Why Are Legitimate Journalists Ignoring the Pattern of Race-Baiting on Fox?

Megyn Kelly
Megyn Kelly
By now, if you’ve heard nothing else about the New Black Panthers Party voter-intimidation incident, you know that the folks at Fox News are positively in a snit that such a huge, huge scandal is being ignored by what Fox News star Sarah Palin calls the lamestream media.

“No one seems to give a darn,” Megyn Kelly, the newsreader who’s been given the lead in pushing the NBPP story, recently said, with a heartfelt pout.

She’s right, of course, but what her viewers will never know is that source of the apathy isn’t the liberal media giving cover to Pres. Obama (not hardly), it’s the fact that there is no “there” there to the NBPP story.

On the other hand, there is a real story here that traditional journalists are ignoring. The attack by this giant “news” network — with its virtually unlimited resources thanks to its amoral right-wing billionaire owner/sugar daddy, Rupert Murdoch — against a tiny, radical fringe group only makes sense when viewed as part of a pattern of race baiting by the network.

[…]

Obama Breaks with Tradition to Honor Fallen Service Members

Pres. Obama reflects on the sacrifice of service members after Marines present him with a wreath at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery
Pres. Obama reflects on the sacrifice of service members while Marines play Taps at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery
In addition to trying to visit military families at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery during a lightning storm this Memorial Day, Pres. Obama and the First Lady crashed a picnic at Fisher House outside of Chicago, which is sort of the Ronald McDonald House for the services.

Jay Agg, a spokesman for AMVETS, accused some people of using the day “as an opportunity to score cheap political points on the backs of our veterans and in doing so dishonor them and distract from the true meaning and purpose of Memorial Day.”

Because members of the military and their families are stationed worldwide and must often travel great distances for specialized medical care, Fisher House™ Foundation donates “comfort homes,” built on the grounds of major military and VA medical centers. These homes enable family members to be close to a loved one at the most stressful times – during the hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.

There is at least one Fisher House™ at every major military medical center to assist families in need and to ensure that they are provided with the comforts of home in a supportive environment.

[…]

Crist Finally Comes Out; Opponent Rubio Follows

BarnesRubioLgComing out of the closet and admitting who he really is has made Gov. Charlie Crist more popular. According to a new Rasmussen Reports survey, the formerly Republican Crist, who recently outed himself as a moderate independent, is polling well.

Crist [is] earning 38% support to Republican Marco Rubio’s 34% and Democrat Kendrick Meek’s 17%. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.

Two weeks ago, before Crist announced his decision to run as an independent candidate, Rubio held a seven point advantage in the race.

Since then, Crist has gained eight (8) percentage points in the poll while Rubio and Meek have each dropped three (3) points. It remains to be seen if this is a temporary bounce or a lasting change in the race.

The poll has a sloppy +/-4.5 percent margin of error, which is more than it shows Crist’s opponents sliding, but still.

[…]

O’Reilly Sanctimoniously Denies GOP Senator’s Charge That Fox Disinformed Viewers with Claim Medical Uninsured Will Go to Prison – Cue Video of 20-Plus Instances of Fox Propagandists, Including O’Reilly, Making That Exact Claim

It’s hard to find someone to root for in this one. Bill O’Reilly, the leading right-wing propagandist on Fox before they hired Glenn Beck versus Sen. Tom Coburn, R-0kla., a member of the Family, the scary Christian corporatist cult that owns the infamous C Street house on Capitol Hill.

In the video, O’Reilly chastises Sen. Coburn because, at a town hall meeting earlier this month, the senator had corrected a constituent who had expressed concern that under the health-care reform law people who didn’t buy health insurance would go to prison. Coburn, rightly assuming she’d heard the jail-for-the-uninsured canard on Fox, warned her not to believe everything she heard on the network and encouraged her to get her news from a variety of sources. In the interview, O’Reilly insists that he had researched transcripts and that no one on Fox had ever said the uninsured would be imprisoned.

[…]

Fox Failed to Vet O’Keefe’s Deceptively Edited Video and ‘Reporting’ – ACORN Cleared of Wrongdoing in California

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Fox News racked up the ratings by tossing red meat to the right-wing racist fringe when it ran video produced by James O’Keefe, the fake investigative reporter, in which he posed as a pimp seeking help finding housing for his prostitution business from ACORN, the anti-poverty group whose clients are mostly African-American inner-city dwellers.

But newly released unedited versions of the video reveal that key sections of footage O’Keefe shot in California were omitted from Fox’s broadcast package in order to create the false impression that ACORN employees were being helpful to O’Keefe’s pimp character when in fact — and in context of the real interview — they definitely were not.

It’s a tribute to the propaganda power of Fox that as a result of its broadcasting O’Keefe’s video, ACORN, which was founded in 1970, shut down last month.

The most superficial and yet telling deception by Fox News and O’Keefe was that during his interviews with ACORN, O’Keefe was dressed as a caricature “Superfly”-era pimp and that ACORN employees were untroubled by this costume, as if they dealt with flamboyantly dressed pimps every day. While it’s true that Hannah Giles, O’Keefe’s associate was attired at the meetings as a prostitute, and O’Keefe was filmed in the Superfly outfit outside ACORN offices, when he went in to the meetings, he was wearing business-casual slacks and a a pin-striped dress shirt. (The Brad Blog has aggressively covered this deception, which corporate media reported without checking. The New York Times, in particular, has refused to correct the record on this issue.)

More significantly, another segment edited out of Fox News’ broadcast package would have clarified why an ACORN employee was so eager to learn details — their current whereabouts, etc. — about the underage prostitutes O’Keefe said he had under his control. If Fox were a legitimate news organization, a segment producer would have followed up on the interview and discovered that as soon as O’Keefe left the meeting, the ACORN employee called the cops on him. Instead, based on the deceptive video Fox aired, the ACORN employee was fired.

The unedited video also reveals that another employee who appeared to be encouraging O’Keefe in his prostitution venture was actually offering supportive words — “You can do anything. Don’t give up.” — to Hannah Giles, who was posing as a prostitute in desperate need of housing.

Based on the complete video record and an investigation into the actions of O’Keefe and Giles, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has cleared ACORN of wrongdoing in California last week. Unfortunately for ACORN, the finding was too late.

A legitimate news organization would have checked O’Keefe’s reporting. The raw footage would have been accounted for and follow up calls would have been made.

But this was not sloppy journalism. It was a highly effective tactic by a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party intended to hobble an anti-poverty group that is allied with a demographic group that Republicans revile and so votes as block for Democrats: the urban poor.

The airing of this intentionally deceptive video would have been a major embarrassment for a legitimate news outlet. But — with the exception of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC — this incident of journalistic ineptitude (or, more likely, malfeasance) has been ignored by the corporate media. Their silence is telling. They no longer take Fox seriously enough to be outraged, or even take note, when Fox News’ “journalism” is revealed to be disinformation in support of the GOP.

Similarly, the nation’s leading journalists were silent last August after a poll revealed that around 75 percent of Fox viewers said they believed as fact four key Republican lies about health-care reform — that undocumented aliens would be covered, that it was a government takeover, that it would cover abortions and that it would institute “death panels.”

The continuing silence from the American media establishment — its refusal fight back, to stand up and say that what Fox presents is propaganda, not news — is another signal that journalism as we once knew it is dying, if not dead.

Fox News, Drudge, Malkin Accused Obama of Making Up 2006 Hawaiian Earthquake

screenshot-fox-coverage-of-hawaii-quake

The latest false rumor floated on the right is that, during his interview with Fox News’ right-wing shill Bret Baier this week, Pes. Obama falsely stated that an earthquake hit Hawaii in 2006:

PRES. OBAMA: It was said that there were billions — millions of dollars going to Louisiana, this was a special deal. Well, in fact, that provision, which I think should remain in, said that if a state has been affected by a natural catastrophe, that has created a special health care emergency in that state, they should get help. Louisiana, obviously, went through Katrina, and they’re still trying to deal with the enormous challenges that were faced because of that.

(CROSS TALK)

OBAMA: That also — I’m giving you an example of one that I consider important. It also affects Hawaii, which went through an earthquake. So that’s not just a Louisiana provision. That is a provision that affects every state that is going through a natural catastrophe. [Emphasis added.]

Media Matters traced the genesis of the lie:

Right-wing blogs: “What earthquake in Hawaii?”

Jim Hoft: “Um… What earthquake in Hawaii?” At 6:54 p.m. on March 17, right-wing blogger Jim Hoft wrote a Gateway Pundit post that stated, “Either Obama’s completely making up stuff now or we all missed some horrible devastating earthquake in Hawaii.” He later wrote: “In 1868 there was a major earthquake in Hawaii that killed 77 people. In 1975 an earthquake in Hawaii killed 2 people.”

Breitbart.tv links to Hoft. At 10:18 p.m. on March 17, Andrew Breitbart’s website Breitbart.tv linked to Hoft’s post and displayed the headline, “Puzzling statement: Obama says ‘Louisiana Purchase’ will help with the earthquake in Hawaii.”

Drudge links to Breitbart.tv post. From the Drudge Report: “Puzzling Statement: Obama Says ‘Louisiana Purchase’ Will Help With the Earthquake in Hawaii’…

Hot Air picks up the false story, as does Michelle Malkin, etc.

Finally it winds up on Fox News’ amateur-hour morning show, “Fox and Friends”:

[Steve] Doocy follows talking points from right-wing blogs. During the March 18 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy played the quote in question from Obama’s interview and responded: “Hold it. What Hawaiian earthquake? There was an earthquake in 1868 that killed 77. There was an earthquake in 1975 that killed two.”

It’s unclear whether these people didn’t bother to check the Google, or whether they did a search and then knowingly lied. Fox News’ coverage of the quake was easy to find. A search on “foxnews.com earthquake Hawaii 2006” brought up this story from the Fox News website in about two seconds.

Here’s the complete text of the story — and we have preserved screenshots of the article in situ on the Fox News website in case, you know, Fox might lose it or make it disappear:

Powerful 6.6-Magnitude Earthquake, Aftershocks Rattle Hawaii

HONOLULU — A strong earthquake shook Hawaii early Sunday, jolting residents out of bed and causing a landslide that blocked a major highway. Ceilings crashed at a hospital, and aftershocks kept the state on edge.

The state Civil Defense had unconfirmed reports of injuries, but communication problems prevented more definite reports. Gov. Linda Lingle issued a disaster declaration for the entire state, saying there had been damage to buildings and roads. There were no reports of fatalities.

The quake hit at 7:07 a.m. local time, 10 miles north-northwest of Kailua Kona, a town on the west coast of Hawaii Island, also known as the Big Island, said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center, part of the U.S. Geological Survey.

• Monitor the situation in FOXNews.com’s Natural Disasters Center.

Blakeman said there was no risk of a Pacific-wide tsunami, but there was a possibility of significant wave activity in Hawaii.

The Pacific Tsunami Center reported a preliminary magnitude of 6.5, while the U.S. Geological Survey gave a preliminary magnitude of 6.6. The earthquake was followed by several strong aftershocks, including one measuring a magnitude of 5.8, the Geological Survey said.

“We were rocking and rolling,” said Anne LaVasseur, who was on the second floor of a two-story, wood-framed house on the east side of the Big Island when the temblor struck. “I was pretty scared. We were swaying back and forth, like King Kong’s pushing your house back and forth.”

Water pipes exploded at Aston Kona By The Sea, an 86-unit condominium resort, creating a dramatic waterfall down the front of the hotel from the fourth floor, said Kenneth Piper, who runs the front desk.

“We are a concrete building, but we really shook. You could almost see the cars bouncing up and down in the parking garage,” he said.

The quake caused widespread power outages, and phone communication was possible, but difficult. By midday Sunday, power was restored to Hilo on the Big Island and was starting to be restored to Maui, said Chuck Anthony, a spokesman for the Hawaii National Guard. Officials did not have a firm estimate of how many people were without power.

Lingle told radio station KSSK that she toured the Kona area by helicopter to view the damage, including earth falling into Kealakekua Bay.

“You could see the water was turning brown,” said Lingle.

A FEMA computer simulation of the quake estimated that as many as 170 bridges on the Big Island could have suffered damage in the temblor, said Bob Fenton, FEMA director of response for the region. More than 50 federal officials were en route to the Big Island to assess damage and begin recovery work, he said.

On Hawaii Island, there was some damage in Kailua-Kona and a landslide along a major highway, said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Center. Officials also said there were reports of people trapped in elevators in Oahu.

In Waikiki, one of the state’s primary tourism areas, worried visitors began lining up outside convenience stores to purchase food, water and other supplies. Managers were letting tourists into the darkened stores one at a time.

Karie and Bryan Croes waited an hour to buy bottles of water, chips and bread. “It’s quite a honeymoon story,” said Karie as she and her husband sat in lounge chairs surrounded by their grocery bags beside a pool at ResortQuest Waikiki Beach Hotel.

Kona Community Hospital on the western side of Big Island was being evacuated after ceilings collapsed and power was cut off, according to a hospital spokeswoman.

At least 10 acute care patients were being evacuated across the island to a medical center in Hilo, said Terry Lewis, spokeswoman for the hospital. About 30 nursing care patients were being moved temporarily to a nearby conference center, she said.

“We were very lucky that no one got hurt,” said Lewis.

Power was back up in the hospital, and its emergency room was accepting patients, hospital officials said. One operating room that sustained minimal damage was available for use if necessary.

The quake affected travel plans for many visitors, though the state was in its low period of the tourism season. Airports were functioning despite the power outages, though travel was difficult and some flights were being canceled, officials said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Les Dorr said planes were arriving at Honolulu International Airport, but there were few departures. Dorr said the Transportation Security Administration security checkpoints were without power, so screeners were screening passengers and baggage manually.

Resorts in Kona were being asked to keep people close to hotels, Big Island Mayor Harry Kim told television station KITV. Cruise ships were asked to keep tourists on board, and ships that were due to dock with tourists were asked to move on to their next location, he said.

“We are dealing with a lot of scared people,” he said.

Hotels throughout the islands reported scattered injuries and disruptions. Many hotel managers broadcast warnings over public-address systems that echoed through corridors.

Earthquakes in the 6.0 magnitude range are rare in the region, though they have happened before. The region more commonly sees temblors in the 3- and 4-magnitude range caused by volcanic activity.

“We think this is a buildup from many volcanic earthquakes that they’ve had on the island,” Waverly Person, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center.

The last Hawaiian earthquake this strong struck more than 20 years ago. The magnitude 6.7 caused heavy property damage on Hawaii Island and collapsed trails into a volcano in Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park on Nov. 16, 1983. A 6.1-magnitude quake also hit in 1989, according to the Earthquake Information Center.

The largest recorded Hawaiian earthquake struck the Ka’u District on Hawaii Island in 1868, causing 77 deaths. Its magnitude was estimated at 7.9.

A 9.5-magnitude earthquake, the largest in the world, struck Chile on May 22, 1960, and a tsunami traveled to Hawaii where 61 people died.

Ad Boycott – And Audience Share – Grow in Wake of Glenn Beck’s Racist Smear of President

On Wednesday, 11 more companies — including Mercedes-Benz, Capital One, HSBC and Discover — announced they were joining the boycott of Glenn Beck’s show on the Fox channel.

This brings the number of companies in the ad ban to nearly 60, according to James Rucker, executive director of ColorOfChange.org, the organization behind the sponsor protest. The list includes Applebee’s, Bank of America, Bell & Howell, Best Buy, CVS, DirecTv, General Mills, GMAC Financial Services, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Regions Financial Corporation, SAM (Store and Move), Travelers Insurance, Travelocity, Vonage and Wal-Mart.

The controversy began in July, when Beck appeared on Fox’s morning bobblehead show and said this:

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Poll: Huge Majorities of Fox Viewers Duped by GOP Lies about Reform – 75% Believe in ‘Death Panels’

Just days after a poll found Fox News to be the least trustworthy among the cable channels, a new poll from NBC News — not teaming this time with Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall St. Journal — finds that around three-quarters of self-identified Fox viewers believe the four big lies being promulgated by the GOP about health-insurance reform:

Results as alarmingly bad as these would cause a panic at a real news organization.
  • 72 percent believe undocumented residents will be covered
  • 79 percent believe they will lead to a government takeover
  • 69 percent believe abortions will be covered
  • 75 percent believe there will be “death panels”

All of these lies have been refuted umpteen times by nonpartisan sources, including FactCheck.org.

Results as alarmingly bad as these would cause a panic at a real news organization. Senior managers’ jobs would be in jeopardy, and the taint of having worked for a news organization so irredeemably incompetent would discredit everyone involved.

But no heads will roll at Fox. In fact, there may be raises — because the real indictment here is that these results expose Fox for what it is really is: a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party and the corporate interests that own it.

The results of these polls are a damning indictment of Fox News any way you slice it.