War on Fox update

This video comes from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Yesterday, The Daily Show finally brought up the "War on Fox," and I'll just let them take it from here:

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For Fox Sake!
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Please, discuss and comment.

Mainstream media goes to bat for Fox

Mike Madden at Salon.com raised an important question on his blog yesterday about the ongoing "War against Fox." Despite the fact that Fox has been nothing but combative toward other mainstream media outlets, relentlessly alleging liberal bias, etc., the media has largely flocked to Fox's side since the network was outed as a right-wing media operation. Mike Madden asks us, "Why?"

From Mike Madden at Salon.com:

Why is the media defending Fox and attacking Obama?

It could be a simple matter of who's in the club, and who isn't

By the time the White House got around to declaring that the administration had simply had enough of Fox News Channel, it wasn't exactly a surprise to anyone. Just three months into President Obama's term, Fox's broadcasting parent had stopped showing presidential news conferences, sticking with regularly scheduled fare like "Lie to Me" instead; returning the favor, Obama froze them out last month when he appeared on every other network's Sunday show to pitch healthcare reform. An armada of Fox News hosts spend their time getting the right-wing troops hot and bothered about creeping socialism and murky conspiracy theories, and the network's fodder often quickly becomes a GOP talking point.

So on the face of it, there wasn't much to argue with when White House aides started saying most of the Fox News crew wasn't giving them a fair shot. Still, listening to some Beltway pundits react to the administration's decision, you might think the White House had ordered Fox boss Roger Ailes to be shipped off to Guantánamo. Fox News isn't exactly universally admired by other political reporters -- after all, the network's "Fair and Balanced" slogan is pretty obviously meant to be a shot at the rest of the press corps, and its cable news competitors get almost as many barbs from Fox as the administration does. But some talking heads from other news organizations started scolding the White House as soon as the battle was joined.

"It makes the White House look childish and petty at best, and it has a distinct Nixonian -- Agnewesque? -- aroma at worst," Ruth Marcus wrote on a Washington Post blog. Her colleague Sally Quinn told Fox News the episode reminded her of Watergate. (Likewise, NPR's Ken Rudin initially compared the White House move to Nixon's enemies list, though he later apologized for the comparison.) ABC News' Jake Tapper pressed the White House on whether it was appropriate for officials to weigh in on what was or wasn't a legitimate news organization. On Time's Swampland blog, Joe Klein said the White House was better off ignoring Fox than trying to hit back

...continue reading at Salon.com

Portrait of Shep Smith: A Diamond in the Rough

At Fox News, honesty and reflection are hard to come by. But one man stands alone. Shepard Smith has been with the network since its launch in 1996 and is now the network's lead anchor. Though it has been said many times and many ways that Fox is political operation, an arm of the GOP and a fear-mongering phenom, Shep Smith seems like a man at odds with the constant beating of right-wing drums at times.

Now I know that some of you are thinking that I'm picking on ol' Shep, but I assure you that I'm sincere. If Fox were a network of Shep Smiths, the viewers may not necessarily be more informed, but at least they would be more entertained (which, let's face it, is why a lot of people watch Fox to begin with).

To help make my case, I'd like to point to some of Shep's greatest on-air moments in which he proves himself one of the few willing to break with the network, and somehow keep his job. The instances are token, sure, but in the land of the blind that is Fox News, Shep Smith is without a doubt the one-eyed king.

Exhibit A: This clip is from yesterday. Smith actually apologizes for the network's "lack of balance," during an interview with the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Chris Christie. New Jersey is a heavily Democratic state and Jon Corzine, the incumbent, is likely to win, which is absent from the story, and the subject of Shep's disdain.

Exhibit B: In this instance, Shep Smith grills Republican Sen. John Barrasso on the public option.

Exhibit C: Shep Smith, famously lost his sh*t over torture, despite every other member of the network marginalizing the role of torture and trying to redefine it alongside the Bush administration's ideas on the subject.

At times, he is strident, lucid and journalist-y. At other times, it just look as though he is coming apart at the seams right before our eyes. These last three clips are just for fun.

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Media Matters' clip sheds light on Right-wing media machine

Media Matters posted another of their signature montages yesterday, urging us to quit laughing at the absurdity of recent right-wing claims, and start taking them seriously. The clip is chilling and speaks for itself:

From Media Matters:

Washington, DC - Today, Media Matters for America released a new video demonstrating how the conservative echo chamber operates in the age of President Obama. Conservative activists - aided by Fox News, a political organization disguised as a news network - use distortions, lies, and smear tactics to shape public opinion and influence national policy.

Chris Wallace compares Obama's "War against Fox" to the Untouchables, Dana Perino agrees with the comparison

This morning on Fox News Sunday, concerned parent and host of the show, Chris Wallace played a clip of "The Untouchables," as evidence of where Obama comes from and the foundation of how his White House does things.

Who did he have on to discuss this? Dana freakin' Perino. The former press secretary to President Bush *gasp* agreed with Wallace's analysis of the film and its relevance to the "Chicago way," which undoubtedly is applicable to not only Eliot Ness, but also the president.



I know it's hard to believe that Fox News' host Chris Wallace and a former Bush official agree completely in pooh-poohing the administration's behavior.

The Washington Post loves them some anonymous claims

Way back when we weren't involved in two wars, the mainstream media failed, miserably, to provide any sort of debate on the issue of going to war. Phil Donahue lost his job for even suggesting debate on the march to war in Iraq, critics were painted as unpatriotic, and the Bush administration got their war.

How did this happen? Part of the problem was the media's heavy reliance on anonymous sources. Alarmist claims and unsupported accusations were the mode when these shadowy hawks were involved. The question today is, has the media learned from their missteps? Apparently not. Glenn Greenwald takes a closer look:

Anonymous sources. Scary war-fueling claims. One-sided accounts. Sound familiar?
Anyone who believes the establishment media in the U.S. learned even a single lesson from what happened with Iraq should immediately read this featured Washington Post article by Joby Warrick, which gravely and frighteningly warns that Iran's Qom nuclear facility "was intended explicitly for making highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons." It's filled with one alarmist claim after the next (all anonymously provided, needless to say), such as this: "That number is too small to furnish fuel for a civilian power plant, but just big enough to supply Iran annually with up to three bombs' worth of weapons-grade fuel, the former officials said" and "Qom could produce enough bomb-grade fuel for two to three bombs annually."

The issue isn't whether you believe Iran desires to develop nuclear weapons; it's obviously possible (even rational) that they do. The issue is the painfully reckless, transparently irresponsible, and Iraq-replicating "journalistic" methods for disseminating these war-fueling assertions. In perfect 2002 fashion, Warrwick does not have a single named source for these scary allegations; instead, this is who fed him these claims: "many U.S. and European intelligence officials" and "two former senior U.S. officials" and "intelligence officials from the United States and allied nations" and "a senior Middle East-based intelligence official" (one wonders, in vain, which "allied nation" and which "Middle-East based" country might have whispered these things?). And while Warwick provides a cursory paragraph devoted to denials by Iranian officials of these accusations, he does not include a single expert or named source to dispute these claims. It's a purely one-sided, unquestioning and entirely anonymous series of dubious, unverified, fear-mongering assertions that can have no purpose other than to create the most sinister picture of the "Iranian threat" possible.

In other words, it's the exact pattern used to lead the country to attack Iraq. Beltway reporters like Warwick have learned nothing and establishment media institutions are just as devoted as ever to beating war drums on command. What else could possibly explain a shoddy, trashy article like this making it past a team of editors? And just imagine how much worse it would get if the U.S. government actually wanted to bomb Iran. All of this is happening while, at least from all appearances, the White House wants to avoid that outcome.

Glenn Beck wants you...to die trying

Thursday on the Glenn Beck show, Glenn Beck asked his listeners to "die trying." Trying what you ask? To overthrow the tyrannical socialismfacistmarxism of Obama of course. Mike Madden at Salon.com has the story:

Glenn Beck used his show Thursday to wax poetic about what he'd like to see in conservative candidates for political office. He riffed for a while on a metaphor involving buildings, and glass companies, and whether skyscraper windows should be opaque (yes, it really did make about that much sense on the air). And then he boiled it all down to one final summation before jumping off to a commercial break.

Glenn Beck: "That's all I want, is somebody who will die trying.

You know what? That one person may fail. We're going to need hundreds of Mr. Smiths. When one goes in, they're going to get licked. They are. They are going to get licked. So, we'll send another, and they'll get licked.

And we'll send more and more and more and more, and each one we send will put another dent in their armor. And we're going to keep it coming. We're going to keep taking those licks until the people in Washington start looking more like our first leader George Washington and wake up.

You know what? He answered the call of the nation, not because he wanted fame or fortune or glory or power, but because it was the right thing. He didn't want to serve. He didn't want to serve.

I don't know a single soul that wants to serve and if you do want to serve in Washington, you're not the guy. Just do the right thing."

Got all that? If you want to serve in Washington, you're not the guy for the job. But that's okay, because you'll probably die trying to get the job done anyway. And when you do, more cannon fodder will be sent in right after you.

Let us not forget these calls for martyrdom the next time a conservative lashes out, convinced that the he or she is "doing the right thing," to borrow Beck's words.

Fox News' greatest hits since Obama's inauguration

The good people at Media Matters have put together a little clip that should help illustrate to the punditocracy the justification behind Anita Dunn's calling Fox News the "communications arm of the Republican Party." The goal of this clip is to just give you a taste of what Fox has been spewing for the last ten months.



I think that the clip says it all. If this is not vitriolic attack based on ideological ground, I'm not sure what is. Here is a screenshot from foxnews.com taken just a few minutes before this post,




If this really is a war between Fox and the White House, I think it's safe to say that Fox is the aggressor.

First Things First

Hello there,

My name is Kevin. I now write a blog. The goal of this blog, broadly stated, is to point out and discuss some of the more egregious errors committed by our cable news. Obviously, with Fox, MNBC, CNN, and CNBC pumping out garbage on a 24-hour cycle, it would be absolutely impossible for me to try to cover all the mistakes, so I will try to keep it to those I find most worthy of discussion. If you'd like a broader picture, I recommend Media Matters. I hope to generate discussion more than dictate to you all, so please comment. Today's post is more to establish the blog than anything, so I'll begin with a clip that I feel does an excellent job of media criticism, with a little humor to boot.

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CNN Leaves It There
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