foreign donation and the authors admitted to Fox’s Steve Doocy that there is no such evidence. Likewise, another GAI study claimed that Obama took more vacation days than average private sector workers. Once again, the study totally distorted the data that actually showed that Obama took far fewer days off.

Now Schweizer has a new book that has been been promoted as a devastating blow to Clinton’s campaign. Rand Paul teased the media by saying that he has “been briefed by Peter Schweizer on this book, and the facts are going to be alarming.” Sean Hannity unleashed a frantic rant saying that “These newest allegations…have the potential in the end to derail this presidential campaign.” These are just two examples of a flood of headlines and hyperbole that say much the thing, that Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations will be over just as soon as the book hits the shelves.

There is only one problem with their prognostications of doom. The book is a fraud that proves nothing. The early reports from people who have actually read it indicate that the author fails to connect any of the dots that the wingnut media is hyping. And according to ThinkProgress, who got a copy of the book, even Schweizer admits that he has no proof of anything untoward:

“Schweizer explains he cannot prove the allegations, leaving that up to investigative journalists and possibly law enforcement. ‘Short of someone involved coming forward to give sworn testimony, we don’t know what might or might not have been said in private conversations, the exact nature of the transition, or why people in power make the decision they do,’ he writes. Later, he concludes, ‘We cannot ultimately know what goes on in their minds and ultimately provide the links between the money they took and the benefits that subsequently accrued to themselves, their friends, and their associates.'”

In other words, he’s got nothing but wild accusations and speculation. But it gets even worse. ThinkProgress also found a segment in the book where Schweizer cites a press release as back-up for his charges. Unfortunately for Schweizer, the press release was revealed to be fake back in 2013, a fact that he had plenty of time to discover and avoid putting forth as corroborating evidence.

This is typical of the sloppiness that has dogged his career. The rebuttals to the book on the basis of his dishonesty and lack of professional ethics have already begun to worry his defenders at Fox News. They are resorting to propping him up by asserting that attacks on his credibility are rooted in partisanship, rather than the abundant evidence of his hackery. Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner rushed to his aid saying that “You talk about tearing Schweizer down because he was formerly with Republicans. What about George Stephanopoulos?”

Isn’t it cute how Faulkner tries to slip in the suggestion that Schweizer was “formerly” with Republicans, as if he is no longer a committed right-wing activist, as evidenced by his leading the Koch-funded GAI? But more to the point, what does Stephanopoulos have to do with this? He hasn’t written a book filled with lies aimed at smearing a Republican presidential candidate. No doubt Clinton backers are just as partisan as any other politicos, but the problem with Schweizer isn’t his party affiliation, it’s his credibility and integrity.

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Which brings us back to the special on tap for Friday. Fox News will broadcast an hour long program titled “The Tangled Clinton Web” that is anchored by Bret Baier and based on Schweizer’s book. However, the book has already been revealed to be a fraud whose author admits that he doesn’t have the goods on Clinton and whose book is rife with errors and uses hoax press releases as proof. And there are still a couple of days before the special airs for more revelations to be uncovered.

This Fox News special is tainted before it has even aired. Will they include any of the info that has come out about the book in their broadcast? Will they try at all to be fair and balanced? Not likely, given the track record for Fox. And even though they’ve got plenty of lead time to include the truth, Fox has demonstrated that truth is not a part of their criteria for reporting what they mistakenly call news.

KNEE-JERKS: The Predictable Ass-Holiness Of Fox News And The GOP Post-SOTU

Posted by Mark NC on January 21, 2015 at 12:12 pm. 8 Comments :

In a development that will surprise only a few mentally deficient cave dwellers, President Obama’s State of the Union speech was greeted by Republican politicians and conservative pundits with barefaced disdain. Naturally, Fox News took the lead in developing a hostile rapid response in order to provide the President’s foes with an easily referenced collection of attack themes. In fact, Fox was so diligent that their oppositional strategy was actually launched before the speech even began.

To set the scene, Obama presented a rosy picture of the nation after six years of his presidency. He spoke of the economic renewal that has created more than 11 million new jobs, reduced the deficit by two-thirds, and produced unprecedented private sector growth. He addressed many of the issues that have long been a part of the Democratic agenda including tax reform that eliminates loopholes for the rich and benefits the middle-class, enhancing opportunities for education, reducing our dependency on foreign oil and advancing the development and use of alternative fuels, Climate Change, equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage, Net Neutrality, and access to affordable and effective health care. And he noted that the successes of the last six years were achieved despite the fact that “At every step, we were told our goals were misguided or too ambitious; that we would crush jobs and explode deficits.”

So how did the right respond to these facts? By denying them, of course. And they topped that off with some distractions and ad hominem insults. The apparent primary line of attack from the right is to accuse Obama of not having heard the message sent by voters last November. However, if there was any message at all it was delivered so faintly that the President could be excused for not hearing it. It was the lowest voter turnout in 70 years. Sixty-two percent of Americans didn’t vote at all, and the Republican victories were achieved with about 20% of eligible voters. That’s not exactly a mandate.

The GOP complained that the American people want him to work with Congress. But their definition of that is to abandon his principles and capitulate to Republicans. Obama tried to work with the GOP for six years and was rebuffed at every turn. It’s ironic that Republicans demand that Obama pay heed to the election results when they so flagrantly ignored them in 2008 and 2012, even plotting to oppose everything he did from day one of his administration. Where were the Republicans insisting on respect for the decision of the voters when Mitch McConnell declared, on inauguration day, that his first priority was making Obama a one term president? And it should be noted that Obama enjoyed landslide victories with much larger voter participation.

It didn’t take long for one of the points Obama made in his speech to get rolled over by the Fox News editorial positioning. The President sought to inspire a more substantive relationship between the White House and Congress saying…

“There are a lot of good people here, on both sides of the aisle. And many of you have told me that this isn’t what you signed up for?-?arguing past each other on cable shows, the constant fundraising, always looking over your shoulder at how the base will react to every decision. […] A better politics is one where we debate without demonizing each other; where we talk issues, and values, and principles, and facts, rather than ‘gotcha’ moments, or trivial gaffes, or fake controversies that have nothing to do with people’s daily lives.”

The response to this by Fox anchors and guests was to embrace trivialization and fake controversies. Within seconds of the end of the speech, Bret Baier complained that Obama had not said the name “Al Qaeda” during the address. Of course, Obama did speak at length about terrorism and his administration’s commitment to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the enemy. The problem is that if you don’t specifically say “Al Qaeda” you are criticized for it. If you do say it you are criticized for not saying “jihad.” If you do say that you are criticized for not saying “Islamist.” If you do say that you are criticized for not saying ….. Well, you get the idea. Obama would have to make a list of every word the right obsesses over and make sure to stuff them all into every one of his speeches.

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The Fox News collective, and the Republican Party they serve (or is it the other way around) suffers from Oppositional Defiant Disorder: a persistent pattern of tantrums, arguing, and angry or disruptive behavior, generally associated with children. A perfect illustration of this is the way the Fox Nation website characterized a post-SOTU article by the Associated Press. Their headline was “AP Fact Check Obliterates Obama’s SOTU.”

To be sure, the AP took a decidedly biased and negative tone, as the so-called liberal media usually does, but even so, they could not find substantive fault with Obama’s speech, much less obliteration. Here are the “facts” they allegedly checked:

Obama: At this moment – with a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry and booming energy production – We have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth.
— The AP’s analysis essentially concurred saying that “Job growth has been healthy. […] Inflation-adjusted median household income…is about 4 percent higher than when it bottomed out in 2011. […] Booming energy production is indeed a reality.”
Obama: I am sending this Congress a bold new plan to lower the cost of community college to zero.
— This, of course, is not a refutable fact and the AP didn’t bother to refute it. They simply argued that Republicans in Congress will not be receptive to the plan. But that knee-jerk obstructionism has been the GOP stance ever since Obama became President.
Obama: We’ve set aside more public lands and waters than any administration in history.
— The AP acknowledged that this is true saying that “Expansion of the massive Pacific islands monument puts Obama on top.”
Obama: Thanks to a growing economy, the recovery is touching more and more lives. Wages are finally starting to rise again. We know that more small-business owners plan to raise their employees’ pay than at any time since 2007.
— Yes, said the AP: “A survey of small businesses by the National Federation of Independent Business does show that a rising proportion plans to raise wages.”

It appears that Fox News is confusing the concept of “obliteration” with the diametrically opposed concept of “nearly complete concurrence.” That degree of cognitive failure explains the antsy grumbling of FoxPods and the GOP who are distressed that Obama has not concluded that the last two years of his presidency are irrelevant and that he should work on his presidential library and let Republicans in Congress govern the country. And it also explains how they can insist that his speech was defiant and combative despite these closing remarks:

“If you share the broad vision I outlined tonight, join me in the work at hand. If you disagree with parts of it, I hope you’ll at least work with me where you do agree. And I commit to every Republican here tonight that I will not only seek out your ideas, I will seek to work with you to make this country stronger.”

It would be naive not to recognize that this sort of rhetorical communion is common in political discourse and is often insincere. But it was nevertheless an outstretched hand and the GOP ought to at least try to grasp it before they swat it down. But that would be totally out of character for a party that has made rancid animosity the hallmark of their tenure.

The Fox News Campaign To Keep Citizens From Learning About ObamaCare

Posted by Mark NC on June 29, 2013 at 12:32 pm. 23 Comments :

We all know about the Republican support for a health care system that gouges patients, fails to serve at-risk constituencies, and enriches heartless corporations (who in turn enrich the Republicans). We know about the right-wing’s indifference to families who are thrust into bankruptcy due to exorbitant medical bills. And we are all too aware of the Tea Party conservatives’ fixation on repealing the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), which they have voted on thirty-seven times in the House of Representatives knowing full well it would never advance to the senate.

There is no ambiguity in the fact that the GOP is determined to defend a broken system that favors the rich and abandons everyone else to a Randian law of the jungle that guarantees that people will die unnecessarily. And Fox News is a critical component in the anti-health propaganda fest designed to keep the American people ignorant and sick.

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In recent days Fox News has been escalating their disinformation campaign by attacking uncontroversial plans to give the American people information about their options under the new law and to educate them about the health insurance exchanges that will be launching next year. Fox has taken the side of the GOP anti-health zealots by criticizing routine efforts to provide the public with details about the program.

Reports that the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to publicize the availability of insurance plans by advertising and otherwise partnering with sports leagues, libraries, and schools have been met with ludicrous objections from the right. They have characterized these efforts as communist-style indoctrination and tyrannical coercion, even though they are nothing more than free market publicity. Fox News anchor Bret Baier went so far as to call it “threatening.”

Bret Baier: Forget reading, writing and arithmetic, you are paying about a million dollars to train public school children in California how to promote President Obama’s health care reform law. […] Officials are promising – or threatening – strict enforcement of the grants with monthly, quarterly, and annual reports.

Holy crap! Now the feds want reports to ascertain whether federal grant money is being used effectively. What’s next, concentration camps?

Other plans being discussed include working with the NFL and the NBA to educate citizens about their options. This has been lambasted by right-wingers on Fox who seem to think that providing information to citizens about programs that they are entitled to use is the work of Satan. They call it propaganda, but it is no more propaganda than public service announcements about seat belts or the dangers of drug use.

The only propaganda here is that employed by Fox News who is trying desperately to misrepresent ObamaCare and the efforts to educate the public about it. Their arguments against publicity campaigns that work with sports leagues, schools, and libraries, consist mainly of phony attempts to turn it all into a political debate. However, ObamaCare is not a political debate – it is the law. And consequently, people are entitled to know what it is and how to use it. There is nothing partisan about that.

What Fox and the GOP are hoping to do is to sabotage the new health care law. They want it to fail (like everything else this administration tries to do) so that they can achieve their goal of repeal and restore the previous system that made them all rich, but that left millions of Americans without coverage. And the best way to produce failure is to make sure that the American people are kept ignorant of the program, which would keep enrollment down. So any effort by the government to let the people know what their options are must be shot down by any means necessary.

This campaign of deceit by Fox and their benefactors is meant only to harm citizens who may be interested in improving health care for themselves and their families. It is not an effort to persuade anyone of the political merits of the plan. It merely informs people of what is currently available. But the anti-health right prefers that the nation be kept as ignorant as possible. That’s something that is apparent to any objective person who watches Fox News. But in this case, the result is not merely being ill-informed, it can lead to serious repercussions for the medical well-being of innocent citizens who are more interested in the health of their families than the phony political controversies that Fox is trying to create.

Fox is embarking on a shameful exercise in greed over humanity. And even Fox viewers should be concerned that their network is working so hard to make sure they stay stupid.

Perverted Priorities: The Editorial Hypocrisy Of Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on April 13, 2013 at 12:25 pm. 3 Comments :

In recent days Fox News has ramped up coverage of the Philadelphia trial of an abortion doctor accused of numerous horrific crimes. To be clear, the spike in coverage was not about the underlying facts of the case or the suffering of the patients. It was about Fox’s contention that the prosecution has been ignored by a liberal press corps for political reasons.

First of all, we need to set aside the false notion that the media has any incentive to suppress reporting on this case due to a liberal bias. The alleged criminal acts committed by this doctor run counter to the values of the pro-choice community whose position is that restrictions on safe and legal reproductive services are what is responsible for creating the conditions from which rogue clinics like this one emerge in the first place.

However, for Fox to get huffy about a media blackout orchestrated by liberals stretches the boundaries of hypocrisy. On numerous segments in the past week Fox has castigated other media outlets for not having covered this trial. The problem with that complaint is that Fox hasn’t covered it either. Nevertheless, Bret Baier hosted a segment of his “Special Report” wherein he read off a list of the offenders in the press who have ignored this story. Conspicuously absent from the list was Fox News. If Fox had indeed reported the story, they would certainly have included the number of times on their graphic to shame their competitors. They left themselves off because their performance was no different than the rest.

In another example of Fox’s self-serving spin, they posted a photo of the seating area in the courtroom that was reserved for the media. The fact that there was no one sitting there was evidence to Fox that the press was negligent and biased. However, also revealed by the photo was that no one from Fox News was sitting there either. They presumably thought that that little detail would just slip by unnoticed by their viewers (and they were probably right. Their viewers are not known for their intellectual prowess).

Clearly Fox’s editorial decision-making is drenched with bias and self-promotion. We can easily ascertain what is important to the network by their programming choices, and apparently the Philly doctor’s trial was not important to Fox. So what was important?

Fox’s closest competitor in the ratings is MSNBC. In the months following the election MSNBC has demonstrated surprising growth while Fox has lost audience share, slipping to levels it has not seen since 2001 (although still maintaining its lead). Consequently, Fox has resumed their onslaught against MSNBC which they escalate whenever they feel threatened.

The latest attack by Fox deals with a promo that MSNBC ran in support of their weekend anchor Melissa Harris-Perry. The promo features Harris-Perry delivering an uncontroversial commentary about the value of society investing in education and child welfare. To Fox, that commonly held principle of a unified family of American citizens was tantamount to Maoist socialism. Fox blanketed their airwaves with exasperated outrage day and night over this 30 second ad. In fact, as reported by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Fox committed more than 15 times the airtime to MSNBC’s promo than MSNBC did.

In conclusion, an analysis of the distribution of time allocated to content tells us that Fox is obviously more concerned about how MSNBC advertises its own programs than they are about heinous criminal activity. And when their attention is drawn to the heinous crimes, they only seem to care about how other media reports it (ignoring their own failures), and not the crime itself or the victims. Remember this the next time you hear Fox complaining about not being taken seriously as credible journalists.

Mitt Romney Even Fouls Out When Pitched Softballs By Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on September 8, 2012 at 5:24 am. 5 Comments :

Following the Republican National Kvetch-a-Sketch, Mitt Romney announced that his first post-convention interview would be with – wait for it – Fox News. Surprised?

You might think that this press availability would be a pretty easy affair for Romney. After all, Fox is the PR division of the GOP and has been handling Romney’s promotional campaign for months. However, it didn’t take long for Romney to expose himself as nearly as incompetent an interview subject as Sarah Palin, who couldn’t name a single newspaper that she read (and considered that a “gotcha” question). Fox’s ~~account executive~~ …er… news anchor, Bret Baier saved a probing question for the end of his interview when he asked Romney…

“To hear several speakers in Charlotte, they were essentially saying that you don’t care about the U.S. military because you didn’t mention U.S. troops and the war in Afghanistan in your nomination acceptance speech. Do you regret opening up this line of attack, now a recurring attack, by leaving out that issue in the speech?

Notice that Baier is not asking whether Romney regrets that he failed to acknowledge and thank the American troops who are serving their country in a time of war. Baier is only asking whether Romney regrets that his omission has provided an opening for his opponents to criticize him. So it wasn’t a question about the troops at all. It was a question about the Democrats.

Nevertheless, Romney managed to utterly embarrass himself with an answer that further disregarded the troops and cast himself as even more devoid of human-like characteristics than previously thought.

“I only regret you’re repeating it day in and day out. When you give a speech you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important and I described in my speech, my commitment to a strong military unlike the president’s decision to cut our military. And I didn’t use the word troops, I used the word military. I think they refer to the same thing.”

So the only thing that Romney regrets is that the press has an interest in the words that he spoke in perhaps the most important speech of his life, and are seeking to understand his meaning. And if that weren’t bad enough, by his own admission Romney doesn’t think that thanking our soldiers is important, or else he would have talked about it.

Romney goes on to say that he expressed his commitment to a strong military, and that “military” and “troops” are the same thing. Actually, they’re not.

The military is a massive bureaucracy that manages various divisions of public and private enterprises engaged in defense operations and preparedness. Troops are people who train and fight and bleed and die. His context was made clear with his reference to “cut[ting] the military.” Obviously he is referring to cutting budgets, not human flesh.

This failure by Romney to draw a distinction between the two echoes his famous inarticulate insensitivity when he said that “Corporations are people, my friend.” Romney has a tendency to relate better to institutions than to mortal persons. This is further revealed in the “Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth” that is on his web site. It refers to workers as “Human Capital.” Makes your heart tingle, doesn’t it? For Romney everything is reduced to a line item on a profit and loss statement.

And this dreadfully mishandled answer was to a question from his pals at Fox News. Just wait until he has to answer questions from more neutral news organizations or those he will encounter in his debates with President Obama.

The Fox Nation Is Suffering Full Blown Obama Derangement Syndrome

Posted by Mark NC on March 16, 2012 at 3:48 am. 5 Comments :

In my ongoing series “Fox Nation vs. Reality” I have endeavored to expose some of the more brazen departures from truthful reporting that so often make their way onto the pages of the Fox Nation web site. But today the Fox Nationalists have ventured beyond even their typical separation from the facts by posting as their headline story this sensationalistic declaration: White House ‘Panicked’ Over Gas Prices, President Becoming ‘Incoherent’

The associated article said nothing about the White House being panicked. It said nothing about the President being incoherent. Despite those words being put in quotes in the headline, they were not referencing any citation by any person. In fact, they were not a part of the story in any respect – not directly, indirectly, insinuated, implied, hypothetical, allegorical, or…well you get the idea. The entire piece consisted of a video of a Fox News report on the presidential campaign, an excerpt of results from a Fox News poll, and one paragraph that briefly abstracted part of the content of the video.

Where the Fox Nation editors got the idea that the president was panicked and incoherent is a mystery. The only explanation is that they are so infected with Obama Derangement Syndrome that they were in the throes of a hallucinatory seizure. Either that or their determination to slander the President is so overpowering that they could not resist the urge to invent derogatory adjectives to attach to his name.

It’s bad enough when the Fox Nationalists post stories with pejorative quotes from the likes of Hannity or Limbaugh as if it were news, but when they don’t even have a source and they still put their insults in quotes, they have crossed a line that could only be acceptable to the most untrustworthy purveyors of schlock journalism – aka Fox News.

Update: The Fox Nationalists edited the article this morning. They swapped out the video for one that consists of a panel discussion with Jonah Goldberg, who made the following statement in response to a question from anchor Bret Baier:

Baier: The president is out almost every other day, it seems, talking about gas prices. Is it a sign that this White House is concerned about this issue? What does it tell us?

Goldberg: I think it tells us they’re in something of a panic over it. We’ve seen his poll numbers drop precipitously. And you can’t prove it, but most people think the gas thing is a major driver of it. And the problem is that he basically beyond doubling down, he’s tripling down on the same stuff he was saying three years ago, and it’s fundamentally incoherent.

So now they have the basis for their quotes – a highly partisan right-winger with an agenda to peddle. However, from the same segment they completely ignored the statements by panelist Kirsten Powers who called it hypocritical:

Powers: This is a real exercise in hypocrisy because when George Bush was being blamed for high prices by Democrats, Republicans were saying the president doesn’t have any control over that and now we have the exact reverse.

Obviously somebody at Fox Nation wasn’t paying attention when they first posted this item. But what’s worse is that the correction includes a clip of Fox’s chief news anchor, citing a Fox News poll, saying that “the majority said the president is to blame for gas prices.” Except that the majority in the Fox poll said exactly the opposite. The majority (52%) said the President is not to blame, and only 40% said that he is. So Fox News compounds their erroneous reporting even as they attempt to correct it.

Republicans Reveal Their Top Priority For America In Iowa Debate

Posted by Mark NC on December 17, 2011 at 12:38 pm. 5 Comments :

At a time when the nation faces some formidable challenges on critical matters of economics, employment, national defense, health care, etc., the Republican candidates for president met in Iowa to debate the issues that they regard as most important to voters and the country.

Leading off the Fox News sponsored debate, Fox anchor Bret Baier summarized just what issues the GOP held as their highest priority, and it wasn’t any of those enumerated in the paragraph above.

Bret Baier: We have received thousands of tweets, Facebook messages and emails with suggested questions. And the overall majority of them had one theme: Electability. People want to know which one of you on this stage is able to be in the best position to beat President Obama in the general election. And that’s the number one goal for Republican voters, obviously.

So there you have it. The number one goal is not restoring the nation’s economic health. It is not creating jobs or strengthening the middle-class. It is not Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Al Qaeda, or any other source of international hostility. It isn’t even Republican pet causes of guns, gays, God, or repealing ObamaCare. The number on issue is electability. Republicans are focused squarely on the singular issue of evicting the Kenyan socialist from the White House, to the exclusion of all other principles or positions. Just like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said shortly after Obama was inaugurated.

Taking this theme to heart, the debate continued with a series of question that addressed nothing substantive other than the candidate’s prospects for beating President Obama next November. Here are the first seven questions asked at Thursday’s debate:

Bret Baier: Speaker Gingrich, since our last debate your position in this race has changed dramatically. You are now physically in the center of the stage, which means that you are at the top of the polls, yet many Republicans seem conflicted about you, They say that you’re smart, that you’re a big thinker. At the same time many of those same Republicans worry deeply about your electability in a general election saying perhaps Gov. Romney is a safer bet. Can you put to rest, once and for all, the persistent doubts that you are indeed the right candidate on this stage to go up and beat President Obama?

Megyn Kelly: Cong. Paul, you have some bold ideas, some very fervent supporters, and probably the most organized ground campaign here in Iowa, but there are many Republicans, inside and outside of this state, who openly doubt whether you can be elected president. How can you convince them otherwise, and if you don’t wind up winning this nomination, will you pledge here tonight that you will support the ultimate nominee?

Megyn Kelly: Sen. Santorum, no one has spent more time in Iowa than you. You have visited every county in the state. And yet, while we have seen no fewer than four Republican candidates surge in the polls, sometimes in extraordinary ways, so far you and your campaign have failed to catch fire with the voters. Why?

Chris Wallace: Gov. Romney, I want to follow up on Bret’s line of questioning to the Speaker because many of our viewers tell us that they are supporting Newt Gingrich because they think that he will be tougher than you in taking the fight to Barack Obama in next fall’s debates. Why would you be able to make the Republican’s case against the President more effectively than the Speaker?

Chris Wallace: Cong. Bachmann, no one questions your conservative credentials, but what about your appeal to Independents who are so crucial in a general election? If you are fortunate enough to become the Republican nominee, how would you counter the efforts by the Barack Obama campaign to paint you as too conservative to moderate voters?

Neil Cavuto: Gov. Perry, by your own admission you are not a great debater. You have said as much and downplayed debating skills in general. But if you were to become your party’s nominee you would be going up against an accomplished debater in Barack Obama. There are many in this audience tonight, sir, who fear that possibility and don’t think you’re up for the fight. Allay them of their concerns.

Neil Cavuto: Gov. Huntsman, your campaign has been praised by moderates, but many question your ability to galvanize the Republicans, energize the conservative base of the party. They’re especially leery of your refusal to sign on to a “no tax hike” pledge. How can you reassure them tonight.

Nothing is more revealing of a party’s intentions than what they themselves place at the forefront of their campaigns. And nothing could be more clear than the fact that Republicans simply do not care about issues or the welfare of the American people as much as they do about their own selfish quest for power.

What’s more, the debate sponsor, Fox News, and other right-wing spokesmodels concur with the GOP’s directive on beating Obama above all else. That’s why the questions were littered with words like “worry,” “doubt,” “fear,” and “leery,” to describe the electorate’s mood toward the GOP frontrunners. And the debate amongst Republican elites is raging at an unprecedented pace. Rush Limbaugh thinks Romney is a milquetoast candidate. Glenn Beck called Gingrich a progressive (a pejorative for Beck) and the one candidate he would not vote for. Even Fox’s Chris Wallace slammed Ron Paul saying that a win by Paul in Iowa would discredit the state’s caucuses.

So what we have here is both the candidates and the media fixated on electability. All they talk about is the horse race and not the underlying issues. And of course, the reason for that is that they don’t care about the issues, only the power that comes from political control. And now they have confessed this obsession unabashedly.

Unfortunately for these polito-Narcissists, they aren’t quite smart enough to craft accurate predictions of who is or isn’t electable. They will undoubtedly make the wrong choice and their anointed candidate will suffer an embarrassing defeat. But to be honest, that’s an easy call for me to make because any of the current GOP candidates would be the wrong choice. They are all presently losing to Obama in national polls, and that’s quite a feat considering Obama’s low favorability ratings. The best thing that’s happened for Obama’s reelection prospects is that he’s running against this batch of pathetic Republicans.

Jon Stewart Skewers Bret Baier Of Fox News

Posted by Mark NC on March 25, 2011 at 12:41 pm. 8 Comments :

In a rollicking discussion of Fox News and its obvious agenda-driven editorial slant, Jon Stewart leaves anchor Bret Baier literally speechless on a number of occasions. Baier is frequently held up as the example (or “human shield” as Stewart quips) of straight-forward reporting on the network. But that just makes him the proverbial “thinnest kid at fat camp.” Any honest appraisal of Fox has to concede that there is an inherent institutional bias. Stewart tries valiantly to elicit such an appraisal from Baier with little success, but much hilarity.

Stewart: I would not say that Fox’s main thrust is objective news gathering. I would say that their main thrust is…it is somewhat of a cover for a more political operation that exists underneath.
Baier: Come on Jon, really?
Stewart: I don’t think I’m alone in that, by the way. I think that there are other people.
Baier: Why then are we, Jon, the best rated news show?
Stewart: That’s a very interesting point. I wasn’t aware that ratings equals quality. But now that I know that I’m gonna reassess my feelings about the show Three’s Company. But you know that the two are not related. I’m suggesting not that it’s not popular or powerful, so is crack.

Baier is regurgitating what his boss, Rupert Murdoch says, on this subject:

“If we weren’t fair and balanced, we wouldn’t have the number one network in news – by a very wide margin. People believe we’re fair and balanced, and they love us.”

Actually, people watch Fox because it validates their preconceptions. If Fox were balanced their partisan viewers would change the channel. For years I have been making the point that ratings only measure viewership, not content. After all, McDonald’s is the #1 restaurant in America. I don’t think that anyone interprets that to mean that they have the best food. What they have is the cheapest crap that is loaded with filler and seasoning to appeal to the largest number of consumers with the least sophisticated taste. And that’s a pretty good description of Fox.

Stewart continues to search for some sliver of integrity from Baier, noting that even Fox’s hard news is “framed through a prism of this more conservative ideology.” When Stewart points out that by watching Fox “you would think the greatest threat to the country is ACORN, the Black Panthers, and Fannie Mae,” all that Baeir can must is a whimpering
“That’s not fair.” But later Stewart lands a blow that staples Baeir’s lips shut completely:

Stewart: A guy gets fired from NPR for being taped undercover saying “I think the Tea Baggers are,” blah, blah, blah. He said a bunch of terrible things. Roger Ailes said, on the record, NPR are Nazis. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?
Baier: {crickets}

Exactly! The hypocrisy at Fox is legendary. Baeir responded the only way he could. He certainly couldn’t defend the retention of an executive who called his peers Nazis. But neither could he criticize his tyrannical employer and expect to live through the night.

More often than not the interview segment on the Daily Show is my least favorite. Stewart has a tendency to be exceedingly deferential to conservative guests in order to ensure that they continue to take his calls (IMHO). But this segment was classic. Stewart was aggressive yet respectful, and importantly, funny. That’s a tricky routine with a high degree of difficulty.

Fox News Hosts Candidate Debates After Giving $1 Million To GOP

Posted by Mark NC on September 11, 2010 at 1:26 pm. 1 Comments :

This is precisely why the News Corp donation of a million dollars to the Republican Governor’s Association was such a violation of ethical standards in media and politics.

Fox News Channel Reporters To Moderate Debates For Governor And U.S. Senator

How can we expect any semblance of objectivity from Carl Cameron as he moderates the debate between the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor of Connecticut? We already know that the company that employs him is bankrolling the Republican candidate. It wouldn’t even matter if Cameron were completely above reproach and capable of being a fair moderator. The perception of bias invalidates his participation and that of his employer.

For the record, Cameron is not above reproach. His bias during the presidential campaign of 2004 was plainly apparent. His wife worked for the Bush campaign, which he never disclosed when covering it.

Similarly, Bret Baier cannot be considered an impartial moderator for the senate debate. He has repeatedly reported on the brush with controversy over statements made regarding service in Vietnam of Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic candidate. But Baier has virtually ignored the controversial financing and the association with drug use of former employees of the Republican candidate, Linda McMahon.

During the 2008 election Democrats refused to participate in any primary debates sponsored by Fox News. That would be a good policy to reinstate with regard to this year’s general election.

Fox News (Lack Of) Journalistic Standards In Practice

Posted by Mark NC on April 27, 2010 at 1:02 pm. 2 Comments :

This morning on Fox News a report was broadcast revealing new revelations about the costs of the recently passed health care bill. Anchor Megyn Kelly introduced the story with obvious shock and disdain for what she characterized as an attempt to keep information secret from Congress and the public.

The thrust of this alleged scoop was that the Department of Health and Human Services had authored a report that showed the costs of health care rising as a result of the new legislation. But the shocking part was the allegation that the report was suppressed by HHS and/or the White House prior to the vote in Congress.

Kelly spent almost seven minutes discussing this would-be scandal with Fox’s chief news anchor, Bret Baier, not some opinion show host like Sean Hannity. That’s seven minutes of valuable airtime devoted to a story that was picked up from the uber-conservative American Spectator, authored by someone who calls himself “the Prowler,” and backed up by a single anonymous source. And all of this was discussed after conceding that the story was unconfirmed.

Well, half an hour later, Kelly brings Baier back for a followup and guess what? The story was completely false. The HHS denied it and provided a timeline to document the course of events.

This perfectly illustrates the inner workings of Fox News and their standards for journalism. They will not hesitate to disseminate suspect information that is not backed up in the way that a responsible press operation would consider routine. Once their dubious report is released into the media atmosphere it is almost impossible to retrieve. There will have been numerous regurgitations on blogs and other Internet news sites. Emails will have started bouncing around the web even before Kelly finished the first bogus report. And by the time the truth is revealed, the lies are a part of the common knowledge in Wingnutia.

Rather than wait until a story has been checked out and confirmed, Fox News just lets it fly and crosses their fingers. Then when the facts become apparent they laugh it off or even portray it as an asset. This is what Kelly did after Baier crushed the HHS story. She proudly told her audience that “you saw it all unfold live, right here.” Indeed we did. We saw the poorly sourced, untrue accusations of a right-wing muckraker broadcast to millions over the air as if it were news. Then, if we were still tuned in, we saw the retraction of a story that was never fit to be aired in the first place.

Nice work Fox.

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