johnny dollar's place

The news broke today about the death of census worker Bill Sparkman: it was a suicide. Or maybe that's what they want you to believe. Because the Fox haters had all this one figured out a long time ago. It was a murder, or more properly a lynching, and the people responsible? Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin...oh, and Fox News of course.

Think Progress was quick to label this a "hate crime" (check the URL), and cited Fox News and Glenn Beck for making people afraid of census workers. The credulous commenters piled on:

• Bachmann and Beck need to be held accountable for inciting crazies.
• At what point does irrational rhetoric become criminal?
• MICHELE BACHMAN & GLENN BECK BOTH NEED TO BE ARRESTED FOR INCITING VIOLENCE & TERRORISM ON AMERICANS!

At something called Thump and Whip they parroted the above and blasted a headline about Mr Sparkman's "murder", tying it all up by dragging Michelle Malkin into the story. Trig Truther Andrew Sullivan was quick to point the finger of blame at the truly guilty:

From this profile of the cancer survivor and volunteer, it appears suicide is unlikely. We'll find out. But at some point, unhinged hostility to the federal government, whipped up by the Becks, can become violence.

Another site used the L-word ("lynching") to again accuse that hate-monger Beck:

We know what 9/12 was. It was crazy anti-government day in Washington, DC. It was fomented by Glenn Beck...Why, you may be asking, would a census worker be the first victim in the war on the government? Perhaps it's because Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann have spread rumours that the 2010 Census is being conducted by ACORN members as a means of rounding us up....Lynching is intended to terrorize, to silence, to shame, to humiliate, to send a message that "your kind" will not be tolerated here.

At MyDD the logic was similar, citing Glenn Beck and Fox News as the causal "hatemongers". Democratic Underground put up a headline that read:

Handy Guide to how Republicans and Fox News are responsible for Census worker being hanged

And the usual insightful comments:

• FOX distorts, people die.
• Do people have something to say about how the Right Wing Media machine is NOT affecting people with hateful messaging?
• There's gotta be some accountability for the lies and hate being pushed by the people who profit from it.

And then there's Keith Olbermann's blog of choice, the Daily Kos, who minced no words in exposing the role that FNC played in this homicide:

The real murderers of this man are the Glenn Beck's, and Rush Limbaugh's, and Michele Bachmann's who have spread the deadly poison of hate and fear of our government and the Obama administration across the land.

Of course for the genuine lowdown we have to turn to the newshounds, another fine product of the Outfoxed gang. There Ellen Brodsky whipped up the kennel-dwellers by "asking" about the "role" of Fox News in the death of Bill Sparkman. Because, after all, anti-government sentiment can "boil over at any moment". And then the denizens of the dog pound went to work:

• Fox continues to incite their ignorant sheep audience to commit violence. They promote violent attacks, then deny they did it. Fox is completely dishonest, hateful, and disgusting.
• We all know that the person or persons who did this to Bill Sparkman will be caught and brought to justice. But what makes me mad is the fear mongers at Fox News, Right Wing Watch, WND, Michele Bachmann and other members of the Republican Party, who spread paranoia and hysteria, will never be brought the justice. They are as guilty as the person who killed the census employee for making some people of this country afraid of their own government.... They are guilty and they know it.
• Thr murderers were most likely influenced by glen beckkk, sean kkklanity, billo the kkklown, kkkomedian rush limbaugh and certain buffoons in the house of congress.
• Several spouting geysers of insane opinion on the rightmost of the right wing gin up paranoia and conspiracy theory about what mild-mannered Census workers have in mind when they come out to benignly COUNT people...one such worker ends up bound and gagged and hanged and naked and DEAD, with his ID taped to his neck like he's some kind of hunting trophy and with the word "FED" scrawled on his chest in felt-tip pen (perhaps because three-letter words are the limit of his murderers' spelling ability) ...and you can't connect the glaringly obvious dots linking the frothing rhetoric to the violent action?
• There's no "whipping up" being done, and the evidence speaks for itself. Fox News is guilty of instigating murder.
• They got away with the death of doctor Tiller and will most certainly get away with the death of the census guy.
• We are all waiting for the big one, when they do-in Obama. We will all fake surprise , moan for a few days and decide that it was freedom of speech to blame for his death and not talk radio or Foxnews with their 24/7 vitriol.
• The fearful and violent are eating this stuff up. To think that Fox will deliberately whip up violence in order to make cheap political points against the Democratic administration just blows my mind. How do these people look at themselves in the mirror?
• In regards to this case, Michelle Bachman, Beck, O' Reilly, Limpnuts and Insannity should all be arrested as accessory to murder. Unfortunatley [sic] it will never happen.
• Well Glen [sic] we hope that you are happy? A man in Kentucky is now dead because of your's [sic] and other Republicans [sic] hate filled speaches. (Acorn+census bureau+Obama).We were laying bets for when you would get it done. you finely [sic] stepped into it. did not take long.... A man was hung in a forest because of you.No matter how much you beg, God is not going to forgive you for this.

And yet the authorities ruled the case a suicide. How is it that they cannot connect the dots? Fox News is guilty of inciting homicide. Beck is the true murderer. Is this another cover-up, like Hanger 18?

Let's leave Bizarro Planet and ask a question in the real world: are these Fox haters are going to admit their claims were erroneous and apologize to Beck, Malkin and Fox for smearing them? Or are they too shameless and dishonest to do even that?

UPDATE: 24 hours later: Thump and Whip has posted a forthright acknowledgement: "I was wrong"--but no apology to Glenn Beck or Fox News for pointing the finger of blame at them. Trig Truther Andrew Sullivan, after being hectored by a reader, concedes that he "should have conceded that error more forthrightly and less defensively." But he offers no apology for accusing the innocent.

The blogger at MyDD notes the new info and apologizes "for jumping the gun on that one", but not to the people who were wrongly accused. At Daily Kos, one of the diarists reports the findings and makes an apology to the unnamed those "who were slandered" by the false charges. But tjlabs, the Kossack who declared Glenn Beck the "real murderer" of Mr Sparkman, has not reported the suicide findings at all. Neither has fingerlakeswanderer, who eagerly put forth the "lynching" theory.

And it will surprise no one that, more than 24 hours after the findings were made public, there is no post about it at newshounds--no report, no acknowledgment of error, and no apology for the repeated smears of Fox News and its personnel. Par for the course. fox news nh tp dk

Shoddy journalism from Huffington Post, plus Fox haters react to J$P. That and more in the latest fun-filled edition of Fox Haters Week in Review!

Around the Interwebs
Our first stop is The Huffington Post, where J Richard Cohen published an open letter to Bill O'Reilly calling on him to "pay up" on a bet that CNN wouldn't fire Lou Dobbs:

I expect you will argue that Lou didn't get fired -- that he got fed up and quit the network he had been with for three decades.... Maybe your fall-back position is that it wasn't a real bet. I don't know. But I think that if you'll stop spinning for a moment, you'll agree that in the court of public opinion, you lose.... CNN did the right thing. Now it's your turn.

This post appeared on the afternoon of Nov 18. What's bizarre about it is that J Richard Cohen appeared on The Factor on Nov 17, and what was the first thing O'Reilly said in that interview?

O'REILLY: And I will pay that debt. I will donate $10,000 to Habitat for Humanity.

So here's Cohen trying to embarrass Mr Bill, telling him to "stop spinning", suggesting that he's going to use a "fall-back position" to weasel out of his obligation--when O'Reilly had already told him he will make the donation, a fact Cohen leaves out entirely!

Another bit of brilliance at HuffPo comes courtesy of John Amato, proprietor of the aptly-named Crooks and Liars. Amato calls for all good lemmings to file FCC complaints over Fox running incorrect crowd footage:

FOX News is passing on "false information" to the public. This must end.... I think it's time we started to take action and the first step is to file an FCC complaint report here. Please join me here and at CrooksandLiars.com to expose these "Hoaxes" by News Corp.

The "hoax" rule cited by Amato has nothing to do with crowd footage: it is for false reports of crimes or catastrophes. More to the point is the idiocy of sending complaints about a cable channel to the FCC. Other than policies regarding programming originated by a local cable distributor, the FCC has no jurisdiction over and no rules about the content of cable channels. Apparently HuffPo's fact-checking is no better than Amato's.

At oreillysucks.com we note a nightly recap described the "highly edited e-mails" read by O'Reilly--on a program where (for reasons for time) there was no email segment! Meanwhile, over at the newshounds (another fine product of the Outfoxed mob) we find the folks who claim to watch Fox News clueless about rudimentary matters. Ellen Brodsky complains:

I've long been shocked at the dreadful quality of Foxnews.com, which seems deliberately designed to make almost any information hard to find. Has anyone tried to figure out what time a given program, say, Live Desk, is on ?

We're pretty sure that's what the schedule is for. Even easier, what about the on air button sitting at the top of every page? It will take you to any show's home base; the page for The Live Desk has the program's time staring you right in the face!

While we're on the topic of the biased bassets, someone's been stirring up a little dust over there. A frustrated reader ("Echo") used the "off-topic" forum to post a litany of complaints, including the snooping of private IP addresses, hypocrisy, and the under-current of anti-Semitism we've seen before in the dog pound. Even though the "off-topic" forum is described by the bowsers as a place "where you can debate in whatever way you like on whatever subject you like, free of interference from us", that statement proves to be as truthful as the rest of the hounds' drivel. It didn't take long for Echo's imprint on the website to be wiped clean: made to disappear. But in the interests of keeping an enduring record of whippet perfidy, we have captured the highlights for your reading pleasure.

Par for the Corpse:
Last week we had a few criticisms of our friends over at News Corpse, centering around a crackdown on several youtube channels that featured FNC videos. The corpsicles took issue with our assessment, but instead of bringing their analysis here, they published it on their own site:

I just saw a hilarious smackdown of ME by the Jon Lovitz (i.e Pathological Liar) of right-wing snews bloggers, Johnny Dollar.

A personal attack in the very first sentence! That's the News Corpse we know and love.

The morally counterfeit Dollar takes me to task for reporting that a liberal YouTuber had his account suspended for posting Fox clips while conservatives were permitted to continue. Dollar pointed out that one of the users I cited has been suspended and he calls me a liar for saying otherwise.

More personal attacks and an out-and-out fabrication. Read our post for yourself, then ask yourself, where did News Corpse get the idea that we called him "a liar"? Answer: they made it up! But while we didn't call him a liar last week, somehow that appellation now seems to fit.

However, that account was not suspended until long after I wrote my article.

"Long after" would be less than 24 hours, and other websites, like Gawker, know how to update a post with new information, particularly new information that counters an earlier claim. Either this sort of advanced internet capability is beyond the corpsicles, or they just didn't care to inform their readers.

And Dollar doesn’t acknowledge that the other users I cited are indeed still up and running, Fox clips and all.

There are a lot of accounts still up and running, including the newshounds' and our own. But the fact that several conservative accounts were also targeted is contrary to the claim still sitting on the News Corpse website:

The selective nature of Fox’s legal actions prove that they are only interested in squelching liberals.

"Selective nature" indeed.

Dollar also demonstrated his champion ignoramus status by utterly failing to understand copyright law and the concept of fair use.

It must be that law degree that's confusing us.

Half-brained Dollar is so obsessed he spent 846 words on his dishonest and moronic attack on my column that was only 572 words.

Actually, omitting the portions that quoted from News Corpse it was more like 670 words. And only a portion of our article was an attack on the blog post, since we also addressed their vacuous assertion that Fox lied about firing Marc Lamont Hill. (The Corpse comeback makes no mention of this; we're not surprised that they wouldn't want to draw attention to such an asinine allegation.) In fact only about 480 words were needed to demolish the falsehoods in the corpsicle column. But we thank News Corpse for reading J$P.

The Hardest Word:
You can always rely on the newsmutts to deliver high-handed lectures about journalistic propriety (which is tantamount to instruction on asteroid dynamics from Paris Hilton). Miss Ellen Brodsky herself has set the standard:

Let FOX News know that "real journalism" requires issuing a correction.

In fact this is something of a recurring theme at the kennel:

• Don't hold your breath waiting for a correction.
• O’Reilly has never apologized for either comment.
• But hey, if it’s propaganda you want, what’s the point of making a correction if it works against the message.
• But no, rather than apologizing to those people, he (in typical Fox fashion) diverted the issue by smearing them...
• Although BOR offered the corrections, there was no apology.
• There's no excuse for this untruth going uncorrected... I'm not holding my breath for a correction.
• Correct the record. If you don’t correct the record then we can simply assume you are a lyin’ sack of feces.
• 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 is.
• FOX did not issue a retraction or correction, they simply disappeared the earlier story and replaced it... 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?

Now you would think with this record of calling for honesty and transparency the harriers' own behavior would be above reproach. But such is not the case. Indeed, they have a long, well-documented history of doing the opposite: hiding their falsehoods without a correction or even an acknowledgment, while silently revising their words in the hope nobody will notice--what we call a "stealth rewrite".

The point of all this is another reaction to last week's exposés. We caught ellen in a nasty smear of Bill Bennett and Sean Hannity. Long story short: she attacked both of them for "misinforming" and "twisting words", but in fact it was Brodsky who misinformed--she's the one who got the quote wrong. Now based on the "standards" enunciated by the tail-waggers, we were sure that a correction and apology would be forthcoming, because otherwise we'd have to conclude that Ellen was a "lyin' sack of feces". But we checked Brodsky's article and it seems she silently snipped out the offending paragraphs and let it go at that. That's right, she didn't issue a retraction or correction, but simply disappeared whole chunks of her article. Shouldn't Ellen have left the original and published a follow-up rather than scrubbing her falsehoods? One wonders who told Brodsky to do that, and if it's considered S.O.P. there. Well, no, we don't really wonder. We know it is.

And yet, after going through all that trouble to hide her untruths, Ellen still couldn't let go of a good smear. In the first paragraph of the cleansed posting we find Brodsky still repeating the slur she knows to be false:

Bennett, however...misquoted General George Casey, chief of staff of the Army, as saying that losing diversity would be a worse tragedy than Fort Hood.

After all, if it's propaganda you want, what's the point of making a correction if it goes against the message?

Finally we thank Ellen for yet another "death threat" from Fox Nation commenters, this time some prattle about trying the Obama administration for treason and then shooting them. Now we're not sure if this is a genuine death threat, as the context is clearly an execution after trial. But it's enough for Brodsky to hang her hat on. And enough for us to point out again the galloping, blinding hypocrisy of the anti-Fox terriers who attack other websites for comments that they themselves permit:


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

The truth about FNC's youtube crackdown, plus we expose more falsehoods and lies. In case you haven't guessed, it's today's Fox Haters Week in Review!

Stay the Corpse:
We lead off with a visit to our friends at News Corpse. When a youtube channel that uploaded videos from FNC was suspended for copyright violations, it didn't take long for our pals to charge conspiracy:

Why would Fox do this? It certainly wasn’t because they were upset that their content was being recorded and distributed without their permission. They have not bothered to remove other Fox-owned content posted by sycophantic fans like TheRightScoop, BuckFarack, GlennBeckDailyClips and ConservativeNewMedia. But the liberally-inclined News1news has been shut down.... Clearly this is not a case of protecting intellectual property. The selective nature of Fox’s legal actions prove that they are only interested in squelching liberals.

First, let's get the facts right. Check out the youtube accounts of GlennBeckDailyClips and ConservativeNation. Oops! They're suspended. So much for the "selective nature". Other sites, like ConservativeNewMedia, have removed all Fox videos. Meanwhile, News Corpse wants us all to shed a tear over the closing of the News1news channel:

While Jon’s clips contained no added commentary, they were often segments in which Fox News personnel looked foolish. This was not Jon’s doing. He just posted the unadulterated video and the FoxPods acted naturally.

News1news was not the saintly public service the corpsicles want you to believe. Here's a small inside story. When Shep Smith made a comment about "fair and balanced", websites scrambled to find a video clip. We were contacted by Mediaite and whipped up a clip that segued from the start of the segment with Shannon Bream to the end of the segment with Shep's comment. Mediaite posted that video and properly credited J$P. News1news had been scooped, and didn't care for that at all. So they downloaded our video, slapped their logo on it, and then re-uploaded it to youtube as their own--without any acknowledgment or credit to either Mediaite or J$P.

And then there is the corpse claim that News1news posted "unadulterated video". We're sure they did...sometimes. But the urge to smear FNC is too great for some Fox haters to ignore. Remember the infamous Glenn Beck frog incident? News1news put out a clip that was deliberately cropped. After they show the frog shtick, they continue with Beck saying:

BECK: Forget about the Republicans, because most of them are fake. Forget about the Democrats, because most of them are fake.

At that point the clip abruptly ends. And it was abrupt for a reason. Here's what the News1news "unadulterated video" purposely left out:

BECK: Forget about the Republicans, because most of them are fake. Forget about the Democrats, because most of them are fake. And forget about the frog, because it was fake!

A lot of websites were fooled by this dishonest editing, and we have News1news to thank for it. But the corpsicles overlook all that and proceed to an ignorant diatribe about "free speech":

What Fox is doing here is an unabashed curtailing of speech - THEIR OWN! They are prohibiting the dissemination of information and ideas based solely on political criteria. I wonder if the First Amendment advocates at Fox will now mount a campaign exposing Fox as anti-speech.

Are the news corpse guys really this uninformed about copyright law? Do they actually think owners of property have no say about its use? Here's another bit of inside information. People who post FNC clips to youtube are told that their videos have content owned by a third party. They are given notice that their clips may be challenged or removed. The action taken against News1news shouldn't have surprised anyone. It especially shouldn't have surprised the corpsicles, given that every page on their blog includes a long-winded four-sentence warning about reprinting their copyrighted articles. Funny, they object to Fox News controlling publication of its copyrighted content, but assert the right to control their own.

We would be remiss if we failed to note another bit of brilliance from the News Corpse coffin. They chortled with glee when contributor Marc Lamont Hill was fired by FNC because "they certainly couldn’t tolerate the presence of an intelligent, articulate, black man". (Race card? Check!) But then a funny thing happened...Dr Hill reappeared on Fox as a guest on The O'Reilly Factor. Uh oh, that made the corpse analysis look, um, stupid and wrong. So they concocted a new attack:

So Rupert Murdoch lied when he told his shareholders that Hill was fired. Hmmm. Lies from Fox World? Who woulda thunk it?

How utterly fatuous can they get? Dr Hill himself says he was fired. Is he lying too? Does the Corpse cabal really believe that anyone who appears on FNC instantly becomes a hired contributor? That would make Brian Ross, George Stephanopoulos, and hundreds of other guests all paid empoyees of Fox News. This kind of brainless idiocy isn't unique in the Fox haters echo chamber, but it acquires a special level of lunacy thanks to the Einsteins at News Corpse.

Around the Interwebs
A Reason article on Glenn Beck can't seem to make up its mind whether it is an objective analysis or a slyly worded hit piece. The latter characterization is thanks to another go-round with an old claim:

A week later, he started investigating the rumor that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was building concentration camps around the country. When that didn’t pan out, he set about exposing the secret communist artwork adorning Rockefeller Plaza...He couldn’t sell FEMA death camps because the facts weren’t there to back the story up.

Meanwhile another blog lies that Beck spent "an entire week" of his show discussing the "possibility" of FEMA camps. How many times do we have to explain this? Glenn Beck has done not one, not two, but three segments--not about the "possibility" of FEMA concentration camps, but debunking them as a crazy internet conspiracy theory. You can see all three here. Will this ever die?

The worldwide web also brings us this fascinating claim about Fort Hood coverage from a Pakistani news source:

While Pakistani leading TV channels have voluntarily devised a code of ethics, America lags behind. Fox News's Shepherd Smith just could not resist the temptation to give away the identity of the alleged killer. Throwing journalistic ethics to the winds, Smith did not hold his tongue.... Every American anchor and his guests thereafter latched on like leeches to the name Nidal Malik Hasan.

What a story. And completely backwards. Shepard Smith was anchoring while other news agencies were naming the killer based on leaked information. Fox News and Smith refused for hours to name the killer until the information was confirmed by the military--even though CNN, (MS)NBC, ABC, and the AP had already done so. That made Fox the last major media source to broadcast the information. The truth is the exact opposite of what the Pakistani paper claims.

And a hat-tip to The Random Blog for catching Media Matters in another bit of disinformation. They attack Fox Nation for "promoting" some incendiary comments by Rep Foxx about "Obamacare". But wait. The comments were newsworthy. All Fox Nation did was link to an article by Politico. And in fact the same comments were aired on C-SPAN, and highlighted in a post at Think Progress. But Media Matters ignores them and oddly chooses Fox to single out for criticism. As blogger Chris Golas points out:

[Fox] covers it, they are "promoting" it and if they don't they can be accused of NOT covering it and it shows another example of pro-GOP "bias".

Shaggy Dog Stories:
No FHWiR would be complete without a a visit to the newshounds (another fine product of the Outfoxed syndicate). And there is much to choose from. A "guest blogger" blows the lid off a burning issue on everyone's mind:

Will Fox News Mock Passivity of Fort Hood Soldiers The Way It Did Va Tech Shooting Victims?

Ah, a trip down mammary lane. To back up this claim, gb offers several examples: a piece at National Review Online, a column from Real Clear Politics, and compilation of quotes from Media Matters. Oddly, not one of these is from any Fox News broadcast.

So our "guest blogger" pulls her trump card: a comment from Mark Steyn. But this lone example was simply an opinion from someone being interviewed. Is gb claiming that every comment from an interviewee represents the corporate opinion of Fox News? Even the tail-waggers aren't deluded enough to think that will fly. So they juice up the claim by calling Steyn "Fox News contributor Mark Steyn". But this too is more dog droppings. Steyn is not a "Fox News contributor". Never was. Where did the mongrels get the idea that he is? They made it up! After all this obfuscation and falsification, the actual number of instances gb cites to back up her allegation? Zero.

Ellen Brodsky tells us that Judge Napolitano "stops one step of advocating insurrection": i.e. he wants a constitutional convention, lower taxes, and other legal and political notions. Silly us, we thought that you'd have to do a lot more than that to be "one step" from the violent overthrow of the US government. Another "guest blogger" goes off on a weird tangent and, apropos of nothing, spews that the Shrine of the Little Flower in suburban Detroit is really a shrine dedicated to 1930s radio priest Father Coughlin. And all along we thought "The Little Flower" was actually Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Meanwhile, if it's preposterous HeadLies that interest you, consider Priscilla's "Chickenhawk Brian Kilmeade Won’t Share His Foxhole With A Muslim". It's a baseless smear, recasting Kilmeade's words into something he didn't say. But the real fun here is Prissy's definition of "chickenhawk" (the newspooches are educational haters--they even give etymologies of their name-calling). Yes, by Priscilla's denotation, the leading chickenhawk in the USA is Barack Obama!

But it always seems to come back to Brodsky. There is nothing more humiliating (or amusing, depending on where you stand) than seeing a self-righteous fabulist pile on the scorn over a mistake...that isn't a mistake. Ellen takes this week's cake as she excoriates the "misinforming" on Fox:

[William] Bennett wasn’t done misinforming, “What bothers me is the Army, is the military… General Casey this week said, ‘This was a horrible thing that happened let's hope that diversity is not a casualty. Because if diversity in the military is a casualty, that will be a worse tragedy than this.’” That’s not at all what General Casey said. He said, “I'm concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that. It would be a shame -- as great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.” It’s very telling that Bennett would twist Casey’s words to make a desire for diversity sound so terrible. Bennett continued to scorn Casey for what he did not say: “A worse tragedy? The loss of some diversity will be a worse tragedy than the loss of innocent people?” Hannity, who should know better, agreed, “Yeah.”

That's not what Casey said?!? A simple check of the transcript or video turns up the truth:

CASEY: And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse.

Whoops. Looks like it's Brodsky who's doing the misinforming. Considering how widely Casey's actual words were reported (over 1400 citations on Google), do you think Ellen's "mistake" was actually Another Hound Lie? Of course Brodsky may publish a correction and an apology. But if she doesn't, you'll know the answer to that question.

Finally, Priscilla slams Fox for a guest's "homophobic", "bigoted" reference to Barney Frank as "the dancing queen". We don't condone the comment. But then again we don't condone the newshounds' hypocrisy either: slamming Fox for a comment made by a guest, deeming it "bigoted" and "homophobic", all the while allowing such comments on their own site:


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

Does Keith Olbermann owe someone at Fox an apology? We say yes! Get the details in today's stunning edition of Fox Haters Week in Review!

Barking Up the Wrong Tree:
The pulse of this week's report is a particularly reprehensible bit of slander from Keith Olbermann, but first a few highlights from the newshounds (another fine product of the Outfoxed mob). Queen Bee Ellen Brodsky, mortified that Fox would permit Col Ralph Peters to be interviewed about the Fort Hood massacre, states:

But instead of showing forbearance, Fox News deliberately whipped up fear and, probably, intolerance, in their audience, by calling on “military analyst” Ralph Peters.

Instead? That of course is false. Fox News interviewed the accused shooter's cousin, his friend, and his uncle. In fact, on the same broadcast as Col Peters, in the segment immediately previous, FNC aired an entirely different point of view: from Geraldo Rivera. Ellen won't tell you that; we just did.

And then there's an embarrassing bit of codswallop from Julie Driscoll. The suspected plagiarist is once again trying her hand at original writing, and the results are not pretty. It centers around an erroneous report that the President was watching an HBO special about him on election night, rather than the returns. This, Julie tells us, is "a lie". Not a mistake, but a lie. Because...

Some other network – okay, maybe we’d believe somebody actually misheard. But Fox . . .

After setting the bar, Driscoll goes on to recount her version of what happened:

Robert Gibbs had a press conference, and someone asked him if the President watched the election returns, to which he replied, “No.” Someone then asked him if the President watched the HBO documentary about his campaign instead, to which Gibbs replied that he didn’t know.... According to whoever is the CYA guy at Fox News, it was a “simple mistake.” Sure, it’s a mistake anyone can make – I know I, personally, am constantly mixing up “yes” for “no,” and “I don’t know” for “absolutely.”

Unfortunately, that isn't how it happened. According to the transcript of the session:

GIBBS: One thing I should contextualize – the President obviously got updates about the election last night.  He did not watch – as I told some of you – did not watch election returns.  I wouldn’t read a ton into that since he didn’t actually watch election returns when he was running.  If you did watch the movie on HBO – we called him and told him he won Iowa.  He did not watch election returns.

Gibbs wasn't asked about the HBO documentary, so he couldn't have replied to a nonexistent question. The HBO reference was something he slipped in when talking about what the President was watching. But the verbatim transcript won't work for Julie--it's just makes it seem too possible that Garrett could have misheard the reference to HBO ("If you did watch the movie on HBO" might be misheard as "He did watch the movie on HBO"). So Julie invents her own transcript. That's her first mistake. Oh wait, Driscoll set the bar on this. Some other writer, maybe we'd believe it was a mistake. But Julie...no. So that's her first lie.

It turns out that Major Garrett admitted that he didn't hear that paragraph above correctly, and was on the air within hours with a correction--a correction that aired long before Driscoll's post appeared. Of course, she makes no mention of that. Instead, even though Martha MacCallum did nothing more than relay what Garrett said, Julie decides that it's time to smear her too:

MacCallum seems to have a little trouble overall with the whole journalistic fact-checking integrity thing. Back in May, she failed to report accurate facts on the story about Madonna adopting an African child.

That was the newspoodles attacking MacCallum for allegedly saying in an unscripted discussion that there are 900,000 orphans in Africa. Actually, MacCallum was talking about the 900,000 orphans in Malawi, from where Madonna adopted a child. Yes, this is typical of the biased bassets. But Driscoll has more venom to drip on the unfortunate MacCallum:

In another example of journalistic excellence, as reported by News Hounds’ Priscilla, MacCallum also elected not to check into polling data or statistics in a discussion she “moderated” back in April about President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame.

Funny thing about that "report" from Priscilla: it's full of mistakes lies! MacCallum's stats were correct and Priscilla's were erroneous, as proved by the very link she cited! Furthermore, Priscilla quoted MacCallum saying things she never said, doctored and mangled things she did say, and lied about FNC's coverage. Julie Driscoll is so desperate to smear MacCallum (for a mistake that wasn't even hers) that she recycles discredited libels and proven falsehoods. Her posts really are more digestible when she simply lifts other people's words without attribution. At least that's better than reading original Driscoll mistakes. Oops, sorry, make that original Driscoll lies.

Anatomy of a Smear
To understand how Keith Olbermann concocts his ritual character assassinations of people on his enemies list, one must appreciate the modus operandi involved. More often than not, Olby spots an attack in a blue blog, preferably a Fox hating one, lifts it without checking, contorts the content even further to suit his own agenda, and then for a big finish tosses in a healthy dose of name calling, ridicule, and personal attacks.

This week brought us an egregious example of OlbyCarthyism, one that appears to have had its genesis at one of David Shuster's favorite sources, Talking Points Memo. They excerpted a few sentences from a four hour program: an exchange the Fox & Friends hosts had with Geraldo Rivera regarding the Fort Hood massacre. The article links to, but does not embed, a snippet of video. But even this skimpy documentation was too much information for Olbermann, who attacked all three hosts by cropping things even further and just quoting their questions and ignoring the answers. Here he cites Gretchen Carlson:

CARLSON: Could it be that the military was exercising political correctness in not approaching him as seriously as they would have had he not been a Muslim?

Why does this question make Ms Carlson a "worst person" nominee? After all, MSNBC's employee Clift van Zandt made a similar point about political correctness, and just today NBC's own David Gregory asked a question that echoed Carlson's about the military missing warning signs. Will they be named "worst persons" by Olbermann? There was a lot more that Gretchen Carlson said--not merely the questions she posed (the job of an interviewer) but her own analysis--that Keith Olbermann neatly avoided telling his viewers about. Before asking that verboten question, she noted:

CARLSON: It puts any Muslim American in a tough situation here because by all accounts most Muslim Americans living here are living here peacefully. I mean, this is the extreme element--potentially--of this religion, and we don't know exactly if the religion was his motivation or not, or if it was the act of war, or that he went nuts. I mean, we don't really know right now.

There's no way Olby is going to let that be heard! Olbermann's distortion of Carlson is pretty bad, but his defamation of Peter Johnson Jr is even worse. Here is the quote as Olby cites it:

JOHNSON: You won’t countenance special screenings for Muslim soldiers, will ya?

Olbermann attacks Johnson for this cropped quote as if Johnson were calling for such screenings. Again, neither Olby nor Talking Points Memo (which frames this statement as Johnson "grilling" Geraldo, as if they were disagreeing) bothers to note anything Johnson said before that interview, which just might shed some light on the situation. Here is what he said after a statement from a CAIR spokesman calling for Americans to remain calm because the motives of the attacker are not known:

JOHNSON: Well that's absolutely accurate, and it calls for restraint, and it calls for concern for fellow citizens. And obviously whether an assailant is Christian, or is Muslim, or is Jewish, is irrelevant.

What? How can that be? Olbermann wants you to believe Johnson is some sort of depraved racist! Well Keith did have that one-sentence quote as "proof". But even that one sentence has been falsified--doctored to change its meaning and intent. Here, in context, is precisely how the exchange between Peter Johnson and Geraldo Rivera went down. After Brian Kilmeade asked if there should be special screenings for Muslim soldiers, Geraldo disagreed. After Geraldo rambled a bit away from the question, Peter Johnson jumped in:

JOHNSON: You can't, you won't countenance special screenings for Muslim soldiers, will you?
RIVERA: You know, it's a hard--
JOHNSON: You can't. As a civil libertarian, can you countenance that, Geraldo Rivera?
RIVERA: It's a hard step for me to take, to countenance. This is an American born person.
JOHNSON: Yeah it is!
RIVERA: This is not a naturalized citizen.
JOHNSON: Right!

This is the exact opposite of what Olbermann claimed. Peter Johnson Jr was not supporting "special screenings". He was agreeing with Geraldo Rivera and arguing against them! But that doesn't matter to Olbermann, who slanders him as a "worst person" based on his dishonestly cropped quote. Par for the course on Countdown.

But wait, there's more. We haven't yet dealt with Olbermann's specialty: over-the-top insults and name-calling. In this instance it was to accuse Fox News of, among other things, racism:

OLBERMANN: Since we’re asking questions, I have one for Carlson, Johnson, and Kilmeade. You guys ever wonder if you all succeeded inside a company like Fox mostly because you’re not Muslim or black or Asian or Hispanic?

We noted above that Olbermann was careful to quote only questions, but not answers. This of course made it easy to strip all context from the discussion, but now we find there was another reason. Because the person the Fox hosts were talking to was Geraldo Rivera. You know, the fellow whose successful Fox News program beats MSNBC and CNN weekend after weekend? Now we're not sure, but we think Geraldo is Hispanic. You know, like Julie Banderas. That's the other reason why Olby avoided even mentioning that Geraldo was there. Because if he had, how could he wail that Fox News won't allow Hispanics to succeed? Oh that racist FNC! If only it could be more like MSNBC, where Hispanic anchors are plentiful. Why MSNBC is a veritable haven of Muslims, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics.

Keith Olbermann owes someone an on-air apology. Big time.

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

Another week, another deceptive screengrab, plus lies, lies, and more lies. We name names in the latest action-packed edition of Fox Haters Week in Review!

The Deceitful Option:
It's funny how the same dishonest tricks of the trade somehow find their way across the Fox haters echo chamber. We've seen the screengrab ploy before, from the newspoodles and MSNBC, as well as from Think Propaganda. So it's not a shock to find the discredited Media Matters crowd pulling the same trick. They published outrageous screengrabs showing Fox News chryons referring to the "government option" in healthcare legislation:

The Live Desk aired a caption referring to the "govt [government] option," a term right-wing pollster Frank Luntz suggested Sean Hannity use on his program because the term doesn't poll as well as "public option." Featuring captions that use language endorsed by a Republican strategist is only the latest evidence that Fox News is actually a conservative political organization.

What Media Matters wants is for Fox, in fact for all channels, to use the term "public option", a phrase poll-tested by Democrats and "endlessly, relentlessly, robotically pushed" by Obama supporters. Media Matters is fine with that! They have no problem with every news outlet featuring captions endorsed by Democrats, making them "actually liberal political organizations". Their only problem is with one news outlet that treats the issue in a fair and balanced manner.

That's something else Media Matters didn't tell you. Just as their news people do, the FNC producers use both phrases: sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both. Here are some of the screengrabs Media Matters doesn't want you to see:


The Loony Bin:
Is there any site as disreputable as o'reillysucks.com? We don't know, but we can say there are few that--pound for pound--offer as many preposterous lies as the sucksters do:

Since July (3 months ago) the Factor ratings have not went [sic] up at all, no increase, none. He averaged 3.4 in July, and he averaged 3.4 in October, earth [sic] to O'Reilly, that is not an increase. Billy has such a giant ego he has to lie about his ratings, even though he already has the #1 rated show on cable news.

The sucksters give no sources, for obvious reasons: their numbers are made up! O'Reilly's 8:00 pm in July: 3,075,000 viewers. O'Reilly's 8:00 pm in October: 3,390,000 viewers. Hey Stevie, 3,390K is more than 3,075K. The rise in ratings is graphically demonstrated in this chart:


But wait, that's not the only thing Stevie lied about. The sucksters quote Mr Bill:

We're real close to Katie Couric numbers. We beat everybody else. Good Morning America. Nightline. I think the Today show is a little bit ahead of us, but it's close.

No way is Stevie going to let that stand:

O'Reilly lied once again about his ratings. He gets about 3.4 million viewers a night, and that is total viewers. Katie Couric gets anywhere from 5.2 million to 5.9 million, so O'Reilly is a liar when he says he is almost beating her.

And again:

O'Reilly does not beat Good Morning America. Nightline, or the Today show. Setting aside the fact that these shows do not even compete with O'Reilly, he still fails to beat them. In fact, the Today Show nearly doubles O'Reilly's numbers.
Total Viewers: Good Morning America: 4.0M
Total Viewers: Nightline: 3.9M
Total Viewers: Today Show: 5.5M
...And this is just a small sample that shows O'Reilly is a biased liar.

Once again it's the sucksters who are lying. They are comparing two broadcasts of GMA, Nightline, and Today (all of which air a second time for West Coast viewers) with just one showing of O'Reilly. When you count both showings of all programs, The Factor's 8:00 + 11:00 pm audience of 4,888,000 clearly tops GMA and Nightline, and is closing in on Couric and Today. And then he claims this:

There are never any Reality Checks on Conservatives.

Another lie. And there's more:

Notice that O'Reilly never does an ambush on any Republicans, ever, he just does it to liberals and Democrats. While claiming to be a nonpartisan independent, which is just laughable.

Stevie lies again. Is there no end to his blatant dishonesty? No wonder this is one of the top five favorite blogs of the newshounds. You will recall that the hounds got burned by printing a suckster lie and believing it, until we posted audio exposing the lie. It was shortly after that embarrassment when Ellen Brodsky rewarded the sucksters with her "top five" recommendation. Birds of a feather, and all that.

All Bark, No Bite:
This smear began with Talking Points Memo, who complained that Fox was "pushing" the "death panel" meme, because legal analyst Peter Johnson asked John Cornyn: "With regard to the death panel, has anything changed?" Actually, in the introduction he called them "so-called death panels", attributing the phrase to Sarah Palin, explaining that the reference was to end-of-life counseling. Media Matters chimed in, trimming a 1:29 clip to 1:14 by leaving out the explanatory intro. Clarence Page reduced it all to one sentence, while the newspoodles simply reposted TPM's clip, adding:

Watch Peter Johnson say death panel as a statement of fact: "With regard to the death panel, has anything changed?"

Of course, that's an easy claim to make when you don't mention what he said just before. And it's made even easier when the newsliars, TPM, and all the rest of them leave out what else Peter Johnson Jr said before the interview began. It's that bothersome business of context, which Fox haters are all to happy to remove when it fits their agenda. They won't tell you about this, but we will:

JOHNSON: The tremendous percentage of dollars that we pay in the last months and years of our life--there is a determination by the House, to focus on those medical costs. No one is saying it's a 'death panel', but people have to understand that there is a tremendous interest in reducing costs in people's so-called later years of life...

Meanwhile, the mongrels did their echo chamber duty on another story, this time from the Huffington Post. Julie of course kicked it up a notch, quickly racking up a trifecta of untruths:

On Studio B Smith slapped down Shannon Bream’s lack of “fair and balanced” in her reporting on the campaign for governor in New Jersey. Bream, true to form, conducted an on-air interview with the Republican candidate, Chris Christie, but looked blankly at the camera for a moment when Smith asked her when she would interview the Democratic candidate, and current Governor, Jon Corzine. It probably hadn’t occurred to her that it would be a, you know, good, journalistic thing to do. Clearly flustered, and a little defensive, it seemed, Bream replied, “We have in multiple requests, and when it comes in, we'll let you know.”

Smith "slapped down" Shannon Bream? Lie #1. In fact the next day Smith confirmed what Bream said and repeated the offer to Corzine for an interview. "Looked blankly at the camera for a moment"? Lie #2. Satellite delay, the same amount that occurred at the beginning of the segment. "It probably hadn't occurred to her..." Lie #3. If it hadn't occurred to her, then how to explain the multiple requests for an interview that had already been filed? As it turned out, FNC did get an interview with Corzine, not pursuant to any requests, but rather by catching him at the scene of an event, just as had been done with Chris Christie:


Apparently it didn't occur to anyone that it would be bad journalism to air this interview with Corzine because his opponent wasn't standing ten feet away to respond! And it seems that none of the websites that made such a big deal out of talking to Christie has even mentioned that Fox did the same with Corzine. That of course would include the biased bassets.

The "guest blogger" (gb) who recaps Glenn Beck's program continues to embarrass herself. When Beck revealed he had news about a new job for Anita Dunn's husband, gb cackled:

I think Beck was so excited by this possible evidence of Washington Corruption that he promoted it all week as his BIG NEWS, but could never get the story nailed down. There were no facts. No goods on Anita Dunn or her husband. No declarative statements. Just this smear left out there about Anita Dunn’s husband.

We're not sure why Mr Dunn getting a job would be a "smear". And the claim that there is no story is not exactly truthful. Another "guest blogger" blasts a headline:

Fox Business As Usual - Attacking Obama

The article in question is a straight report on the disagreement with the Chamber of Commerce. Read it: Fox Business did not "attack" Obama. Another lie.

Ellen tells us that if anyone on Fox argues that health care mandates are unconstitutional, they are just repeating "right wing talking points" that have been "debunked". Her "proof" of the debunking? A link to Media Matters (no bias there!) citing "legal scholars". Any legal scholar (and that would not include Ellen) will tell you that a difference of opinion regarding constitutional law analysis does not constitute "debunking". Brodsky goes on to claim that "Fair and balanced Fox never told its viewers" about any of these differing analyses. What's her evidence for that? Why, nothing at all. She made it up! Never mind all the reports, debates, and discussions you may have heard on Fox. Ellen says none of that ever happened.

Brodsky returns with a complaint about reporting on possible voter fraud in New Jersey. There are 2,300 applications with mismatched signatures, but rather than explaining why this isn't news, Brodsky's only argument is: what about Ann Coulter!

Meanwhile, "fair and balanced" Fox continues to ignore the formal voter-fraud investigations that have been launched against regular guest Ann Coulter.

Yes, the tu quoque fallacy raised to a new level! Note Brodsky's "proof" that Fox "ignored" the Coulter charges: a search of foxnation.com. That's really clever, Ellen. Not. Fox Nation wasn't even in existence when the Coulter charges made news! Are you going to attack USA Today for not having filed a report on the Hindenburg disaster? This ploy is as transparent as Saran Wrap, but what else could Brodsky do? After all, even a cursory search of foxnews.com would prove her charge that Fox "ignored" the Coulter charges to be another hound lie. By the way, Coulter doesn't work for Fox News. Brad Blog (another hound recommended site) continues to lie that she does, but it was MSNBC that hired her.

Tolerance and Compassion:
Our moment of Fox hater zen comes to us from the newspoodles, who are up in paws because they spotted "anti-Semitic" comments at Fox Nation. Ah yes, you'd never find Ellen Brodsky allowing that sort of thing in her kennel. Right?

• I'm glad crooks and warmongering neocons like Jew-liani and yourself are NOT associataed with Dr. Paul anymore. Your a disgrace to true libertarianism.
• Hey Goldberg, how would you like it if we linked your boy McCain in with the ZOG machine, maybe a little ditty about taking down the ZOG Machine JEW BY JEW BY JEW will get the white people up in arms and against McCain and the ZOG machine.
• Morris is a paid global business lackey and a Likudnik Zionist Jew
• Jew me, sue me / Everybody do me / Kick me, kike me / Don't you black or white me

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