Fox News lies about Obama

[AstroDiaper]

They got busted with the madrassa story. John Gibson & Steve Doocy rehashed the lie. Fox News sweeps it under the rug.

I think it's time for the Jayson Blairs of Fox News to be fired

[2:30]

It will never happen, as long as the lie furthers the official Faux agenda - which is exactly what this one did.

[Lazlo Toth]

Faux post.

[Paper Trail]

Sticks, Stones and Mr. Obama
Misleading aspersions about the senator's background only make the perpetrators look bad.

Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/27/AR2007012701097.html)

IT'S BECOME a fad among some conservatives to refer to the junior senator from Illinois by his full name: Barack Hussein Obama. This would be merely juvenile if it weren't so contemptible. Republican lobbyist Ed Rogers, on "Hardball," was one of the early adopters of this sleazy tactic. "Count me down as somebody who underestimates Barack Hussein Obama," he said. Radio host Rush Limbaugh, demonstrating his usual maturity, got a chuckle out of the senator's allegedly oversized ears, calling him "Barack Hussein Odumbo." And Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council issued this e-mail alert: "Joining an already glutted field of hopefuls, Sen. Barack Hussein Obama (D-Ill.) announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic nomination yesterday."

Insight magazine managed to further degrade the public discourse with a scurrilous "report" alleging that Mr. Obama, as a child in Indonesia, attended a radical Islamic madrassa. In fact, Mr. Obama attended a public school in Jakarta that was predominantly Muslim -- no surprise given that Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country. Insight, whose piece was eagerly touted by Fox News Network, might have learned this if it had bothered to check its story rather than cravenly attributing the false report to "Hillary Clinton's camp," citing unnamed "sources close to the background check" that the New York senator supposedly conducted into Mr. Obama.

When the madrassa story was debunked by CNN and the Associated Press, Insight didn't even have the decency to slink away. "The media uproar over our reporting reveals a media establishment choosing not to ask the tough questions about Obama's Muslim past: If he was raised in a secular household (as he claims), why does he have -- or retain -- Muslim names, Barack and Hussein?" the magazine asked in a posting on its Web site. "Were his father and stepfather as secular as he says? What is the exact nature of Obama's current religious affiliation and what are the beliefs and teachings of his current church in Chicago, the Trinity United Church of Christ?"

Mr. Obama's slimers seem to think such name-calling and Muslim-baiting can score points with the American people. On the contrary, Mr. Obama's multicultural background (his father was Kenyan, and he spent several years living in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather) ought to be viewed as a plus. A president with an understanding of Islam and the developing world would be welcomed by those who too often feel misunderstood and slighted by the United States.

Mr. Obama has never tried to hide his past or his family name: He has written about being educated at a predominantly Muslim school. His father, a non-practicing Muslim, was Barack Hussein Obama Sr. His grandmother is Sara Hussein Obama.

The senator, however, does not use his middle name. Those who take pains to insert it when referring to him are trying, none too subtly, to stir up scary images of menacing terrorists and evil dictators. They embarrass only themselves.

[Paper Trail]

Behind the 'Madrassa Hoax'
What a bogus report on Barack Obama reveals about the media food chain.

By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

Jan. 27, 2007 - What will the first full week of Campaign '08 be remembered for? That Barack Obama was under attack for his behavior as a 6-year-old. It’s worth revisiting the Madrassa Hoax story for what it tells us about our warp-speed politics.

The subtext of the story was that Obama was some kind of Muslim Manchurian Candidate (or the Russian spy played by Kevin Costner in “No Way Out”)—trained in an Indonesian religious school to be a jihadist who would do Al Qaeda’s work from within. Under the old media order, the whole thing would have made for a nice joke amid the somber mood surrounding President Bush’s State of the Union address. But this is a different time, when every campaign lives in fear of being Swift-Boated. Even after the story was debunked, the folks at Fox News Channel wouldn’t apologize, and in one case kept pushing a line on the air they knew was false.

The pathetic little saga begins on the Web site of Insight Magazine, a scandal sheet connected to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times. On Jan. 17, Insight reported that “Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp” had conducted a background check that found Obama attended a madrassa (religious seminary) when he moved with his mother and stepfather to Jakarta in the late 1960s. The idea, according to Insight, was to show that Obama was deceptive about his “Muslim past.” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson says flatly: “They made it up.”

True or not, this bit of grade-school innuendo proved irresistible to Steve Doocy, know-it-all host of “Fox and Friends,” Roger Ailes’s idea for a right-wing morning chat show. Doocy garbled the story into a reference to Obama “spending the first decade of his life raised by a Muslim father.” After John Gibson of Fox repeated this yarn, which managed to slime two campaigns simultaneously, CNN dispatched a reporter to Obama’s old school in Jakarta, where he revealed it to be a normal public school with religion classes only once a week and no indication of Wahhabism, the Saudi-inspired extremist philosophy. (Indonesian schools were even more secular 40 years ago than they are today.) The whole underlying tale was untrue.

But neither this solid reporting—later backed up by ABC News—nor a categorical statement from the Obama campaign that he “has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago,” killed the story. Fox was “unwilling to stop when they knew they were wrong or correct what they knew was a lie,” says Robert Gibbs, Obama’s communications director. Executives at the network claimed that their on-air “clarification” was enough, but Fox’s own people didn’t get the message. Gibson—once a respected correspondent and host—went on the radio to malign the CNN reporter, John Vause. He “probably went to the very [same] madrassa” as Obama, Gibson said.

On one level, the story ended up being a net positive for Obama. His supporters were glad he fought back hard, and the emphasis on his church attendance (he committed to Christ in his 20s) may help soften the concern about his troublesome middle name, “Hussein”—a family name given him by his atheist father, a Kenyan academic whom Obama met only once in his life. Even though Fox wouldn’t apologize, at least the falsity of the story was not in doubt. The problem for the Obama team is that other such stories might not lend themselves as readily to being shot down. Without being black and white, they fester in gray. And where Hillary Clinton’s vulnerabilities are all a decade or so old, Obama’s are new. He's so green he deserves—and will receive—more scrutiny than politicians who've been around for a while. So even when the charges are false, they are imbued with a patina of “news” that will not apply to stories about Rose Law firm billing records or cattle futures. Generally speaking, being fresh is an advantage in politics. But it makes any critical story fresh, too, when stale might be easier to squelch.

Political operatives on all sides are worried about the new rules governing their world. “We used to whine about round-the-clock cable in ’96—that’s child’s play now,” says Harold Ickes, a longtime Clinton aide getting ready to help Hillary. “The lesson of Swift Boat [the 2004 efforts to throw mud on John Kerry over his Vietnam service on a river craft] is you cannot let this stuff circulate unanswered.” The implications for opposition research are only now coming into view. “If they [bloggers] can finger you trying to drop poison into the well, you’ll be hurt by it,” Ickes adds. “Stuff moves out so quickly that campaigns have to exercise much more control over their negative information apparatus.” This could be good. When “oppo” goes transparent, it might shrivel.

Until then, the hostilities will escalate. Last week, Joe Novak, a Chicago media consultant with a longtime rivalry with David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign chief, launched a Web site dedicated to trashing Obama. (One of his first hits was on Michelle Obama for sitting on the board of a pickle company that closed a plant recently.) Meanwhile, Dick Morris, the former Clinton operative turned Hillary hater, is working on a dirt-filled documentary. Unless the Clintons’ courtship of Rupert Murdoch bears fruit quickly, it’ll no doubt be Doocy’ed for Fox viewers as soon as it’s released.

[Diplomat]

Calling politicians by their full names is nothing new.

The first President Bush was called "George Herbert Hoover Bush" by the classless SOB Tom Harkin. The President was routinely referred to by his full name by detractors as a way of reminding them of his upbringing.

Dan Rather made reference to "J. Danforth Quayle III," ignoring the fact that the VP was named for James Danforth, a family friend and wasn't a "III."

A lot of Hillary Clinton's detractors refer to her as "Hillary Rodham Clinton" (often emphasizing the "Rodham") as a way of reminding people she uses her maiden name, too. I think it's silly of them to do that.

Mr. Obama should be glad his detractors are doing this now. By the time this campaign gets serious, it'll pretty much be a dead issue.

If some politician's middle name were "Adolf" or "Hitler," rest assured his opponents would use it just like they're using "Hussein" against Obama.

[ January 30, 2007, 10:14 PM: Message edited by: Diplomat ]

[Spike]

Originally posted by Diplomat:
Mr. Obama should be glad his detractors are doing this now. By the time this campaign gets serious, it'll pretty much be a dead issue.I can't help but wonder if the "source" for this story, which the Moonies claim was Clinton's campaign, actually originated within Obama's own campaign. They had to have known this was coming. Wouldn't it be better to get it out there early, get the obvious questions answered in a very public way, then let the issue die? Everybody ended up looking bad here EXCEPT Obama, and he continues into the contest with his opponents having lost that weapon against him.

Plus, it's happening when no other issues are really being discussed. It could have been disastrous for Obama later on, if he were trying to talk about his platform and kept having his message drowned out by questions about his middle name and his education in Indonesia. It's almost as though he chose the time to get this out of the way, so that he can concentrate on issues later without the shrill distractions.

[2:30]

The Moonie/FNC establishment gives itself away with this one:

a media establishment choosing not to ask the tough questions about Obama's Muslim past: If he was raised in a secular household (as he claims), why does he have -- or retain -- Muslim names, Barack and Hussein?" The tough questions about Obama are about his name?

And that a rabid rightie drug addict tries to attack Obama, the former editor of the Harvard Law Review, as "dumbo" - well... there you are.

[Spike]

Originally posted by 2:30:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> a media establishment choosing not to ask the tough questions about Obama's Muslim past: If he was raised in a secular household (as he claims), why does he have -- or retain -- Muslim names, Barack and Hussein?" The tough questions about Obama are about his name?</font>[/QUOTE]That's also like asking why millions of people in this country with Irish names didn't change them and suggesting that since they didn't, they must support Irish terrorism.

[Produce man]

JeffSkilling, you're a little behind on this.

Fox did nothing wrong.

[AstroDiaper]

Nice try prodouce

Fox News, Steve Doocy, John Gibson, and Moody are all crap journalists.

They got busted and it's so friggin' hilarious to watch their fans and their management scurry like rats

[Banned]

Don't worry everybody. He doesn't have a chance anyway.

[Kace]

Yeah, but Steve Doocy being an idiot isn't a newsflash.

[AstroDiaper]

Steve Doocy really should go. He's the Peter Arnett of the elite right wing media

[writer2]

Update: Mister Obama is freezing the Fox reporters out of covering his campaign. At the moment. Google it.

[Kace]

Does that mean less coverage about Obama's cuticles by Carl Cameron?

[Clever Login Name]

Originally posted by writer2:
Update: Mister Obama is freezing the Fox reporters out of covering his campaign. At the moment. Google it.Bad mistake. If Obama wants to attract crossover voters, he's going to need to reach that Fox News audience. It also shows him to be remarkably petty and thin-skinned ... not exactly unheard of qualities in a politician, but not ones that will endear him to the voters, either.

[AstroDiaper]

Bush and Cheney have frozen out the media for 7 years (except good ole boy Brit Hume). It took Tony Snow joining the team to finally get a little more interaction between the WH and the media

[2:30]

If Obama wants to attract crossover voters, he's going to need to reach that Fox News audience. Wrong. The core FNC audience will never vote for Obama, or anyone else who isn't a white male. Freezing out the propagandists from FNC is a great idea for him, if it's handled properly. They add nothing to his reach, and he can say that while they're welcome to cover his events and campaign, he's not going to waste time with people whose coverage is dictated by the right wing of the republican party.

[Clever Login Name]

I disagree. A large part of Obama's "appeal" is that he is trying to transcend partisan politics, and he'll need to be exposed to conservative voters to do that. And I'll repeat that freezing them out accomplishes nothing, but it does show him to be too sensitive ... if he can't handle big ol' bad Fox News doing something he doesn't like, how's he going to tackle dictators with nuclear weapons? This is an opportunity for Obama to take the high road (assuming that's necessary) ... if he can't or won't, he's simply placating the moonbat liberal base of the Democratic party.

[Fargin Icehole]

Originally posted by Diplomat:
Calling politicians by their full names is nothing new.
We do the same with people convicted of high crimes. Coincidence? graemlins/eusa_whistle.gif

[the original buttongod]

Originally posted by Jeff Skilling's Con-Science:
Steve Doocy really should go. He's the Peter Arnett of the elite right wing mediaHe needs to go back to PM Magazine in Wichita, KS
oh...wait....that got cancelled..

[Paper Trail]

THE LOW POST: The Scum Also Rises
Fox kicks off the witch-hunting season
MATT TAIBBI (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13302538/the_low_post_the_scum_also_rises/print)

"Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?"
-- From Hannity.com, Monday night, long after the "madrassa" story had been debunked


Nearly two years before the next presidential election, we've already set the tone: Even the most outrageous media fictions about candidates are apparently going to go unpunished.

At least that was my thought, after watching last week's unfolding of the Obama-madrassa scandal -- the unofficial starting gun for the Great Slime Race, as the 2008 presidential campaign will someday be known. I found the entire affair puzzling. I know for sure that if I made a journalistic "mistake" of that magnitude, I'd be spending the rest of my life picking strawberries in the Siberian tundra. Most print journalists I know would expect the same thing; the legal ramifications alone of intentionally going to print with a story that missed by that much would guarantee that 80 cents out of every dollar you made for the next ten years would go to the victim of your libel. That's unless you're Tom Friedman and you can use congenital idiocy as a defense in court.

For some reason, however, we never see full-blown libel suits in high-level political journalism. Moreover, there appears to be a completely different standard for talk-radio and TV talk-show hosts, who are somehow allowed to lie and **** up with impunity, and still remain employed. I get the feeling that as a society we have decided to give a collective pass to serial media swindlers like Sean Hannity simply because we never expect them to actually document the "facts" that come spewing in mass volumes out of their zoster-covered mouths every day. We actually expect them to pull most of their material out of their asses, and are mostly content to address the problem by pompously correcting their errata post-factum in whiny media-crit outlets like...well, like this one. Actual real punishment never seems to be forthcoming.

The Obama incident was a perfect example. After Fox outlets, Insight magazine and the Roger Ailes morning vehicle Fox and Friends erroneously reported that a source in "Hillary Clinton's camp" had uncovered that Barack Obama had been schooled in a "madrassa" in his youth in Indonesia, CNN dispatched a reporter to the school in question and found that the tale was totally false, that there were religion classes only once a week at the school and that the school had not even a hint of Wahabbite influence. Moreover, Hillary Clinton's camp denied having anything to do with the story. "They made it up," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said.

Fox responded with a classic "Eat me you clowns!" send-off, with Fox anchor John Gibson *****ing that John Vause, the CNN reporter who blew up their report, "probably went to the very [same] madrassa." Ultimately there was a reluctant "retraction" of sorts on Fox and Friends, but if you pay careful attention, the statement read by Fox anchor Steve Doocy isn't a retraction at all. Here's what he said:

DOOCY: One other thing. We want to clarify something: On Friday of last week, we did the story from Insight magazine where we talked about how they were quoting that Barack Obama, when he was a child growing up in Indonesia, had attended a madrassa. Well, Mr. Obama's people called and they said that that is absolutely false. They said the idea that Barack Obama went to a radical Muslim school is completely ridiculous. In his book it does say that he went to a mostly Muslim school but not to a madrassa.
Obviously there is absolutely no admission of error here; they only concede that Barack Obama himself claims the story is false, which is what most people expect a politician to do even after a true expose. Doocy read his text with the tone of a junior-high bully wiseass ripping off a school-mandated "apology" in front of the class; his tone clearly indicated that he, and Fox, were greatly annoyed by the inconvenience of having to "clarify" anything for anyone.

Not only that, but well after the story had been crushed by every reputable news outlet in America, the Fox-affiliated Hannity continued to have the Insight story up, uncorrected, on the front page of his Web site. It's still there now, lingering like a hemorrhoid, as I write this piece.

I'm not sure if people realize exactly how serious a situation this is. The way our national media is currently constructed, a lie of this magnitude broadcasted on a major network becomes an irreversible blow within, I would guess, about 24 hours after it appears. There are rare cases of an unsourced hoax blowing up quickly enough that it won't stick to a politician -- the John Kerry mistress story is a good example -- but for the most part, once the lie is out there, it's there to stay. This is especially true given the nature of the audience for outlets like Fox and Hannity. Unless you force a Hannity or a John Gibson to apologize by ripping his own still-beating heart out on national television, their audiences will assume that any "retraction" comes with a grain of salt, that the original report was true.

Years after George Bush himself admitted that there is no link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, I continue to meet people who believe just the opposite -- that the original implications furthered by the White House and the talk-radio preachers were true, and that the no-link concession was something somehow forced on Bush and the likes of Fox by hyper-cautious media lawyers and lefty journalists who, it is assumed, harbor some secret allegiance to Saddam Hussein and/or the cause of Islamic terrorism in general.

This unwillingness to believe the "reputable" media outlets' final judgments about such controversies is now endemic and a result of a number of factors, most of those having to do with the failure of the mainstream media to perform vigilantly in the face of various bald national deceptions.

After the debacle of 2000, for instance, many people automatically distrust the published verdicts about election results, choosing to assume that votes were stolen by one side or the other and that the commercial media is a fellow traveler tied to whichever side you choose to think is rigging the game -- Republicans or Democrats, both sides are regularly suspected. And though few people probably register the issue consciously, there has to be some kind of fallout when the population is fed "They hate us for our freedom" by "reputable" media outlets as an explanation for the 9/11 attacks. When the media trades so blatantly in such egregious, transparent bull****, why shouldn't their audiences choose to make their own decisions about truth and untruth?

The lesson of all this -- and of the Iraq war, the Swift Boat controversy, and indeed the whole careers of swine like Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and the like -- is that unless you prevent the lie from coming out to begin with, it doesn't really matter what happens afterward. In the Internet age, and with no kind of regulation of the "facts" that are circulated on afternoon radio, once that genie is out of the bottle, he's staying out.

Moreover, we live in an age in which an increasing number of unscrupulous media creatures make phony/misleading rhetorical arguments and cover themselves by "citing" media reports that may be still floating around on the Internet, long after they've been debunked. Rush Limbaugh is the master of this technique. A classic Limbaugh news-reference involved a mountain-lion attack in Colorado (hyping alleged liberal overconcern for deadly mountain lions is a surprisingly hardy staple of right-wing radio entertainment); Limbaugh wanted to argue that PC-mad animal rights activists had raised more money for the lion cub than had been raised for the victim's family. "As of May 23, the orphaned mountain lion had received $21,000 in donations and Barbara Schoener's two kids had received around $9,000" was how Rush put it, way back in 1994. The story was total bull**** and had been exposed as such for more than a month at the time Rush came out with that story.

And once he realized he could do this without suffering consequences, he just kept on doing it, which is why his listeners over the years have been treated to such nuggets of wisdom as "There's no such thing as an implied contract," "It has not been proven that nicotine is addictive," "The condom failure rate can be as high as 20 percent," "The poorest people in America are better off than the mainstream families of Europe," "Banks take the risks in insuring student loans," "Anita Hill followed Clarence Thomas everywhere," and "$14,400 for a family of four-- that's not so bad." There are endless lists of these casually-told lies that stick long after debunking -- anyone interested in seeing the full list can check out sites like fair.org.

Now we're seeing the same thing with the Obama story; it is lingering, even after it has been totally discredited. Emboldened by a generation that has refused to punish their libelous behavior, these guys now just take whatever "facts" they like and run with them. Hannity is one culprit. Michael Savage, a spineless little ****head who should be torn apart by hyenas, responded to the debunking of the Obama story by telling his listeners that Obama "will not reply" to the original Insight report, a blatant lie. He added, for good measure, that "assuming the world is still here" after a Clinton-Obama administration, Obama would then run for president with "Saddam Hussein's younger grandson" as his running mate.

The very fact that the liars are allowed to continue their trade unpunished is a sort of endorsement of their original versions of the "truth." I have absolutely no doubt that many Americans believe deep down in their gullible hearts that if people like Hannity and Limbaugh were really liars, they would be pulled off the air, or punished for some reason. They see that a Michael Savage can be yanked from a lucrative job for gay-bashing, but there appears to be no punishment at all for unchecked, intentional lying, which is at least as serious an offense for a journalist.

The results of widespread public disenfranchisement with the media are already out in the open for everyone to see -- wild conspiracy theories running rampant on both sides of the political aisle, great masses of the population eschewing reporting and appealing to Biblical interpretations of world events, and the explosion of a blogger movement that on the one hand has greatly enhanced press freedom, but on the other has inspired "mainstream" media organs to dispense with traditional fact-checking procedures in a desperate attempt to compete with the speed of the Internet and cable news. The direction all of this is traveling in is a future of pure informational mayhem, in which people will have absolutely no reliable means to make political decisions, leaving the political landscape ripe to be seized by demagogues and swindlers of all stripes, the public with no defense against political and environmental corruption, etc.

If the press is serious about saving itself as a social institution, it has to start policing its own business. We all have to encourage the likes of Barack Obama to hire the meanest lawyers on the planet and to file the hairiest lawsuits imaginable against the Hannitys, Gibsons, and Savages of the world. We have to impress upon the victims of these broadsides that choosing to ignore that style of libel is a betrayal of the public trust and an act of political cowardice that the rest of us end up paying for in spades. That's the ugly truth: Until one of those monsters goes down in a fireball of punitive litigation, we are all ****ed. And it's not going to happen anytime soon.

[2:30]

Can you say busted?

Wonder if Ailes will fire Hannity?

He hasn't dumped Bully Boy despite his outrageous and repeated antics...so I doubt a simple racist smear will hold much sway at Faux.

[Diplomat]

Sean Hannity's website is not connected with FNC. It's for his radio show. Anyone who works in media should know that.

This obsession with trying to get FNC hosts fired smacks of something media wannabe David Brock would do.

If 2:30 were really concerned about racism, she'd ask the New York Times to fire Bob Herbert or have expressed concern about Molly Ivins during her lifetime.

For the record, I don't think Herbert or Ivins should've been fired but merely called on their racist and race-baiting proclivities.

[ February 02, 2007, 02:30 PM: Message edited by: Diplomat ]

[Produce man]

Originally posted by 2:30:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />If Obama wants to attract crossover voters, he's going to need to reach that Fox News audience. Wrong. The core FNC audience will never vote for Obama, or anyone else who isn't a white male. Freezing out the propagandists from FNC is a great idea for him, if it's handled properly. They add nothing to his reach, and he can say that while they're welcome to cover his events and campaign, he's not going to waste time with people whose coverage is dictated by the right wing of the republican party.</font>[/QUOTE]Oh, the FNC viewers are racists? :rolleyes:

You're not too bright, huh?

[Produce man]

Paper, forgive me if I roll my eyes at that article.

Any journalist or pundit who can't write a column without using the words "f@ck" and "b!tch" is a waste of time. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[Invinoveritas]

And I'll repeat that freezing them out accomplishes nothing, but it does show him to be too sensitive ... if he can't handle big ol' bad Fox News doing something he doesn't like, how's he going to tackle dictators with nuclear weapons? I disagree, the way I see it, he IS handling Fox News. He is handling a media outlet the best way you can, and that is to not allow them to cover your news. With all of the media we have today news orginizations need to be able to get the relevent news as much as if not more than politicians need that 1 channel to give them coverage.

[Diplomat]

Yet, if a politician "froze out" CBS or the NYT or NBC, people would be screaming "First Amendment" or "censorship" or something equally ridiculous.

Politicians can talk or not talk to the media outlets of their choice.

[Mr. Pratfall]

Maybe, maybe not.

The current administration has frozen out everyone but FNC.

[Diplomat]

Not true. I've seen administration people on the major broadcast networks and quoted in most major newspapers.

[Mr. Pratfall]

Maybe "shown FNC special treatment" is a better way to put it.

And why wouldn't they? They know they'll get sympathetic coverage.

[Diplomat]

Originally posted by Mr. Pratfall:
Maybe "shown FNC special treatment" is a better way to put it.

And why wouldn't they? They know they'll get sympathetic coverage.I think the older, more established media are angry because THEY are the ones NOT getting preferential treatment anymore. They have a sense of entitlement and they're not controlling what everyone sees or reads anymore.

Your argument can be turned around, too.

Why would this administration give an interview to the New York Times, for instance? The paper is so far left that anyone who doesn't bow to Little Pinch's ideology is going to be smeared.

The leftist politicians love talking to the NYT or other leftist-controlled outlets because they know they'll get sympathetic coverage.

See. It works both ways.

[Mr. Pratfall]

And your argument works both ways. You don't hear cries of "First Amendment" or "censorship" when Cheney goes to FNC to spin his shooting a guy in the face. So I don't see the problem with Obama attempting to "freeze out" FNC, the network that has desperately, desperately tried to discredit the guy.

[ February 02, 2007, 07:24 PM: Message edited by: Mr. Pratfall ]

[Diplomat]

Originally posted by Mr. Pratfall:
And your argument works both ways. You don't hear cries of "First Amendment" or "censorship" when Cheney goes to FNC to spin his shooting a guy in the face. So I don't see the problem with Obama attempting to "freeze out" FNC, the network that has desperately, desperately tried to discredit the guy.Nor do I see a problem with the President ignoring, for example, Helen Thomas, a lying, anti-Semitic hag who spends her time trying to desperately, desperately discredit him. the bigoted b*tch shoulda been kicked off the White House grounds.

Politicians can talk to whatever media they want to. If Obama doesn't want to talk to FNC, that's his choice. If the President doesn't want to talk to the NYT, that's his choice.

[Mr. Pratfall]

Where did that come from? Goodbye.

[Diplomat]

Originally posted by Mr. Pratfall:
Where did that come from? Goodbye.You were concerned that a media outlet was trying to discredit someone. I simply presented a long-running example.

Take your marbles and go home, then.

:rolleyes:

[AstroDiaper]

Originally posted by Diplomat:
[QB]Sean Hannity's website is not connected with FNC. It's for his radio show. Anyone who works in media should know that.

This obsession with trying to get FNC hosts fired smacks of something media wannabe David Brock would do.
QB]Hannity's radio show is an extention of the Hannity brand...comments he makes there are no different than if he says them on his FNC show. To argue otherwise is idiotic.

And Steve Doocy and John Gibson should be fired, period. This is no different than the elite right wing media's attacks on Rather, Arnett, Helen Thomas, or any other liberal journalist.

Doocy and Gibson lied, they perpetuated the lie, they aren't journalists any more than Jayson Blair is a journalist.

I don't think you're always wrong Dip, I just think you look through a toilet paper tube to see the world. It's a narrow, stinky, one-way view of things from that perspective.

[ February 02, 2007, 08:33 PM: Message edited by: Jeff Skilling's Con-Science ]

[Diplomat]

FNC has no control over Hannity's website. You might want to take up any problem you have with his website to ABC.

[AstroDiaper]

That's so silly. I cannot believe you would actually make that argument.
Unbelievable.

[Diplomat]

Originally posted by Jeff Skilling's Con-Science:
That's so silly. I cannot believe you would actually make that argument.
Unbelievable.Hannity's website is connected to his radio program. The radio program is affiliated with ABC Radio.

I can't believe you would call for opinion hosts to be fired just because they expressed an opinion you don't agree with, yet you say nothing about leftist opinion writers/commentators who said stuff that's far worse. Perhaps you're the one with the narrow, stinky, one-sided view.

I don't think the guys on either end of the spectrum should be fired. They're expressing their opinions. Nobody is forcing anyone to watch or ted them.

[AstroDiaper]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Diplomat:
Unbelievable.[/qb]I can't believe you would call for opinion hosts to be fired just because they expressed an opinion you don't agree with, yet you say nothing about leftist opinion writers/commentators who said stuff that's far worse. Perhaps you're the one with the narrow, stinky, one-sided view.
QB]

Doocy and Gibson are opinion hosts?
Last I checked Doocy and Gibson were promoted by Fox News Channel as news hosts. The old "opinion hosts" argument is so played out. Find a new argument

[ February 02, 2007, 09:05 PM: Message edited by: Jeff Skilling's Con-Science ]

[Diplomat]

Gibson's show, when I have seen it, features his commentary on issues.

Doocy is part of the morning show, which comes across like a morning-drive radio show.

You guys on the left seem to think that anyone who has a conservative thought watches FNC all the time or listens to Sean Hannity. There are two or three shows I watch on FNC, none of which are The Big Story or Fox & Friends and I don't listen to Hannity.

If you don't like them, don't watch. I don't like the racism in the NYT's Op-Ed page, the anti-Semitism of Helen Thomas, the lies of the late Molly Ivins, the idiocy of Al Franken--so I don't watch or read them. You have the power. Turn the channel.

[ February 02, 2007, 09:16 PM: Message edited by: Diplomat ]

[s'news]

They've corrected themselves, right?

[AstroDiaper]

Originally posted by Diplomat:
Gibson's show, when I have seen it, features his commentary on issues.

Doocy is part of the morning show, which comes across like a morning-drive radio show.

You guys on the left seem to think that anyone who has a conservative thought watches FNC all the time or listens to Sean Hannity. There are two or three shows I watch on FNC, none of which are The Big Story or Fox & Friends and I don't listen to Hannity.

If you don't like them, don't watch. I don't like the racism in the NYT's Op-Ed page, the anti-Semitism of Helen Thomas, the lies of the late Molly Ivins, the idiocy of Al Franken--so I don't watch or read them. You have the power. Turn the channel.1. You don't know me. Don't call me "left." Just because I don't like Fox News channel's crap doesn't make me left. You should know better.
2. Fine, then quit *****ing about the NYT, Helen Thomas, Al Franken...nobody's making you listen/watch/read. That's the lamest, I mean L-A-M-E-S-T, drivel I hear from you pro-fox guys...you don't like it, don't watch. Using that logic we shouldn't have to hear your daily rants against all those you pass judgement on with 11000...11000!!! posts.