NewsBusters

Fox Nation’s Acrobatic Smear Fest: A Triple Putz

Posted by on March 2, 2012 at 3:39 pm. 4 Comments :

Sometimes, in the right-wing noise machine, you really need to stretch to spread your smears across as many targets as possible. It calls for a strategy that aims to cast your juvenile insults so broadly that they ensnare any of your perceived enemies within a certain proximity. In a way, it’s a conservative approach that allows you to use less tar to tarnish more opponents in one wide swipe.

To that end, the Fox Nationalists went after Matt Taibbi of the Rolling Stone for his remembrances of Andrew Breitbart. Taibbi took a particularly Breitbartian tone in saying…

“So Andrew Breitbart is dead. Here’s what I have to say to that, and I’m sure Breitbart himself would have respected this reaction: Good! Fuck him. I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead.

I say this in the nicest possible way. I actually kind of liked Andrew Breitbart. Not in the sense that I would ever have wanted to hang out with him, or even be caught within a hundred yards of him without a Haz-Mat suit on, but I respected the shamelessness. Breitbart didn’t do anything by halves, and even his most ardent detractors had to admit that he had a highly developed, if not always funny, sense of humor.”

That’s the sort of hyperbolic, attention-seeking comment that epitomized Breitbart’s existence. And that is exactly the point that Taibbi was making. It was a fitting tribute, not just to the man, but to his inner being and what he stood for; what he was most proud of. Breitbart defiantly rejected calls for civility, and when he was challenged to apologize for outrageous statements, he famously responded by barking back, “Apologize for what!” So how did Fox Nation report this news?

Fox Nation

Presumably the Fox Nationalists don’t think that Matt Taibbi is well enough known to carry a hit piece on his own. So they dressed it up with one of their favorite, and most childish insults – to refer to comedian Bill Maher as “Pig” Maher. But some pimply-faced editor still didn’t think that was enough, so they added a reference to the evil home of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, NBC. Neither Maher nor NBC had anything to do with this story. Even the source article to which Fox Nation linked, from the uber-conservative NewsBusters, made no mention of these innocent bystanders. In fact the NewsBusters, while still incensed by Taibbi’s language, acknowledged a certain appropriateness. In their opening paragraph they say…

“I almost hate to draw attention to this incredibly sad example of the intolerant left over at Rolling Stone, but quite frankly, Andrew Breitbart probably would have eaten this up, and tweeted it back out.”

That’s absolutely true. Breitbart even tweeted back out a criticism of him that I sent just last week:

As I, and many others have noted, Breitbart would have been the first to proudly speak ill of the dead. On the day that Sen. Ted Kennedy died. Breitbart tweeted “Rest in Chappaquiddick.” He followed that up with several other disgraceful remarks that, unlike Taibbi, he could not frame as being tributes to the decedent.

Which brings us back to Fox Nation’s utterly unrelated assaults in their story’s headline. The inclusion of Maher and NBC was wholly the idea of Fox, and it really demonstrates how embarrassingly infantile the Fox Nationalists are. It’s bad enough that Fox is a netowrk that has no regard for the truth, but do they also have to embrace such brazenly immature rhetoric while they are lying?

Fox Nation Only Likes Their Own 9/11 Truthers

Posted by on August 28, 2011 at 1:31 pm. NO Comments :

Yet another example of the unique tunnel-blindness of Fox News and their rightist colleagues.

Fox Nation Touré

The Fox Nationalists are clearly disturbed by the conspiracy theorists who believe that the truth about the 9/11 attacks has not yet been told. Consequently they use that as an excuse to dismiss remarks by MSNBC’s Touré regarding global warming. The Fox Nation item links to an article by their pals at NewsBusters:

“On Friday’s Dylan Ratigan Show, MSNBC contributor Touré, who is also a 9/11 truther, wondered if Hurricane Irene is an example of global warming. He speculated, ‘When you talk about an unusual weather event happening in New York and this sort of thing, is this really evidence of global warming to see this sort of a massive storm happening here?’

“Touré is routinely featured on MSNBC, despite his tendency to tweet in support of 9/11 conspiracy theories.”

What a travesty! Hosting a 9/11 Truther to give commentary about unrelated news events? The only thing that could be worse would be to give a 9/11 Truther his own daily show. Like…um…Fox did with 9/11 Truther, Judge Andrew Napolitano

The Fox Nation/NewsBusters gang whines that “It’s a bit much to blame this hurricane on global warming. It’s even weirder when a conspiracy-minded 9/11 truther does it.” I wonder why I haven’t yet seen Fox post an article dismissing everything Napolitano says because of his conspiracy theorism.

And, by the way, Touré is factually correct in his questioning about hurricanes and global warming. The science is pretty well established that the impact of climate change will include more frequent and more severe weather events. But Fox won’t let facts interfere with their bashing of anyone with whom they disagree. They don’t even care if their bashing happens to snag one of their own.

Fox News Escalates Its War On Media Matters

Posted by on August 5, 2011 at 4:28 pm. 6 Comments :

Fox News has been engaging in a relentless campaign against Media Matters for more than a month. They began in June with allegations that Media Matters had violated their tax-exempt status by factually covering Fox News broadcasts as well as other right-wing media. The Fox campaign included frequent solicitations on the air (more than 30 times) by Fox anchors beseeching their viewers to file complaints with the IRS challenging Media Matters’ non-profit status. Amongst those participating in the onslaught were Bill O’Reilly, Bret Baier, Steve Doocy, Charles Krauthammer, James Rosen, Ann Coulter, Dick Morris, and Bernie Goldberg.

The latest salvos come from two fronts: 1) An official filing of an IRS complaint against Media Matters by a Fox crony (more on that later), and 2) from the Fox Business Network which has just completed a three-part series on the subject.

The arguments presented by Fox Business were pitifully weak and often contradictory. For instance, the article stated that some of Media Matters’ activities were “not found in the scope of nonprofit tax law.” That’s a contorted argument because the tax law was never meant to include every imaginable activity that might occur. There is nothing in the law that says that an exempt organization can provide Italian food during meetings, but that doesn’t mean they are in violation of the law if they send out for pizza.

The article also quoted Marcus Owens, a former IRS official, as saying that his remarks in defense of Media Matters were misconstrued. The only problem with that is that the article itself quoted Owens explicitly defending Media Matters saying that their activities are “generally protected by the first amendment,” and that they are “not going to jeopardize its tax-exempt status.” So the article is disparaging its own source. It further points out that…

“Media Matters says in its tax returns that it has not engaged in political campaign activities or lobbying. But Media Matters has run items that advocate for legislation, which would violate the tax law if it became a substantial part of the nonprofit’s activities.”

And what does the article regard as “substantial?” A single 2004 posting on the Media Matters web site in support of the Fairness Doctrine. That’s it. Compare that to the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters, a conservative mirror image of Media Matters. NewsBusters conducts persistent campaigns including one in opposition to the Fairness Doctrine. They also have campaigns against immigration, George Soros, and in support of the Tea Party. These are not years-old, isolated efforts. They are current and ongoing. Yet Gray has not filed a challenge to the tax-exempt status of the Media Research Center. Or the Heritage Foundation. Or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Or the Tea party’s own Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.

The remainder of the series consists of an abundance of nonsense. It suggests that having tax-exempt status is equivalent to having a government endorsement. It cites an IRS ruling that “a nonprofit will lose its tax-exempt status if, among other things, a significant portion of its communications consist of viewpoints or positions ‘unsupported by facts.'” Of course, Media Matters is notoriously stringent about providing factual support for everything they post.

In addition to Fox News and Fox Business, the Murdoch propaganda family continued piling on Media Matters with articles on Fox Nation that still retain the first position in their “New Stories” section, despite being more than a month old. The Fox Nationalists posted links to a pre-filled-in form that could be printed out and mailed to the IRS. News Corpse has requested information from the IRS on the volume of complaints, if any, they have been receiving in the past month. That request is still pending. However, it may be safe to surmise that the response of the Fox audience was not particularly impressive, because they had to resort to filing their own complaint indirectly via former George H.W. Bush counsel, C. Boyden Gray.

C. Boyden GrayIn filing this complaint, Both Fox and Gray asserted that they are unaffiliated with one another. Gray insisted that he is not representing Fox and is not on the payroll. What they neglected to disclose is that Gray was previously identified as a both a Fox News Supreme Court Analyst and a Fox News contributor. This puts in doubt their claims to being unaffiliated, and it destroys any pretense of transparency.

Gray’s obviously biased perspective is well represented in the letter he sent to the IRS. The core of his complaint is the allegation that Media Matters has “declared war” on a television news channel [Fox News]. Of course the truth is that Fox News had long before declared war on Media Matters. Consequently, Media Matters may just be regarded as defending itself from a powerful, international, media megalith.

Gray’s complaint began with a claim that “Media Matters’s efforts to harm Fox News are intended to weaken the Republican Party.” Gray offers no support whatsoever for that claim. The truth is that Media Matters is merely attempting to demonstrate the bias on the part of Fox News for the GOP. And despite Gray’s charge, every example he cites of Media Matters allegedly attacking Republicans actually show that they are reporting on what others in the media are saying about the party.

Gray also makes a rather incoherent argument that the IRS is somehow violating the free speech rights of Fox News by granting Media Matters tax exempt status. The tortured case he makes seems to be that such status somehow punishes Fox News. Suffice to say that he never explains how, or establishes that Fox News’ rights have been violated in any way.

But the height of Gray’s Inanity is his contention that Media Matters has embarked on an “unsupportable attempt to tie Fox News to the Republican Party.” However, tying Fox News to the Republican Party is about as difficult as tying your shoelaces. The support is overwhelming and includes surveys that show the extreme imbalance of Republicans to Democrats on Fox News. It includes the rampant utilization of talking points directly from GOP sources on one program after another throughout the broadcast day. It includes memos from executive editors directing their anchors and reporters to frame stories favorably to right. It includes the overt hostility and racism that Fox Nation publishes repeatedly.

Setting all of that aside for the moment, it would interesting to hear how Gray would reconcile his assertion that Media Matters is trying to “weaken the Republican Party,” with his assertion that any attempt to tie the party to Fox News is “unsupportable.” If the party and Fox News are unconnected, then how could one be harmed by attacking the other? Gray’s arguments are an endless loop of contradiction. They can’t both be true.

Given a full examination, Gray’s complaint to the IRS is amateurish blather. He fails to prove a single point in his letter. But he does manage to prove that Fox News, and the Murdoch-led News Corp, is a deceitful and unethical enterprise for endeavoring to partner with Gray on this puerile exercise. they are exhibiting their proclivity for bullying their perceived enemies and using their media perch to smear those with whom they disagree. They are a criminal enterprise and should be treated as such. Hopefully the investigations just getting underway will put these gangsters where they belong.

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.

NewsBusters Lies About Howard Dean Lying

Posted by on October 18, 2010 at 1:44 am. 4 Comments :

It may be time to start a regular feature about the recurring episodes of stupidity on the part of NewsBusters’ associate editor, Noel Sheppard. The latest example comes from his analysis of a debate between Liz Cheney (Dick’s spawn) and Gov. Howard Dean.

The NewsBusters column asserts that “Liz Cheney Exposes Howard Dean In Lie About His Connection To George Soros and MoveOn.org.” Sheppard helpfully provides video of the exchange and a transcript. The only problem is that these documents show that Dean was entirely truthful and that Sheppard and Cheney were the liars. Here is the relevant portion of the debate:

HOWARD DEAN (overlapping): We don’t want anybody buying elections.
LIZ CHENEY (overlapping): I mean George Soros started all of this with MoveOn.org–
HOWARD DEAN (overlapping): I know McCain-Feingold, they weren’t able buy elections.
LIZ CHENEY (overlapping): –which was a big backer of yours, Governor Dean. So I think that, you know–
HOWARD DEAN (overlapping): Who was a big backer of mine?
LIZ CHENEY: George Soros, MoveOn.org.
HOWARD DEAN (overlapping): No he wasn’t. No he wasn’t a big–
LIZ CHENEY: Governor Dean, I think that the notion–
HOWARD DEAN (overlapping): –neither– neither was MoveOn.org, as a matter of fact, just to set the record straight.

As we see in this exchange, Cheney asserted that George Soros and MoveOn were “big backers” of Dean. The Governor denies that. And this is where Sheppard barges in to declare that. “This was a flat out lie by Dean on national television.” Sheppard backs up his claim by revealing that Soros had contributed $1,000 to Dean’s presidential campaign in 2004, and that MoveOn had hosted a web page where Dean solicited donations.

Gov. Dean raised about $50 million for his 2004 primary campaign. Soros donated only $1,000 of that (or 0.002%), which is less than half the amount allowable ($2,500). As for MoveOn, Sheppard admits that they donated nothing at all to Dean. They merely permitted him to solicit their members for donations. Those donations would have been made by the individuals choosing to donate, not MoveOn, and there was no accounting for how much the members may have donated, if anything. But MoveOn donated $0.00.

It is on the basis of this that Sheppard asserted that Dean’s contention was “100 percent false.” However, Dean was actually 100 percent truthful because the facts, even as Sheppard told them, show that Soros and MoveOn were not “big backers” of Dean by any stretch of the imagination. Unless you define “big” as infinitesimally small. So, as it turns out, it’s Sheppard who is lying.

The remainder of the Dean/Cheney debate gave Sheppard additional opportunities for him to make a fool of himself. Cheney kept trying to put words in Dean’s mouth, to the effect that he and President Obama were saying that the Chamber of Commerce was paying for domestic campaign ads with foreign money. However, neither of them said that. The issue was whether the Chamber was receiving money from foreign entities (which they admit), and that because there is no disclosure of those receipts or how they are spent, there is no way to know whether the foreign funds were included in the campaign financing. It is a question of disclosure and transparency. There is a big difference between accusing the Chamber of using foreign funds in the election, and merely criticizing them for not disclosing their financing. It was the latter that Dean was asserting.

Sheppard and Cheney are either too dense to grasp that distinction, or too politically dishonest to acknowledge it – or perhaps a little of both. Cheney, of course, is a political operative and can be expected to spin arguments in her favor. But Sheppard fancies himself a media watchdog and, thus, reveals himself to be utterly disreputable and without credibility.

NewsBusters: The Most Powerful Name In Stupid

Posted by on September 26, 2010 at 8:29 pm. 6 Comments :

You know that you’ve reached new lows in stupidity when you make it necessary to defend CNN/Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz. But Noel Sheppard, NewsBusters’ Associate Editor, can hang his head in pride at having achieved just that feat.

In an article “analyzing” a segment of Kurtz’s Reliable Sources, Sheppard manages to demonstrate an astonishingly deficient ability to comprehend simple English. In this segment Kurtz correctly criticized Fox News in general, and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity in particular, for falsely asserting that Democratic Delaware senatorial candidate Chris Coons had “admitted” to being a Marxist. The basis for the assertion was this excerpt from an article Coons wrote 25 years ago in college:

“I spent the spring of my junior year in Africa on the St. Lawrence Kenya Study Program. Going to Kenya was one of the few real decisions I have made; my friends, family, and professors all advised against it, but I went anyway, My friends now joke that something about Kenya, maybe a strange diet, or the tropical sun, changed my personality; Africa to them seems a catalytic converter that takes in clean-shaven, clear thinking Americans and sends back Bearded Marxists.”

It’s plain from reading this that it was Coons’ friends who raised the subject of his being a Marxist, and even that was clearly stated to be a joke. There is nothing there resembling an admission of Marxism, and there is no way a person with a functioning cerebrum could arrive at that interpretation. Which neatly explains how Beck and Hannity managed to do so. Kurtz, for whom I rarely find anything worthy of commendation, deserves credit for calling out the pair of Fox News hacks for their blatant and deliberate deceit.

Here’s where NewsBusters steps in to lather themselves in shame. Sheppard begins with an inquiry as to why Kurtz didn’t mention a previous article that appeared in Politico and referenced the Coons article. Sheppard asks…

“Why didn’t Kurtz scold Politico? After all, [Politico author Alex] Isenstadt appears to be the first national reporter to bring this article to light.”

The answer, of course, is that Isenstadt never alleged that Coons confessed to being a Marxist. There is nothing wrong with drawing attention to prior writings by political candidates. The problem comes when someone dishonestly portrays the contents of it, as Beck and Hannity did. Isenstadt didn’t do that so there was no reason for Kurtz to scold him.

Next Sheppard quotes a line from Isenstadt’s article that cites Coons’ campaign spokesman calling the “bearded Marxist” reference a joke. Sheppard then asks…

“Is this where Kurtz got the idea that the whole article was a joke? From Coons’s campaign spokesman? That doesn’t seem like good journalism, does it?”

Sheppard wouldn’t know good journalism if it reached out of his monitor and slapped him. The first idiotic hokum in this question is the premise that Kurtz held that “the whole article” was a joke. Kurtz never said that, nor did Coons or his spokesman. But where Sheppard goes off the rails is by suggesting that Kurtz got the idea that it was a joke from the campaign spokesman’s comment rather than from the actual text of Coons’ article that said explicitly, “My friends now joke that…” It was right there in black and white, in the original article, that Kurtz, and everyone else who can read, got the idea that it was a joke. It couldn’t be more clear if you pasted a picture of Henny Youngman above it. I guess it’s that clarity that accompanies reality that confused Sheppard.

And yet Sheppard persists in making a fool of himself. He concludes his analysis by complaining that Kurtz has a double standard because he criticized the coverage of Coons but not that of his GOP opponent, Christine O’Donnell. However, Kurtz was criticizing the Coons coverage because it was wrong. The coverage of O’Donnell was merely replaying video of her own performance on television. Nobody mischaracterized what she said, they just broadcast it as it was. If there was something wrong with it, even Sheppard didn’t bother to point it out. But he did take one more swing at the debunked smear that Coons was a self-avowed Marxist:

“As such, an autobiographical article by Coons in which he referred to himself as a bearded Marxist is all a joke while comments O’Donnell made concerning her religious faith are somehow relevant to this campaign.”

Once again, Coons did not refer to himself as a “bearded Marxist,” and his friends who did so were joking. And both candidates’ histories are relevant to the campaign, but they must be presented accurately. Unfortunately, Sheppard prefers the lying gasbag approach.

~~~

On a separate matter from the same program, Kurtz earned himself another commendation by calling out his own network, CNN. They declined to broadcast a story of war atrocities by Michael Ware due to graphic imagery. Kurtz observed that a story of this importance should still have been aired, and if the images were deemed too disturbing they could have simply left them out of the broadcast. He also took the network to task for refusing to make anyone available to discuss the matter. Kurtz deserves credit for that position. I hope we see more of this sort of media criticism going forward, but I’m just a cockeyed optimist.

On Letterman: Donald Trump Declares War On Islam

Posted by on September 3, 2010 at 10:31 am. 10 Comments :

Joining many ignorant and intolerant right-wingers, Donald Trump has taken the position that all Muslims were responsible for the World Trade Center terrorist attack. Appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman, Trump responded to a question about the non-mosque that is not at ground zero:

Letterman: Does this suggest that we are in fact officially at war with Muslims?
Trump: Well, somebody knocked down the World Trade Center. […] Somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.

Somebody knocked down the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma too. Are we therefore at war with all Christians? Somebody bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama killing four girls. Somebody shot and killed a doctor in Kansas. Somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff in the name of Christ, so no more churches should be built in America. Right, Donald?

The Fox Nation (via NewsBusters) carried this story with a headline that asserted that Trump had “schooled” Letterman. They noted twice that Trump received applause from the audience for his remarks on the mosque. What they left out was that Letterman was also applauded when he disagreed with Trump and stood up for religious freedom. Letterman received more applause later when he explicitly said that we are not at war with Muslims, but that segment was cut out of the NewsBusters video. (The video above is not from NewsBusters. It contains the full exchange).

Even worse, the Fox Nationalist’s completely deleted the exchange where Trump said that we should never have gone into Iraq. He called the Iraq war a “bad move” and “incompetent,” for which he received additional applause.

What this proves is that Fox News, Fox Nation, and their pals at NewsBusters, are no more credible than the notoriously dishonest Andrew Breitbart. They will deceptively edit their videos to produce whatever conclusion best fits their agenda. Anyone who continues to believe what they see there is simply ignorant by choice.

Bill O’Reilly: MoveOn Forced CNBC To Hire Howard Dean

Posted by on March 29, 2009 at 7:47 pm. NO Comments :

Bill O’Reilly gets funnier by the day (or scarier, depending on your perspective). His latest broadcast falsehood is that MoveOn.org has wielded its mighty power to “force” NBC/Universal CEO Jeff Zucker to hire Howard Dean as a contributor to CNBC. This display of domination was allegedly in response to conservative commentaries by CNBC’s Jim Cramer and Mark Haines.

Even if someone was stupid enough to believe that a relatively small political activist group could boss around the chief of a major entertainment and news empire, the accusation is completely without foundation. In fact, Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, who did some actual reporting, unlike O’Reilly, found that:

“…the decision to bring the recently departed DNC Chair on board, the source says, was finalized well before the current wave of CNBC-angst. So while grassroots groups have sprouted up in recent weeks petitioning the network to make wholesale changes, Dean’s hiring can’t be viewed as a direct result of public pressure.”

O’Reilly’s stupidity, however, extends even further. The source he quotes for his baseless and false allegation is Noel Sheppard. O’Reilly identifies him as the author of a column in the Washington Examiner. What O’Reilly doesn’t tell you is that Sheppard also happens to be the Associate Editor of NewsBusters, an arm of the uber-conservative Media Research Center. The MRC was just revealed to be the source for many ideologically twisted stories on Fox News, a fact that former anchor Brit Hume confessed just last week. Now O’Reilly has admitted that he too is disseminating MRC propaganda as if it were news. It should be noted that neither O’Reilly nor Sheppard produced any evidence that either MoveOn or Zucker played any role in Dean’s employment.

As if that were not enough, O’Reilly went on to disparage Dean saying that he “know[s] little about economics.” Where O’Reilly gets the gumption to knock Dean’s credentials is beyond me. Dean served as governor of the state of Vermont for twelve years. For a portion of time he was Chairman of the National Governor’s Association. Prior to that he was a Wall Street stock broker. And his father was a top executive at Dean Witter Reynolds. But O’Reilly, who expounds on economics every day is a former tabloid TV news reader. So on whose advice would you prefer to rely?

On the comedy tip, O’Reilly is even having trouble organizing his outrage. For years he has been hammering NBC and its cable units as being irredeemably compromised by wicked leftists. He reveled in characterizing them as despicable purveyors of group-think. The following quotation, however, reveals a psyche that is sorely starving for air.

“Now many on Wall Street believe Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric which owns NBC, has completely lost control of his company, including the actions of Mr. Zucker. The evidence of that is that MSNBC is supporting and promoting the same far-left loons that are hammering the sister outfit CNBC. I mean, how rich is this?”

First of all, the “many on Wall Street believe” canard is an example of a lazy intellect. O’Reilly won’t, and can’t identify these imaginary critics. Secondly, his complaint that MSNBC is critical of CNBC contradicts his contention that all NBC units think alike. Even worse, by mocking this diversity of opinion, he is implying that he would prefer it if they did think alike. Of course, he would prefer no such thing. He would simply go back to accusing them of being blindly and uniformly liberal. It’s the O’Reilly way

Karl Rove’s Blogger Smackdown

Posted by on March 21, 2008 at 4:12 pm. NO Comments :

Karl Rove may have been Bush’s Brain, but the nimrods at NewsBlusters are the ones who seem to be in need of gray matter reinforcements. NB’s Matthew Sheffield did an interview with Rove that is downright hilarious.

The first question dealt with why wealthy conservatives do not invest in media, whereas wealthy liberals do. [Pause for laughter] Sheffield didn’t bother to cite a single example of a wealthy liberal media investor, and Rove answered the question as if the premise wasn’t nonsense.

“I think wealthy conservatives are busy investing in profit and job creation and enterprise and wealthy liberals, many of them either from the media industry themselves or from – recognize the value of communications and are more ready to put money into a less profitable enterprise, namely the media.”

Rove ignores the fact that his new boss, Rupert Murdoch, deficit-financed Fox News for five years, and it is still less profitable than CNN despite having more viewers; his New York Post has never made a profit as long as he’s owned it; the newly hatched Fox Business Network is struggling to stay afloat; and he purchased MySpace for over half a billion dollars though it had never, and still has not, made a profit.

As for conservative investors in the media, Sheffield and Rove might want to familiarize themselves with former GE chief Jack Welch; or the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Washington Times; or former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer of Freedom’s Watch, a $200 million propaganda factory; or the Heritage Foundation; or the American Enterprise Institute; or Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal al Saud (of the Saudi Sauds) who is a significant shareholder in both Time Warner in News Corp.

When asked about the Internet, Rove came out swinging at liberal blogs saying that…

“…most of them are hate-filled, obscenity-clogged rants of anger and hatred.”

[Pause for laughter] But that’s not the funniest part. When asked why there are more liberals in the Blogosphere, he said…

“I hate to sound sort of diffident about it but it strikes me that a lot of people on the right have got active lives and are doing other things and the idea of spending a lot of time on the internet and taking their talents and displaying them there is not something they really do.”

[Still laughing] Bear in mind that he was speaking to a blogger. Did Rove intend to insult him as a loser who had no life? Or is it only liberals who blog because they have nothing else to do? Another reason that people on the right are not “taking their talents” to the Internet may be because they haven’t got any – witness Sheffield.

Rove returns often to the theme of blogging as something conservatives haven’t the time for. He says they have more “active lives;” or they are “busy investing in profit;” or they are “not completely absorbed in politics;” or that they “have other enterprises and charitable efforts.”

If all of that were true, then what does it say about the conservatives who do stoop to blogging? And why does he want them to do it more? Does he want their lives to be more shallow and vacant as he imagines the lives of liberal bloggers to be? I also wonder how Rove reconciles the claim that conservatives have more profitable endeavors to pursue with the claim that conservatives tend to engage more in philanthropic activities. Which is it – are they helping themselves or helping others? It hardly matters because, according to Rove, being charitable is a compliment to conservatives but an attack on liberals. And the same is true for being wealthy.

What’s really funny is that NewsBlusters published this incoherent, contradictory spew as if it were somehow newsworthy. Sheffield didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by Rove’s insults. Nor did he pick up on any of the obvious contradictions. I can’t say that I expected much more from the NewsBlusters team, but I do appreciate a good laugh.

America Is Uniting – Against Fox News

Posted by on January 8, 2008 at 5:19 pm. 2 Comments :

Any fair-minded observer of American media is well aware of the intrinsic bias of Fox News. It is a bias that is recognized by journalists and scholars, analysts and amateurs. Even Fox no longer tries to pawn the euphemistic “fair and balanced” nonsense off on their viewers. They now cast themselves as “the most powerful name in news.” That slogan should provoke an obvious question: Is “power” something that is desirable in a news network?

Many divergent camps in politics and media are answering that question with a resounding “NO!” Those camps may now be coalescing into a united front that shares a healthy disrespect for Fox News.

It hardly needs mentioning that progressives view Fox as a festering boil that serves only to stain the otherwise honorable pursuit of journalism. Democrats like John Edwards and Barack Obama decline to appear on the network. As a result, the network has escalated their already derogatory coverage, going so far as to refer to them as “fools“ for having the temerity to steer clear of Fox’s venom.

Having alienated the Left, Fox has now set its sights on estranging their natural allies on the Right. This approach began with the exclusion of Ron Paul from a Fox debate co-sponsored by the New Hampshire Republican Party. Not surprisingly, Paul’s supporters were aghast, along with others who saw the blatantly prejudicial intent on the part of Fox News. Paul commented on the affair saying…

“They are scared of me and don’t want my message to get out, but it will. They are propagandists for this war and I challenge them on the notion that they are conservative.”

Paul may have something there. While it is plain that everything Rupert Murdoch touches reeks of rightist propaganda, Fox viewers actually appear to be more loyal to Fox than to Republicans or conservatism (see The Cult Of Foxonalityâ„¢). The New Hampshire debate went on without Paul and without the state Republican Party who withdrew their sponsorship in protest of Fox’s candidate exclusions.

Long-time conservative icon, Richard Viguerie had this to say about Fox:

“While Fox has ended the Democratic monopoly in TV news, it is becoming disturbingly clear that it is perpetuating the pro-Big Government monopoly in TV news.”

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson is peeved at Fox’s coverage of him which he thinks is excessively negative:

“This has been a constant mantra of Fox, to tell you the truth. […] for you to highlight nothing but the negatives in terms of the polls and then put on your own guys who have been predicting for four months, really, that I couldn’t do it, kind of skew things a little bit. There’s a lot of other opinion out there.”

NewsBusters (the right’s lame answer to MediaMatters) doesn’t think Fox’s conservative bona fides are worth much:

“Even the allegedly “conservative” Fox News gave the New York Senator a softball interview.”

The freakin’ John Birch Society is weighing in with criticism of Fox and their in-house pollster (and serial dissembler) Frank Luntz:

“Whatever Luntz is doing on Fox with his ‘focus groups,’ its not science and its not even social science. Instead, it is an example of yellow journalism and nearly undisguised political propaganda designed to be misleading and manipulative.”

So Ron Paul, Richard Viguerie, Fred Thompson, NewsBusters, the Republican Party, and the John Birch Society have come together in recognition that, whatever it is that Fox does, it isn’t news. They are now in an uneasy harmony with most of the progressive end of the political spectrum. Perhaps now they will join us in shunning the network that is more focused on its own welfare than on the ethical practice of their craft.

A network consumed with bias, that revels in its own “power,” is dangerous to all of its potential subjects and to democracy itself. The state of journalism, and of the union, is greatly enhanced by this unity against media corruption. And our nation could only benefit if we can all get together and expel Fox News from the body politic. On that count we may owe Fox a debt of gratitude for uniting such far flung elements of society behind a frothing opposition to Fox itself. Thanks.