Google Guile
You can't teach an old dog new tricks. That goes double for the Fox haters. Their armamentarium of artifice ranges from recklessly sloppy research to outright deception. And that D-word brings us directly to Deborah of the newshounds (another fine product of the Outfoxed mafia).
Deb is an enthusiastic devotee of the "invisible man" technique. A brief explanation for new readers: this is a propaganda device pioneered in the smear video Outfoxed, which famously documented bias on FNC by zooming in on a Republican and cropping the Democrat out of the shot. Just cherry-pick what you want people to see, and pretend like anyone else who was on the channel wasn't there at all. They become "insivible men".
Deb's current mission in life is to use this tactic on Fox's 5:00 pm Election HQ hour. And she is reaching new heights of dishonesty:
FOX Drags Hillary Clinton Through Gutter Today on America's Election HQ... Viewers got non stop speculation about the damage done by Clinton's Bosnia comment but also made sure to keep the conflict between Democratic candidates red hot while Republican guests rejoiced. Tammy Bruce gets the gold star... Then they added a Monica Lewinsky reminder reporting on a question Chelsea Clinton got today while campaigning.... They showed a clip of Chelsea's response without even commenting that the reporter may have stepped over the line.... Douglas Kennedy added a story about the new governor of New York, David Paterson, admitting to cocaine and marijuana...What "reporter" was this that asked Chelsea a question, given that reporters aren't allowed to question her? Don't take it seriously; that's just another example of Fox hater "research". And is Deb upset that FNC dared to report on the mayor's admitted drug use, or objecting to that radical right-winger Douglas Kennedy?
More to the point, Debbie insists that the hour was "non-stop" Clinton bashing engaged in by a parade of "Republican guests". Well, she did mention Tammy Bruce, who is a registered Democrat--oops, more of that rigorous newsmutt fact-checking. But what is Debbie not telling us? Who are the invisible men who were part of the coverage but erased by Deb?
- Hillary Clinton supporter Lanny Davis
- Democratic strategist Bob Beckel
- Democratic political analyst Kirsten Powers
- Democratic talk show host Bill Press
Oh and as if that weren't enough, the entire final segment of the program was an interview with that well-known Democrat-basher and "Republican guest": Obama girl! Five people made invisible, all to protect Deb's lie of "non-stop Republican rejoicing".We mentioned bad research above. This is a gem from Melanie:
Two hours ago (March 23, 2008) the Associated Press reported that 4,000 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq. I don't see anything about it on the flag-on-every-lapel, support our troops, we're-more-patriotic-than-you-are website.Websites have lapels? Never mind that. Just know that even as Mel published those words, this report (the same AP report Mel cited) was not only sitting on the fox news website, but was linked to by a headline on the main page!
But for once someone finally trumps the newspoodles for incompetent analysis. For this we turn to the Huffington Post, where one Toby Barlow writes about the corruption of Kwame Kilpatrick and manages to work in a smear of FNC:
Somewhat predictably, Fox News is lovin' it too, because this timely story is right up their alley. In a move torn from their very own insidious playbook, they're intensely covering the story, thereby pouring even more racial overtones into a highly charged political landscape...Never mind that every cable channel has covered this story--MSNBC more "intensely" than FNC, if Mr Barlow had bothered to pay attention. But Barlow is a writer, a columnist, maybe even in his mind a reporter. And he isn't just making this up out of whole cloth. He's gone the extra mile to nail it down. He's done research:
...and if you think I'm being paranoid, note that a Google search of "fox news" and "kwame" pulls up 124,000 results, while the next closest - "ABC News" and "kwame" - brings in just 25,000.No, we aren't making this up. Barlow's "research" consisted of counting the hits in a Google search. There may be a more patently fallacious method of documenting his claim, but if there is, we can't imagine what it would be. And just to complete the fraudulence, Barlow didn't even tell the truth about it! A Google search of CNN and Kwame turned up 277,000 results, more than twice as many as Fox:
