Unless you kick his ass.
If a big ugly guy is getting in my face about the fact that he thinks he should have my girlfriend, for example, I’ll tell him much worse than that. There’s a time and place for STFU.
When we see propaganda in America… STFU is perfectly appropriate.
I wouldn’t believe Rupert Murdoch if he swore he was lying.
Fox is doing marginally better than the legit news networks because it doesn’t do news. It seeks to masturbate a specific target audience with tabloid style fake news and manufactured outrage. That audience is still statistically tiny and irrelevant, and has no chance of growing.
Mark my words, Obama will pay no price whatsoever. No one is going to change their mind and vote for Sarah Palin because Obama said that Fox News is partisan.
Would you like a list of Fox News falsehoods?
Sure. Make sure they are from the News part of Fox, though, and not from the commentators opinions …
There isn’t any news part of Fox, but I’ll find you a list.
Fox is a working info center for conservative Repubs. They don’t even pretend to do news. When have they ever broken a story? (other than the ones they make up) . I think Obama should ignore them. Treat them like he has a TV remote and just skip over that channel.
A sharp analysis, although its effect is probably unintended. At least the impression i got upthread is that Obama’s message wasn’t at all pointed. It was rather mild and got overblown later. Unless maybe he’s that clever.
Mediamatters list of falsehoods and distortions, all from the ostensible “news” reportage.
And WHY DIDN’T ANYONE RESPOND TO ME
I don’t know what you saw, but it doesn’t sound like O’Reilly. O’Reilly is a simplistic, sloganeering moron.
Sorry, dude.
It sounds like O’Reilly (middle-aged, balding guy?). AFAIK, he is the one who popularized the text sidebar, though it is becoming more common. And though I’m not a fan or anything, I’d agree that his show is more intelligent than a lot of cable TV (not that that’s saying much).
But I’d be wary of extending the respect you accord one person to whole networks. Sean Hannity follows O’Reilly, and IMO he’s the model for Stephen Colbert’s idiot-asshole-republican schtick. Similarly, I think Wolf Blitzer and Larry King have IQs in the Keanu Reeve-Ashton Kutcher range; but I still watch other people on CNN.
I think that O’Reilly is somewhat brighter than most of the Fox heads, but that’s not saying a whole lot. He still tends to be be simplistic and self-obsessed.
Hannity is probably the single most worthless and detestable personality on television. Smarmy, vacuous, utterly uninsightful, or thoughtful or even passionate. He is a pure shill. completely lacking in any sense of integrity, shame or consistency, any sense of humor, any projection of human decency (which I think that O’Reilly does show sometimes).
At least O’Reilly and Beck think for themselves, and at least Beck is creative – diseased, but creative. Hannity is just an unadulterated outlet for GOP talking points, and right wing, special interest smear jobs.
Larry King is senile, but he isn’t political.
I’m not really familiar with Blitzer (I never watch CNN), but isn’t he a straight news reader? Does he do commentary? I know his performance on Jeopardy was SNL level bad, so I won’t try to argue that he’s intelligent, but I thought he just read copy.
The absolute DUMBEST cable news personalities have to be those “Fox and Friends” idiots, though. I don’t know how they even manage to feed themselves.
Diogenes, thanks for the link. MediaMatters has this to say, for example:
So why isn’t the Administration busting ABC’s chops? And more to the point, Sotomayor apologized for her statement … so why is it wrong to highlight it? I mean, she must think it was wrong, otherwise, why apologize? (Don’t get me wrong, I was overjoyed when Sotomayor was appointed to the Court. I just thought her statement was very foolish. The issue is experience, not race or ethnic background as Sotomayor said.)
While some of the things that MediaMatters says about Fox News are true, a lot of it seems to be straining at gnats. For example:
“Repeatedly suggested”? What does that mean? Why don’t they quote what he said, if it was so terrible? And why don’t they discuss the fact that the information about the four “stimulus” projects was all true … all they talk about is that Fox got the information from the Republicans, as if that were the crime. I don’t care where ABC or Fox or anyone else gets their news, I’d just prefer it were correct. And in this case Fox had the facts right.
Then Media Matters says:
That’s it? That’s the huge distortion, that the bill takes away the secret ballot but Fox said it was taking away the workers right to a secret ballot? Get real, that’s not an error, that’s pettifoggery.
Look, Dan Rather had to resign because he played fast and loose with the news in order to attack President Bush. ABC (as noted above) has already been busted by Media Matters. MSNBC and CNN both recently ran totally made-up bogus quotes from Rush Limbaugh, and only CNN apologized for it. And guess what? MediaMatters reported the bogus quote as well, and they also refused to apologize for it … bad watchdog, no cookies …
Media Matters, which Hilary Clinton helped to start, is hardly a neutral body in this debate. In fact, Media Matters has also attacked ABC, and CNN, and MSNBC, and NBC, for errors in their reporting … so should the White House say that MSNBC is not a “news organization” as well?
My point is that nobody, not even Media Matters, is immune to error. Should the White House attack Media Matters for lying about what Rush said?
Don’t get me wrong here. I do think that Fox News, just like the rest of Fox, has an ideological slant. And it is a political slant which is particularly repugnant to me. But if freedom of speech is to mean anything, it means the right to hold views that are repugnant to me.
But MSNBC, and ABC, and Media Matters, and NBC all have their political slants too. And Fox doesn’t check their facts very well … but neither does MSNBC and ABC and Media Matters and Dan Rathers. It’s foolish for the White House to attack one of them just because they don’t like their reporting. All that does is focus attention on Fox, and guess what? They love the attention. They think it’s great. They wish that the White House would attack them more. They revel in it.
So I have to ask you, Diogenes — why you are advocating the same action that Fox News is advocating? Both Fox and you think the White House should attack them, so you are in total agreement with Glen Beck on this issue … doesn’t that bother you just a bit, that you agree with him about this? Doesn’t that make you the least bit uneasy, that you and Glen are best buddies on this question, like you might have overlooked part of the equation here?
Fox News doesn’t make “errors.” It lies. It makes things up. It makes fake videos.
Your ending question is inane. Do you think that’s clever or something. Am I supposed to blanch in cognitive distress?
I don’t care if Fox likes Obama calling it out (and they don’t, regardless of what they say). It needs to be said because it’s the truth, so no, it doesn’t bother me a bit that Glenn Beck is pretending to like it. Why should it?
Telling the truth is not an “attack,” by the way.
You asked for a list of lies and distortions from the fake “news” portions of Fox. You got them. That doesn’t even count the far more over-the-top fabrications, video tampering etc. from the “commentary” shows (which is most of Fox’s content, and it’s disingenuous to try to divorce that shit from the fake news stuff), nor does it include the network organizing and hyping anti-Obama rallies. You’re obviously highly emotionally invested in defending Fox from any criticism at all, though, so I doubt you’ll concede anything.
Forget polls, did you miss the articles where the media admitted being biased towards Obama?
Brian Williams from NBC admitted during the campaign that he was biased in Obama’s favor
The Washington Post also said the media was biased in Obama’s favor in this piece
Mark Halperin of Time magazine called the election media coverage “the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war. It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage.” cite
Diogenes, all of the media is reporting things that are total bullshit, from Fox to MSNBC to Dan Rather. Whether they are “lies” or “oversights” or “lack of proper research” is a judgement I am hesitant to make. I do know that few of them apologize when they are caught, which makes me suspect all of their motives. I’ve heard as many lies about Rush as I have heard about Obama, so I’m not sure what your point is here. I’m not defending Fox, I think they are among the worst offenders … but they are far from being the only offenders.
Nope, although I do admire the line “blanch in cognitive distress”. I merely invited you to think about it. It’s a curious world where you and Fox end up on the same side of an issue.
If you truly don’t think they are happy about the White House attack, you don’t understand media. This attack has put Fox’s name on many people’s lips, heck, it even got me to watch it for the first time. Fox’s ratings have gone up, and you seriously are claiming that they don’t like that? Beck loves it, he’s milking it for all that it’s worth. They glory in the role of the so-called “oppressed minority”. Like I said, he’s put a red phone on the set and keeps inviting the White House to call when he says something untrue … of course the White House won’t call, which will further reinforce the false idea that it is an empty attack without anything to back it up. Why wouldn’t Beck love the attack, it’s bringing him viewers and it makes him look more powerful. If he wasn’t powerful, the logic goes, why would the White House attack him? Yes, I know the argument is somewhat bogus, but it is also somewhat real, in that you can measure somebody’s effectiveness by how hard people attack him. That’s one reason people say you should attack up and never attack down, it merely lends legitimacy to your opponent.
The White House attack is also very poorly timed, coming not long after of the resignation of Van Jones. Fox took credit (perhaps correctly) for driving Jones out of the White House, and now the White House turns around and attacks Fox. What do you think that says to Fox partisans? Why, that Fox is being attacked, not for lying, but for being successful … so yes, Beck and Fox are eating this up, they think it’s great. Beck is hoping that Obama never takes Helen Thomas’s advice to stop the attack.
And you agree with Beck, and disagree with Helen Thomas … which, like I said, is kinda curious.
Here’s a random assortment of quotes:
Oh, man, this is so depressing. I’m so tired of stupidity coming from the White House. Compare and contrast this from Tuesday, with Robert Gibbs, Presidential Spokesman:
OK, that’s excellent, the White House won’t mess with the press pool, that’s decided by the WHCA … but then we get to today. Today, forty eight hours later, the White House offered interviews with Kenneth Feinberg, the “Pay Czar” to the press pool … well, all of them except Fox, they said Fox couldn’t attend. They’re trying to kick Fox out of the press pool, how infinitely stupid is that?!?
To their eternal credit, the heads of the five networks represented in the press pool (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and CNN) got together and told the White House to fuck off, either Fox was included or none of them would go …
So now, in addition to boosting Fox’s ratings, the White House has managed to both frighten and piss off the rest of the networks. Because unlike the White House idiots in charge of this ill-advised war on the media, all of the network heads can see that this is an extremely dangerous incursion on press freedom. They can see that if Obama can do it to Fox, the next Bushalike could do the same thing to any one of them … and that’s a very scary thought.
Man, just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse …
I’m wondering how many of Fox’s new viewers are coming over from places like The Daily Show to watch The Crazy in person? Beck, for example, has gotten so much coverage, it’s gotta be drawing in the curious.
Just because people like watching freak shows doesn’t mean they want to be freaks themselves.
There is no bia in favor of Obama in news reportage. You are imagining things.
Wingnut Daily is not exactly a credible source, by the way.
No, the deliberate falsification of the news and openly partisan advocacy is only a Fox thing. There is nothing else like it in th media. There is no liberal analog.
Beck doesn’t agree with me. Fox is lying through its teeth if it says it’s happy about any of this.
All those peopel are wrong. I’m right.