Tag: Fox News Lies

How Fox News Threatens Our National Security

Buck Banks

“The threat posed to our democracy by Fox News is multifaceted: First and most simply, it’s clearly advancing and giving voice to narratives and smears backed and imagined by our foreign adversaries. Second, its overheated and bombastic rhetoric is undermining America’s foundational ideals and the sense of fair play in politics. Third, its unique combination of lies and half-truths has built a virtual reality so complete that it leaves its viewers too misinformed to fulfill their most basic responsibilities as citizens to make informed choices about the direction of the country.”

— Garrett Graff

Walsh Says Fox, Conservative Media Lying to Americans

Buck Banks

“This is an absolute shame and I think you’ve got to call it out for what it is. The Americans who listen to Fox News and conservative talk radio are being lied to and manipulated every day when it comes to impeachment.”

— Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), who is also running for president, slammed Fox News and conservative talk radio for their coverage of the impeachment probe of President Trump, CNN reports.

Forget Facebook, Focus on Fox

Buck Banks

“I understand the fear about digital fakery. But to focus on Facebook instead of Fox News is to mistake the symptom for the disease…. The disease is an entrenched, well-funded, decades-in-the-making, right-wing propaganda network, one that exists to turn faintly sourced rumors into full-blown, politically convenient narratives. The propaganda network’s tentacles now infiltrate every form of media — magazines, books, talk radio, social networks — but it still finds its most profitable and effective outlet in the Murdochs’ cable empire. … And it is devastatingly effective: Just about every political lie that has dominated American discourse in the past two decades — the Swift Boaters and the birthers, death panels, the idea that undocumented immigrants pose an existential threat but climate change does not — depended, for its mainstream dissemination, on the Fox News machine.”

— Farhad Manjoo

The Coming Summer of Propaganda

Buck Banks

“President George W. Bush once said that to get a message across, you had to repeat it over and over, ‘to kind of catapult the propaganda.’ President Trump must have been paying attention. … I predict this will be a summer of nonstop, shameless propaganda from Trump and his minions. It will be clumsy, ridiculous and pathetic — but don’t ignore it. Call it out. Laugh at it. Recognize it for what it is: a sign not of strength but of fear.”

— Eugene Robinson

Propaganda: The Real Source of Trump’s Power

Buck Banks

“Conservative media could take its cues from the party’s congressional leadership, but its most influential figures have personal ties to the president. As Gabriel Sherman has reported, Trump communicates so frequently with Fox News he is serving in some sense as its de facto editorial director. To the extent Trump deserves credit for his takeover of the party, it is through his canny playing of the inside media game, wooing powerful insiders in the right-wing media to make him (rather than Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell) the protagonist of their drama.”

— Jonathan Chait

Even Fox Employees Were Embarrassed by Coverage of the Russia Investigation

Buck Banks

“I’m watching now and screaming. I want to quit.”

“Some employees at Fox News were left embarrassed and humiliated by their network’s coverage of the latest revelations in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election meddling,” according to conversations CNN had with several individuals placed throughout the network.

A Growing Tolerance for Lying

Buck Banks

There’s a good chance that if you’re reading this you don’t believe it. … It hasn’t exactly been a banner year for truth-telling in the 2016 election, with flubs, rumors, misleading stats and flat-out falsehoods uttered on the campaign trail and ping-ponged around the social media universe with regularity. But in many cases, furious fact-checking from the mainstream media has not only failed to prompt solemn apologies from the worst offenders — it’s made them stronger.

— Carrie Dann, NBC News