3/9/10 12:24 AM

Fox Haters Week in Review

Who let the dogs out? We don't know, but they may invest in some muzzles after reading today's edition of Fox Haters Week in Review!

Let Slip the Dogs of Smear:
We begin our special all-newshounds report with a tenet of Fox haters--they have to prove FNC is wrong, wrong, wrong, no matter what. That often leads to crackpot analysis and outright lunacy. And no one begets more egregious examples than the blinkered beagles, whose yelps regularly prove to be embarrassingly wrong-headed.

They ridiculed the notion that Iran is getting closer to a nuclear weapon, calling it "war mongering" and insisting that John Bolton must be running "his own private spy agency". Well he must have loaned that secret agency to the UN, since the IAEA found evidence that Iran was looking to create a nuclear payload for a missile. Oops. This is pretty much of a piece with another hound claim that there was no evidence the Fort Hood shooter was involved in terrorist activity, and that Fox was trying to "paint Hasan as a terrorist for the sole purpose of furthering Fox’ anti-Obama agenda." How evil of Fox. And how evil of Homeland Security Secy Janet Napolitano, for painting Hasan as a terrorist. She must have been furthering her anti-Obama agenda. Oops #2.

You have to keep these laser-sharp insights in mind when you read anything the mongrels write. For example, suspected plagiarist Julie Driscoll launched a scathing personal attack on Laura Ingraham:

Evil-incarnate-with-the-crucifix, Fox News something-or-other, Laura Ingraham, did a postmortem on President Obama's healthcare summit with the Republicans. When O'Reilly asked Ingraham if there was anything about "this whole thing" that she liked, Ingraham -- the woman with the cross, the woman blazing with the symbol of Christian goodness -- instead took the opportunity to ridicule those who have no access to, or can't afford, health insurance or proper healthcare.
Was Ingraham ridiculing those who have no access, or the politicians who use them in an appeal to emotion? Don't ask Julie. Her piece is recycled straight from Media Matters. Driscoll cited Laura's criticism of Rep Slaughter's tale of a woman who used her dead sister's dentures:
Screw us for believing that people should be able to afford their own [expletive deleted by J$P] dentures.... In my opinion, the cost of Ingraham's devotion to the right and the cost of Ingraham's hate-filled "analysis" is the right to wear that cross. Get that [expletive deleted by J$P] off, Ingraham, it's false-flagging -- the God you profess to believe in can't be that big a fool.
You should take this analysis with a large grain of salt. You see, the proposed health care bills don't cover adult dental care!

Julie's fingerprints are also on another bit of harrier fakery. Condemning Bill O'Reilly for reporting on a withdrawn study about projected sea levels, the mongrels claim to know why it was withdrawn:
O'Reilly won't tell you, but we will. The reason is simple -- and surprisingly unpleasant to O'Reilly and the Right . . . it's because it's too conservative an estimate.
Driscoll and her "guest blogger" cite comments that the estimate was too conservative, but guess what? They don't come from the authors of the study. If you want to know the real reason it was withdrawn, why not do what Driscoll refused to do: go to the source? Here it is, straight from the Nature website and the authors:
We tested the sensitivity of our results to the length of the time step used in the integration of the model for the period of deglaciation, which we found to be robust. However, we overlooked that the simulations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are sensitive to this time step, which led to an overestimation of the sea-level response to warming in the simulations for these centuries.
Uh oh, have we spotted Another Hound Lie? We report, you decide.

The word smear is defined as a slanderous defamation, a false accusation of an offense or a malicious misrepresentation of someone's words or actions, an attempt to damage someone’s reputation by telling lies about them. That seems fairly straightforward, but the biased bassets have invented their own definition: something that's true but we would rather you not mention. Examples:
  • Fox "smeared" Rep Baron Hill because they played a video from five months ago and that made it "old news" (but not as old as this).
  • Fox "smeared" Robert Gibbs because they discussed him getting a twitter account.
  • Hannity "smeared" Michelle Obama by mentioning her statement about being proud of her country.
The whippets don't even try to suggest that any of these are untrue--they're just "smears" because they'd rather people not bring them up! We want to assist in the education of the newspoodles. So to help them understand simple English, here are a few examples of genuine smears:These are all false. And there is something else they all have in common: they were all perpetrated by the newsmutts. What's more, even after having been exposed as untrue, they are all still standing without correction or retraction. That's what makes 'em "smears", dawg!

The Lie of the Week:
We have suggested repeatedly that the newshounds, while they profess to watch Fox, really spend most of their time recycling complaints, videos, and arguments scoured from other websites. This brings us to a post from "Alex"purporting to review FNC's health care summit coverage. It is ironic that "Alex" confirms our suspicions:
I collapsed on the sofa with a cup of coffee to watch FNC live for 15 minutes... Overall it was a disgustingly biased, sneering fifteen minutes. I wrote yesterday that I hoped there would be some balance provided at another time during the coverage. From what I’ve read, and reviewed on video since then, that was a hope in vain.
How better to characterize seven hours of broadcasting than by watching it for 15 minutes, then scouring the interwebs for other people's opinions and video clips? By the way, from the description "Alex" gives of the "15 minutes", it's actually more like nine minutes: a whopping 2% of the coverage.
The meme infecting some of the more factually challenged members of the rightwing blogosphere is that not only did Fox News Channel’s coverage of yesterday’s Health Care Summit trump that of CNN and MSNBC –but that MSNBC didn’t cover it at all, preferring hockey to healthcare....First, lets deal with the “MSNBC didn’t cover the summit” lie. MSNBC covered the healthcare summit and then broke off for hockey – because NBC has the contract to cover the Olympics.
"Alex" is strangely coy about what "right-wing" blog made this claim, so it's impossible to verify that any website did so. But coming to her rescue is a hound commenter--conveniently the first one out of the box--to claim that it's J$P!
  • HH (aka Blackflon) posted this (screen grab below) last night on Dollar's comment thread, and Dollar never corrected him even though he himself put up a link to an article that mentioned MSNBC's coverage: I see that MSNBC is not covering the Health Care Summit. They are covering hockey instead...
If that's what "Alex" is hanging her hat on, she shouldn't rewrite other people's words. Blackflon said MSNBC is not (present tense) covering the summit, not that MSNBC "didn't cover it at all". We didn't correct Blackflon for a basic, elementary reason: he was right! The hound screengrab was cropped so it didn't show the time stamp. When Blackflon posted at 4:21 pm, MSNBC wasn't carrying the summit. They were covering hockey instead. Back to the brilliant insights of "Alex":
When the main network doesn’t cover the Olympics in the afternoon, MSNBC and other affiliates do.
True, but NBC has five cable channels available in addition to their broadcast network. They didn't have to put the Olympics on MSNBC, in the middle of the health care summit. They made the choice to dump the second half of the live summit in favor of hockey. Note: it seems passing strange that "Alex" considers it a "lie" to say "MSNBC didn't cover the summit". In the same paragraph "Alex" claims that Sarah Palin "apparently didn't watch the summit" because she switched in the afternoon to watch the Olympics on MSNBC. So "Alex", if it's a lie to say MSNBC didn't cover the summit, it's a lie to say Sarah Palin didn't watch it. She did the exact same thing MSNBC did! Folks, don't try to make sense out of any of this. It's Hound Logic. "Alex" continues:
When showing confrontation in a split screen, MSNBC put President Obama in a bigger box. FOX put the Republican in the bigger box.
Here "Alex" is repeating what she read from a CNN transcript, because as we know "Alex" didn't watch any of FNC's airing of the actual summit. No surprise: she gets it wrong. Fox gave the bigger box to the person who had the floor and was speaking, be they Republican or Democrat. In another example of parroting someone else's reporting, "Alex" states:
Fox News provided the most uninterrupted coverage before the lunch break...
Actually FNC showed the entire morning session without interruptions, pundits, or commercials. CNN and MSNBC repeatedly talked over the summiteers, muted their audio, and inserted commercial breaks. It would be more accurate to say that Fox was the only commercial news channel to air uninterrupted coverage of the morning session. But "Alex" wouldn't know that. She didn't bother to watch. That said, she doesn't do much better with the nine minutes she does claim to have seen:
Megyn Kelly and Trace Gallagher were smirking their way through what Kelly called, in a mocking tone, "Healthcarepalooza" and reading out a selection of messages which were coming in via their on-air "town hall" - all slamming the Democrats, or both parties, but all parroting Republican talking points... Do you mean to tell me that out of the 25,000 comments Gallagher claimed had poured in by then, there was not ONE in favor of the bill, or approving of the summit?
Gallagher didn't say there were 25,000 comments. He said 25,000 people were logged into the chat. Oh, details, details. As for those chat comments..."All slamming the Democrats":
I like the exchange for Obama to say to McCain, 'The election is over'.
"Not ONE approving of the summit":
People saying 'no, it's not boring at all'. In fact some are saying 'this is a great civics lesson'. A number of people saying 'this is the farthest thing from boring'.
"There was not ONE in favor of the bill":
John said: 'They should pass the bill'.
"All parroting Republican talking points":
Dick Wilson says: 'My guess is that 99% of the 50% who say do nothing either have good health insurance, medicare, or both. In other words, I've got mine, the hell with them.'
These were read on air by Gallagher during three brief hits--one of them part of the nine minutes "Alex" claimed she saw. So someone isn't telling the truth here. Is it your lying ears, or the lying newshounds? Before you answer that, there's more:
I’m not sure how well Fox News’ spinpalooza, featuring sneering hosts...
Who were the "sneering hosts"? The only host "Alex" mentions is Megyn Kelly. Oh wait, that's the only one she actually saw. So is she claiming that Bret Baier and Shep Smith were "sneering" too--without having seen their coverage? Looks like.
...sneering hosts and an endless parade of rightwing shills, qualifies as superior coverage of the debate.
Who's she talking about now? It can't be anyone in the morning session, since we know it was the other cable news channels that broke away from the summit to air pundit spin, not Fox. Kelly did talk with Dr Marc Siegel who addressed issues that impact practicing physicians. "Alex" did see one guest interviewed by Megyn Kelly: a town-hall protester who could be fairly called "right-wing". So if we include Siegel (for sake of argument only, as it's an insult to describe him as a "shill" for anyone) what do we have, an endless parade of two people?!? Here's the truth:It's not like this is secret information. Videos of the two interviews are sitting right on the fox news website. But "Alex" either didn't review videos as she claimed, or deliberately left them out. And these are just from Megyn Kelly's portion. More Democrats and liberals appeared both before and after that. So where did "Alex" get the idea that Fox's coverage was "an endless parade of rightwing shills"? She made it up! These desperate, specious slanders earn "Alex" the highly-coveted distinction of having told The Lie of the Week.

Spot something you'd like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email!

2/28/10 8:06 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink) |

Fox Haters Week in Review

We deal with crooks, liars, truthers, and some very bad dogs. The smears stop here: it's another action-packed edition of Fox Haters Week in Review!

Around the Interwebs:
There is nothing so irresistible as low-hanging fruit, and nowhere are the coconuts closer to the ground than at the loony bin, aka orreillysucks.com. Where else can you find both ignorance and dishonesty in one sentence:

Fox News even has a Democratic military expert on the payroll, General Wesley Clark, but O'Reilly never uses him.
Wesley Clark is not on the FNC payroll and hasn't been for nearly three years. (He didn't last long at MSNBC either.) And as for the claim that O'Reilly "never uses him"? Another lie: when he was with Fox he appeared with O'Reilly over and over again. And even after the General left FNC and O'Reilly was under no obligation to put him on, he continued to invite him back to The Factor:
  • The Factor invited retired General Wesley Clark to weigh in on the issue.
  • The Factor was joined by retired General Wesley Clark, who stressed the need for a definitive strategy in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, we have another deep thinker to deal with: Trig Truther Andrew Sullivan. His latest outburst against FNC concludes:
Fox News is not a conservative news organization. It is, in many ways, a racist and xenophobic one whose double standards are a result of pure prejudice not reason.
What's he talking about? It's a bit unclear, as in the five paragraphs preceding this peroration there is only one sentence about Fox News:
Fox News described the Fort Hood shootings as an act of terrorism...
Just like the Obama administration.
...but did not describe the assassination of Dr George Tiller as an act of terrorism.
Oh? Who is the "Fox News" that refused to give that description? We're pretty sure that terrorism is not discussed in the Articles of Incorporation so we have to assume that Sullivan is not talking about "Fox News" the entity but rather about some person on FNC. But whom? Andy doesn't say, so let's give him the benefit of the doubt and go with the most-heard voice on FNC: the guy with the biggest ratings and largest audience. That seems fair. Here is what Mr Bill O'Reilly said, in his own words:
  • A domestic terrorist shot the doctor dead.
  • George Tiller, who was murdered by a domestic terrorist, destroyed viable fetuses...
  • Now, I held back replaying that harrowing account because of the murder of Dr. Tiller by a domestic terrorist.
  • I said that flat-out I think the guy who did it is a domestic terrorist. I don't think it was a crime of murder. It was a terrorist act.
Where did Andy get the idea that FNC refused to call the guy a terrorist? He made it up! We don't know what Sullivan is smoking, but we definitely don't want any.

The Lie of the Week:
It doesn't matter how many times a website has been discredited, haters will still swallow anything they write. So it is that our Lie of the Week was born at the aptly-named Crooks and Liars. There one finds the following penned by David Neiwert:
Fox News' anchors seemed eager to assure viewers today that the plane-crash attack on IRS offices in Austin this morning was not an act of domestic terrorism.... Brian Stelter at the NYT notes that all the networks are treading around the word gingerly. Fox, meanwhile, is running hard and fast with the claim that it wasn't terrorism at all.
Neiwert presents a montage of Megyn Kelly and other FNC reporters stating it's not considered to be a terroist incident. But they weren't expressing an opinion. They were reporting on official statements from Homeland Security, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and the Obama administration--all of which said the attack was not terrorism. How does accurately repeating what the the US government says become "Fox" claiming "it wasn't terrorism at all"? Here's a montage of CNN reporters covering the same breaking information that Fox did:
  • JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via phone): [The Department of Homeland Security] now say at this time, "We have no reason to believe there is a nexus to terrorist activity."
  • MESERVE: they launched two Air Force F-16s out of Ellington Field in Houston out of this crash.... Whether or not this might be terrorist related. But as we say, DHS at this point saying no indication that that's the case, Ali.
  • ALI VELSHI: ...a number of people concerned about whether or not it was a terrorism -- an act of terrorism. Jeanne Meserve was just on with us, saying that the Department of Homeland Security does not think that there is a nexus to terrorism
  • VELSHI: They are still holding firm to the idea that they don't think this is terrorist connected. MESERVE: That's absolutely correct. They do not believe there's any nexus to terrorism
  • MESERVE: we've heard from the White House travel pool that President Obama was briefed on this situation by his counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, although let me emphasize, we've heard from multiple sources that they do not believe at this point in time that there's any terrorism relationship to the events that unfolded in Austin today
How exactly was CNN's reportage any different from FNC's? Why isn't Neiwert condemning CNN for "running hard and fast with the claim that it wasn't terrorism at all"? Why attack Fox for reporting the same news as CNN?

The phony anti-Fox charge was quickly picked up by the echo chamber. FiredogLake claimed "Fox doesn't think this was terrorism". And of course, the newshounds' own Ellen Brodsky uncritically parroted the slander:
David Neiwert, at Crooks and Liars, notes how eager the Fox News folks were to assure viewers that yesterday’s (2/18/10) plane crash into an IRS office in Austin had nothing to do with terrorism.... So what’s the big difference that mandates that Hasan be called a terrorist and not Stack? The only reason I can think of is that Hasan is a Muslim and Stack does not seem to be.
Such a beautiful smear. If only it were true. You see, Mr Neiwert isn't telling the whole story. For all his cherry-picked segments, there are some he skipped over and didn't include in his video. Salvaged from Neiwert's cutting room floor, here is Megyn Kelly who--if you believe Neiwert--is doing her best to convince viewers this was not an act of terror:
MEGYN KELLY: The Department of Homeland Security reported they had no reason to believe this was a terrorist act. We believe that is still the latest information. However obviously, this is one man on his own individual act of terror against the IRS and those in that building...
Wait a minute. We must have heard wrong. Let's listen to it again:
MEGYN KELLY: The Department of Homeland Security reported they had no reason to believe this is a terrorist act. We believe that is still the latest information. However obviously, this is one man on his own individual act of terror against the IRS and those in that building...
But wait, there's more! Neiwert said Fox "anchors"--plural--were eager to tell viewers this was not an act of domestic terrorism. Before Megyn Kelly took over the coverage, Jon Scott was at the anchor desk. Neiwert avoids any mention of Scott, and here's why:
JON SCOTT: From what Rick is reporting, the best I guess example that comes to mind is really what Timothy McVeigh did. This appears to be at this point some kind of, I guess you would call it domestic terrorism. The reports are that government offices, federal government officers, are in that building, including the offices of the Internal Revenue Service.
FNC's anchors claimed "it wasn't terrorism at all"? Another smear proves to be a shoddy fabrication. Crooks? Liars? Which one is David Neiwert?

As for Ellen Brodsky, who posted his drivel as if it were true, what's her excuse? We have suggested in the past that Brodsky and her minions don't spend much time actually watching Fox News. Instead they recycle claims from other Fox hater sites. That would explain what happened here, except that Brodsky denied that's true:
[Dollar] falsely accusing us of not watching Fox, when I can assure him that we do.
OK Brodsky, have it your way. That would mean you knew that Megyn Kelly and Jon Scott both described the act as terrorism, and yet posted an article claiming they said it had nothing to do with terrorism. In other words, you lied.

Unfinished Business:
After last Sunday's FHWiR, newshound Ellen Brodsky posted her own rebuttal: little more than a string of misrepresentations and lies, as our response documented. Brodsky fired back yet again, but rather than addressing our point-by-point analysis, she ignored it! Instead she made new accusations (aka moving the goal-posts, changing the subject etc) that we will deal with here. For example:
Although Dollar/Koldys accuses News Hounds of making unfounded assumptions, he did exactly the same thing in his accusation that I or somebody associated with News Hounds supposedly led an attack of vulgar comments on his website. His "proof?" That he received a comment, never published, saying, "I will tell the Kennel to come over and have some fun." Was this supposedly a comment from me? Another News Hound? Dollar/Koldys doesn't bother to say.
Hold it right there. Brodsky insists that we made an "accusation" that she or another newshound led an attack of vulgar comments. Read our words yourself. At no point do we claim that Brodsky or any other newshound left that comment or "led" the attacks. Ellen is lying.
I have challenged him to prove that that comment came from me or someone connected to News Hounds. So far, he has not provided any substantiation. And I can assure you, he never will.
Why would we provide substantiation for a lie? Read our words. We never said that comment came from you or anyone "connected" to you. Can't you even tell the truth about that?

The desperation meter must have been going into the danger zone because, in addition to all this, Ellen also added to her original rebuttal, tacking on a comment from "Alex". By including it in her own piece, Brodsky vouches for its accuracy (unless Ellen and Alex are one and the same). EllenAlex booms:
Koldys/Dollar wrote this:
Patrick is the guy who merrily called for Bill O'Reilly to be raped and murdered over at the newshounds forum. He was part of the gang who comment-bombed this website with all those unprintable, vulgar, repellent personal attacks.
My Challenge to You: I challenge you to send Ellen, via email, screen shots of those comments, including the IP's, which no doubt you have archived.
Why would we send anything to a serial liar and trust her to suddenly turn honest? Why send anything to Ellen when we didn't accuse her, or any other newshound, of any involvement whatsoever?

As for revealing private IP addresses: that's an easy challenge to make, knowing that J$P has a standing policy not to reveal anyone's IP address without their express consent. We take privacy rights a bit more seriously than they do at the kennel. If you start posting things the biased bassets don't agree with, you may just find the moderators snooping into your IP address, talking about where you work, and making veiled threats to report you to your boss. And if that fails, then the mongrel mods can take your IP address and reveal it to the whole world (we've blurred the numbers here so as not to be a part of their unethical behavior).

Bear in mind that after Alex first posted her "challenge", the very person we mentioned--Patrick (aka Michael Weston, aka Bababooey etc), who called for O'Reilly to be murdered--replied to Alex. Yes, he does post comments at newshounds. And what's more, he admitted to being the same Patrick we were talking about:
Yes, I did say that I hoped Billo would be raped and murder.....but you are missing the context...
Back to the EllenAlex challenge:
Prove that those comments came from a "gang" of our regulars. I don't believe it for one second. You are trying to smear us...
Another lie. We said the comments came from a "gang". We didn't say "a gang" of "newshounds regulars". You're the ones who keep saying that, which is in itself revealing.
We do NOT encourage or condone such behavior, contrary to what you would like to believe, and your insinuation that we might is vile in itself.
Of course you don't, except when you do. Here's Ellen Brodsky congratulating a "newshound regular" who had just finished disrupting a J$P comment thread by posting a string of name-calling personal attacks:
As far as I'm concerned, you can't be too rude to that little prick.
Ellen, tell us again how you never encourage or condone such behavior.

The newshounds doth protest too much.

Spot something you'd like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email!

2/21/10 4:55 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink) |

FHWiR Update: Lying by the Numbers

UPDATED! It seems we struck a nerve. The newshounds take issue, and we respond in a special update edition of Fox Haters Week in Review!

Ellen Brodsky of the newshounds has posted a "rebuttal" to our last FHWiR. It is only fair that we acknowledge her courage in addressing our points, and assess the credibility of what she writes. To assist the reader we will rate the truthfulness of each statement, using our patented J$P dials, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 representing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Only in the bizarro world of Mark Koldys/Johnny Dollar, a guy so obsessed with us he has my picture prominently placed on his homepage, would a correction we made to a post be characterized as something nefarious and deceitful.
Actually it's not only in our bizarro world, but also in the bizarro world of the newshounds, who attacked a Fox correction for the very thing the mongrels did, scrubbing an erroneous article:
But a click on that headline in Google News brings one to the Petraeus denial, and the original story is not to be found. ...FOX should have left the original and published the follow-up rather than scrubbing the earlier one. One wonders who told the FOX webmasters to do that, and if it's considered S.O.P there?
So Ellen's first rebuttal attempt rates, oh, a 4. Then she addresses our point that her correction didn't point out what errors were being corrected:
The point, as I see it, is to keep what's on the blog correct, not to explain why what's NOT on the blog was incorrect.
But wait, this is another complete about-face from what the bowsers said before:
Other news organizations handle corrections differently. In these New York Times corrections, the newspaper states directly which information was incorrect and what the correction inforrmation [sic] is. Perhaps the journalists of Fox News should review aspects of the Society of Professional Journalists ethical guidelines which ChrisH posted recently.
We'll be generous and rate this highly disingenuous argument as a 4. Plus we have to note that Brodsky completely ignores our key point: in order to keep hound mistakes buried, she removed her "correction" post just 48 hours after it appeared. Definitely a lie of omission.
Koldys/Dollar further suggests (after falsely accusing us of not watching Fox, when I can assure him that we do) that I lied in a post wishing Fox News' Jennifer Griffin our best wishes for a speedy recovery from breast cancer.
For the record, what we said about not watching Fox was that they admitted to attacking Fox's reporting without having seen it. But we'll let that go. Note that Brodsky does not quote our actual words, so we will do so now. See if you can spot where we accused her of lying:
We applaud Brodsky for her well wishes toward Ms Griffin, but one line in her post was particularly striking:
I, along with several of the other News Hounds have long thought that Jennifer Griffin was one of the best reporters on Fox News, if not the best reporter.
It would have been nice if she had said that before now. We searched the hound website but couldn't find Ellen or any of the newspooches having made that statement in the past.
We accused her of lying?!? We'd give that a zero if we could, but we'll have to settle for a 1 on the truthfulness scale.
Koldys/Dollar claims that we called Griffin a "tool of the religious right." Where did he find that in this post? I could not. Chrish was suggesting that Fox News did not want to offend the religious right, not denigrating Griffin's reporting abilities.
Well the only thing Chrish's post dealt with was a report by...Jennifer Griffin. And the headline of the piece happens to read:
Jennifer Griffin does it again
Gee, ya think it was a criticism of Jennifer Griffin? Bueller? Anyone? Rating: 1.
Koldys/Dollar exaggerated Donna's words to falsely claim she called Griffin a "Pentagon spinmeister."
Well let's quote Donna's words:
Today on Studio B with Shepard Smith they had a segment on with Jennifer Griffin reporting from the Pentagon (Comment: I don't know if Fox still has reporters in Iraq) and they put the best positive spin they could on the story.... But, she added that there was a rise in car bombings since the surge and that has led to a large number of attacks against civilians in Baghdad. (Comment: She said this like an afterthought).... It figures that after staying away from the stories in Iraq for so long that when they finally get back to reporting on them, they'd twist them to have a positive spin.
They = Smith and Griffin. Brodsky's truthfulness: 3.
Koldys/Dollar also twisted Marie Therese's post to allege she characterized Griffin as doing "phony baloney" reporting. In reality, MT was criticizing Fox News' context, not Griffin's work.
Marie Therese wrote:
Angle aired a report by Jennifer Griffin that included statements about Iran made by an "Iranian dissident" named Alireza Jafarzadeh, author of The Iran Threat and founder of Strategic Policy Consulting, Inc.... All of this is really sounding more and more like the phony-baloney build-up we all went through before the failed war in Iraq!... And of course Griffin never mentioned that the Bush administration has steadfastly refused to enter into any kind of substantive diplomatic dialog with either Iran or Syria until just recently.
Wait, Ellen says MT didn't criticize Griffin's work, and yet there it is, MT criticizing Griffin's work! Amazing. But Brodsky is correct that MT criticized others in addition to Griffin, and while that doesn't disprove what we wrote, we will again be generous and rate this as a 5.
Koldys/Dollar claimed we said, "Jennifer Griffin is the epitome of a spoiled brat." In reality, what Nancy wrote was: "Griffin's report (my emphasis) was the epitome of spoiled brat sneering 'eewww'; she's better when she reports from Jerusalem."
This is definitely a Brodsky classic. How exactly can a report be a "spoiled brat"? A spoiled brat is a person! It would be possible to say that Ellen Brodsky's post is a "flagrant liar". But we know that it's not the post that's the liar, don't we? Truthfulness rating: 4, for creative but unconvincing parsing.
Furthermore, I never said in my post that Griffin was a flawless reporter who stood up to Fox News' spin machine.
Straw dog! We never suggested that you did say that.
Did I say that none of us had ever criticized her? No.
Straw dog part deux!
Meanwhile, Koldys/Dollar, after complaining I should have given those props to Griffin before, somehow overlooked Nancy's post saying, "This interview & Jennifer Griffin's report on the same topic were actually informative & balanced... -- unlike the rest of the program, which was a re-tread of stories aired earlier the same day on Fox News Live, a reiteration of GOP talking points, & a few off-hand bashes at the usual targets."
Wow, one whole sentence vs a string of attacks. And yet it too is a diversion, as the point was we couldn't find any newshound post that said Griffin is one of FNC's best reporters. This one certainly doesn't. Rating: 3.
Koldys/Dollar also attacks us for criticizing Fox Nation's comments...
In fact we concurred with the newshound criticisms of those comments:
We agree that such language is inappropriate.
We didn't attack their criticisms, we attacked their hypocrisy. 1.
There is simply no comparison, except in Koldys'/Dollar's fantasy world, between one out-of-line comment that got past our volunteer moderators and the mountain of death wishes and bigotry that has either been approved or ignored by the moderators of a site owned by one of the largest media conglomerates in the world.
Just as you'll find more left-handed people in New York City than in Dog's Breath Nebraska, there are more objectionable statements in a Fox Nation thread of 533 comments than in a newshound thread of 40 (fyi 1 out of 40 is over three times more per capita than 4 out of 533). Don't forget that Ellen's "one out-of-line comment" is just the latest example of something we have already detailed, on more than one occasion. Still, the point is not the numbers, it's the hypocrisy. Rating: 5. Overall truthfulness: a miserable 3.1 out of 10.

UPDATE:Ellen Brodsky has put up yet another post ostensibly answering this update, calling it a "hissy fit" and tossing in more hand-wringing irrelevancies. But Brodsky ignores the ten documented falsehoods above and addresses none of the substantive points made, so there's really nothing for us to respond to on the merits. We didn't expect there would be because we're right and she's wrong, but it's good to have that confirmed. Instead Ellen raised new charges (along with additional fabricated claims) that are beyond the scope of this article. Stay tuned, as our devastating rebuttal will come in good time.

Spot something you'd like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email!

2/15/10 2:10 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink) |

Fox Haters Week in Review

Hypocrisy, lies, and J$P secrets made public for the first time. All this and more in another thrill-packed installment of Fox Haters Week in Review!

Nothing on FNC escapes the notice of those sharp-eyed lotion-lovers at Media Matters. They expose the hateful bias and misinformation no matter where it leads. For example: Carl Cameron joked that the US should ship some snow to Vancouver. MM's sourpuss reaction: Put up a post about it! Fox interviewed a candidate and allowed him to plug his website (something that never happens anywhere else). Put up a post about it! Steeve Doocy made a quip about Sarah Palin's hand, Dennis Miller joked about Marc Lamont Hill's tie--each crack dutifully "exposed" by Media Matters. And just let Greg Gutfeld make a passing mention of MM: another post!

David Brock's outrage machine was cranked up to 11 when they attacked Fox News for using the "loaded" term "illegals":

Fox News frequently refers to "illegals" in TV reports, on websites
Now this reminds us of how Media Matters made a big deal about FNC not carrying the Haiti telethon, but gave Headline News a total pass. So what about all those other news channels and websites that use the "loaded" term "illegals? To wit:
  • CNN: Illegals for hire
  • CNN: Amnesty for illegals?
  • CNN: Joe Johns: the public is divided over letting illegals come back to the U.S
  • CNN: Bob Franken: legislation that would allow many illegals to seek citizenship
  • MSNBC: Illegals and business
  • MSNBC: Drivers Licenses for illegals
  • MSNBC: Mike Barnicle: How complex is this issue in terms of identifying illegals
  • MSNBC: Joe Scarborough: seal the border and deport illegals
  • MSNBC: Pat Buchanan: Nobody knows how many illegals...
  • MSNBC: Chris Matthews: ...get the illegals out of the country.
  • NBC: Tom Brokaw: you’ve got some illegals on your payroll
  • HuffPo: Clinton opposes licenses for illegals
  • HuffPo: The rich legacy of illegals
  • HuffPo: Romney fires landscaper over illegals
  • NY Times: 38 illegals detained
  • Washington Post: Tuition break sought for some illegals
  • LA Times: Police sweep for illegals
Seems like this "loaded" term is pretty widespread, so we'll wait for Media Matters to single out some of these guys like they did FNC.

Around the Interwebs:
Capitol Hill Blue bills itself as a "non-partisan, take-no-prisoners political news site". But they really need to work on their fact-checking:
Sarah Palin had "crib notes" written on her hand during an interview with Fox News that included questions scripted and pre-approved in advance.
Um, no, there were no "crib notes" used in Chris Wallace's interview with Palin; nor were the questions pre-approved. You'd think the two videos posted with the article that clearly show this stuff happening at the tea party convention, not during the Q&A with Fox News, might have been a clue.

Even more humiliating is this gem from something called Reconstitution 2.0, who are all a-twitter because in an interview with Glenn Beck a candidate revealed herself as a 9/11 truther:
It bothers me because a supposed “news” organization clearly decided to act as a surrogate of the two “establishment” Rushpubliscums....The way that lying psychopath Beck boxed Medina in should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind anymore. FOX “News” is a propaganda arm of the Rushpubliscum Party.
Yeah, how dare Fox News ask a candidate for public office if they subscribe to a theory so fringy it would embarrass Dr Walter Bishop? But wait...it wasn't Fox News at all. It was Glenn Beck on his radio show. Oops.

Over at the loony bin, aka oreillysucks.com, hardly a week goes by where the inmates running that asylum don't spout some preposterous lie about Bill O'Reilly. Sure enough, they delivered again:
O'Reilly is a hypocrite, because he never reports on the Mark Sanford affair, because he is a Republican, but he sure reports on the Edwards garbage because he is a Democrat.
Ahem:Sucksters, it's time to replace your meds with truth serum.

And a word of thanks to those websites (TV Newser, Newsbusters, and others) who used our Chris Wallace/Megyn Kelly video and credited J$P with a link. And to those sites who used our video without an accrediting link (we're looking at you, HuffPo): stay classy!

Old Hounds, Old Tricks:
There is no consistency as consistent as the shopworn bag of tricks that are coin of the realm at the newshounds. We know they attack FNC programs without watching them, and it's really just one small step from that to slamming Fox for things that haven't even happened yet. So it is that Ellen Brodsky proclaimed that Chris Wallace is "sure to be a lapdog for Sarah Palin" when he interviews her. And the kennel-dwellers lapped it up:
  • It's sure to be a very scripted, taped interview
  • I'm sure they'll give her the questions in advance so her team can rehearse her on what to say, then we can all look forward to another taped in advance interview where they'll have plenty of time to edit out the gaffs.
  • Will he ask the one question on many peoples' minds (those who have one): "You asked for the the resignation of Rahm Emanuel for his use of the r-word. Will you make a similar request of Rush Limbaugh for his repeated use?"
  • Will Wallace ask her about the growing scandal regarding her hubby's involvement in the Alaska governor's office?
For the record, Wallace did ask those questions. In fact, Time headlined Wallace "grilling" Palin, while others praised how he "exposed" her views and delivered a "smack-down". Somehow that doesn't seem to track with the "lapdog interview" Brodsky predicted, but she has conveniently avoided posting an article analyzing the interview that actually took place. Apparently the one in her head takes precedence.

We should probably count ourselves lucky that Brodsky didn't fall back on another time-honored hound tactic: burying their mistakes. When newspup Julie completely misread the plain data on some poll results and based another Fox attack (Dec 18 2009) on her own ignorance, even the kennel-dwellers saw through it:
  • Are you serious? Where does one get the notion that favorable ratings for various groups have to add up to 100%?
  • The numbers don't add up to 100% because they're not mutually exclusive.
  • Julie, you need to read the actual NBC/WSJ poll results before writing an editorial. Fox reported the results accurately.
Rather than admit an embarrassing error, Driscoll and Brodsky came up with a better idea. They made the old post disappear, and then put up a "correction":
A prior post about Fox's reporting on the WSJ/NBC poll was incorrect and has been withdrawn.
What was incorrect? Where was the mistake? Slyly, Ellen doesn't say. And with the original post "withdrawn" within hours of its being published, their secret is safe. Oh, and just to make sure this whole humiliating screw-up stayed dead and buried, just 48 hours later the "correction" disappeared as well! Gone from the front page and gone from the site archives, as if none of it ever happened. There is literally no way to get to either the original post or the "correction" from any link on the newspoodle site, but you can still find both if you know the secret URLs.

It is touching that Brodsky went through all this trouble just to protect Julie Driscoll from herself, especially given how Driscoll's suspected plagiarism has damaged the reputation of the mongrels. Perhaps Ellen felt Julie owed her a favor, so rather than facing up to her own misbegotten predictions of the Wallace/Palin interview, Ellen declined and Julie ended up with the task. Driscoll obliged by making no mention whatsoever of Ellen's brainless prognostications. Instead, Julie just decided to make stuff up out of thin air:
I'm going to assume for the record that the questions were given to Palin in advance, and she had a little time to study them.
Say what? Where'd that come from? When has Fox News Sunday, or any other Sunday show, ever given their guests the questions ahead of time? Here's a challenge to Julie Driscoll: prove it. Do you have any source for this other than your diseased imagination? Our comments are open for you to back that up with facts...but please, your own words this time.

In other news, Ellen posts that she just learned of Jennifer Griffin's struggle with cancer (three months after it was first reported). We applaud Brodsky for her well wishes toward Ms Griffin, but one line in her post was particularly striking:
I, along with several of the other News Hounds have long thought that Jennifer Griffin was one of the best reporters on Fox News, if not the best reporter.
It would have been nice if she had said that before now. We searched the hound website but couldn't find Ellen or any of the newspooches having made that statement in the past. However, we did find these: Meanwhile the biased bassets continue to focus on the "violence" found in comments at the Fox Nation. We agree that such language is inappropriate, and we don't permit it here. But keep in mind that the tail-waggers pre-approve every comment before it appears. Given that, you have to wonder about the level of hound hypocrisy that finds remarks like this one (h/t to emailer "Haggis" for spotting it) worthy of publication, and cheered on by others:


Behind the Curtain:
Warning: Ugly Language! This is a good time to bring you a little J$P behind-the-scenes. It began with this, a comment that we received but did not publish:
  • I will tell the Kennel to come over and have some fun.
What followed was a Niagara of vulgar and obscene comments: hundreds of them. Some were just endless repetitions of the f-word or the c-word. Others were in the form of septic attacks on anyone and anything, often revealing strong streaks of racism and homophobia. The comments below, made public for the first time, represent a tiny sample of what "the kennel" dumped here. We have deleted expletives but have left some decipherable so that the reader will truly understand the nature of hatred:
  • Get a life f@g.
  • [expletive deleted] THOSE N@@@@@S RIGHT
  • Your hero is Boy George and Lady Gaga, a f@g and someone who makes us all gag.
  • God you are such an idiot, liar and obtuse [expletives deleted].
  • like who the hell care you were at the sex change clinic f@g boy.
  • Shut up retrard [sic].
  • you are an idiot, a moron, and just a plain [expletive deleted].
  • Lets go butt [expletive deleted] some indonesian children.
  • And is it just me or are you looking like a bigger f@ggot everyday.
  • Stick your [expletive deleted] in and [expletive deleted]
  • This pathetic blog only has 30 comments and two of them are from me, ripping on you f@gs
  • [expletive deleted], Maklin is an ignorant Conservative c@@@.
  • Shut up f@ggot.

Note: an update to this post is here.

Spot something you'd like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email!

2/14/10 6:06 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink) |

Fox Haters Week in Review

If you think Media Matters is unreliable, see what happens when others appropriate their stuff. It's another long-winded installment of Fox Haters Week in Review!

Fact Check Fizzle:
In advance of the State of the Union Address, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sought to mobilize Fox haters everywhere. To do so they announced an exciting new initiative to "fact check" FNC's coverage of the SotU, and called on people to sign up and report all the Fox falsehoods and lies. The echo chamber swung into action, and the effort was given maximum exposure: HuffPo, The Atlantic, Talking Points Memo, and thousands of others. Of course the newshounds, eager for material, rushed to promote the partisan effort:

The airwaves and blogosphere will erupt with lies and spin galore before, during, and after President Obama's State of the Union speech tonight.
Unfortunately, the hound comment thread didn't exactly erupt with examples. In fact, not one Fox lie was identified.

But what about the rest of the blue blog army? What did they turn up for the DCCC? We looked for a press release without success, but the DCCC did announce their results: in a tweet! It took us back to the sign-up page, where, if you scroll down far enough, you'll find the Niagara of Fox lies enumerated for your reading pleasure. But of eight examples listed, only two are credited to a DCCC tipster. The rest? Mostly links to Media Matters! Two entries were about things said on Fox the next day, and one of those was just a comment by an interview guest.

Let's look at some of the remaning six. One cites a Media Matters article about an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The article has nothing to do with FNC, yet here it is, listed as part of the "Fox Fact Check". Another cites a statement by John McCain about cutting the deficit; it links to an irrelevant Politico piece about how McCain voted on something. Whipping out the tu quoque fallacy is first-rate agit-prop, but how McCain voted is logically immaterial to whether his opinion is a Fox "lie". Not to mention the absurdity of suggesting that if you disagree with the opinion of someone being interviewed, that means the channel airing the interview is "lying". By that standard, every news channel lies hundreds of times every single day

Possibly the shadiest of these DCCC entries is the one that links to yet another Media Matters piece as "proof" that "Fox says" Obama has not cut taxes. The MM piece is about a New York Post editorial, but there is a fleeting mention of Fox:
Fox Forum columnist Peter Roff wrote, "We cut taxes? How did I miss that?"
Now in true MM style, you have to follow links to get the full context of the conversation. It turns out that multiple voices were liveblogging the SotU; here is the relevant part of the exchange:
  • Peter Roff: We cut taxes? How did I miss that?
  • Ellen Ratner: He does not to do a ton more to create jobs-- good that he is going after the tax cuts they did-- why don't you guys recognize that????
  • SECupp: Cut taxes?! WHAT?
  • Ellen Ratner: Peter, you would miss it unless it came from a Republican!!
So we have a guy doing a liveblog, and DCCC trumpets his words as "Fox says". Meanwhile Ellen Ratner, who is actually a Fox News contributor and appears on FNC, in the very same discussion, says the opposite. If a quote from an online conversation represents the corporate opinion of Fox News, why shouldn't the headline read: "Fox Congratulates Obama for Cutting Taxes?"

Dog and Phony Show:
The State of the Union was also a big focus over at the dog pound, and no one will be surprised that we find the newshounds adopting the same tactic as the DCCC: lifting from Media Matters! You may wonder why it took two people--Ellen Brodsky and "Brian"--just to rewrite a post from Brock's boys. Well, that's what gives it that extra dose of perspicacity and insight. Brodsky and Brian tell us that Cavuto served up "GOP falsehoods" regarding the SotU:
Host and guest each regurgitated the same Republican talking points we’ve been hearing elsewhere on Fox News – attacking President Obama for daring to criticize the decision and overlooking the serious, Joe Wilson-like breach of etiquette by Justice Alito.
B&B then go on to rebut any criticism of Obama's comments, letting Media Matters do their research for them:
As Media Matters has pointed out, presidents have a history of criticizing the Supreme Court on a SOTU stage. President Harding ripped the Court in 1922 for overturning a 1919 Child Labor Law.
Well that's a lie. Here's what Harding said:
The decision of the Supreme Court has put this problem outside the proper domain of Federal regulation until the Constitution is so amended as to give the Congress indubitable authority. I recommend the submission of such an amendment.
He didn't attack the Court for its decision. He didn't say or imply that the Court was wrong. In fact, by calling for an amendment, he acknowledged the Court's authority.
President Reagan ripped the Court for ruling on school prayer (1988 address) and Roe v Wade (1984 address).
The truth (1988):
The Congress opens its proceedings each day, as does the Supreme Court, with an acknowledgment of the Supreme Being. Yet we are denied the right to set aside in our schools a moment each day for those who wish to pray. I believe Congress should pass our school prayer amendment.
The truth (1984):
During our first 3 years, we have joined bipartisan efforts to restore protection of the law to unborn children.... We should rise above bitterness and reproach, and if Americans could come together in a spirit of understanding and helping, then we could find positive solutions to the tragedy of abortion.
Reagan did not "rip" the Court or attack their judgment, and like Harding Reagan argued for an amendment, recognizing the Court's authority. In 1984 Reagan didn't even mention Roe v Wade or the Supreme Court! But there's one more B&B falsehood to deal with:
George W. Bush complained about "activist judges" "redefining marriage by court order." (2004 address)
This example is laughable in its transparency. Like Reagan in 1984, Bush never mentioned the Supreme Court. He's talking about local and regional judges, not Justices of the Supreme Court. B&B would have you believe he was attacking the Supremes for a ruling about "redefining marriage"--a fictional ruling that exists only in the diseased minds of David Brock and Ellen Brodsky.

Speaking of lies, remember what it took two people to write, that "host and guest" attacked Obama about this? Watch the video for yourself and you'll find no such attack from Cavuto. Oh, and as for Brodsky's claim that they both "overlooked" Alito's reaction? They discuss it at 5:45 in. Why tell a lie that is so easily disproved?

Also chiming in on the SotU was someone who goes by "Alex". Putting on her Perry Mason hat, "Alex" turns legal scholar:
Martha McCallum told viewers that according to the Fox News “brain room", President Obama was wrong when he said that the recent SCOTUS ruling on corporate donations to candidates would “open the floodgates” for foreign-controlled companies to spend in US elections. Well, once again Fox News gets it wrong and our intelligent and well-educated 44th President gets it right.
As the ruling makes clear, the law regarding foreign corporations and groups was untouched. It's the same now as it was before the decision came down.

So what does "Alex" do to "prove" her case? No one should be surprised as the road leads once again to Media Matters. Letting Brock do her research for her, "Alex" parrots the MM citation of the dissent (!) to argue that Fox is wrong. No, we're not making this up. Never mind that constitutional scholars and Law Professors say Obama was mistaken. The dissenting opinion, which has no force of law whatsoever, has been elevated by "Alex" to the ultimate authority!

The dissent speculates about what might happen in future cases, raising the possibility of reversing the ban on some foreign contributions. "Alex" presents this educated guesswork as if it were fact, even though the respected SCOTUSblog says that "the clear implication" of the ruling is that the Court would not overturn the ban on foreign contributions. So just how does this prove that Obama was right and "Fox was wrong"?

And that brings us back to the main issue. Now this is going to get even more pedagogic, but it needs to be said. Refer to the quote from "Alex" above. Note how she claims that MacCallum and Obama were talking about "foreign-controlled corporations". Compare that to Obama's words:
The Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.
And to MacCallum's words:
The president's reference to foreign corporations' participation in this change is what is wrong here. Now, the court specifically wrote that it was not overturning restrictions on foreign dollars. Those will stay in place.
Why is "Alex" using a phrase ("foreign-controlled corporations") that neither Obama nor MacCallum used? Because that's what the dissent was about! "Alex" explains the dissent's position:
They have good reason to believe that a back door may have been opened wide for campaign funding by foreign-controlled U.S companies.
Again, Obama didn't say "foreign-controlled US companies" and neither did MacCallum. They were both talking about "foreign corporations", not the foreign-controlled US companies mentioned in the dissent. The two are not interchangeable; legal implications for one are different from the other. So whatever the merits of the dissent, it certainly doesn't prove Obama right or Fox wrong because it's not talking about the same thing!

When you're honest about who said what, it's clear that Fox News and MacCallum were and are verbatim correct. "Alex" can doctor quotes and drag red herrings across the path, but either she's an ignorant schlub who parrots Media Matters because she doesn't know any better, or she's purposefully telling Another Hound Lie.

Perhaps the mongrels should stop cribbing from others. We looked at their posts over a 14-day period and found that some 80% of them were based on an article or video from some other website. Maybe if they started watching Fox News Channel a little more instead of relying on what other people post, they wouldn't make so many embarrassing mistakes.

Priscilla whined this week that we chastised her because she "misspelled the name of a Fox News reporter". No, Prissy, you didn't make a typo--you got her name wrong because you had no idea who she was. Just like you did when you referenced "Fox reporter Tim Vaughn"--who isn't a Fox "reporter" and whose name actually is Tim Gaughan. And there's the wannabee mutt who on Jan 20 wrote about "a regular old Fox “news” program yesterday, America's Election HQ, in fact – which is part of the minority “news” lineup." Except there is no FNC program by that name! See, this is what you get when "newshounds" write about Fox News but know little about it, because they don't watch Fox so you don't have to. Even their slogan is a lie.

Spot something you'd like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email!

1/31/10 7:13 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink) |

Fox Haters Week in Review

Double the standards, double the lies! Smear merchants beware: we tackle Media Matters and more in today's action-packed episode of Fox Haters Week in Review!

Mendacity Matters:
Sometimes it seems like David Brock's Media Matters is deliberately trying to single out Fox News. A shocking claim, but before you dismiss it out of hand, stay with us. On Friday they posted nine paragraphs about something that can be summed up in one sentence: FNC did not air the Haiti telethon. Their headline:

Fox News stands virtually alone in not airing Haiti benefit concert
What is "virtually alone"? Scores of cable channels aired it, but there are hundreds that didn't. Or maybe they're talking about cable news channels. But if so, why didn't Media Matters do a nine-paragraph post about Headline News? They didn't carry it either, yet Media Matters says nothing about them. Why?

The MMers go on to report what O'Reilly covered instead:
Bill O'Reilly aired segments about Sarah and Bristol Palin's "body language" during their Oprah interview, an interview with Glenn Beck about his first year at Fox News, and a segment on the "collapse" of the "far left media."
Is this summary somewhat incomplete? There's no mention of the interview with Dennis Kucinich, or the report from Haiti on rescue efforts from a collapsed hotel. Now why would Media Matters want to hide that information from their readers? Meanwhile Headline News was airing Nancy Grace and leftist comic Joy Behar; apparently that programming is perfectly acceptable to Brock's brigade: no nine-paragraph post!

This is not the only example of Media Matters targeting Fox to protect others. Chris Golas noticed this MM headline:
Fox Nation declares "Brown Win Could Cause Huge Stock Rally"
All the MMers tell you is that the Fox Nation story "linked to Newsbusters". But as Mr Golas observed, that's just a tad deceptive:
Media Matters does tell their readers that Fox Nation linked to Newsbusters but Newsbusters was writing about Jim Cramer...Jim Cramer works for CNBC!!
Mr Golas caught them pulling the same trick again, splashing a Fox Nation headline: "Is President Obama Bad for Business?" So who was Media Matters protecting this time?
The Fox Nation links to a Yahoo! News item which is actually from Bloomberg. The headline is: "Obama Seen as Anti-Business by 77% of U.S. Investors". Yeah, I really do wonder how Fox Nation came up with this headline...
The MMers went after O'Reilly's Friday Talking Points Memo as well, but in a rather curious manner. The TPM wasn't exactly exhaustive in length: less than three minutes. Yet Brock's boys decided that was too much information, so they used a familiar ploy. Cutting the TPM down to 20 seconds, they posted O'Reilly's conclusion--but none of the examples and data that he gave to support his conclusion! Here is some of what Media Matters didn't want you to hear:
O'REILLY: When the Massachusetts votes were being counted, Fox News had almost six times as many viewers as MSNBC in primetime, five times the audience of CNN.... The Factor at 8:00 on Tuesday night beat all of ABC's primetime programming that evening....

Writing in the Miami Herald, TV critic Glenn Garvin did tell the truth: If you watched CNN or Fox News last night, you got a balanced analysis of how Republican Scott Brown pulled off the political upset of the century...On MSNBC, you got practically every conceivable expression of venom against Brown and anybody who voted him.... It may be too much to expect NBC, these days reduced to a national wisecrack, to be embarrassed over the frothing lunacy that passes for news coverage at corporate stepchild MSNBC.
There's no way Media Matters was going to post that on their website. Keith Olbermann might complain. So it ends up on Brock's cutting room floor. Oh, another thing sliced out of the MM clip: this graph. Shocker.

Fun with Numb3rs:
We haven't visited the loony bin for a while, so we thought we'd drop in at o'reillysucks.com and play a numbers game. How long will it take us to come up with ten distortions, falsehoods, or lies, just on the front page? We begin...
The O'Reilly Factor is #4, it averages 3.2 to 3.8 million total viewers a week.
Actually, in December The Factor averaged 4.8 million total viewers a week (3.3 + 1.5). [1]
Then O'Reilly said the left-wing media is dying all over the place, when it was one radio station that went bankrupt.
Air America is not "one radio station". It's a network of radio stations. [2]
And not once in 8 years of Bush did O'Reilly say the USA is moving to the left.
Talking Points Memo: America Moves to the Left. [3]
The Republican Chris Wallace was on to discuss it, and he disagreed with O'Reilly.
Oops. [4]
Yes Fox News was the only cable news network to not show the telethon.
Already disproven. [5]
O'Reilly said he had almost 7 million viewers last night (Wednesday) that's a lie, he had exactly 4,632,000 million viewers Wednesday night.
O'Reilly attracted 6.7 millions viewers Tuesday (4.6 + 2.1). [6]
Billy had Lesly Jacques from Radio Haiti on to discuss it. And he said Kristof is right, and that O'Reilly is wrong.
Actually, when asked "Am I right", Jacques responded "Yes and no", agreeing with O'Reilly that money shouldn't be sent to the Haiti government. And Jacques flat-out said Kristof was wrong, particularly in his claim that conditions in Haiti had been improving. [7]
[Luntz] admitted he could not get any Coakley supporters for his focus group, and yet he did it anyway without them.
Luntz said several Coakley supporters cancelled their appearances, not that he couldn't or didn't get any. In fact the group was predominately Democrats, only four of whom crossed over to vote for Brown. [8]
O'Reilly had Carl Cameron and Bret Bair [sic] on to discuss the campaigns...a biased one sided report with three Republicans who work for Fox, with no Democrats, none.
Undocumented, made-up, and too stooopid for words. [9]
Then O'Reilly had the two Republican legal experts Lis Wiehl and Kimberly Guilfoyle on for the is it legal segment. And as I like to point out, there are no Democratic legal experts for this segment, just the two Republicans.
Guilfoyle's voter registration is unknown, though she was married to Gavin Newsome (D). As for Wiehl, it's no secret that she's a (D): her federal contributions have gone exclusively to Al Gore and other Democrats, plus she worked for the Democrats in the House of Representatives. [10] Q.E.D.

Sharp as a Hound's Tooth:
You'd think that people who claim to "watch Fox so you don't have to" would be at least minimally informed about their subject matter. Yet the cavalcade of newshounds ignorance marches on. Braniac Priscilla, writing about "smarmy" Bill Hemmer, somehow finds herself thrice referencing FNC reporter "Molly Lyons". Is she some relation to this person, who's only been on Fox for four years? Isn't that her name right up there on the screen in the very video Priscilla posted?

And then there's Julie Driscoll, suspected plagiarist. Her genius move was to pick apart a body language segment, prefacing her probing analysis with:
I'm not a body language expert, or a psychologist...
Point taken, remaining drivel ignored. Driscoll also showcased her smarts while ranting about O'Reilly's use a graphic from your humble blogger:
O'Reilly failed to note where Dollar's little picture came from – whether it actually generated from a legitimate polling source or whether Dollar just doodled it on a napkin...
Permit us to explain something for Julie's benefit. "Legitimate polling sources" survey the populace for opinions, trends, etc. The graphic had nothing to do with public opinion. It's a simple matter of elementary mathematics--taking a speech and dividing how many minutes were aired by its total time. You don't have to be smarter than a fifth grader to know how that works.

What week would be complete without another attempt by Ellen Brodsky to pull the wool over somebody's eyes? She asserts as fact:
Fox News was the only news network and almost the only network, period, not to air the Hope for Haiti telethon.
Already disproved. She cranks out a HeadLie:
Scott Brown Pimps His Daughters; Fox News Gives Him A Pass
The basis for this: in a segment with Greta and Carl Cameron, Greta was critical, but Cameron wasn't. Ergo, "Fox News" gave him a pass! Needless to say, Brodsky's brigade have posted no articles about FNC's subsequent coverage of the controversial remark. Once a lie is in place, it wouldn't do to allow contravening evidence.

And then comes this gem of dissembling from the dog pound's Queen Bee:
If Greta Van Susteren’s special on Scott Brown last night (1/22/10) wasn’t a slobbering love affair, then I don’t know what is. Van Susteren spent the full hour of On The Record supposedly “giving you the inside story” on Brown. Not surprisingly, it was all glowing.
Brodsky's proof: one segment, an interview with Sen-elect Brown. Remember last week, when Brodsky cited one interview to make a dishonest point, carefully leaving out a second, contrary interview? The old "lie of omission". This time, to paint the image of the "all-glowing" hour Ellen had to work overtime at leaving things out. The program was in large part biographical, but what about Greta's interviews, one with a Democrat who supported Coakley as well as one with a Boston Globe reporter? Not to mention Greta's characterization of Brown as "cocky". And why does Brodsky ignore the discussion of his "thin record" and his flip-flop on Cap-and-Trade? All these were part of the "all-glowing" hour--and all omitted by Ellen to further Another Hound Lie.

Finally, a special J$P shout-out to the sharpest knife in the kennel. We've mentioned this before, but with the election concluded there's a special resonance to this sharp, incisive analysis. Enjoy once more the wisdom of the dog pound's very own Priscilla:
Another Stupid Fox Nation Headline Says MA Democrats “Nervous” About Tea Party Candidate.... There is nothing remotely connected to MA Democrats being “nervous” except “polls” which show the race between Brown and MA Attorney General Martha Coakley tightening to 9 points. But hey, in Fox Nation wishes become reality and when reality bites, ya just make it up.

Spot something you'd like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email!

1/24/10 7:25 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink) |

CNN, MSNBC Cut Republican Candidate's Mic!

During Tuesday night's coverage of the Massachusetts special election, CNN and MSNBC aired only a fraction of the Republican candidate's speech. Fox News Channel aired both candidates' speeches in their entirety.

When Martha Coakley (D) took the podium to concede the election, all three channels aired most or all of the eight-minute speech. However, Republican Scott Brown's address was cut short on CNN after just seven minutes. On MSNBC Keith Olbermann cut Brown's mic and instead attacked the Republican candidate, talked about "teabaggers", and ran commercials. CNN only ran 26% of Brown's speech, while MSNBC aired 37%. Fox News Channel carried 100% of both speeches:


(Sources: videos, Brad Wilmouth)

Yes, we know the Brown speech ran longer (27 minutes). But really, isn't this exactly the sort of thing Media Matters would trumpet if positions were reversed? You know it is.

1/20/10 2:42 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink) |

Fox Haters Week in Review

"Earthquakes bring out the worst in people." A cheesy movie line but you might think it true after reading today's Fox Haters Week in Review.

Media Matters, Honesty Doesn't:
The big noise this week was over another "report" from David Brock's Media Matters. This time it was an attempt to diminish FNC's Haiti coverage to make MSNBC's look better. So that means it can't be anything straightforward, like how much coverage on each individual day. MM decided on a new criterion: the three highest-rated programs. Highest rated from 2009 that is. That way they can "compare" MSNBC's 7:00 pm hour not with FNC's 7:00 pm hour, but with with a program that airs at an entirely different time! Thus their "analysis" includes Glenn Beck, O'Reilly, and Hannity: three commentary programs. And neatly sidesteps Special Report, Shep Smith, Greta, and all the programs with extensive coverage.

Sure enough, the numbers came out lopsided, as they wanted. And just to show how "honest" they are, buried at the tail end of the text was an acknowledgement that Shep and Bret Baier had provided "extensive" coverage. But whatever you do, don't include them in the report itself! Once that was published, Media Matters could immediately start posting follow-ups which link to the results but omit any reference to Shep or Bret, knowing that few follow links and read them to the end. So within an hour that first post was eclipsed by a new one that totally ignored Shep and Bret, and later another that did the same.

FNC has something no other cable news channel has: an evening newshour that avoids pundits, talking head debates, and the like, and focuses on straight news. That gives them the freedom to vary the content mix in the hours afterward. As O'Reilly himself noted:

Shepard Smith who comes on before us, pretty much did wall-to-wall coverage. You want me to do the same thing? You want me to do identical coverage? That's insane. All this is is cheap shots by the left to try to bolster CNN and MSNBC. We covered the story responsibly. We told you what the social problems were there. If there was anything new, we reported it immediately. And our numbers speak for themselves. We had enormous ratings this week, because we did our own program in addition to the lead story of Haiti.
There's another oddity in Brock's propaganda. The earthquake hit on Tuesday, yet Media Matters ignores Tuesday and starts with Wednesday. How odd. Why skip Day One of the coverage? Perhaps because one of their key aims--to make MSNBC look good--would have been undermined. On Tuesday, MSNBC's top-rated program (Keith Olbermann) was on the air live. Not only was there no report on Haiti, Olbermann didn't even mention that there was an earthquake! And at 7:00 pm while CNN and Fox were covering Haiti, MSNBC was showing a taped rerun of Hardball. Nope, there's no way Media Matters was going to address Tuesday's coverage.

One thing is clear: Brock isn't going to do a report on the weekend coverage (unless he suddenly changes the criteria, a trick he's tried before). Because he would have to include FNC's top-rated trio of Geraldo, Huckabee, and The Fox Report, who all offered compelling reportage. And as for MSNBC, well their most-watched weekend programs of 2009 might be a tad embarrassing. How much earthquake coverage could you expect from To Catch a Predator and LockUp?

Boehlert's Boehlony:
Jumping into the campaign to bolster MSNBC and attack Fox was discredited hack Eric Boehlert. Now writing for Media Matters, Boehlert amplified the propaganda with more of his trademark disingenuousness:
Outside of Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, Fox News doesn't do foreign coverage. Period. It has no commitment to global journalism.
How then to explain that, outside of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel, it maintains news bureaus in London, Moscow, Paris, and Rome? Last time we checked, those are "foreign" countries. Perhaps Boehlert could tell us what Dana Lewis was doing in Russia. Or, if Fox "doesn't do foreign coverage", why was Jennifer Griffin in Mogadishu? How could Greg Palkot have been reporting from Yemen just yesterday? Apparently Amy Kellogg didn't really report from Iran, or from Russia along with Steve Harrigan. And if you think you saw Adam Housley in Venezuela, or Greg Burke reporting from London, Rome, Madrid, and Vienna...well Eric Boehlert says you are hallucinating. Funny thing, though, we were sure that Fox's Steve Centanni was kidnapped while reporting from Gaza. Must have just been a rumor, because according to Eric Boehlert it couldn't have happened. Because "Fox doesn't do foreign coverage--period!"

There is, of course, a more rational explanation: Boehlert is lying. Note how his piece continues:
Fox News' abdication of its news gathering responsibilities is not new. The cabler did the same thing in the wake of the 2004 tsunami. At the time, I noted this at Salon...
Hold the phone! Eric Boehlert is actually citing his Salon report on the tsunami coverage? The one where he was caught blatantly lying about what Fox aired? The one where he never acknowledged, let alone corrected, his lies? Case closed.

Sleeping Dogs Lie:
The interwebs have more distortions about Fox's Haiti coverage than Planter's has peanuts. We've seen lies like FNC has no reporters in Haiti and FNC is "ignoring it all together" [sic]. Mediaite headlines what they describe as a "questionable comment": Cavuto compared Haiti to Somalia. Yet the video shows only two references to Somalia, and comes to the conclusion that the circumstances are different. That's not comparing--it's contrasting.

Over at the newshounds, they've found a clever way to avoid stepping in it over FNC's earthquake coverage. Avoid the subject! Oh they dutifully parroted Media Matters, with Ellen Brodsky (despite her own checkered history regarding race) suggesting that it's all due to "the fact that most of the victims are black"! Yet other than that, five days into the tragedy, they've done dozens of posts, including ten about Sarah Palin, but nothing on the continuing Fox News coverage from Haiti. Not one video from Bill Hemmer, Steve Harrigan, Geraldo, Adam Housley, Jonathan Hunt, Orlando Salinas, Dr Manny Alvarez, or any of the other FNC personnel on scene. A huge story and the newshounds are asleep. Do you think Brodsky isn't interested because most of the victims are black? Works for me!

The tail-chasers have talked about what's really important to them: not Haiti, not the victims, but Martha Coakley. You will recall that the mongrels yelped when a Fox Nation headline said Democrats were worried about the race:
Another Stupid Fox Nation Headline Says MA Democrats “Nervous” About Tea Party Candidate...There is nothing remotely connected to MA Democrats being “nervous” except “polls” which show the race between Brown and MA Attorney General Martha Coakley tightening to 9 points. But hey, in Fox Nation wishes become reality and when reality bites, ya just make it up.
Yeah, that's just made up. A poll that closes from a 30-point gap to single digits doesn't worry anyone. By the way, the latest poll shows Coakley trailing by three points, but never mind that. Fox is stupid and making things up when they say Dems are nervous about the race.

Of course Ellen Brodsky had to chime in on this, and gave us a new example of one of her favorite lies. It began with her claim that "Fox News Interrupts Its Haiti Special For Discussion On MA Senate Race". Well that's not exactly truthful. Fox didn't air a "Haiti special". They aired additional hours of straight news coverage (known as "American's News Headquarters"). So reporting on the Senate race was not an interruption of anything. Then Brodsky followed up with her shoot-the-messenger objections to inteviewing Democratic pollster Doug Schoen:
Fox News Takes A Break From Haiti Earthquake Coverage To Do A Little PR For GOP Candidate In MA Senate Race... Every new poll showing a tightening race is a news cycle won for Republican Scott Brown, but, on the other hand, tightening polls could motivate Democrats and relieve sense of 'inevitability' that has plagued Democrat Martha Coakley's campaign.
Hey Brodsky, if that's so, then just how is this "PR" for the GOP candidate? Are they supposed to ban him from the air because you don't like how the race is going? Ellen adds:
(He) only seemed to think about how much trouble Coakley is in, how angry the population is over President Obama’s “increasingly unpopular” agenda and how the entire Democratic Party has moved “further and further left” with Obama.
How dare he? Why he should manipulate the data, you know, Media Matters style, to make it say what Brodsky wants it to say. Because just airing this interview was "PR for the GOP candidate".

Only Ellen isn't telling you something. After the interview with Schoen, Fox did another interview, this one with Geraldine Ferraro. She spoke on behalf of Coakley, and gave the reasons why she thought Coakley should and would win. This is what Brodsky would call "PR for the Democratic Candidate"...except of course that Brodsky didn't call it anything at all. It disproved her point, and showed Fox to be fair and balanced, so she left it out completely. Not even a mention! Instead of the truth, we get another lie of omission from the inveterate fabricators: Ellen Brodsky and the newshounds.

The Spirit of Hope and Unity:
Bill Hemmer's reporting from Haiti has been so good that Brodsky doesn't dare embed it, but The Huffington Post has been much more even-handed in covering the coverage. They did a short interview with Bill Hemmer from Haiti, and while many of the comments were responsible, the Fox haters still came out in force:Now that was pretty classy in itself, but there's more. The editors at HuffPo chose to post our video of Steve Harrigan with Shepard Smith. Here it is again for context, followed by how some HuffPo commenters reacted to it. It's a reminder of the truism that in order to be a Fox hater, you first have to be a hater:

  • Obama needs to start attacking Fox News again, and on a daily basis.
  • I didnt know anybody from fox news had any feelings for anybody, especially for black people. I would think fox news reporters would be busy blaiming the haitian people for the earthquake, and telling everybody how uneducated and undiciplined the hatian people are (as if that caused the quake).
  • He might get fired, Fake News don't want any of that.
  • Why do Faux correspondents always cry on air?
  • Because they're being forced to have to rub elbows with little poor brown people.
  • Is that the new lines of software FOX has just upgraded its "Robo"Journalists" with? The new plugin called Humanity with new add on effect called tears? If it is FOX, It is Fake!
Spot something you'd like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email!

1/17/10 3:46 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink) |

Fox Haters Week in Review

Distortions, hypocrisy, lies... and words of praise for The Huffington Post?!? Read all about it in the first Fox Haters Week in Review of 2010!

Ups and Downs:
One of the longest-lasting myths is the one about "doctoring" transcripts. It's long-debunked, even though the same silly claims pop up about other cable channels as well. This meme got a shot in the arm this week when Michael Steele used the phrase "honest injun" on Hannity. The Huffington Post reported:

Fox News Scrubs 'Honest Injun' From Steele Transcript...Fox is helping Steele out by altering the transcript of the segment:
STEELE: Our platform is one of the best political documents that's been written in the last 25 years, honest engine on that.
Exactly! Surely we should ask of our lyin' ears if Steele didn't actually say "honest engine."
But kudos to Jason Linkins who, on learning that facts, made the kind of correction all writers should make, and put it at the top of his piece:
CORRECTION: It's been pointed out to me that however hilarious the insertion of "engine" is, the fault here is not Fox's at all, but the automated transcription service that provided the transcript in the first place. Thus, the entire premise of this piece is, as they say, crap! And the fault is mine. I regret the error, and it shan't happen again.
Ironically, even after that highly visible disclaimer was added to the article, some HuffPo commenters preferred the untrue version:
  • Why did Fox do that? Because that's just how stupid and ill-informed their viewers are. Fox viewers deserve to be duped and lied to over and over again.
  • You cant say to anyone with a straight face you work at Fox it gotta be humiliating to manipulate videos and transcripts.
  • It's the fact that they revising history, in real time. They didn't like the fact that he said something embarrassing, so they changed it.
  • The story is about FOX scratching to cover up their $hit............as usual....now they scrub their transcripts as well........this IS a story worth reporting AND FOX needs to be constantly monitored.
By the way, one person who hyped this story as soon as it appeared was David Shuster. Interestingly enough, even after Shuster was informed twice that the story was wrong, he didn't tell his 23,000 Twitter followers. But then this is the same David Shuster who tweeted Michael Steele's call for Harry Reid to resign from this morning's Fox News Sunday, and then added:
I wish somebody would ask steele about his "honest injun" remrks on fox.
Somebody did, Dave. Sheesh!

But we digress. Back to The Huffington Post, where not everyone is as honest as Mr Linkins. Cenk Uygur, desperate MSNBC wannabe, gives us a polemic so nice he posted it twice: at HuffPo and at Firedog Lake:
Why is Fox News Leaving Geithner Alone?... He is the Treasury Secretary when the main issue in the country is the state of our economy. And Republicans in Congress are now going after him. So, why is Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. keeping their powder dry?... The right-wing media in this country have no interest in attacking big money, big corporations or big banks. So, while they'll talk for ten straight days about how Janet Napolitano should be fired for misspeaking, Geithner is remarkably bullet-proof. Why? Because they actually love what he's doing.
Most readers of this site, who actually watch FNC, will no doubt find the whole concept of "Fox News" covering up for Geithner because they love what he's doing to be jaw-droppingly fatuous. If Uygur is going to attack Fox without watching it, at least he could read this site, where we posted this just days ago. Even HuffPo commenters didn't swallow Uygur's line, citing more proof, including this and this. Clearly the premise of Uygur's piece, advanced without a shred of documentation or evidence, has been demolished, yet it stands unaltered as if it were true. If he could just have Jason Linkins teach him how to write a correction.

Around the Interwebs:
The genuises at News Corpse now fancy themselves constitutional scholars. Hence, they attack Glenn Beck for asserting the "crazy" claim of natural law:
This is going to come as a surprise to Constitutional scholars and legal experts. According to Beck, it was God who established freedom of speech.... Beck’s inability to comprehend the role of law is boundless.
The ignorance in their "analysis" is staggering, given that Beck was espousing the same principles laid out by Thomas Jefferson. But if the Corpsicles are comfortable with ennabling slavery, hey, it's all in a good cause: smearing Fox!

Newser describes itself as:
a news aggregator with brains. We select the best news stories from hundreds of sources all over the web, read them for you, and summarize them in two succinct, sharply written paragraphs or less.
Its founder is Michael Wolff, unreliable Murdoch biographer and discredited critic of Fox News. Newser's latest salvo at Fox uses Glenn Beck as its ammunition:
Glenn Beck doesn’t like the 2010 US Census form one bit, because it allows people to identify themselves as “African-American,” a “bogus, PC, made-up term” that is “not a race.” Speaking on his Fox News show, the host offered his objections to the designation.
The "video" clip is really an audio clip with a still frame of Beck on FNC. And it's obvious just ten seconds in that it has nothing to do with Fox News whatsoever. It's Glenn and his producer discussing the issue on his radio show! Now that's what we call news "with brains".

Even dumber is lying about something that millions of people have seen with their own eyes. Enter Minnesota Think:
Fox News (aka Faux News or Fox Newz) has shown its true stripes once again. Yesterday, President Obama held an afternoon news conference to talk about airline safety and the failure of the nation's intelligence and homeland security communities...Fox (Faux) News chose to ignore it. Their regular programming ran without interruption....It would be a real hoot, if the ramifications for the country weren't so serious.
Only Minnesota Think is not telling the truth. Fox News carried the statement (it was not a press conference) live, as it happened, just like the other cable news channels did.

Media Matters, Truth Doesn't:
The mendacious Minnesotans weren't the only ones making stuff up about that Obama coverage. Our friends at Media Matters, in high dudgeon over Fox & Friends for questioning why the statement was repeatedly delayed, claimed:
Hmmm, it's funny that they seem to care so much about what Obama revealed or whether the press conference started on time. Because if you were watching Fox News last night, you wouldn't have been able to watch it in its entirety. They cut away from it a third of the way in to show Glenn Beck.
Um, not true. It took place at 4:35 pm, during Your World w/Cavuto. Fox didn't cut away from it but showed the entire statement, which was over before Glenn Beck even began!

Since one good lie deserves another, here are the MMers talking about FNC coverage of the recently announced Democratic retirements:
Fox News ties Dem retirements to Obama's "radical" agenda, ignoring similar number of GOP retirements...Fox ignored that a similar number of Republicans are retiring in Congress.
MM cites examples like Brit Hume's commentary, which was specifically about the fact that three prominent Democrats announced their impending retirement within the space of less than a week. That was both more timely and more newsworthy than what Republicans did months ago. But what of the claim that Fox News "ignored" the GOP retirements? As anyone who watched FNC would know, even before Media Matters published their smear the GOP angle was repeatedly reported on Fox.

Lie With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas:
What have they been up to at the newshounds kennel? More making stuff up! We know Fox Nation is a favorite target of the biased bassets, but you would think they'd have enough material to work with without having to fabricate:
President Obama Right, Fox Nation Wrong...Over at Fox Nation last night there was much hooting and howling over the site editor’s latest “find” : a statement by President Obama that the existence of the US prison at Guantanamo “was an explicit rationale for the formation of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula”.... I did my homework et voila: the President is correct. Did the editors of Fox Nation really get this wrong, or did they keep the truth under wraps knowing that their followers are too stupid/blinded by ideology/uncaring/all of the above to do a simple Google search?
The "facts" the mastiffs present are a list of things that happened in 2003, based on the theory that's when AQitAP was "formed" (never mind terrorism activity from Yemen dating back to the US Cole!). But none of the links they offer confirms this formation date. Moreover, the hounds' whole laundry list of 2003 events is nothing but an especially brainless application of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, so it proves nothing. But what's really dishonest here is the claim that Fox Nation "got this wrong". Take a look at the Fox Nation article for yourself. All it is the Obama statement, quoted accurately and with video. No editorial comment, no analysis, just the President's words. So what exactly did Fox Nation "get wrong"? Nothing! The newspoodles made that up!

You want more fabrication? The dog pound delivers:
Fox News’ latest shrieker, Patricia Powell, was so worked up, she urged “the average guy out there” to stop paying taxes.... Nobody seemed to mind that she was advocating breaking the law by not paying taxes!...Patricia could be the next Fox News star, I’m afraid.
To correct the record, Patricia Powell has appeared on Fox for years. This is one of those instant reversals that the newspooches do at the drop of a hat. They used to say that you get the "real story" from "straight talker" Powell. But she committed the sin of saying something the whippets don't like, so they did a quick about-face and slimed her. She did not advocate breaking the law, but changing it:
I would advocate that we all take care of ourselves.... I would advocate that people who don't have the ability to buy their own health care, instead of paying taxes for people who are getting their health care for free, that those people would have that money if we didn’t pick their pockets.
Nothing says "liar" like a post from Ellen Brodsky. First she yelps:
Instead Of Informing, Fox News Makes Political Theater Out Of Terrorism Issues.... why did Fox get two political strategists instead of someone with real security and/or aviation expertise?... Fox News producers didn’t really want to inform the viewers of the “we report, you decide” network.
It's Ellen who doesn't want to inform. Hannity is a political show and focuses on political guests. In the hour just previous Fox interviewed Gen Wesley Clark and former CIA analyst Gary Berntsen, both of whom know something about security. Why does Ellen claim Fox wasn't doing something when they clearly were? Why is there no newshounds post about Wesley Clark's appearance? Were they too busy picking cherries?

Complaining that Fox didn't cover a Janet Napolitano presser in full, Brodsky tosses in this stinkbomb:
Hosts Shepard Smith and Bret Baier complained that the press conference was not as "shocking" as they had expected it would be (read: they were hoping Napolitano would resign).
False. It was the Obama administration who said the report would be shocking. And when did either Shep Smith or Bret Baier call for Napolitano to resign? The one link Brodsky provides goes to (her impartial source) Media Matters, and neither Smith nor Baier are even mentioned in it! In other words, Ellen Brodsky made up another lie to smear two fair and balanced journalists.

Clearly, there is nothing too low for the schnauzers. But we can always rely on their commenters to set a tone of intelligence and responsibility, aided by the moderators who pre-approve every submission--ensuring that whatever appears is up to newshounds standards. Like this:


Spot something you'd like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email!

1/10/10 6:28 PM, posted in: slanders (Permalink) |