Tag: Fox News

At Least 30 GOP-Fox Channel Propagandists Contributed to, Endorsed or Raised Money for Republican Campaigns This Year

Jon Ponder

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

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:

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Verbatim

Trish

I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

— Former NPR and continuing FOX News commentator Juan Williams, explaining to Bill O’Reilly that he’s not racist, just nervous (in the words of comic Marc Maron). Williams was fired from NPR following his appearance on FOX’s The O’Reilly Factor.

Beck: If You’re Parading Around in a Nazi with Your Son, It ‘Might Be Fun’

Jon Ponder

If you were doing this with your son, I could see how this might be fun. If you happen to have a Nazi uniform in your closet and you’re wearing it and you’re like, yes, i’m wearing my Nazi uniform around, you might question someone. But if you are part of an reenactment group and you are war gaming, I could see that as, again, not something I necessarily would participate in, but nothing wrong with it.

– GOP-Fox’s Mormon televangelist Glenn Beck.

CNN’s Firing Rick Sanchez Is More Proof That Fox Is Not a Legitimate News Organization

Jon Ponder

photos-beck-sanchez

Within 24 hours after the radio interview during which CNN anchor Rick Sanchez called Jon Stewart a bigot and complained that Jews run the media, CNN fired him. Contrast that with the fact that it has been 14 months since Glenn Beck called the president of the United States a racist. Nearly 300 advertisers have boycotted his show as a result, but Fox did not even consider firing him. What does that say about Fox?

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Verbatim: LAPD Chief Denies Department Bought $1 Bil in Jet Packs, Despite Report on GOP-Fox Channel

Jon Ponder

We certainly haven’t bought any jet packs. We haven’t bought [squad] cars for two years. So no, that means that no jet packs are coming to LA, at least not now.

– Charlie Beck, LAPD chief

Earlier we were talking about jet packs where you can fly around, and it looked like the LAPD was going to buy a whole bunch. Turns out they’re not going to.

– Steve Doocy, co-host of “Fox and Friends,” offering what amounts to a retraction after reporting that the story as fact based on a story in the supermarket tabloid, Weekly World News

Self-Punking Dimwits on ‘Fox & Friends’ Reported LAPD Bought $1 Bil in Jet Packs

Jon Ponder

$1 Billion

Amount the dim-wwitted cast of “Fox & Friends” on the GOP-Fox channel said the LAPD paid for 100,000 space-age jet packs. In a rare move for the Republican cable channel, the hosts were forced to recant the story later when it was revealed that their source — the supermarket tabloid, Weekly World News — simply made it up.

Beck Lies about Slavery, Claims It Was Created by Court Orders, Government Regulation

Jon Ponder

There’s a complete transcript of the “Countdown” segment below, but here is Beck’s money quote about slavery:

BECK: It also took a long time to start slavery. It started small. And it started with seemingly innocent ideas. And then a little court order here and a court order there and a little more regulation here and a little more regulation there, and before we knew it, America had slavery. It didn’t come over in a ship to begin with, as an evil slave trade. The government began to regulate things because the people needed answers. They needed solutions. It started in a courtroom. And then it went to the legislatures. That’s how slavery began. And it took a long time to enslave an entire race of people, and convince another race of people that they were somehow or another less than them.

History? Get me rewrite! Forget the facts. If you thought slavery was caused by greed and a penchant among the powerful to oppress the powerless that predates recorded history, you’re wrong.

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