WHOA! CNN’s Jim Acosta Rips New York Post and Fox News: USDA Grade A Bullshit

Here’s something you don’t see every day. Anchoring CNN’s Saturday Newsroom, Jim Acosta reported on the debunked and ridiculed story that the children’s book – Superheroes Are Everywhere – by Vice-President Kamala Harris was given to every migrant child who arrived at border detention facilities.

Fox News, Fake News

Acosta’s take on the easily disproven story was an epic smackdown of the fake news purveyors that included the New York Post and Fox News. It was a thing of beauty:

“Take for example the uproar over this New York Post story that claimed that copies of a children’s book written by Vice-President Kamala Harris was being given to migrant kids in their “welcome” kit. That tale from the border didn’t just border on BS, This was USDA Grade A bullshit and the reporter who wrote the story resigned claiming she was forced to make it up. But the damage was done, pumped out over the airwaves at the bullshit factory also known as Fox News.”

“From there the lie kept spreading. Prominent Republicans like House Minority Whip, Steve Scalise, who suggested the Vice-President was profiting off the problems at the border. His tweet is still up.”

The story, of course wasn’t true. There was a single book received among donations to help the kids by members of the community. But that didn’t stop the right-wing fabulists intent on manufacturing fake scandals from jumping on the phony allegation and disseminating it to their fact-averse followers.

Numerous high-ranking politicos regurgitated the flagrant falsehood. And their tweets also still remain online. They include GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, GOP Party Chair Ronna McDaniel, Sen. Tom Cotton, Rep. Jim Jordan, to name just a few.

The New York Post deleted the original story and then replaced it with another version that said that “Kamala isn’t at the southern border — but at least one migrant kid got Veep’s book.” The new version, which changed little more than the headline, was also attributed to the original author, despite her having resigned amid complaints that she was forced to write the false article.

The tweet to which Acosta was referring is one that Scalise posted with a video of Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki. She was responding to a question from Peter Doocy of Fox News who asked whether Harris “was making any money” off of the book’s distribution that never happened. Scalise asked in his tweet if “Kamala Harris [is] profiting off the border crisis?” No, she wasn’t. And, yes, it’s still there:

It’s satisfying to see the more conventional news networks speaking truthfully about the blatant dishonesty of Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda enterprises. They are the most prominent and prolific source of disinformation and they present an imminent danger to democracy and America. It’s long past time that they be treated by legitimate journalists as the right-wing domestic terror PR agency. Because that is what they are.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

‘What Fox News Has Created is a Market For Crazy’ – Truth Bomb From Down Under

The vast majority of the American people recognize that Fox News is a deceitful cabal of propagandists bent on advancing the interests of radical Republicans and Trump cultists. Never mind the ratings. While Fox Entertainment is leading the other legitimate news networks, that’s only because they have a near monopoly on the right-wing fringe. Their actual penetration into the population at large is only about one percent.

Donald Trump Vladimir Putin

Nevertheless, Fox News is deliberately dividing the nation on behalf the corporations and wealthy elites they represent. And they have an impact because other media parrots their partisan rhetoric and helps to disseminate their lies. But they aren’t fooling everyone, and especially not the leaders of foreign countries that have their own problems with Rupert Murdoch’s media.

Case in point, on CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday morning, Malcolm Turnbull, the former Prime Minister of Australia, Murdoch’s birthplace, explained to host Brian Stelter why Fox News is so dangerous (video below). And he wasn’t mincing words:

“What Murdoch has delivered largely through Fox News in the United States is exactly what Vladimir Putin wanted to achieve with his disinformation campaigns. Turning one part of America against another. So exacerbating the divisions that already exist in American society and undermine the trust Americans have in their Democratic institutions. That was the objective of the Russian disinformation campaign. And that is exactly what is being delivered by Fox News, and by other players in that right-wing populace media ecosystem.”

Exactly! And Turnbull’s commentary applies just as much to Donald Trump as it does to Fox News. The talk of “collusion” during the first impeachment of Trump barely scratched the surface of the conspiracy that engulfed Trump, Russia, and Fox News. They were (and still are) all working toward the same ends: Turning Americans against each other and their country. Turnbull continued saying that…

“What they have created is a market for crazy. They’ve become unhinged from the facts. It is now, basically, they’ve worked out that you can just make stuff up. Everyone talks about and complains about social media. But what is being done by curated media, mainstream media – including, and in particular, Fox News – has done enormous damage to the United States.”

The evidence of the ultra “crazy” market that Fox News created is all too apparent in the Trump insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th. It is apparent in the adoption of QAnon insanity by many on the right, including the QAnon supporting primetime host, Tucker Carlson. And it couldn’t be more obvious than when Fox News denies that the GOP is the party of QAnon.

Turnbull concluded by asking whether America is “a more divided country than it was before, thanks to Murdoch’s influence?” The answer is an unequivocal “Yes!” Murdoch is a foreign-born domestic terrorist who has never had the best interests of the nation at heart. To the contrary, he has spent his lifetime attempting to pervert democracies in order to empower the oligarchs and enrich himself.

The harm done by Fox News is extensive and destructive. And Trump is just as responsible for it as Murdoch and his treasonous media manipulators. They have been executing the agenda of Vladimir Putin, who couldn’t be more pleased with the efforts by Trump and Fox News. And they must be called out at every opportunity for their betrayal.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post is Purposefully Spreading Fake Fear of COVID Vaccines

There has been some good news recently about the progress being made with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. The rates of new cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities have declined to the lowest rates seen in many months. And the Biden administration’s management of vaccine distribution and implementation has been extraordinarily effective.

Rupert Murdoch, COVID

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 50% of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 30% have been fully vaccinated. This could bring about a state of herd immunity much sooner than previously estimated.

However, there are still some hurdles in the way. For one thing, The least vaccinated U.S. counties are, not surprisingly, mostly dominated by Trump voters. That is likely due to the recklessly negative propaganda promulgated by Fox News, where vaccine conspiracy theories proliferate. Tucker Carlson has been especially active in driving up anti-vax hysteria.

Joining Fox News is their sister publication owned by Rupert Murdoch, the New York Post. They have been engaged in a dishonest and deadly campaign aimed at magnifying doubts about the vaccines and frightening the public away from getting vaccinated. Case in point, the right-wing “news” paper published an article fear mongering about a college student in Cincinnati who died shortly after being vaccinated:

The Post’s own reporting eventually (four paragraphs in) admitted that there was no evidence that the death had anything to do with the vaccine. They later deleted both the article and the tweet promoting it. But they never issued a retraction or an apology, or made any effort to correct the record for those readers who were unnecessarily panicked. And what makes this irresponsibility all the more reprehensible is that this wasn’t the first time that the Post engaged in this sort of disinformation and perilously inflammatory – and flagrantly false – hyperbole. Just in the past few months…

  • December 29, 2020: Israeli man reportedly dies of heart attack hours after getting COVID vaccine https://trib.al/0JiXxwB
  • January 24, 2021: Californian dies hours after getting COVID-19 vaccine, prompting probe https://trib.al/MtcfP9f
  • February 7, 2021: Elderly man collapses, dies shortly after getting COVID-19 vaccine at Javits Center https://trib.al/GTMJC89
  • April 16, 2021: NJ man hospitalized after J&J COVID-19 vaccine placed on ventilator

In every one of those stories the Post either acknowledged that there were no connections between the vaccine and the fatality, or they failed to provide any evidence of a connection. It was simply their attempt needlessly scare people to satisfy some perverse, political agenda. Never mind that last December Rupert Murdoch jetted off to the U.K. to get vaccinated himself by their socialist National Health Service.

The New York Post is unambiguously acting as anti-health terrorists. They are endangering the lives of both those who will be dissuaded from getting vaccinated, and the rest of the nation’s population that will be vulnerable to the consequences of delaying herd immunity and increasing the opportunity for new variants to emerge. It is criminal deceit and there ought to be a price to be paid.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Chief Fox News Anti-Vaxxer Tucker Carlson Pushes Deadly Pro-COVID Agenda

For a network that has been bleeding viewers for the past four months, you might think that Fox News wouldn’t want to see their audience shrink any further. Especially not due to viewers dying off from a deadly pandemic that they helped to exacerbate. But you would be wrong.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Coronavirus

On Monday night the Chief Fox News Anti-Vaxxer and Pandemic Promoter, Tucker Carlson, demonstrated just how determined he is to kill off as many of his dimwitted viewers as possible. He ran another in his series of coronavirus disinformation segments whose only plausible purpose is to convince his audience to ignore common sense health guidelines that preserve life. But then, Fox News has been doing that for nearly a year now.

Carlson began by dismissing the settled science that social distancing effectively mitigates the opportunities for viral transmission. He attributed that advice to a 19th century biologist whose work has been validated repeatedly in the intervening years but, according to Carlson, should be rejected just because it’s old (aka time-tested). Then Carlson got to the meat of his mendacious monologue that aimed to cast doubts on the efficacy of COVID vaccinations:

“This should prompt some pretty tough questions for our public health experts in this country. And one of those questions is: How effective is this coronavirus vaccine? How necessary is it to take the vaccine? Don’t dismiss those questions from anti-vaxxers. Don’t kick people off social media for asking them. Answer the questions. Especially now that the administration would like you to take this vaccine. As Joe Biden told you last week, you can’t celebrate the Fourth of July if you don’t.”

So Carlson is only “asking questions.” Never mind that these are questions that have been answered a thousand times by experts with far more credibility on the subject than a fatuous Fox Newser. All the evidence shows that the vaccines currently in use in the United States are safe and effective and critical to saving lives and returning to some degree of normality.

Still, in Carlson’s world the utterly disreputable, conspiracy-minded, anti-vaxxers must be paid attention to despite their having been exposed as crackpots long ago. What’s more, Carlson is joining his Fox confederates in distorting President Biden’s hopeful message of defeating the virus and safely enjoying gatherings with friends and family. The Foxies twisted that into an authoritarian dictate to submit to mandatory vaccination.

That ludicrous interpretation, however, exists only in the biases of right-wing deceivers like Carlson. It’s just another purposeful misstatement of fact that poisons the minds of his viewers. The result of those lies has produced a subculture of ignorance. Carlson noted that…

“When you look at the vaccination rates in certain states, it’s pretty clear that some people are not taking the vaccine on purpose.”

What Carlson isn’t mentioning is that the people he’s talking about are his own viewers who he has been lying to for months, along with others on Fox News and Donald Trump. Of course they’re skeptical. And their skepticism is fueling dangerous behavior that will surely result in more fatalities. According to a recent poll

“Nearly half of Republican men — 49% — say they won’t choose to be vaccinated if a vaccine is available to them […] Among those who said they supported Trump in 2020, 47% said they wouldn’t choose to be vaccinated. […] In contrast, 6% of Democratic men and 10% of Biden supporters said they wouldn’t get the shot. 25% of Black respondents, 28% of white respondents and 37% of Latino respondents said the same.

UPDATE: Late Tuesday Trump finally recommended that people get vaccinated (two months after he did, secretly).

What’s peculiar is that the vaccines that Carlson is maligning and portraying as unexamined and unnecessary are the same ones that Trump is now trying to take credit for. They’re the same ones that his boss, Rupert Murdoch, was vaccinated with way back in December. So since Carlson is so fond of asking questions, here a few for him:

Are you disputing your employer who clearly isn’t worried about the vaccine? Are you contradicting Trump, your political Messiah? Do you disagree with the doctors who are universally supportive of the vaccines and the science validating them? Do you really think people and society will be better off refusing to get vaccinated? Or do you just not give a damn how many people you kill? I’m just asking.

UPDATE: MSNBC’s Ari Melber did a segment on this with a supercut of Fox News shills saying how great the vaccine was when Trump was still in office.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

CNN’s Righteous Rant that ‘Tucker Carlson is the New Donald Trump’

Ever since the election last November, Fox News has suffered a crushing decline. For the first time in twenty years they fell to third place behind MSNBC and CNN As a result of that collapse, the GOP’s propaganda network has embarked on a mission to win back the Donald Trump devotee demographic that was previously their exclusive property.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump

Some of the ratings shrinkage was due to newer and more radical right-wing outlets seducing disaffected StormTrumpers after the decisive victory by Joe Biden. Although Newsmax and One America News Network are also hurting ratings-wise now. The strategy adopted by Fox News has been to shift even farther to the right. They fired some of their more “moderate” presenters and canceled programs that weren’t stridently conservative hype factories.

What’s more, Fox News shifted the content of their existing programs to even more fanatical extremism. The CEO admitted publicly that the network’s mission is to oppose Biden. And no one on Fox News has answered that call more fervently than Tucker Carlson. Some of his recent unhinged diatribes include…

On Sunday morning, CNN’s Brian Stelter opened his program, Reliable Sources, with a monologue about Carlson that hit all the right notes (video below). The theme was that “Tucker Carlson is the New Donald Trump.” It’s hard to know who should be more offended by this comparison. They are both so reprehensible that it’s too close a contest to predict. But Stelter had the goods to back it up:

“Tucker Carlson is the new Donald Trump. Tucker has taken Trump’s place as a right-wing leader, as an outrage generator, as a fire-starter. And it’s all happening on Fox just like Trump’s campaign did. Which means Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are ultimately responsible.

“Think about all the ways these two men are similar. Everyday Carlson is throwing bombs, making online memes, offending millions of people. Also delighting millions of others. Tapping into white male rage and resentment. Stoking distrust of Big Tech and the media. Generally coarsening the discourse. Never apologizing for anything. And setting the GOP’s agenda. Sounds like a recently retired president, right?”

Right! And it’s no accident. Carlson has always been a brazen self-promoter whose primary motivations were to advance his own welfare. Now he sees an opening to raise his profile among a group of people who are like cult followers left adrift when their leader has been deposed. And he’s milking it for all it’s worth. For example, these are few of Carlson’s recent tele-tantrums:

Carlson doesn’t care if he’s leading his flock off of sanity’s cliffs edge. He doesn’t care if he’s harming the country or the desperate people who are sucked into his web of lies. And Fox News doesn’t care either. Stelter closed his monologue with this cogent observation:

“It’s ultimately all about the Murdoch’s and what they want. How they’re gonna keep the profits flowing. By giving the viewers more and more radicalized content. Led by Tucker Carlson.”

The fact that a cable network can operate with such reckless abandonment of principles and callous disregard for people’s welfare is frightening. And while the responsibility rests with shameless liars like Carlson, the management cannot pretend to be blameless. The fault lies with everyone contributing to the madness and the inflammatory rhetoric that is poisoning the weak minds their audience. But sadly, their audience aren’t the only victims. Carlson and Fox are more broadly dangerous because their purposeful lies and disinformation are driving the nation apart. And that’s makes victims of us all.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News CEO Murdoch Admits that the Network Opposes Biden – For Ratings

When Fox News launched twenty-six years ago, its mission was to advance the interests of conservatives and Republicans, and to serve as a partisan counterweight to credible news enterprises and honest journalists. While that was no secret, it’s founders – right-wing newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch and GOP media consultant Roger Ailes – pretended to be “fair and balanced,” a slogan that falsely implied that other news operations were not (and which Fox ditched four years ago).

Fox News, Joe Biden

This week Rupert’s son, Lachlan Murdoch, who is now the network’s CEO, spoke at a Morgan Stanley investor conference where he said the quiet parts out loud. Apparently, in the Era of Trump and QAnon, it is no longer necessary to veil their biases in cheesy slogans. Murdoch said that…

“‘The main beneficiary of the Trump administration from a ratings point of view was MSNBC … and that’s because they were the loyal opposition,’ Murdoch said of the rival cable network. ‘That’s what our job is now with the Biden administration, and you’ll see our ratings really improve from here.'” […]

“‘Seventy-five million people voted for a Republican president, sometimes in spite of his personality at times,’ Murdoch said. ‘That’s what we represent. We’re going to stick to the center-right. That’s where our audience is.'”

Murdoch was obviously making excuses for the fact that, since the election last November, Fox News has slipped to third place in the cable news wars, behind MSNBC and CNN. Rachel Maddow is now the number one program in all of cable, not just cable news:

However, Murdoch’s explanation is peculiar in that he is also admitting that Fox News is “the loyal opposition” to the the administration of President Joe Biden. That’s wholly inappropriate from a journalistic ethics standpoint. Plus, it implies that they were affirmatively supporting Donald Trump for the past four years. Of course, anyone with a functioning cerebrum knew this, but it was rarely stated explicitly in public by Fox News executives.

What’s more, Murdoch is also saying that the reasons for his network’s blatant bias is for ratings. That’s also improper in the news business, where truth is the standard to which honest journalists aspire. Truth, of course, was the first casualty of Fox’s mangling of the reporter’s craft.

And as if that weren’t bad enough, Murdoch went on to concede the repugnant nature of Trump’s personality, or lack thereof. Yet he is still supporting him because of the voters he hopes to keep as viewers. Murdoch outright slams Trump’s noxious demeanor and, in the same sentence, declares that that’s what Fox News represents, and will continue doing so.

The position that Murdoch is taking is not acceptable for any enterprise that purports to be in the news business. And while he seemingly spoke for MSNBC, NBC didn’t appreciate that presumptuousness:

“A spokesperson for NBCUniversal News Group, which includes NBC News and MSNBC, said in response that ‘our role, and the role of any legitimate news organization — whether it includes an ‘opinion section’ or not — is to hold power to account, regardless of party.'”

And therein lies the difference between Fox News and its competitors. While other news networks may have opinions, they are based on facts and applied uniformly. At Fox News their overt negativity is always aimed the Democrats and the liberals whom they regard as enemies (as conveniently illustrated by Tucker Carlson) this week. Fox’s extreme political prejudice has even irritated other members of the Murdoch family. Lachlan’s big brother James complained about the “toxic” politics practiced by Fox News:

“Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years. […] Spreading disinformation – whether about the election, public health or climate change – has real world consequences.”

That pretty much says it all. And it comes from a source that is embedded well inside the Fox bubble. Unfortunately, James has nothing to do with the network any more, other than being a shareholder. But when Daddy Murdoch is “off the air” that may change. And then, so may Fox.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News Primetime Doubles Down on Crazy After Trump Seditionists Assault Congress

So where does an ultra-conservative television network go after the loathsome president they propped up for four years is cast out of office by a decisive majority of the American people? Well, if you’re Fox News you go shopping for programming that is even more radically right-wing and overtly offensive.

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Fox News, Maria Bartiromo, Donald Trump

That’s the path that was recently announced by Fox’s management following the humiliating loss by Donald Trump to Joe Biden last November. Fox News struggled to maintain their support for the twice-impeached Trump with brazenly dishonest propaganda. They aided and abetted his relentless attempts to spread blatant lies about election fraud, despite having no evidence. Even after Trump was caught provoking a seditionist assault against Congress, and aligning himself with the conspiracy crackpots who orchestrated and carried out the assault, Fox News continued to back him up. That’s what he gets for favoring them with nearly exclusive rights to his softball interviews for four years.

Now Fox News is pondering its future in the wake of a season of ratings declines. For the first time in years, Fox finds itself in third place after CNN and MSNBC. And this isn’t a fleeting moment in the cable news game. Fox’s ratings have been in freefall since the November 3rd election. Along with the audience’s dissatisfaction, Fox has also picked some competition from newcomers, Newsmax and One America News Network (OANN). So the patriarch of the Fox media empire, Rupert Murdoch, has retaken the reins from his son Lachlan to reimpose the extremist wingnuttery that he believes put Fox at the head of the cable news class.

NOTE: Murdoch’s other son, James, is not exactly on board. He recently released a public statement condemning the “toxic politics” and “disinformation” of “propagators of lies.” He didn’t actually cite Fox News, but his description made the connection unavaidable.

The result of Murdoch’s intervention is a new program anchoring their primetime schedule. It’s called simply “Fox News Primetime.” They probably paid a marketing consultant a fortune to come up with that. But that isn’t the worst of their problems.

The new program represents yet another shift of airtime to more ultra-conservative opinions. It will launch with a rotating cast of temporary hosts. The first week will have Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends in the anchor’s seat. He will be followed by Maria Bartiromo, Katie Pavlich, Mark Steyn, Rachel Campos-Duffy, and former U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy. What they all have in common is that they are all white wingers with an unflinching devotion to conservative politics in general and Trump in particular.

While each of them have earned their own disrepute as individuals, Bartiromo has distinguished herself as Fox’s Senior Trump-fluffer. No one on the network comes to close her drooling sycophancy. So handing her a spot in primetime signals that Fox News is determined to own the rabid wing of the Republican Party. In other words… Same as it ever was.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

James Murdoch Scorches the ‘Disinformation’ and ‘Toxic Politics’ of… Fox News?

Last week the militant flank of Donald trump’s cult brigades mounted a seditious assault on the Congress of the United States. Their mission was to disrupt the legislative branch of government from performing its constitutional duty to certify the results of the presidential election. Their orders came from Trump himself who was intent on overturning the will of the American people and declaring himself the de facto dictator of the country.

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Fox News, Titanic

Trump’s plot was a predictable failure, like pretty much everything else he attempts. But it still produced significant harm as at least five people were killed, and untold more injured. And that isn’t counting the harm it did to the nation’s reputation and faith in democracy.

However, this violent and unpatriotic insurrection didn’t happen in a political vacuum. It was whipped into a manic state of irrational fury by the relentless provocation of Trump, who devoted months to persuading his cult disciples to ignore reality and to disbelieve the facts about the election that he lost decisively to Joe Biden.

Trump was aided and abetted by an ultra-conservative pack of media shills who parroted his delusional assertions of election fraud. And that media contingent was led, as usual, by Fox News. Sycophantic bootlickers like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, all contributed to the flagrant flurry of falsehoods that buttressed Trump’s attempted coup.

The traitorous rhetoric disgorged by Fox News was produced and sanctioned by the family of Rupert Murdoch that controls the company. The patriarch, Rupert, still serves as chairman of the media empire. His son Lachlan is the current CEO. And their hand-picked executive team carries out their orders to advance the rightist dogma of the Trump-led Republican Party.

Rupert’s other son, James, has set himself apart from any operational role in the family business. Although he is still a major stockholder and sits on the board of directors. However, he appears to have somewhat less extremist conservative positions. And that was evident in his remarks following the Capitol riots:

“The damage is profound. The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very much so. Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years. […]

“Spreading disinformation – whether about the election, public health or climate change – has real world consequences. Many media property owners have as much responsibility as the elected officials who know the truth but instead choose to propagate lies. We hope the awful scenes we have all been seeing will finally convince those enablers to repudiate the toxic politics they have promoted once and forever.”

James Murdoch nimbly avoided naming names in his commentary. But it’s difficult to imagine anyone other than Fox News when he cites “those outlets that propagate lies.” Fox News has long been the foremost offender among media sources that were “spreading disinformation” about “the election, public health or climate change.” So when brother James condemns the “media property owners … who know the truth but instead choose to propagate lies,” it’s impossible to believe that he isn’t referring to his father Rupert, and his brother Lachlan.

And James is right about the persistent damage caused by the purposeful dishonesty of his family of propagandists. They enabled both Trump and the hordes he commanded into the service of his totalitarian aspirations. His statement is a profound condemnation of a media Firestarter bent on burning down the foundation of American democracy.

However, what will James do about it going forward? As a board member and stockholder he has considerable clout in shaping the future direction of the company. And he has both ethical and financial arguments for insisting on major changes. After all, Fox News has taken a considerable hit in the ratings since the election on November 3rd. CNN has actually been beating Fox regularly since then. Even MSNBC has been outperforming Fox.

So now that Fox is languishing in third place it would be a good time to shake up their programming. The problem is that they have actually been getting worse and worse. They even announced recently that they will not broadcast an inaugural special on January 20th that is being carried by CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC. So if James wants to be taken seriously, he needs to do more than release statements to his pals in the press.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. And you can follow this surrogate Twitter account here. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

UH-OH: Trump’s Fox News ‘Friends’ Admit He Has No Evidence and ‘No Shot At Success’

For twenty-five years Fox News has aggressively pursued its mission to advance an extremist conservative agenda and the partisan interests of the Republican Party. And for the past four years that has meant propping up Donald Trump, the most corrupt, dishonest, and incompetent president this nation has ever produced. It’s a record rife with lies, propaganda, and an almost proud aversion to ethical journalism.

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Fox News Friends

Within that framework of deliberate disinformation, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends managed to stand out as Trump’s most loyal and shamelessly obsequious devotees. Prior to his election he even had a weekly segment on the program called “Mondays with Trump.” However, now that Trump has been booted from the White House, there have been some baby steps toward sanity in the realm of Trump’s “Friends” on Fox News.

This course correction may have something to do with Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior as he seeks to persuade his dimwitted cult followers that he actually won reelection by a landslide. And the release of his phone call threatening Georgia election officials to get them to falsify the election results probably didn’t help him.

Consequently, on Monday morning the Fox and Friends crew took a surprising turn by presenting their viewers with a relatively realistic analysis of Trump’s preposterous and unproven claims of election fraud. With regard to the efforts by Trump and his congressional confederates to challenge the Electoral College vote, co-host Brian Kilmeade acknowledged that “It’s got no shot at success.” Co-host Steve Doocy rebutted Trump’s bizarre assertions, including his claim of thousands of dead people voting, by noting that there are only two current allegations of it.

The brief segment went on to explicitly call out Trump’s weak case for election irregularities and his demand that he be crowned President-for-Life, as illustrated in these excerpts:

Doocy: That’s the case that Donald Trump and his lawyers have put out. They said there is all this evidence. But they haven’t really produced the evidence. […]

Kilmeade: I just worry about you have that along with the protest the president is calling for on Tuesday and Wednesday. I mean, this is the type of anarchy that doesn’t work for anybody, Republicans or Democrats in the big picture. And I just think it’s up to the president’s legal team to produce what they are telling them they have. […] So far there is no proof of it. […]

Doocy: There have been a number of the president’s supporters who have said things on TV or on social media that have, you know, clouded the waters where it’s like wow, thousands of dead people. Dominion machines and all that stuff. But interestingly enough, that information is never entered into a court because you cannot present information to a court if you do not have the evidence. And so far we haven’t seen the evidence.

Like WOW, indeed! The Fox News Trump-fluffers may have finally have come to the realization that Trump has utterly failed to produce the evidence that he keeps claiming to have. And while it’s one thing to rant on TV and Twitter about flagrantly fake election crimes, they cannot be introduced in court without exposing oneself to criminal charges. That explains why the sixty-plus lawsuits filed by – and on behalf of – Trump have result in defeat and dismissal.

There appears to be a mini-trend developing among some of the properties in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. His New York Post recently published a front page story exhorting Trump to “Stop the Insanity.” His Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote that Trump should “Give it up, Mr. President — for your sake and the nation’s.” And a select minority of Fox News personalities have strayed slightly from their usual unflinching adoration of Dear Leader. That has caused Trump to viciously attack the network that made him president and to promote some even more sickly fawning media toadies like Newsmax and OANN.

But don’t let that fool you into thinking that the Murdoch worm has turned. Fox News’ “Judge” Jeanine Pirro just hosted a Trump flunky who proposed a blatantly seditious act, which she was happy to embrace.

Nevertheless. Trump’s desperate, delusional, and pathetic grasping at ludicrous conspiracy theories might be making some Foxies nervous. They may see that he’s engaged in a futile and impotent attempt to retain power to avoid the certain legal peril he faces as a civilian. And some of them may want no part of that. It’s likely that in the next few months Fox News will be trying on new personas for the post-Trump era. Eventually they will settle on flipping from a pro-Trump network to one that is virulently anti-Biden. And so it goes…

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

MUST SEE VIDEO: The Fox News Virus: Rupert Murdoch’s Empire of Misinformation

On Friday evening MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” aired a segment that neatly encapsulated the human atrocity that is Rupert Murdoch and his virulently un-American right-wing media empire.

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Fox News Rupert Murdoch

The segment simply must be seen to do it justice. And therefore, here is an excerpt of the opening, followed by the video of this righteous rant:

“For the past nine months Rupert Murdoch-owned media have, by and large, waged a war against public health and the scientific consensus on containing the corona virus. On Fox News and elsewhere they’ve been playing down the virus and peddling just outright lies and pushing junk science and elevating cranks. All of which has tangibly, materially contributed to behavior that has made the pandemic worse.

“And what makes it all the more infuriating is that — as we have noted — while Fox hosts have been dismissing the experts, and suggesting lockdowns don’t work, and ridiculing people that avoid the office and follow public health guidelines, many Fox News employees have been working remotely at the same time.

“So now we arrive at the question of the vaccine. And last night one of Murdoch’s minions went on air to coyly just ask questions and rail against the offense of pro-vaccine propaganda that’s propagated by all corners of the media and the elite consensus that you should get the vaccine. Quote: ‘On the question of the coronavirus vaccine, our leaders are definitely not pro-choice. Their view is “do what you’re told and don’t complain.”‘ Of course, no one is actually telling you what to do. The vaccine is voluntary.”

The “minion” of which Hayes spoke was Fox’s Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson. And he did indeed devote much of his program to disgorging flagrant lies about the coronavirus vaccine. He characterized it as the key component of a plot to enslave Americans under some undefined threat of “social control.” His preposterous horror story included evil doctors, tech companies, media figures, and politicians. He even fingered Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Carlson asserted was both a ring leader and incompetent.

Hayes went on to point out some blatant hypocrisies. For instance, Fox News never bothered castigate Vice-President Mike Pence, who publicly got the vaccination that Fox News is now disparaging as a marketing ploy to trap people in their net of social control. Hayes also recounted how Murdoch’s New York Post set out to deliberately ruin the life of an innocent and heroic COVID nurse by spreading lascivious tales about her personal life that had no news value. The only purpose for the story was to be cruel in order to make a trivial political point

Hayes closed with a summary of how Murdoch fits into in this picture by noting that it was just “another day In the life of one of the most destructive people on the planet.” Which pretty well captures Murdoch’s villainous role. He is the lynchpin in the cabal of conservativism that is dragging down the American principles of freedom and democracy. And if he is allowed to get away with it, the American experiment will end in failure.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.