Ed Markey

Floundering GOP Senate Candidate Turns To Republican PR (aka Fox News) For Help

Posted by on June 22, 2013 at 11:39 am. 4 Comments :

The race to fill John Kerry’s senate seat in Massachusetts has never been much of contest. Democrat Ed Markey has led Republican Gabriel Gomez from the start and in the few days left before next Tuesday’s election, he has expanded to his lead to up to 20 points in some polls. But that hasn’t stopped Fox News from brazenly trying to manipulate the outcome by juicing their coverage of the race in favor of Gomez.

Fox News

Having concluded that their efforts to boost the Gomez candidacy with phony polling analysis and swipes at Markey, Fox News is ramping up their game in a last ditch attempt to put their man in the senate. Tomorrow, on Fox News Sunday, they will feature an interview with Gomez, just two days before the election. That’s a pretty generous donation of valuable air time on a nationally televised program. Any candidate would be thrilled to get that much free publicity.

However, Ed Markey isn’t so fortunate. The “fair and balanced” folks at Fox will only be hosting Gomez at this critical juncture in the campaign. In fact, Markey has not been on Fox at any time during this campaign, while Gomez has been featured multiple times. And Fox always allows Gomez to advertise his web site and plead for donations.

The booking of Gomez on Fox News Sunday is just another example of how Fox has established itself as the PR agency for the Republican Party. There is no more reliable ally for GOP candidates, particularly when they are desperate and appear to be trailing badly. And even when the candidate isn’t available, the Fox anchors and pundits are there to lavish praise on them and to smear their Democratic opponents. It’s a valuable service/scam for which the candidate doesn’t have to shell out a single penny.

Fox News Math-Challenged Poll Analysis Strikes Again In Massachusetts

Posted by on June 15, 2013 at 12:19 pm. 13 Comments :

Last year Fox News suffered some of the most embarrassing episodes of journalistic failure in recent history. They were so determined to orchestrate a Republican victory that they repeatedly shifted their analysis of presidential polling based on whether or not their candidate was ahead. If Romney was leading in any poll, Fox would hype it relentlessly and celebrate the wisdom of the pollsters. But if Obama took the lead, Fox feverishly denounced the polls as biased and unbelievable. They even went so far as to ignore their own polls if the result was favorable to Obama.

Late in the presidential campaign an obscure blogger published what he claimed were “unskewed” polls. He re-weighted the partisan breakdowns on the published polling to presume higher numbers of Republicans in the electorate. After Obama’s decisive victory, Fox News, and the rest of the GOP establishment, were shamed by their diversion from reality. Their audience was furious at having been so flagrantly misled. A humbled Fox then fired and/or benched their most blatant info-manglers like Dick Morris and Karl Rove, and promised to do better in the future.

Fox News

Well, so much for that promise. This morning’s headline on Fox News blared an utterly false rendering of poll results in the Massachusetts special election to fill John Kerry’s senate seat. The article, with no byline or source (but numerous grammatical errors), stated flatly that “Polls Show Gomez, Markey close in special election race for Mass senate seat.” However, that can only be true if you consider a 9.3 average advantage for Markey as being “close.” The lede paragraph declares…

“The Senate race is (sic) Massachusetts is deadlocked heading into the final weeks […] Yet most polls show first-time Republican candidate and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez within just several percentage points of Democratic Rep. Edward Markey”

Actually, most polls show Markey with a sweeping lead. The RealClearPolitics average of polls for the race give Markey a 9.3% lead, and some polls have his lead as high as 12%. How Fox takes that data and describes the race as “deadlocked” is beyond explanation. What’s more, in a story that is ostensibly reporting poll results, the polling data is not even mentioned until the twenty-first paragraph of a twenty-four paragraph article. The whole thing reads like a press release from the Gomez campaign if it were written by a functionally illiterate press agent.

What Fox hopes to achieve with this brazenly dishonest reporting is hard to figure. If they think that by manufacturing a fake competitiveness in the race it will improve Gomez’s prospects for victory, they have learned nothing from their embarrassing behavior last year. More likely, they are merely fulfilling their role as the GOP PR agency whose duty is to hype Republican positions and politicians without regard for the truth. And if this is a prelude to how Fox will conduct itself in next year’s mid-term elections, we can expect another season of sensationally skewed reporting that woefully misinforms their gullible audience. Actually, it should be kinda fun.

Be Sure To Like News Corpse On Facebook

Change At FCC And Congress: Good News For Media Reform

Posted by on November 21, 2008 at 2:54 pm. NO Comments :

The signature slogan for the 2008 campaign season was a single word that can spark a thousand interpretations: CHANGE! [It narrowly beat out “Maverick” and “You Betcha”] And change there will be.

This week, something happened in the House of Representatives that is almost unheard of. The sacred principle of seniority was set aside when Henry Waxman of California booted John Dingell of Michigan from the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Dingell had been chairing the committee since the flood of Noah, and through most of his tenure he was a friend to the industries over which he had jurisdiction. Waxman, on the hand, is known for his work on the Government Oversight Committee as a bulldog who kept a close watch on the people’s interests. He held numerous hearings to investigate corporate abuse, greed, and corruption.

Since the FCC falls within the Commerce Committee’s jurisdiction, there is good reason to assume that Waxman will put them on a short leash. He is an advocate of Network Neutrality and strict enforcement of anti-trust law. He has been deeply involved with environmental and healthcare issues for many years and will likely want to focus on those matters. Consequently, he may leave a lot of the media-related heavy lifting to Ed Markey, chair of the Telecom subcommittee. Markey is an ally who’s views and priorities are in sync with Waxman.

Combine these adjustments in the House with news that the Senate Commerce Committee is undergoing its own upheaval and there is real hope for reform. Jay Rockefeller will be taking the gavel from Daniel Inouye, another old-time industry bull. Rockefeller is far more likely to support initiatives for far-sighted projects like universal broadband (making the Internet more like a utility that is available to everyone). He will get help from Sen. Byron Dorgan, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce, who has sponsored legislation to reduce the number of television stations and newspapers that a corporation can own.

In addition to these leaders in Congress, the makeup of the FCC is going to change as well. Barack Obama has gotten off to good start by naming a couple of knowledgeable and forward-looking academics to lead his Transition Team: Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach. He has also tapped Julius Genachowski and Blair Levin, both top aides to former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, as advisors. One of them may turn out to be the new FCC chair. And given Obama’s own statements on the media, there is more potential for positive developments in the next eight months than there has been in the past eight years. Here is an excerpt from the Technology statement on his website:

“As president, Obama will encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum.”

There is much to be done to recover from the past few years of regressive policy and obedience to corporate domination. But this is as promising a beginning as one can expect. It is now up to the new administration to follow through, and an active citizenry to be vigilant and vocal.