Fox News leans conservative. Okay, it's dripping with conservatism . If you watch Hannity and Colmes, you'll see that Hannity steals the show and Colmes gets stuffed in a dark corner. When he's allowed out to conduct an interview, he's treated like Elizabeth Hasselbeck on The View. So what? Liberals have the backing of ABC, The Washington Post, MSNBC, The New York Times, CNN, and nearly every loud and obnoxious celebrity with a platform.
If we didn't have Fox News, we'd all be, well...Democrats. Without an opposing viewpoint and information that Fox News takes the time to research and report, I'd think that Democrats were superior and Republicans were wicked too.
A wise man once told me that most people want to hear "news" that supports their beliefs. While this is true, don't assume that watching CNN and reading the New York Times is going to give you the broad overview you seek.
10 comments:
Well at least we agree on something!!
Poor Colmes…not only is he always stuffed in a corner and rarely allowed to finish s sentence but they dress him funny as well. It must all be a plot to make the “real” Fox news talking heads look more professional.
Let’s do be a little more careful mixing everything in the liberal pot, so to speak. It’s one thing to list ABC, the NYT, MSNBC and others together but you must, absolutely must place all the obnoxious celebrities on a completely different list. They try make news but don’t report it. By the way, I hear Brittany Speers is a Palin fan – what does that say?? Can you say trailer park in a nice falsetto?
You must be upset with ABC (since they are on your liberal list) because Gibson tried to do an in depth interview with a VP candidate that she just couldn’t handle. I’m surprised you didn’t include NBC on your list after those fiasco versions of interviews that went on to prove the apparent lack of depth of thinking in this individual.
The bad thing about TV news is that the term is a misnomer. Fox News actually lasts for a few minutes at best. The rest is Fox (or insert another station name here) opinion. If that weren’t the case Headline News would last for more than 30 minutes every half hour. It is also difficult to tell when the new ends and the opinions begin. Print, on the other hand, clearly defines where the news ends and the editorial page begins. And it’s pretty consistent with most newspapers, sitting on the last few pages of the main news section. When a news article clearly states the who, what when, where and how it becomes easier to separate fact from fiction.
As for a broad overview of the news, be very careful what you watch on cable news networks that exist for more than news reporting. Do read as many different newspapers as possible and do open your mind to other possibilities. It’s what made our nation great.
Say, we did agree on one thing, didn’t we…?
Looks like Colmes had enough. For now, "Hannity America"...a liberal's nightmare!
Even Democrats concede that the media was shamelessly one-sided in their reporting of this election (with the obvious exception of Fox News).
Oh, and Britney Spears is the best you can come up with? Do you have any idea how many celebrity morons went out for Obama? I don't have the time to list them all...and you darn well know it.
An article in The Guardian gives a scary view at the depths that the US media will sink in order to kiss up to the Bush administration.
The article is about the $70M lawsuit that Dan Rather is bringing against CBS for breach of contract. Rather was fired the day after the 2004 election because of a story he ran about Bush’s military record in the National Guard. Rather suggests that they fired him because CBS’s parent company wanted to curry favor for regulatory issues that were due to come up during Bush’s second term.
Perhaps the most stunning revelation is that the panel that CBS set up to investigate the story was packed with conservatives. Among the people that CBS considered for the panel were far-right broadcasters Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
Rather further contends that CBS tried to suppress other stories that were damaging to the government, including reporting on evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib.
The final irony is that you have to read a UK newspaper in order to learn about this. Maybe we will get to hear about it when the case goes to court early in 2009.
From the article:
Rather contends not only that his report was true - "What the documents stated has never been denied, by the president or anyone around him," he says - but that CBS succumbed to political pressure from conservatives to get the report discredited and to have him fired.
Some hypocrisy:
From Monday, November 10, 2008
Former GOP Congressman and now cable TV commentator Joe Scarborough has a long history of fighting against obscene words on TV.
In 2003, Scarborough was incensed that the FCC refused to impose fines on ABC when Bono used “the F word” during a live broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards. Scarborough even claimed that because of his proper upbringing he didn’t use such words.
In 2006, Scarborough hosted a show that attacked Barbra Streisand for using the F word when speaking about President Bush.
Most famously Scarborough led the charge against the infamous 2004 Super Bowl Janet Jackson halftime show, insisting that the FCC chairman Michael Powell hit CBS with massive fines or be fired. “But I have got to say, that’s the problem, not just being exposed to Janet Jackson, but being exposed to the F-bomb several times from rock stars at award shows, from actresses at award shows. Unbelievable.”
So you probably can guess where this is going. This morning Joe Scarborough said “fuck you” on TV when talking about Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff.
The funniest thing about it is that he didn’t seem to realize that he had actually said it until the other people on the show started tittering and blushing.
I just love this one from Atlantic Monthly!
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12 Jan 2009 06:31 pm
The Funny Wilderness
A reader notes:
I'm really starting to enjoy these FOX FORUM topics on Fox News' web page, as the right get more isolated, bitter, and bizarre. These two topics were featured last week, on the same day:
• FOX FORUM: Advice for Obama — Put a Sock in It
• FOX FORUM: Obama's Plan Is the Great Snow Job of '09
And here's today's:
• FOX FORUM: Bush Should Have Gratitude of All Americans
Does that skinny woman have another book out? Or did I miss it?
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You know, if Bush had been a decent president the reupblicans wouldn't be in this fix right now! No media could have stirred things up so well. ;-))
“Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary. I’ll predict that right now.” -William Kristol on Fox News Sunday, Dec 17, 2006.
Coverage of the Tea Parties
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Some coverage from CNN featuring a protestor calling Obama a fascist and holding a sign depicting Obama as Hitler. The reporter asks him several times why he thinks Obama is a fascist, and his reply is only “because he is”.
A more accurate answer to her question might have been “because Fox News tells me he is.” In this coverage from the “we report, you decide” cable news channel, their reporter Cody Willard calls the stimulus bill a “fascist” piece of legislation, and exhorts viewers to “wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country.”
See also this video, which shows Fox’s Neil Cavuto blatantly lying. On the air he claims that the crowd size at a protest in Sacramento as “easily” 10,000 to 15,000 people, while just before that (but off the air) he and his producer estimated the crowd at 5,000. The California Highway Patrol independently estimated the crowd to be 5,000 at its peak. Crowd numbers were expected to be higher in California than most other states, because anti-tax sentiments are running especially high after Governor Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers made a budget deal in February that included temporary increases to sales, income and vehicle taxes.
Faux News can’t get anything right — part two
Monday, April 13, 2009
Earlier today, I posted a story about Fox News Channel blatantly lying about its role in the “tea parties” that are being held around the US. Not willing to merely rest on their laurels, Fox News then proceeded to get the whole pirate standoff story wrong, taking it as an opportunity to lambast the Obama administration for being weak even before they had any of the facts. They bet that Obama would not be able to resolve the crisis. They were wrong.
When Fox claims “we report, you decide” how can anyone not roll on the floor laughing at them?
Fox News — why do they hate America so much that they bet against it?
Astroturf Politics
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The term “astroturf” was coined to refer to “grass-roots” events that are faked — typically organized and financed secretly by a hidden organization to promote their political goals.
One of the most famous examples of astroturfing was the “Brooks Brothers Riot” that succeeded in stopping the Florida recount during the 2000 presidential election. That somewhat violent riot was designed to appear to be spontaneous, but was actually organized by Republican congressman John Sweeney, and the protestors were Republican congressional staffers who were flown in specifically for the event.
Today, on Tax Day, we are seeing essentially the same thing in the “Tea Bagging” parties that are being promoted by various well-financed conservative organizations, including Fox News. What makes these events particularly ironic is that they are being organized and paid for by the very people that the tea baggers should actually be protesting. As Matt Taibbi puts it “You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your stuff.”
Doubly ironic is that the “tea bagging” parties are supposedly protesting high taxes, but a new Gallup poll shows that more Americans say that their tax rate is “about right” than say that it is “too high”. In other words, there is no groundswell of protest against tax rates, other than perhaps among the rich — who of course are the people financing the tea bag events. Not only that, but the tea parties are targeting their rage at Obama, even though he is actually cutting taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 per year.
But those events are just practice for what might turn out to be the largest astroturf in history — the coming sham “grass-roots” campaign against the reform of the health insurance industry. Already, health insurance lobbyists have hired a PR firm to send phoney letters to the editor. In fact, the PR firm is sending in letters using the names of actual senior citizens, without their consent or even knowledge. The PR firm even called up a newspaper to see if a letter supposedly sent by Gloria Gosselin was going to be printed, and pretended to be her grandson. Except Gosselin didn’t write a letter, and the caller wasn’t her grandson.
The health insurance industry was able to derail reform during the Clinton administration, and as a result we now pay more for health care than any other nation, and get less in return. Will we get fooled again?
This short clip from Fox News demonstrates clearly why these charlatans shouldn’t have press credentials. The headline is “National Healthcare: Breeding Ground for Terror?” I kid you not:
(I would drop in the link but you don’t have high speed and I’m sure you’ve seen the story anyway)
This is so wrong on so many different levels:
Their whole premise, that nationalized health care promotes terrorism, is a joke. But they don’t get the joke.
Fox News is clearly acting as a tool of the health insurance industry. I hope they were well paid.
Their main argument, that countries like England import many of their doctors and Muslim countries are a big source of these doctors, is racist. It equates Muslims with terrorists.
Their other argument, made with no evidence at all, is that terrorists use government bureaucracies because they can hide in them while cooking up their nefarious plans.
Finally, and one of my big pet peeves, is that Fox keeps talking about National Health Care. As far as I know, nobody is proposing that we nationalize our health care. Even the most far-reaching left-wing proposals are for nationalizing only our health insurance, not our doctors or hospitals. And Obama’s plan doesn’t even do that — it is not a “single payer” plan. By continually talking about doctors working for the government, Fox is trying to scare you — and using information that even they must know is false.
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