Tag: Media Watch
At Least 30 GOP-Fox Channel Propagandists Contributed to, Endorsed or Raised Money for Republican Campaigns This Year
As you doubtless know by now, Keith Olbermann is returning to work tonight on MSNBC’s “Countdown” after being suspended for making three political donations to Democratic candidates in the last week or so of the midterm election campaign.
“There are multiple people being paid by Fox News to essentially run for office as Republican candidates. If you count not just their hosts but their contributors, you’re looking at a significant portion of the entire Republican lineup of potential contenders for 2012.”
– Rachel Maddow
– Rachel Maddow
As his colleague Rachel Maddow said Friday night, Olbermann’s suspension — like CNN’s firing Rick Sanchez and NPR’s firing Juan Williams — draws a sharp distinction between the ethical boundaries of real journalistic organizations like MSBNC, CNN and NPR and the lack of any similar journalistic ethics at the GOP-Fox propaganda channel:
MADDOW: Here’s the larger point, though, that’s going mysteriously missing from the right-wing cackling and old media cluck-cluck-clucking: I know everyone likes to say, “Oh, cable news, it’s all the same. Fox and MSNBC — mirror images of each other. But if you look at the long history of Fox hosts not just giving money to candidates, but actively endorsing campaigns and raising millions of dollars for politicians and political parties — whether it’s Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or Mike Huckabee — and you’ll see that we can lay that old false equivalency to rest forever. There are multiple people being paid by Fox News to essentially run for office as Republican candidates. If you count not just their hosts but their contributors, you’re looking at a significant portion of the entire Republican lineup of potential contenders for 2012.
They can do that because there’s no rule against that at Fox. Their network is run as a political operation. Ours isn’t. Yeah, Keith’s a liberal, and so am I. But we’re not a political operation — Fox is. We’re a news operation. The rules around here are part of how you know that.
Indisputable evidence of this is the fact that at least 30 people who work for Fox donated money and/or time and/or endorsed Republican candidates in the midterms. According to Media Matters, if Fox was a legitimate news organization, it would have to suspend most of its marquee names, including Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, William Kristol and even the propaganda channel’s owner, Rupert Murdoch.
Here’s the list from Media Matters:
ABC News to Andrew Breitbart: F*ck Off
ABC News apparently likes to learn its lessons the hard way.
The following letter was sent from ABC and received by Mr. Breitbart:
Dear Mr. Breitbart,
We have spent the past several days trying to make clear to you your limited role as a participant in our digital town hall to be streamed on ABCNews.com and Facebook. The post on your blog last Friday created a widespread impression that you would be analyzing the election on ABC News.
We made it as clear as possible as quickly as possible that you had been invited along with numerous others to participate in our digital town hall. Instead of clarifying your role, you posted a blog on Sunday evening in which you continued to claim a bigger role in our coverage. As we are still unable to agree on your role, we feel it best for you not to participate.
Sincerely,
Andrew Morse
ABC News, Breitbart Now Squabbling over His Role as Election Night Commentator
Shirley Sherrod’s attorney’s likened Breitbart’s ABC invitation to “giving a Klansman an award for burning a cross on Shirley Sherrod’s house.”
ABC News’ misguided plan to use racist blogger Andrew Breitbart as a political commentator on election night continues to backfire.
First, ABC News got an earful about it from the likes of, well, us and many others, which forced them to relegate Breitbart from the main news set to online coverage.
Now, predictably, Breitbart and ABC News are exchanging angry emails about his role tomorrow night:
Flashback: It’s Your Duty to Vote
This rant from Craig Ferguson is as relevant now as it was in 2008 (unfortunately).
‘Assume David Duke Had to Wash His Sheets’
Pensito Review publisher, managing editor, and all-around senior person Jon Ponder took up my call to email David Ford, ABC News spokesperson, who is defending the network’s decision to include disgraced blogger Andrew Breitbart in their election night coverage. In a missive with the subject line, “Assume David Duke had to wash his sheets Tuesday night,” Jon emailed:
It is simply appalling that ABC News is giving a platform to Andrew Breitbart on election night. By his words and deeds, this man is a racist provocateur and should be shunned by decent people. Elevating him this way says more about ABC News — it frankly reeks of desperation — than it does about him.
If ABC News was hoping for a boycott on Tuesday night, and all the publicity that comes with it, I hope you get your wish.
Hopefully, this will inspire you to send Ford a piece of your own mind.
Update It worked! See update here.
Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear Live
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear is set to live stream at noon on Saturday, Oct. 30. If you don’t have a TV (I feel ya, I don’t either) don’t despair. Just go to the Daily Show’s site and viola!
And speaking of spreading insanity and fear, if you’re up for multitasking while you watch I have an assignment for you. Send an email to David Ford, spokesperson for ABC News. Ford is the guy who’s being quoted justifying the network’s plan to include discredited blogger Andrew Breitbart in their election night coverage.
Asked about Breitbart’s history of unethical behavior and misinformation, ABC News’ David Ford told Media Matters: “He will be one of many voices on our air, including Bill Adair of Politifact. If Andrew Breitbart says something that is incorrect, we have other voices to call him on it.”
It’s not a matter of if Breitbart will say something incorrect, so for ABC to hide behind the fair and balanced trope by including people who don’t plan elaborate media lies isn’t exactly the same thing as providing the best reporting available.
Here’s what Ford lists as his email address on LinkedIn:
Update: Apparently there was an outpouring of criticism. Media Matters reports that the Breitbart has been shunted onto ABC’s online coverage on election night:
What Is This Election Really About? Not the Deficit, the Stimulus or Big Govt – Watch Maddow Bust the Media Myths about the 2010 Mid-Terms
MADDOW: It‘s not the deficit. It‘s not big government. It‘s not the stimulus.
It‘s not Obamacare. It‘s not populism. It‘s not that all of these people are outsiders.
It‘s none of these things. These things are all provably not what‘s going on. They‘re not bolstered by the facts no matter how many times you hear from the Beltway media. This is not what‘s happening.
But the media dressing these guys up like there is some coherent narrative, like there is some cogent argument here, that conveniently obscures what‘s really going here, which is that we are on the precipice of elevating the federal office, the most extreme and in some cases strange set of conservative candidates in a lifetime…
There are extremist candidates who from time to time survive the churn of electoral politics and actually make it into the mainstream. There‘s always a few. But there has never been this many.
None of this makes any sense. We‘re just about to elect a whole bunch of extremists … unless thing change in the next two week.
Complete Transcript:
