Oh Well...You Are What You Read And Watch

From Taegen Goddard:
"A new Public Policy Polling survey looks at perceptions of network television news and finds Fox News as the only network that more people say they trust than distrust.

Here are the trust/don't trust spreads: Fox 49% to 37%, CNN 39% to 41%, NBC 35% to 44%, CBS 32% to 46%, and ABC 31% to 46%.

Analysis: "These numbers suggest quite a shift in what Americans want from their news. A generation ago Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in the country because of his neutrality. Now people trust Fox the most precisely because of its lack of neutrality. It says a lot about where journalism is headed."

Watching Fox Will Fry Your Brain (cont.)

TW: Yep another graph where somehow numbers that should add up to 100% do not. But then ponder the question. If asked I would respond it is very likely a scientist- somewhere, sometime- has falsified data. Of course, that is essentially irrelevant to global warming one way or the other. This is not an effort to educate, it is propaganda for a particular viewpoint. And given the numbers sloppy propaganda at that.

Fox News Educating America

TW: An interesting way to portray data.

Stewart Nails Another One

Daily Show: The Rogue Warrior

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TW: Stewart nails the Palin thing like no other...his riff starts about 3:00 minutes into the clip although the Lieberman tangent is good too (and shame on Ratigan! that sloppiness feeds Palidiocy).

"Bending Reality To Pre-Conceived Narratives"

Sean Hannity Apologizes to Jon

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TW: Great piece if for no other reason than Stewart weaves chiggers into the bit.

Stewart Is On the Case

For Fox Sake!

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TW: Have been going lite on Stewart recently but that only makes its that much better when we feature another classic.

For instance, I love Cal Thomas truly one of the biggest douche bags ever and has been for the twenty years at least I have seen him defile our media.

I repeat myself but I respect Fox's business model of creating a resounding and reassuring echo chamber for a certain minority of Americans. My only beefs with Fox are when I see allegedly intelligent innocents treating as something different (i.e. an actual news organization attempting to be relatively unbiased). Or when some asshole at my health club turns it on in front of me within my range of vision...that aggravates the shit out of me and has risked violent confrontation.

Welcome Back Mr. Stewart

Mad Men

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Nate Silver And Fox Friends: Oil And Water

TW: You know we like Mr. Silver, the progressive yet accurate polling geek who managed to get 49 of the states right last November. He appeared on Fox and Friends last week with predictable results.

The thing is though, while what Nate said is correct, by saying it he likely ensures he will never appear again on that show perhaps any Fox show. He is not playing the game. A more cynical and popular pundit would have merely released an inane post on his blog advertising his appearance. By speaking the truth he will likely be shut out thereby sealing shut the echo chamber known as Fox a little more tightly.

From Nate Silver:
"This past Friday, I woke up at the crack of dawn to do an interview for Fox and Friends...it was one of the more aggravating experiences that I've had in my brief "career" in politics. The host misread his teleprompter (that's the generous interpretation), introducing me as someone who had correctly predicted "29 out of 50" states last November, and then recited a series of pre-spun questions, seeming flummoxed afterward that I hadn't agreed verbatim with his talking points and complaining aloud that the very smart conservative who was supposed to have been on the panel with me (a last-minute cancellation) hadn't been there (to "balance" me, I suppose).

Then as I was leaving the studio past a huge trailer serving Johnsonville Brats, they launched into a segment about Britney Spears and Alzhemier's. There was just no pretense of trying to do anything even vaguely resembling the news. I'm not reflexively anti-FOX; in fact, I'd had a couple of good experiences last year on Shepherd Smith and on their business channel. But as for their morning program: Wow. I've never met people more terrified of what might happen if they actually tried to engage in a rational discussion."

Fox News: Unfair And Unbalanced

Above from Media Matters tracking Fox News "experts" early this week

Below from conservative snarkist James Pethokoukis of Reuters:
"I think it is hilarious that the protesters get criticized for being uninformed about an uber-compliated plan that has been marketed in talking points and catch phrases. How dare they! This administration loves complicated, only-an-economist-could-love approaches."

TW: The recipe is simple: confuse, mis-lead, mis-inform; then react with surprise when folks get agitated; then blame it on those damn elitist Dems who just cannot communicate with the little folks. Who is patronizing who here?

Americans get the governance they deserve. If we cannot burn this this BS, then yes we deserve to fade as a world power as ill-informed, close-minded or passive populaces allow themselves to led around by the nose by this approach.

Fox New's Real Motto: "Obsfucate, Distract, Mis-lead"

"From the category of "things that make you want to gouge your eyes out with your pinky, shove scalding hot pokers in your ears, and repeatedly slam the door of a 1950s-vintage, American-made sedan on your head"
--Noam Schreiber New Republic

TW: The irony of course is the folks engaging in these fantasies baahed like meek sheep as the Bush/Cheney Administration trampled rights for 7 1/2 years post 9/11. What Burton did not ask Ms. Kelly was what would she suggest that Obama et al. lock themselves in a cave and bar emails from their servers so that citizens could not communicate? These are strawman arguments designed as Burton did say to confuse and obsfucate. And btw if Obama wanted to get the email addresses of opponents I assure you he has many ways (like any POTUS) to do so.

But here are a few questions from the Economist for Ms. Kelly and Fox et al.

From Economist:
"...Ms Kelly never makes it quite clear, but she is mighty worried that the whole thing will have a chilling effect on the right to email asinine conspiracy theories to millions of people you don't know.

There are, of course, countries that really do use the internet to exert a chilling effect on free speech. For example, Xu Zhiyong, a Chinese human-rights lawyer who was mounting a class-action suit on behalf of victims of melamine-laced milk, was arrested a week ago in Beijing and has not been heard from since. And over the past few days, someone (but who?) has eliminated Mr Xu's presence from the internet. His blog has vanished. Entering his name in Chinese search engines, like Baidu and Chinese Google, returns a message that the search has been disallowed because it may be connected to illegal activities. One might think that a bastion of freedom of speech like FOX News would be interested in such a story. But, funny thing, another search engine that doesn't return any news about Xu Zhiyong's arrest is the one on FOXNews.com. The site did carry a few AP stories about Mr Xu's melamine suit, but since his arrest, not a word.

Another way to come up with nothing is to go to the site's video section and search for "China dissident". Or "Murdoch China". "Murdoch" returns lots of video of Rupert Murdoch speaking his piece on various issues, and, what with his Chinese wife, his house in Beijing, and his immense investments in the Chinese market over the past 15 years, you'd think he would be interested in saying something about China. But no, not a word. Bill Dover, a former NewsCorp executive, would say Mr Murdoch pulls his punches on China because he's currying favour with the government. But who are we to judge?

Perhaps we should should suggest to the folks at FOX News that they do a story on Chinese dissidents. We could leave a comment on their website! But, oh dear, to leave a comment you have to register. Gosh, look at all the information you have to give them. Name, email, zip code, profession, income—all required fields. (Funny, if your last name contains a three-letter word meaning "tuchus", you're not allowed to enter it. Who'd they buy this software from, the Chinese government?) And then you have to check this box that says you've read their privacy policy.

Shall we read it? Do let's! It says they can provide all your Personal Identifying Information to any other NewsCorp company or sell it to a third party, but they have to "obtain your permission" first. Well, that's what they're doing now, isn't it? And (also with your "permission") they can monitor your click behaviour in, say, online polls, and combine it with your identifying information. Could they sell that information to a third party interested in knowing your name, email, political views, how much you earn, and where you live? Gosh, it seems to suggest they could, but it's not terribly clear.

Wait—I know! Instead of laboriously harvesting health-care reform opponents' personal information from forwarded emails, the Obama administration can save lots of trouble and buy that information from FOX News! They seem to have it all on file already."

Now This Is Some Fair And Balanced Journalism

TW: One can always count on Fox for balanced and deeply insightful analysis. Or actually just some bouncing around within their own little echo chamber.

Creating an Alternative Reality

TW: The recent shootings create plenty of opportunity for demagoguery from the left. I will not head down the path of extrapolating the behavior of depraved individuals other than to say if one can isolate their behavior to "individuals" then presumably much "jihadist" behavior can as well, no? Or if not then why not them but the far-right wingers yes?

My point though relates to Fox News and more broadly the right-wing cocoon perpetuated by Fox and others. Charles Krauthammer received an award the other night from Rupert Murdoch for "political commentary" excellence, in his acceptance Krauthammer made remarks which were taken out of context I thought by progressives. Many quoted the part about "alternative reality" as if Krauthammer was critical of Fox, in truth he was being complementary. Here is a longer quotation:

"In that respect, there should be a special award for Fox News. Fox has done a great service to the American polity -- single-handedly breaking up the intellectual and ideological monopoly that for decades exerted hegemony (to use a favorite lefty cliche) over the broadcast media.

"I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting -- half the American people. The reason Fox News has thrived and grown is because it offers a vibrant and honest alternative to those who could not abide yet another day of the news delivered to them beneath layer after layer of often undisguised liberalism.

"What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality."

Putting aside alleged lefty bias in the media to which Krauthammer refers (a huge canard from my perspective but that is for another day), I think Krauthammer is spot on that Fox and others are enabling an alternative reality. A very harmful and wrong-headed alternative reality. The truth is a pliable concept when folks are built up to be respectable sources of information then begin perpetuate ignorance and illogic, their viewers are lead down the path towards ignorance and illogic. A network that features absolute crackpots like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and then backstops them with "fair and balanced" Orwellian journalism from the likes of Krauthammer and Bill Kristol and Neil Cavuto the world gets topsy-turvy where up is down and down is up. Shepard Smith makes unsurprising comment and gets pilloried. Glenn Beck manages to turn a Nazi walking into a Holocaust museum and shooting an African-American guard into a left-wing conspiracy. Who are "they" anyway?

Exhibit A:
When anybody on Fox leaves the rails they are pilloried. Shepard Smith states an obvious point and gets this and this treatment.


Exhibit B:
Glenn Beck of course is the poster child for a certain segment of the right-wing:

Go Figure

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TW: This one takes a bit to get going but ultimately Stewart delivers (go to about 2:50 mark).

The Echo Chamber Rattles On

(click on image to enlarge)

TW: Here is a screen grab from earlier today on Fox Nation. Fox Nation is an on-line site created ostensibly to compete with "lefty" equivalents. But Fox Nation is so biased that it is almost satire for righty media. Today's headlines could be shortened to:

"Obama does not like the US, Obama still might be Muslim who likes Iran more than Israel, Sotomayor is a Latina power gal, and yippee lets talk about 2012 Republican POTUS nominees"

Down in the "culture" section they were still talking about Joe the Plumber and lamenting a judge who decreed no reading the bible in kindergarten.

I actually hit the site a few times a week. If Fox Nation were my primary news source I would be quite depressed and very concerned about the future as well. Again I respect Fox's need to generate profits, but one should be if not wary at least well-aware of such blatant bias.

Daily Kos is very biased in favor of progressive causes but Kos is not meant to be mainstream media.

You Go Jesse!!! (cont.)

TW: These Ventura appearances keep providing substance to the debate. Listening to the admittedly lame Fox entertainers really begins to remind me of the Iraq War rationalizations, the proponents just jumped from one rationale to the next as each one lost any credibility (recall- WMD, 9-11, building democracy, protecting the Iraqis people etc.).

Here the Fox guy goes from it is not torture to it works to well we should just kill "them" all.

Torture is only a part of the overall approach to dealing with terrorism. Torture reflects some folks willingness to do anything even if it is technically illegal, contravenes longstanding American morals, is of dubious efficacy and greatly harms our reputation across the world. This trade in search of the hint of security is fundamental. Gitmo and how it is shut down feeds into the same theme- will we except any risk.

What is often missed in these debates is the cost of heading down the path of trading security for our liberties and reputation. Folks debate the efficacy and semantics of torture but not the costs. Losing our moral grounding and interanational repuatation are very serious prices to be paid. We cannot forget this.

Ya Think....

TW: I do not begrudge Fox New's business model of pursuing profits by taking an unbashed right-wing slant to their programming. I merely get frustrated when friends and acquaintances get sucked into the Orwellian propaganda from Fox that it is in anyway "fair and balanced". Just understand and appreciate what it is (and no ABC, CBS, NBC are not the left-wing equivalents).

From Economist:
"[quoting Media Matters]

'Fox News has provided attendance and organizing information for the events on air and online dozens of times. You name it, they’ve likely done it. Fox has offered viewers and readers such vital organizing information as protest dates and locations and addresses of Web sites where people can learn more. It has even posted information and publicity material for the events on its own Web site. Tea-party planners are now using the planned attendance of Fox News hosts to promote their protests and listing Fox News contributors as “Tea Party Sponsor[s]” on their Web site.'

Fox has even hired a gonzo motivational speaker who dresses up as Tom Paine, and who recently asked his supporters to mail bags of tea to Congress (the "suspicious items" are removed in the mail room), to promote the events on the air. There's something unseemly about a network using the public airwaves to call for revolution, especially when that network spent George Bush's presidency as, more or less, an arm of the state. (It was the only network to break away from 2009 inauguration coverage to run Mr Bush's speech upon arriving home to Texas for his retirement.) But this might just be one future of American journalism, partisan and proudly so, the way that the earliest newspapers backed one party or another. The Tea Party protesters might have to drop their pretense of being "grassroots", but only for now. Later, this will be the norm."

Colbert Shreds Beck

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TW: I repeat as long as Fox carries Glenn Beck they are not a serious news organization. To the extent people believe Beck then they are fools.

Republicans Really Need A Facial

TW: The Republicans have a serious problem. Their party is being defined as a cast of undesirables by a fleet of obnoxious, toxic media stars. The combination of W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, Sarah Palin and now Micelle Bachman as brought to us by Rush, Hannity and Glenn Beck is creating a witches brew.

Barack Obama and the Dems are not perfect but the not so loyal opposition is failing to provide even a modicum of considered, serious, viable alternatives. This piece by Klein frames the challenge. He makes an indirect comparison between Rush and Paul Krugman. Yes, Krugman is strident and outspoken, and even porcine. But Krugman is a Nobel Prize winning economist with massive economic credentials, more importantly his name recognition is likely not even half of Rush's. Rush is an entertainer and a primary face of the Republican party, Krugman is an academic little known beyond the pages of the NYT.

Meanwhile, Bachmann, Gingrich et al. appear regularly on Fox making increasingly outlandish and largely irrelevant accusations and claims. Glenn Beck and Bachmann are touting a one-world currency conspiracy more or less out of thin air. Crazy pols are not new. Racist and virulent anti-communist congressmen fomenting illusory conspiracies were no rarity through the 1960's. But there was no Internet, you tube or Fox News back then to push such rubbish to the fore.

This toxic combination of political caricatures and foaming media personalities bodes ill for the Republicans and the country. We need a serious opposition to help tone policies, not crazy harangues.

From Joe Klein at Time:
"I've known Newt Gingrich for about 20 years now and I've always enjoyed him intellectually, but detested him politically. The reason for the latter is his now-anachronistic first resort to anger; again and again, he cheapens public discourse through exaggeration and wild claims. One imagines that if John McCain were President and Paul Krugman had said, out of the box, that he wanted McCain to fail, Gingrich would be leading the charge, calling Krugman "unpatriotic" and even, perhaps, traitorous.

As it is, I won't call Newt--or the other conservative hyperbolic baloney slicers--unpatriotic. Just graceless, boorish. And completely, demagogically out of touch with the national mood--which is concerned, serious and resistant to right-wing bullpucky. The latest was Newt's completely over-the-top reaction to Tim Geithner's new regulatory plan on the vile Hannity's program the other night:

We are seeing the biggest power grab by politicians in American history. The idea that they would propose that the treasury could intervene and take over system assets gives them the potential to basically create the equivalent of a dictatorship.
You don't want to do what they want, they take over your company. You do what they want, Congress retroactively, and this is what made last week's lynch mob like a third world government when the Congress literally got out of control, panicked, panicked because people were mad at it, and it turned out that the Congress had passed the authorization in the stimulus bill for to pay those bonuses.
The Congress had approved it, the people at were acting what they thought was the rules set by the government. Suddenly they're being attacked,they are retroactively losing their money. Why would anybody want to invest in a country.

Actually, what we're seeing is a reasoned public reaction to the fact that the financial services industry was given free rein--by Republicans and Democrats (I'm still looking at you, Larry Summers)--to engage in the most outrageous schemes since the 1920s. Millions and millions of people have had their retirement plans shredded by these banker-mopes, millions have lost their jobs. But those are people who do not inhabit the Beltway-right-wing-lecture-circuit planet that Newt and various others live on. Their unwillingness to protect average Americans from the untrammeled rapacity of an unregulated market is a disgrace.

So far, Geithner--and yes, Summers--have shown excellent balance, a respect for the free market system plus an awareness that the public needs to be protected from the sharks. Gingrich et al will remain banished somewhere in the outer darkness--and the Fox News cave-ghetto--until they realize that the Obama Administration's economic plans are not at all extreme, but a reflection of the broad American middle. Just ask Paul Krugman."

Economic Pornography

TW: Not surprisingly I find Glenn Beck repulsive. But he has anchored prominent shows now on two separate major networks, CNN and now Fox. This recent clip to me is the height of irresponsibility and speaks to the depths MSM will sink in pursuit of ratings. Does he represent a segment of our population, probably. A segment we would want governing our nation, I sure hope not.

Btw, the Steven Roach character puking about 90% tax rates works for the Wall Street Journal and appears regularly on CNBC. My guess is his brilliant analysis assumes to trying to pay down all the recent expenditures over a very short time period as opposed to over many years which will be the case (just like we paid for WWII etc.). Mike Scheuer is a very controversial former CIA analyst aligned with Ron Paul.

The gap between certain conservatives and quackery is narrowing.

Well That Was Quick

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TW: I am sure few fretted that Fox News would be thrown off their game for long. They are on it with a passion already. So be it. If the best the Republicans have are Hannity, O'Reilly and Limbaugh then that would speak volumes. The Republicans actually have better and will develop even more credible opposition over time but for now the bloviators at Fox are the lead echelon.

This early hysterics from some on the right over Gitmo and terrorism does though frame one of our nation's dilemmas. Do we cede to fear or can we truly abide liberty whilst opposing the tyranny of terrorism? Only time will tell.