Fox News Caught Coddling Conspiracy Crackpots for Fear of Losing Audience and Advertisers – Again!

Posted by Mark NC on March 29, 2023 at 1:17 pm. 1 Comments :

The billion dollar defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News is getting closer to being played out in court. And with an April 17 trial date, there is still more evidence of Fox’s fraudulence coming out on a nearly daily basis. The extent of their ethical emptiness continues to astonish and disgust.

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The latest exposure of Fox’s unscrupulousness came in the form of a “slide deck” that Dominion lawyers used at a March 28 hearing. Matthew Gertz of Media Matters posted images of the presentation by Dominion’s lawyers (in this Twitter thread). And while it contains some cringeworthy examples of deceitfulness, it is also all too reminiscent of what has been published previously.

Among the new disclosures are internal communications from Fox News executives and hosts. They show that these people have no regard for journalist principles or the welfare of the nation. What follows are some samplings from the hearing…

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott:
[Reacting to a reporter’s fact checking] “This has to stop now. This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.” […]

“I can’t keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers and how to handle stories. The audience feels like we crapped on and we have damaged their trust and belief in us. We lost 25k subs from FOX NATION.

Fox News Host Maria Bartiromo:
“We have to go to a full on war. They have used all systems to defraud… Jared says he doesn’t want to hear about any conspiracy theory… The campaign is not doing shit.” […]

“The country needs to survive. We need to keep this president. Noone (sic) thinks anyway that people voted for Biden.” […]

“It was sophisticated funded and orchestrate & uses all areas of fraud including digital. We now know Nancy Pelosi has an interest in it. It’s directed also by Soros.”

Fox News Host Tucker Carlson:
“[Sidney Powell] is a psychopath. She’s getting Trump all spun up and has zero evidence. Same with Rudy [Giuliani].” […]

“[Mike] Lindell seems to really have gone off the deep end. He is definitely crazy… I agree there’s concern about Lindell being a conspiracy theorist now. But he has bailed us out loads of times when no one else would.” […]

“We can concentrate on cancel culture rather than his wild claims… If no one is buying him, he loses money to be able to advertise with us. And then we lose our biggest advertiser.”

[Note: After most major advertisers pulled out of Carlson’s show to avoid association with his racism and conspiracy theories, Lindell was indeed his biggest advertiser. Although he had problems of his own]

Fox News “Brain Room” staffer Leonard Balducci:
“Claims about Dominion switching or deleting votes are 100% false. Dominion systems continue to reliably and accurately count ballots, and state and local authorities as well as fact checkers, have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process.” […]

“Dominion has no company ownership relationships with any member of the Pelosi family, the Feinstein family, or the Clinton Global Initiative.”

These are the sort of statements that prompted the Society of Professional Journalists to respond to the allegations against Fox News in a damning statement by their Professional Standards and Ethics Committee. They found…

“…the allegations against Fox News deeply troubling. A fundamental ethical rule of journalism, set out in the SPJ Code of Ethics, is to seek the truth and report it. If a news organization knowingly spreads lies, either in news reporting or opinion, it has clearly breached this most sacred of principles. No responsible journalist can accept or excuse this behavior. […]

“[And that] responsible opinion hosts and commentators have a duty to use verified facts as the basis of their arguments and to not peddle what they know to be lies and disinformation. Many people use the information they get from their favorite hosts and commentators to form their own opinions.”

Indeed, that last line illustrates the problem that Fox News creates when they deliberately mislead their viewers. Of course, Fox doesn’t view it as a problem, It’s precisely the effect they intend to have on their audience. And the truly sad part of this is that it’s working.

SEE THIS: IT’S A CULT: Most Fox News Viewers Are Still Loyal After Dominion Lawsuit Discloses Their Lies

If anyone still thinks that Fox should be considered a “news” enterprise, ask yourselves this question: Why havn’t any of the alleged “journalists” at Fox resigned after learning about just how corrupt and dishonest the organization is? How could anyone who regards themselves as an ethical reporter continue to work for such a company? Why won’t they even make a public statement of disapproval?

The answer, of course, is that there isn’t anyone at Fox with the integrity to take such a stand. They are all equally responsible and, thus, reprehensible. There isn’t one of them with an ounce of honor or professional decency.

UPDATE I: In a March 31 ruling on summary judgement, the judge found that “The evidence is ‘CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements [made on Fox News] relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.'”

UPDATE II: The judge in the Dominion case has sanctioned Fox News for withholding evidence. He also made several other rulings that hamper Fox’s ability to deflect from the issue of defamation.

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Too Close to Trump? Fox News Won’t Run Ad for Oscar-Nominated Anti-Nazi Documentary

Posted by Mark NC on February 14, 2019 at 10:45 am. 1 Comments :

The Trump-fluffing by Fox News has been going on for three years now. It hardly seems like news to point out new instances of their blatant bias and propaganda. But every now and then they achieve new lows of sycophantic sucking up that require special attention. And on Wednesday they had just such an achievement.

A documentary about Nazis in America in 1939 has been nominated for an Oscar in the Documentary Short category.. It’s called “A Night at the Garden,” and tells the story of a rally in New York City by supporters of fascism. It’s a revealing, albeit disturbing, moment of truth from America’s past. And it’s something that all Americans should be aware of. To that end, the producers sought to run an ad for the film (video below) on fox News, but ran into an obstacle. According to the Hollywood Reporter

“Fox News has rejected a national advertising buy for a 30-second spot that warns viewers about the potential dangers of American fascism after an ad sales representative said network leadership deemed it inappropriate, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.”

“The spot doubles as a promotion of this year’s Oscar-nominated documentary short A Night at the Garden, which recounts a 1939 Nazi rally in New York City, and a warning — ‘It Can Happen Here’ – to Hannity’s largely conservative viewers about the potential dangers of President Donald Trump’s brand of populism.”

So Fox News doesn’t think this ad is “appropriate” for their network? You have to wonder what about this ad they considered inappropriate. It is almost entirely historical footage of the Manhattan rally. It never says anything political, other than the closing tag line that “It can happen here.” It doesn’t mention Donald Trump or any political party.

The only plausible explanation for rejecting this ad is that Fox News simply considered it too close to the sort of fascism that is recognizable in Trump’s rhetoric and demeanor. Without any direct or indirect references to Trump, Fox made this association on their own and decided to ban the ad for fear of shocking the tender sensitivities of Sean Hannity’s Trump worshipping audience.

While Fox News considered this ad inappropriate for their air, they didn’t feel the same way last year about an ad by Trump that literally accused Democrats of being responsible for every crime committed in the U.S. by undocumented immigrants. It had a truly fascist tone in saying that “Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.” In addition to that disgusting attack, the ad was a flamingly racist assault on all Latino immigrants. But Fox news aired it anyway, until the public backlash caused them to reverse course.

In rejecting the documentary ad, a statement was released by Fox’s ad sales group that was troubling all by itself:

“A Fox News national ad sales representative told the distributor’s media-buying agency on Wednesday that CEO Suzanne Scott (“our CEO”) said the ad was ‘not appropriate for our air,’ according to email correspondence viewed by THR.”

Imagine that. The Fox News CEO actually stepped in to make sure the ad would not air. That’s highly unusual. Executives at that level rarely make decisions about advertising content. This shows how determined the network is to shield Trump from any potentially negative fallout.

Even though the ad doesn’t allude to Trump in any way, the top brass at Fox still made that association and nixed the ad. And in doing so they actually affirmed their own fears by acting like the fascists they are striving to disassociate themselves from. Good work, Fox.

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

Fox News is So Littered with Repugnant Rage-aholics they Need Nannies to Avoid Being Offensive

Posted by Mark NC on June 28, 2018 at 1:12 pm. NO Comments :

There is an unmistakable relationship between the tenor of Fox News reporting and the unhinged ravings of Donald Trump. Both engage in unrestrained hyperbole and lies floating in a pungent broth of foul rhetoric. What were once called “dog whistles” intended to subtly appeal to loathsome confederates, are now better described as bull horns bleating to faithful disciples.

Recently Fox News has been taken to task for offensive remarks by their hosts and guests. The only thing about this that’s new is the criticism. Fox News has long been a source of racist commentaries and abhorrent outbursts on the air. Some examples that occurred in just the past couple of weeks include host Laura Ingraham comparing the immigrant child cages to “summer camps.” Or the former Trump deputy campaign chief, David Bossie, saying that the African-American he was debating was “out of your cotton-picking mind.” For these and many other instances, there has been a backlash against Fox News by advertisers.

Consequently, the new Fox News president, Suzanne Scott, called a meeting of the network’s producers to law down the law: “You are responsible as the producers. You have to protect the talent and the brand.” Notice that the admonition by Scott was not that they needed to refrain from making racist or derogatory statements, or from being insensitive to the suffering of children or other victims of injustice. It was purely a fiscal matter to prevent tarnishing the company or the reputation of its personnel. In other words, they were welcome to express the very same heinous opinions so long as they hid them within more “acceptable” language.

It should be noted that Scott could not have been surprised by the discourse on her network. She was the executive responsible for giving both Ingraham and Tucker Carlson prime time programs. Ironically, before Carlson supplicated himself to Fox he referred to them as “a mean, sick group of people.” So Scott knew exactly what she was getting into. But what’s unprecedented about this new corporate mandate is simply the fact that producers need to be told to clean up the patter of their hosts and guests. That’s actually a recognition on Fox’s part that there is a big problem with them going out of the bounds of decency and that they need to be carefully monitored – and even punished – to insure that they are constrained from acting on their natural, ugly impulses.

What that tells us is that Fox News is now aware of something most news consumers already knew: That Fox is a bastion of crudeness and invective and that their “talent” can’t be trusted to be civil. But to be fair, the same thing is true of Donald Trump. So if the President is doing it, and Fox News is really just a State TV asset, then maybe they need not bother with the nannies at all. Let it all out and let the viewers and advertisers decide.

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

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