An image from Fox News' anti-Obama attack ad.
Even by Fox News standards, yesterday's edition of "Fox & Friends" was jaw-dropping. The show produced and aired its own four-minute attack ad targeting President Obama, brazenly shifting Fox from the role of an ostensible news organization to that of a Republican super PAC.
The Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik said Fox's attack ad was reminiscent of "1930s propaganda," adding, As the guy who challenged the Obama administration two years when it tried to deny Fox News access to interviews and other opportunities offered to the media on the grounds that Fox was not a legitimate news operation ... even I am shocked by how blatantly Fox is throwing off any pretense of being a journalistic entity.... Any news organization that puts up this kind of video is rotten to the core."
Bill Shine, the executive vice president for programming at Fox News, eventually blamed "an associate producer" for the incident. It was a curious response that leads to some follow-up questions:
* Did this associate producer stage a bloodless coup, commandeering Fox's control room against the wishes of the senior producers and hosts? And if so, why did the in-house attack ad air twice?
* If this associate producer was to blame, why did Gretchen Carlson introduce the attack ad by telling viewers, "We decided to take a look back at the president's first term to see if it lived up to hope and change"? And why did Fox Nation tout the piece as a "must-see Fox video"?
* If this associate producer did something wildly inappropriate that embarrassed the network and removed all doubt about Fox serving as an appendage to the Republican Party, why did "Fox & Friends" lavish praise on him after the attack ad aired?
Whatever the answer to these questions, Fox News' executives apparently weren't pleased with yesterday's developments -- by mid-day, the "Fox & Friends" attack ad was removed from the show's website as well as Fox Nation, the network's aggregation site.
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Pants on the ground! Pants on the ground! -Kevo
They must have disintegrated the belt or suspenders holding them up... when they burst into flames.
I thought this piece was TOTALLY out of line when I saw it. If they had compared numbers/data now to when President Obama started and showed clips of his "hope and change" rhetoric, then maybe so. But the music, the graphics, etc...not journalistic at all.
That said, TRMS is a continuous ad for President Obama and the Democrats and against Romney and the Republicans. Just the "war on women" phrase, if there were really a war on women, the Democrats would have 98% or more of the women vote, not just 52% or so.
Nice to see computers are so user-friendly that those stupid enough to flunk the IQ test low enough to qualify as Republicans can use them.
RobDon ... Look up "Battered Woman Syndrome" and "Stockholm Syndrome." Explains many of those working class folks who vote Republican, including many women.
I always love the way "Reagan Democrats" complain about their lot in life. They did everything but say, "Please, Mr. Reagan. I just worship you. I so hate those terrible unions (including the one I belong to). Won't you cut my pay and benefits, or better yet, ship my family wage job that provides security for my family to some low-wage state or country. I just can't get enough."
TRMS is not pretending to be anything other than what it is (a very well researched opinion show). Fox and Friends was supposedly not part of Fox's block of opinion shows that have an obvious slant/agenda. Granted we know there's a slant/agenda to the whole network, but this kind of thing was above and beyond their usual slight of hand. There's no need for false equivalency here. TRMS does not produce slick hit piece attack ads against any candidate. TRMS does not shun dissenting opinions from it's discussions. TRMS does not shy away from criticizing the current administration.
If Fox wants to continue broadcasting things like this it needs to register with the FEC immediately. Otherwise it should offer to give equal airtime to the opposing party.
RobDon has apparently missed the many times that Maddow heaped large amounts of @!$%# onto the president and democrats.
It would help if you actually watched the show before lying about it.
... dup post
Machined, you make several very valid points. I agree comparing TRMS to Fox and Friends from a pure journalistic/opinionated show standpoint is not an apples and oranges comparison. I would note that I have had several conversations here with those who believe that TRMS is just reporting facts, not utilizing data to support a position.
I would also note the lack of diversity of opinion on both MSNBC and FOX News. Each seems to have staked out their individual corners. Additionally, I thought the Fox and Friends piece was out of line completely.
mpguy, you think about 50% of the women have "Battered Woman Syndrome" and.or "Stockholm Syndrome?" Really? That's how you explain it? Tens of millions of US women suffer from a syndrome because of the Republicans, who knew?
TC, do you always just take to insulting those with whom you disagree instead of engaging in conversation?
Republicans aren't even bothering to pretend to uphold accepted societal standards of decency and fairness.
- Fox openly supports Republicans, attacks Democrats, and calls itself "fair and balanced"
- Republicans openly call for tax increases on poor "lucky duckies" and tax cuts for rich "job creators"
- Republicans openly call for ending Medicare with vouchers to be used for private insurance
- Republicans "starve the beast" policies aim at ending Social Security
- Republicans openly crushing public union bargaining rights
- Republicans openly deny climate science, openly call for destruction of the EPA
- Repubicans answer to the problem of the Great Recession caused by their failed policies of 30+ years is to double down on those policies of deregulation, tax cuts, ...
- Republicans call for end of Dodd-Frank to allow Wall Street to continue the gambling that lead directly to the Great Recession,
- Republicans stand in the way of renewable energy in the hopes of continuing the fossil era forever,
- Republicans unabashedly repeat easily debunked lies without shame and media serves as megaphone,
- and on and on and on...
And 50% of the American public looks at this and says, "Sounds good."
These things just couldn't have happened even 10 or 15 years ago. Then W, Rove, and Fox happened.
This country is far worse off than it was in the Great Depression. At least then, it didn't have a Ministry of (un)Truth that is Fox and the surrounding complicit incompetent media that makes use of the deeply gullible, ignorant, and stupid people in the country that forms its majority.
How could I forget?:
- Republicans across the nation are openly and apologetically disenfranchising voters and not providing justification.
@DisgustedWithItAll -- A-to-the-men!
I meant "unapologetically" in that last post.
It's because they know the Dems will do nothing about it. Dems will yell and scream and cry and threaten to hold their breaths until they turn blue--but they won't do anything about it.
Obama has the machinery of the Justice Department and a wide variety of other tools. Do you see him using them? Of course not.
Look at the Wisconsin recall. Very winable race--or at least it was. Republicans went all in. The DNC hemmed and hawed about putting a few bucks in, and Obama does contortions to avoid saying anything about it, much less going there to help. Unless Dems learn to fight back with equal ferocity, it's going to be another great Republican election this fall.
As I wrote yesterday,are Fox sponsors aware they are donating to a super pac.Is it legal to use their money for political attacks on the President of the United States.The Fox motto should not be "Fair and Balanced"it should be "How Low Can We Go".I for one used to watch Fox,that is until the 2008 elections when I found out just how biased a network they are. They are nothing more than an arm of the republican/tea party and should be advertised as such.
Why else would they be sponsors of Fox? (It really took you till 2008 to understand what Fox was/is all about?)
DisgustedWIA ... Chubby Checker's "Limbo Rock" should be used as its buffer music.
Isn't this an FEC violation?
I'll bite, who the heck is the FEC?
Rob
FEC=Federal Election Commission. Guess what they supervise ;-)
Thanks...Maria. I guess I was thinking FCC but I would assume the FEC (which I didn't think of) has some or all oversight in this area. See, I do learn things here, I've been trying to tell you folks that...I do listen.
I know you do Rob. I know you do. :-)
"....brazenly shifting Fox from the role of an ostensible news organization to that of a Republican super PAC."
You're giving FAUX NOISE just way too much credit when you refer to what they do as "news"! They have been and are Rupert Murdock's "propaganda arm" and as such have been used to dumb down the sheeple enough that they vote against their own best interests.
Very sad . Sad that the brainwashed Faux Nooze watchers will embrace that fair and balanced statement . The link is being emailed by your crazy uncle as we speak. These MF'erers are crazy like a Faux . "Oops our bad" fully well knowing it would be mentioned and shown by everyone (including here who took the bait) They know exactly what they are doing
This is what America has come to
We should call on the FCC to pull its license.
They're probably a contributor.
this is who they are
Let's also acknowledge this video had a double purpose, and we're all complicit in it being successful in its second purpose. Yes, it was meant to blast Obama in a biased fact-optional way. 4 plus minutes of free airtime to the RNC. But it was also produced so that every other news show and news network and news blog and political blog (and on and on) would link to it and ask "did Fox News go too far?" Thus it gets far more anti-Obama exposure, for free.
It's brand reinforcement, like when Coca Cola releases commercials or billboards reminding you that Coke is a thing that exists - everyone in the world knows Coke exists, but it's important to keep the logo in front of everyone's eyes to maintain their dominance. Fox News is oh-so-subtly reminding their base where to go to get their anti-Democratic pro-Republican hate-on. And the world agrees to help.
It would bother me less if more media outlets called them out for this, rather than just "oh, it's just wrong."
They were letting everyone know that they can lie and fudge the numbers and get away with it. I'm bored with it all, think I'll read a book.
I was not aware that two years the Obama administration tried to deny Fox News access to interviews and other opportunities. They need to try again, harder.
When my wife, who has worked in TV news on the technical side for 20 years, read this, with Faux blaming an "associate producer" she nearly fell out of the chair, laughing so hard. An associate producer would never get close enough to anything to be able to do something like this, let alone get Bimbo-of-Belsen Gretchen Carlson to have anything to do with it. In an organization as top-down totalitarian as Faux, that came straight from Roger Ailes.
That's funny, they have no idea who does what on that station. They should just point at that person and say "He did it."
Fox continues to push the bounds of what is considered journalism and news reporting. The abolition of the Fairness Doctrine is what allowed Fox to evolve as a political operation masking as news. Fox will continue to blur the line between a news and a political organization. The same holds true for MSNBC. But the rest of the media is just as guilty of sins against journalism when they fail to properly do their jobs. They have given politicians a soapbox to spew their talking points and failed to challenge the lies. The line between news and entertainment has become so fuzzy that The Daily Show and sometimes Colbert Report are asking the hard questions that the news media should be asking while the news shows have become mostly entertainment that trivializes the actual news. Only CNN has been covering in depth the events in Syria on a daily basis while the rest of the media ignores what should be in the news every day. There is more than enough skullduggery and scandals in Washington DC that the news media could easily uncover if they just dig around and stop picking the low hanging fruit.
I don't need the news media to do analysis of everything that happens in politics; I need them to ask the hard questions of politicians who have been ducking and dodging for a long time. The first rule of any news media organization doing political talk shows and interviews is to disallow politicians who spew talking points rather than engaging in discourse. Air time is too valuable to let people use it for dissemination of political propaganda. The second rule for the media is to always ask the obvious hard questions and stop pitching fluff. Third, the media should cover major news stories with in depth analysis, not every political sneeze and cough of the day. When the news media is ready to reclaim their integrity, then they can start casting stones at Fox and MSNBC.
Why is anybody surprised at this? Faux "News" Channel is, and always has been, the main television arm of the Republican Party. Nothing more.
Any other "news" that appears there is meant to momentarily distract its lemming-like viewers from figuring that out.
Nonsense like this from "Fox & Freaks"? Nobody is surprised at this. Anyone who claims to be surprised is obviously pretending - following through on the pretense they must have been maintaining that Fox Propaganda is a real "news" organization, or "fair" or "balanced" in any way.
Anyone else who may have actually thought that Fox was a "news" organization is too dull (or dulled) to have realized that there might be anything objectionable about a piece like this in the first place. I.e., a "typical Fox viewer".