Eric Bolling

10 People Fox News Should Fire, But Haven’t

Posted by on February 16, 2012 at 10:00 am. 15 Comments :

This article also appears on Alternet.org.

Every media organization has had to, at one time or another, discipline staff who crossed an ethical line. If a reporter loses his or her cool and becomes offensive in the course of their work, they must be held accountable to some set of professional standards. Ideally the standards would be a set of objective criteria that focused on verifiable breaches of honesty or civility. A credible news organization must never tolerate a reporter lying or engaging in personal attacks. I repeat, a “credible” news organization…

Unfortunately, there is a disturbing lack of oversight in this regard. Often offenders are excused without consequence or, conversely, punishment is meted out to an innocent party. For example, NPR terminated their relationship with a couple of executives who were victims of false allegations in a video produced by James O’Keefe, the criminally convicted, right-wing activist best known for deceptively edited videos.

This past week presented a revealing lesson in contrast as to how different media enterprises deal differently with anchors and other editorial personnel who fail the test of principles that ought to govern all journalists.

CNN was put to the test this week when Roland Martin posted a Tweet that appeared to advocate violence against gays. Martin pointed out that it was not meant seriously and wasn’t even directed at gays, but at the sport of soccer. Nevertheless, CNN acted quickly to suspend Martin indefinitely.

By contrast, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta delivered a commentary on Sunday berating women in the military for complaining that they get raped too much (Trotta did not define what an “acceptable” amount of rape is). The news that triggered this revolting commentary was a Pentagon report that rape and sexual assault had increased 64%, a statistic that Trotta cavalierly dismissed. She further asserted that servicewomen should “expect” to be raped because they work closely with men. Fox News has had no comment on this matter despite fierce criticism from women’s groups and veterans offended by the assertion that male soldiers are innately animals and female soldiers should quietly accept assault as a part of military life.

These two examples illustrate the differences between a news enterprise that attempts to act responsibly and one that disregards such restraints in order to forge ahead with a sensationalistic approach and to pander to the scandal-lust of their viewers. CNN has faced this dilemma in the past by meting out punishments for ethical infractions to Lou Dobbs, Rick Sanchez, Octavia Nasr, Susan Roesgen, Peter Arnett, and Eason Jordan. MSNBC has done the same to Keith Olbermann, David Shuster, Mark Halperin, Markos Moulitsas, and Pat Buchanan. Some of these chastisements were warranted (Dobbs, Buchanan), and some were executions of petulant grudges (Markos), and CNN still inexplicably employs miscreants like Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch. So CNN and MSNBC should not necessarily be held up as models of morality. But at least there is some evidence of an internal criteria for ethical behavior of some sort.

Fox News, however, has yet to make any news staffer pay a price for professional indiscretions, despite the fact that things got so bad at Fox they had to distribute a memo asserting a “Zero Tolerance Policy” that warned of “letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other possible actions up to and including termination.” The memo was issued after numerous, embarrassing on-air blunders by Fox reporters and producers. But rather than undergoing discipline, Fox News bent over backwards to reward reporters who behaved badly. In fact, while other networks were firing such violators, Fox seems to be on a mission to recruit them. For instance: Juan Williams, Don Imus, Doug McKelway, and Lou Dobbs were all put on the Fox payroll after having been terminated for cause at other networks. Even Glenn Beck who, while no longer hosting his own program, appears regularly with Bill O’Reilly and others.

Fox maintains a clubby environment for recalcitrant reporters, and there remains a full stable of them on the air. Here is a selection of some of the more obviously repulsive people that Fox News should have fired for their absence of morality and professionalism, but to date have not even had their wrists slapped. And make no mistake, the job security enjoyed by these weasels is not due to carelessness on the part of Fox News. Controversy, hostility, and rabid right-wing advocacy are the hallmarks of Fox’s business model. It’s how they cultivate and reward the loyalty of their audience. What other explanation could justify this:

Todd Starnes: Unsurprisingly, Fox News has smeared the Occupy Movement from its inception. They have disparaged them as everything from unfocused to unclean to un-American. But it took Starnes, the host of Fox News & Commentary on Fox Radio, to equate them to mass murderers by asking, “What should be done with the domestic terrorists who are occupying our cities and college campuses?” By comparing Occupiers to the likes of Timothy McVeigh, Starnes is engaging in rhetorical terrorism and insulting hundreds of thousands of concerned Americans.

Cody Willard: This Fox Business reporter brazenly exposed his bias when he attended a Tea Party rally and feverishly barked at the camera this call to arms against the U.S. government, “Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country?”

Andrew Napolitano: The “Judge” is a notorious 9/11 Truther who believes that the attack on the World Trade Center towers was an inside job, orchestrated by agents of the United States government. That’s a position considered so crazy by Fox Newsers that it was instrumental in their campaign to get Van Jones fired from his post as a green jobs adviser to President Obama. But, in typical Foxian hypocrisy, it has no impact on the employment of Napolitano. [Note: The entire primetime schedule of the Fox Business Network, including Napolitano, Eric Bolling and David Asman, was recently canceled. But it was due to poor ratings, not content. And all remain active Fox News contributors.]

Bill Sammon: The Fox News Washington managing editor was recorded admitting to a friendly audience on a conservative cruise that he would go on air and “mischievously” cast Obama as a socialist even though he didn’t believe it himself. In other words, he lied to defame the President and rile up his gullible viewers. That would be cause for termination at most news networks, but probably earned Sammon a bonus at Fox.

Eric Bolling: Hoping to sustain Fox’s leadership in inappropriate Nazi references, Bolling accused President Obama of engaging in class warfare that was “forged in Marxist Germany.” And if that wasn’t asinine enough, he sided with Iran against the U.S. by accusing the American hikers who were held in an Iranian prison of being spies and said that Iran should have kept them.

Bill O’Reilly: Dr. George Tiller, a family physician in Kansas, was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist who may have been incited to violence by rhetoric like this from O’Reilly: “Now, we have bad news to report that Tiller the baby killer out in Kansas, acquitted. Acquitted today of murdering babies.” O’Reilly regards the acquittal of a doctor for performing legal medical services “bad news,” and the services themselves “murder.” But he never took any responsibility for fanning the flames of violent incivility that led to the actual murder of Dr. Tiller.

Col. Ralph Peters (Ret): In a rant that argued that the United States should fight back against our enemies with the same tactics they use against us, Peters turned the media into military targets: “Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. And like Bolling, Peters also took the side of our foes by suggesting, without evidence, that a missing American soldier was a deserter and that “the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills,” presumably by killing him.

Michael Scheuer: This former CIA analyst was concerned that the American people were not sufficiently afraid of future terrorist attacks. He regards that absence of fear as dangerous complacency. But he has a solution: “The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”

Roger Ailes: The CEO of Fox News proves that a fish stinks from its head. In response to NPR’s firing of Juan Willimas for bigoted remarks about Muslims, Ailes let loose a tirade wherein he viciously attacked the NPR executives saying that… “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism.”

Liz Trotta: Ending up where we began, this abhorrent attempt at comedy simply could not be left off of this list. What started out as a verbal stumble became a call for assassination when Trotta said, “Now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, umm, Obama. Well, both if we could.”

It’s difficult to believe that anyone could retain a job in the media after making statements like those above. These were not mistakes or misunderstandings. They are not out of context. They were considered, deliberate expressions of opinion that represented the reporter’s views at the time. Yet all of these people are still employed and active at Fox News.

To be fair, there is an example of Fox News firing reporters who crossed a line that even Fox could not abide. Steve Wilson and Jane Akre investigated a story that detailed the health risks posed by the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a milk additive manufactured by chemical giant Monsanto. Fox objected to the story’s negative portrayal of a major advertiser and ordered the reporters to make modifications that they knew were false. When the reporters refused they were fired. In the subsequent litigation Fox argued in court that the network had a right to determine the content of their stories, and even to lie, and that employees who declined to comply could be terminated as insubordinate.

So while Fox News has no problem with their analysts advocating terrorism against Americans, they draw the line when it comes to suppressing their Constitutional right to lie. Fox has taken great care to set their priorities and to draw their ethical lines in sand that is always under the prevailing tide.

[Update] This week racist Pat Buchanan was sacked by MSNBC and radio schlock jocks John & Ken were suspended for calling Whitney Houston a “crack ho”. But Liz Trotta, Eric Bolling, et al are still happily working at Fox.

Andrew Breitbart At CPAC: I Have Videos Of Obama In College

Posted by on February 11, 2012 at 4:11 pm. 7 Comments :

Andrew BreitbartAs if Andrew Breitbart’s performance before some Occupy protesters wasn’t pathetic enough, the terminally choleric pundit delivered an incoherent rant from the CPAC podium. He spent much of the time rambling in sentence fragments, struggling to make sense. But one portion of his speech teased what may be his next video crusade. And, no, I’m not talking about the hilariously twisted “Hating Breitbart” documentary that was announced at the conference. I’m referring to Breitbart’s tantalizing claim to have unearthed videos of President Obama in college.

“I have videos. This election we’re going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008. The videos are going to come out, the narrative is going to come out, that Barack Obama met a bunch of silver ponytails in the 1980s, like Bill (Ayers) and Bernadine Dohrn, who said one day we would have the presidency, and the rest of us slept as they plotted.”

OMG! Obama in college plotting with Ayers to become president. That’s blockbuster material. I can just picture it: A twenty year old Obama meeting with the middle-aged Ayers, drafting a scheme that would see Obama elected to the presidency thirty years later. What foresight and commitment they must have had. Especially since they never met until long after Obama graduated from Harvard Law and eventually moved to Chicago where Ayers lived.

It is also interesting that Breitbart would characterize his comrades on the right as sleeping through the eighties. You know, the eighties when Ronald Reagan was president and conservatism was at its peak. That would explain a lot, like how Reagan got elected president in the first place. Little did they know that liberals were holed up conspiring to take over the free world – thirty years in the future – by electing a black man with no birth certificate to the presidency. A brilliant plan that couldn’t possibly fail. It makes you wonder if there might not be a young, undocumented, Mexican atheist currently putting together a plan with billionaire drug lords to occupy the White House in 2040.

For Breitbart to make these allegations involving Bill Ayers is curious since he just attended a dinner party thrown by Ayers a few days ago. Breitbart was invited to the party by Tucker Carlson who paid $2,500 in a charity auction to have dinner with Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn. Breitbart, ever the gracious guest, told Eric Bolling on the Fox Business Network (whose show was just canceled) that Ayers was a great conversationalist, an incredible chef, and a sociopath.

Another guest for dinner, Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard, posted his recollections of the affair with a distinct and buoyant whine about not having had enough time to harangue his hosts. He ate their food (personally prepared by Ayers), drank their wine, and enjoyed a scrumptious desert of apple pie topped with Ben & Jerry’s AmeriCone Dream (the flavor inspired by Stephen Colbert). But apparently two hours and a free gourmet meal is not deserving of appreciation. How rude of the Ayers’ not to take a seat in the dunking booth and allow their rightist guests to harass them for another hour or two about things they did forty years ago.

Which brings us back to the videos that Breitbart claims to have in his possession. If they are anything like the videos he has released in the past, we can be assured that they will utterly lack any truthful representation of events. Like the ACORN videos that were deliberately edited to create false and negative impressions of people who were unselfishly helping low income citizens to vote and find housing for their families. Like the Shirley Sherrod video that was cut to make her look like a racist when the the whole, unedited video proved just the opposite. Breitbart’s history with video exposes is a cavalcade of conscious deceit.

I have doubts that any videos of Obama’s college years will ever actually be released, but if they are it seems unlikely that they will have any relevance this many years later. Breitbart once famously declared that he would “take down the institutional left” in three weeks. That was two years ago. He’s a radioactive bundle of bluster and petulant anger. And even though he has threatened his liberal enemies saying that “We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns”, I’m not losing any sleep over it.

Fox Business Network Cancels Entire Primetime Lineup

Posted by on February 10, 2012 at 2:53 am. 3 Comments :

Fox Business NetworkThe day after News Corp released their latest quarterly earnings report, they made another announcement that somehow was left out of the earnings conference call.

The struggling Fox Business Network (FBN) has, in one fell swoop, canceled their entire primetime lineup. Wiped from the schedule are “Freedom Watch” with Andrew Napolitano, “Power & Money” with David Asman, and “Follow the Money” with Eric Bolling. All three programs had little business running on a business network in the first place. They were brazenly political vehicles for sharply partisan, right-wing gasbags.

Andrew Napolitano is a notorious 9/11 truther who believes that the attack on the World Trade Center towers was an inside job. He also lamented the killing of Osama Bin Laden whom he characterized as a victim of assassination, “killed on the illegal whim of the President.”

David Asman has said that we should all be celebrating the 1%. He is an advocate of shutting down the government and believes that its size must be cut “before it kills us all.” He called Obama “Hugo Chavez on the Potomac.” And he believes that Social Security is “one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated.”

Eric Bolling is perhaps the most deserving of the Glenn Beck Memorial Wingnut Award for Delusional Hyperbole. He has accused President Obama of engaging in class warfare that was “forged in Marxist Germany.” He embraces every conspiracy theory that comes along including that Sesame Street was demonizing the Tea Party. He even accused the American hikers who were held in an Iranian prison of being spies and said that Iran should have kept them.

The demise of these programs signals the dismal shape that FBN is in. The decision to swing the axe was not prompted by the development of new programs to take their place. FBN will fill the holes with repeats of programs that air earlier in the day. It is clearly a desperation move by a network that needs to cut the dead weight and run leaner and cheaper.

FBN’s primetime lineup never drew more than about 25,000 viewers in the coveted 25-54 year old demographic. Their ratings have been pathetic from the start, when they proposed to launch a new business channel that would appeal to “Main Street.” That was a direct contradiction of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch who said that “a Fox channel would be ‘more business-friendly than CNBC.'” Of course, a business network is not supposed to be “friendly” toward the businesses it is covering.

In an ironic twist, FBN’s Vice-President, Kevin Magee, recently distributed a memo to his staff admonishing them for being too much like their sister network, Fox News.

Magee: “I’ve been asked to remind you all again that they are separate channels and the more we make FBN look like FNC the more of a disservice we do to ourselves. I understand the temptation to imitate our sibling network in hopes of imitating its success, but we cannot. If we give the audience a choice between FNC and the almost-FNC, they will choose FNC every time.”

That’s excellent advice. CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC should pay attention. However, it apparently came too late to save the most Foxish programs on the network. Now Magee has lopped off the worst offenders in the hopes of rescuing the floundering enterprise. Though the losers will still be around as Magee notes that “We look forward to Judge Napolitano, David and Eric continuing to make significant contributions to both FOX Business and FOX News.” Yeah right.

The only purpose Fox Business ever had was to extend the rightist propaganda already blaring from Fox News. They loaded up the network with conservative extremist pundits and vacant ratings whores like Don Imus. That approach has proven to be another failure for Murdoch, whose MySpace investment quickly went down the tubes; whose New York Post has lost millions for as long as he has owned it; for his international newspaper syndicate that is still reeling from the discovery of rampant criminal activity, phone hacking, and the the shuttering of his biggest paper in the UK, the News of the World.

Another item of information that was disclosed with the News Corp earnings release is that their cable television assets represent 60% of their revenue. That’s a pretty heavy reliance on one business segment of a conglomerate that includes international publishing and film operations. Now that FBN is slipping away, all that Murdoch needs is to have his Fox News falter. That is the last remaining support for his crumbling empire. And for the benefit of honest journalism, the nation, and the world, it can’t come too soon.

Fox News On Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns: Who Cares?

Posted by on January 17, 2012 at 4:10 pm. 3 Comments :

The Fox News morning program, Fox & Friends, has a unique quality that differentiates it from the rest of the Fox News schedule. In addition to the lies, propaganda, and GOP PR that fills the network’s fare, Fox & Friends features a trio of hosts who are called anchors only because of how much they weigh down the network’s IQ.

On today’s episode, the three squawking heads entered into a discussion of Mitt Romney and the question of whether he would, or should, release his tax returns as just about every other candidate has done in modern times. [Video below] It went a little something like this:

Brian Kilmeade: One thing about Mitt Romney: He’s rich! And most people know it. And I guess that’s one of the reasons that he does not want to release his tax returns, because there seems to be a war on success in this country.

Gretchen Carlson: And I want to know from the viewers: Do you care about this topic? Tax returns?

Eric Bolling: Who cares if he made a lot of money. Frankly, we should all be thrilled he made a lot of money. He’s a capitalist. Don’t we want that?

Indeed, Mitt Romney is rich and most people know it. But that is not the reason that he doesn’t want to release his tax returns, and it’s not the reason that voters want him to. The practice of releasing tax returns was begun in order to establish whether the candidate is complying with the law and not receiving special treatment due to his connections in business or politics. It is also done to disclose any impropriety or relationship to special interests that might pose a conflict for a public servant.

Fox News is exploiting the controversy surrounding Romney to invent another so-called war on something they consider sacred (i.e. Christmas, junk food, religion, light bulbs, etc.) In this case it’s success. The segment was chock full of the usual complaints about “villainizing the wealthy,” “job creators,” and “class warfare.” But the ultimate goal was to trivialize those who call for accountability on the part of our representatives, and to give people like Romney (or R*Money, as his Highlife Homies call him) cover to suppress any information that they want to hide from voters.

I’ve seen a lot of tactics used by right-wingers to obfuscate and evade true transparency, but this is a new low. People have a right to know whether their leaders are honest and trustworthy. I have to wonder whether Fox’s Tea Party viewers, who purport to be fed up with government deceit, would actually approve of this effort to free candidates from the responsibility of demonstrating their fitness to serve in this simple manner.

Does Romney have something to hide? Is he embarrassed by how little he paid in taxes due to loopholes that the rest of us don’t get? Does he have investments in enterprises that might affect his judgment or independence? These are important questions, but equally important is why is Fox News running interference for Romney and any other politician who might have skeletons he wants to keep in the closet until after the election?

Handicapping The Race For Glenn Beck’s Successor

Posted by on April 9, 2011 at 12:46 am. 3 Comments :

On April 6th Fox News and Glenn Beck announced that his program would be “transitioning” off the air. Reminds me a little of when Charlie Sheen was transitioned off of Two and a Half Men. And so, as the chalk dust settles, it is time to look ahead.


On April 1st, just a few days prior to this announcement, I rather prophetically “revealed” a list of candidates that Fox News was considering to replace Beck. It included such conservative luminaries as Ann Coulter, Andrew Breitbart, and Ted Nugent. Now I would like to offer my own musings on how Fox could fill their 5:00pm slot.

The Favorite: Judge Andrew Napolitano. He is currently the most frequent fill-in host for Beck and holds almost identical views. If anything, he leans even further off the ledge by openly asserting the 9/11 Truther position that the World Trade Center attack was an inside job.

The Gender Card: Laura Ingraham. She has the reliably wingnut views that are a prerequisite for Fox anchordom. More importantly, she fulfills Fox’s blonde quotient. She’s paid her dues filling in for Bill O’Reilly and would bring a sizable radio audience, just as her predecessor did.

The Young Turk: Eric Bolling. He currently hosts a program on Fox’s floundering business network and may be due for a transfer to the mother ship. He has filled in for Beck and appears as a guest on several Fox shows. But this guy may want it too bad. His delivery is that of someone in a permanent state of shock. On second thought, he may have shot.

The Lone Stranger: Juan Williams. Fox shelled out $2 million for Williams when he was booted out of NPR. By giving him his own show they might be able to justify that ridiculous outlay for an occasional commentator. Plus they would fill a dual demographic hole in their schedule by promoting an African-American liberal. However, that is also two strikes against any Fox News hopeful. Even though Williams is barely a liberal, the fact that he isn’t batshit insane might be enough to disqualify him alone. And since Fox’s audience is more than 98% white, the race card isn’t worth much to them.

The Dark Horse: G. Gordon Liddy. This former Watergate burglar would love to bring his radio shtick to television. He has a loyal following and would be able to retain all of Beck’s survivalist products advertisers. He would provide a consistent transition for the American Patriopaths who revere God, gold, and guns.

Of course, there are plenty of other options for Fox. They could poach Rick Santelli from CNBC. He’s the guy who got the whole Tea Party parade marching. Or they could just stretch Bret Baier’s program for an extra hour. That would be cheap and it would refocus the network on news – something which with they have little experience.

And then there’s my favorite contestant: Victoria Jackson. She has Tea Party cred and is guaranteed to never say anything that would go over the heads of the Fox viewers – or their kids.