Media -- Faux News

October 16, 2009

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, and Zaid Jilani

MEDIA

Faux News

In recent days, a war of words has erupted between Fox News and the White House. It began last week when White House communications director Anita Dunn told Time magazine, "[Fox News] is opinion journalism masquerading as news." Last weekend, she told CNN, "Fox News operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party." This set off a blustering reaction from Fox, whose senior vice president Michael Clemente responded, "It's astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming. It seems self-serving on their part." Fox News host Glenn Beck went further, comparing the White House effort to call out Fox News's partisanship to Richard Nixon's attacks on the press and compiling of an enemies list. The truth is, Fox engages in practices that a legitimate news network would never do, regularly promoting GOP talking points and misinforming its audience on key policy debates.

A GOP TALKING POINTS MACHINE: While Fox infamously maintains that it is "fair and balanced," the fact is that the network often does little more than shovel out Republican Party talking points. For example, its "news" anchors regularly parrot the "where are the jobs?" mantra of the GOP. In July, House Republicans, one after another, took to the floor to engage in political theater by repeatedly asking that question. Numerous Fox hosts, especially America's Newsroom co-host Bill Hemmer, have echoed that talking point time and time again, failing to mention that they borrowed it from the GOP. Another example of the network aligning itself directly with the Republican agenda was its endless promotion of the conservative "tea party" demonstrations. The network even went as far as to "[provide] attendance and organizing information" for the right-wing demonstrations -- hardly the behavior of an objective network. As Comedy Central's Jon Stewart recently pointed out, the network gave wall-to-wall coverage of the anti-tax, anti-government demonstrations, yet completely ignored a similarly-sized demonstration in favor of gay rights. Indeed, Fox News chief executive Bill Shine has proudly boasted that his network aims to be "the voice of opposition."

A NETWORK OF DISINFORMATION: Fox repeatedly deceives its audience. A 2003 study found that 80 percent of those who primarily relied on Fox News believed falsehoods about why the U.S. invaded Iraq. In June 2007, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that Fox covered the war less than CNN and MSNBC, and yet, its anchors now claim the network was "very faithful about covering all the bad news that came out of Iraq." A poll conducted last August found that 72 percent of self-identified Fox News viewers believe the false claim that health reform will provide insurance to undocumented immigrants, 79 percent believe it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions (it won't), and 75 percent believe that it will allow the government to put the elderly to death. This isn't to say that the network always misinforms people. In a recent exchange with Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Fox host Shepard Smith rightly corrected the senator and disproved his own network's talking point that a public option would mean a "government takeover" of the entire health care system. As Smith pointed out, the public option is simply a government-run health insurance plan that people can choose. This left the Barrasso flummoxed and clearly surprised that a Fox anchor would ever challenge Republican disinformation.

A HYPOCRITICAL NETWORK: While Fox claims to be outraged over the White House pointing out that certain news networks are blatantly partisan, the fact is that it was singing a different tune under the Bush administration. In May 2008, White House counselor Ed Gillespie sent a scathing public letter to NBC News President Steve Capus, claiming that the network was guilty of deceptive editing and blurring the lines between the "news" and "opinion," a charge not unlike the one the Obama White House has leveled against Fox News. Rather than attacking the White House for calling out the press as it is doing now, Fox's hosts supported the Bush White House. Fox contributor Laura Ingraham even went as far as to say, "Why would the White House agree to do an interview with [NBC correspondent] Richard Engel?...I mean, why really bother at this point?" Then-Fox host E.D. Hill heartily agreed, "NBC News basically panders to the left and is, in essence, in the pocket for Barack Obama. Why go on a venue like that to begin with?" Gillespie has changed his mind now that Fox, and not NBC, is the target of White House scorn. Beck asked him about the White House effort to "blackball Fox," adding, "You don't see Republicans doing that to NBC, do you?" "No, and sometimes I question why," replied Gillespie. "It is beyond me, frankly."

MEDIA -- CNN ADMITS CONFLICT OF INTEREST FOR CONSERVATIVE 'CONTRIBUTOR' CASTELLANOS: In a statement released yesterday, CNN confirmed that their on-air contributor, Alex Castellanos, was guilty of "potential conflicts of interest" when he made comments on health insurance reform while at the same time being paid by the insurance industry group, America's Health Insurance Plan (AHIP), to design an anti-reform media campaign. CNN's announcement came just hours after the Plum Line's Greg Sargent confirmed Castellanos' political consulting firm, National Media, was the buyer for AHIP's new ad blitz attacking health reform plans before Congress. Castellanos, the self-described "father of the modern attack ad," is also a health care reform opposition leader. In July, Castellanos wrote a memo for the GOP leadership on how to kill health reform, arguing that the Republicans' goal should be to destroy any reform effort: "If we slow this sausage-making process down, we can defeat it." Additionally, according to the FEC website, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has made four payments totaling $434,336 to Castellanos' firm for media work. While devising plans to kill reform and accepting huge payments from the RNC and AHIP, Castellanos both made outrageous claims about reform and feigned bipartisanship on CNN without ever mentioning his conflicts of interest. After Castellanos was exposed, CNN vowed to be more "vigilant" in reporting future "potential conflicts of interest." The policy will hopefully apply to other CNN pundits, including Frank Donatelli, a GOP lobbyist who represents Blue Cross Blue Shield.

At a town hall event in New Orleans yesterday, 9-year old Tyren Scott asked President Obama, "Why do people hate you? They supposed to love you. God is love." Obama responded, "If you were watching TV lately, it seems like everybody's just getting mad all the time. And you know, I think that you've got to take it with a grain of salt. Some of it is just what's called politics." Watch the video here.

CNN has rejected an ad produced by America's Voice and Media Matters that calls out the network for giving Lou Dobbs a prominent platform to spew anti-immigrant hate. "The most trusted name in news isn't willing to critically examine one of its pre-eminent hosts," said Eric Burns, president of Media Matters. "He isn't worthy of the platform CNN gives him."

Obama is facing criticism from his liberal allies for moving too slowly to fill positions on the federal court. "During his first nine months in office, Obama has won confirmation in the Democratic-controlled Senate for just three of his 23 nominations for federal judgeships, largely because Republicans have used anonymous holds and filibuster threats to slow the proceedings to a crawl."

The House voted yesterday "to allow detainees being held at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba to be transferred to the United States, but only to stand trial." Republicans tried to strip the measure from the overall Homeland Security Department appropriations bill but failed by 224 to 193.

Some rank-and-file congressional Democrats are expressing frustration about the influence of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) in the health care reform debate. "This is the United States of America. This is not the United States of Maine," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA). "I mean that one senator cannot hold the entire nation's health care plan hostage."

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) said yesterday that he believes that "every Democrat" in the Senate will end up supporting health care reform legislation. Baucus also said that "there will be at least one Republican and maybe a couple more who also will vote for it."

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) blasted "charges by a group of conservative lawmakers that a Muslim activist group has planted interns on Capitol Hill in an effort to alter national security legislation." "Numerous Muslim-American interns have served the House ably and they deserve our appreciation and respect, not attacks on their character or patriotism," said Conyers in a statement.

After an investigation in to allegedly fraudulent ballots from Afghanistan's disputed election, the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has found that President Hamid Karzai's portion of the vote has been reduced to about 47 percent, "an outcome that will trigger a runoff between him and his closest competitor." Karzai's ambassador to Washington said yesterday that a runoff is "likely."

The Treasury Department's "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg "pushed outgoing Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth D. Lewis into giving back about $1 million he received so far this year and forgoing the rest of his $1.5 million salary for 2009." Feinberg reportedly decided that Lewis' retirement benefits package and unvested stock worth at least $69.3 million "was large enough, and possibly too big."

And finally: Yesterday, the national media tripped over themselves to provide live coverage of a runaway balloon that was supposedly carrying a young boy on-board. Falcon Henne -- aka "balloon boy" -- suggested to CNN last night that it was all "an elaborate attention-seeking stunt." "We did this for the show," Falcon said. On NBC's Today show, the father -- Richard Henne -- dismissed allegations that the disappearance was staged but "Falcon threw up into a container when his father" was answering the question.

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More "czar" hysteria from conservative members of Congress.

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"I don't believe that [during the Bush administration], the military was saying we need significantly more [troops in Afghanistan]. If there had been that cry, I suspect the previous administration would have been very responsive to it."
-- Former Bush adviser Karl Rove, 10/15/09

VERSUS

"[Then-top commander in Afghanistan Gen. David McKiernan] decided to tell George W. Bush's White House what he knew it did not want to hear: He needed 30,000 more troops. ... The Bush administration opted not to act on McKiernan's request."
-- The Washington Post, 8/17/09

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