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White House Repeats Message: Fox News Is ‘Propaganda Masquerading as News’
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the serious threat a well-funded and popular propaganda organization — masquerading as a ‘news’ channel — posed to our country’s democracy. Well, it appears the White House is now on the same page:
Last week White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told Time Magazine:
“[Fox News] is opinion journalism masquerading as news,” Dunn says. “They are boosting their audience. But that doesn’t mean we are going to sit back.”
A few days later, she revisited her Time Magazine comments with CNN’s Howard Kurtz, telling him:
“If we went back a year ago to the fall of 2008, to the campaign, that was a time this country was in two wars, that we had a financial collapse probably more significant than any financial collapse since the Great Depression. If you were a Fox News viewer in the fall election what you would have seen were that the biggest stories and the biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and something called ACORN.”
“The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it is not ideological … what I think is fair to say about Fox, and the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the Republican Party.”
“Obviously [the President] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again… when he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it really as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition. Which is fine, he never minds doing that.”
“It’s not just their opinion shows … Let’s be realistic here, Howie. [Fox is] widely viewed as a part of the Republican Party: take their talking points and put them on the air, take their opposition research and put it on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”
“When the statements are untrue, when they mischaracterize, when they are using opposition research that is inaccurate, when people are just not being honest, absolutely we are going to go out there and we’re going to correct those facts. We learned over the summer that the main stream media often will start covering these total inaccuracies as a controversy and that’s the way it gets into the press room and onto the front page of the New York Times.”
Dunn’s candor created a flurry of contrived criticism from main stream media pundits, who — after their own derelictions of duty in holding the neo-cons to account, not to mention their complicity in misleading Americans in the run up to the Iraq war — would prefer the spotlight never cast its beam back at the press. Fox News pundits predictably erupted with outrage as their legitimacy as a news organization swept headlines everywhere. They spent much of the week playing the victim — accusing the White House of enacting revenge on those who won’t tow the Administration’s line.
But the White House would not be deterred — in fact, they’ve been aggressively pushing the message forward. Sunday morning’s political shows featured two high-ranking Administration officials — both on message — who continued to upbraid Fox News as more propagandist than ‘news organization’.
The President’s Senior Adviser David Axelrod told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:
They’re not really a news station if you watch. It’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming. I mean, it’s really not news, it’s pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way. We’re not going to treat them that way. We’re going to appear on their shows. We’re going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.
Over at CNN, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told John King:
It’s not so much a conflict with Fox News … It’s not a news organization, so much as it has a perspective. And that’s a different take. And more importantly is to not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be lead into following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization …
As I noted the last time I raised this topic, it’s perfectly acceptable for news pundits to share their points of view with their viewers, as long as their underlying reporting remains fact-based. It would be a bit naive to believe that any news journalist could remain completely neutral from formulating an opinion on the news they report. For this reason, the viewer is actually entitled to know where the journalist stands, if only for the sake of allowing the viewer to consider the messenger’s potential bias within his reporting.
Fox News’ credibility is what is being targeted here by the White House — not their opinions. We all just witnessed a Summer of lies and distortions, as generated by Fox News and right-winged talk radio. Their intentional misinformation campaign (death panels, etc.) nearly succeeded in torpedoing all efforts to reform our nation’s broken health care system. It was within this context that the White House began to channel their energies towards dispelling some of the widely-held lies. And to put a lid on it, they’ve begun to target the originating sources — the propagandists, masquerading as journalists — who championed the misinformation and helped to spread it like wildfire: namely, Fox News.
Those on the right will claim the White House efforts are a mere political ploy, but it is much bigger than that. Lies, left unchallenged by the main stream media and perpetuated by Fox News over the last eight years, resulted in serious damage to our country on so many levels the effects will be felt for generations to come. Finally, a spotlight has been shone directly onto the propagandists, during prime time, in front of millions; a feat few outside the White House could achieve. Now that they’ve been exposed, we should take it a step further, and consider what safeguards might be implemented so that they can never again threaten our democracy.
Two-thirds of Americans Want Public-Option: Olympia Snowe To Be ‘The Decider’
Is there any wonder why Americans are so cynical about their government? The White House and key Democrats in the Senate are essentially telling us that a necessity for a ‘bi-partisan’ Health Care Reform bill trumps the actual contents of said bill. Consider that their definition of a ‘bi-partisan’ bill is one passed by ONLY Democrats except for a single Republican vote, Sen. Olympia Snowe’s (R-ME).
Could this be just a rhetorical excuse to water down Health Care Reform? Consider that the bill approved Tuesday by the Finance Committee has no government-sponsored insurance option — something Americans support by a two-to-one margin — and yet requires all American citizens to purchase unaffordable health insurance from the private health insurance industry. In fact, the health insurance industry leveled a veiled threat in the form of an industry-funded study on the eve of the vote that stated they’d be likely to raise insurance premiums with the passage of the Baucus bill to the tune of $1,700 more per family per year. The health insurance cartel continues to prove, time and again, that greed has no bounds. The Senate Finance Committee has given them a present — in the form of the Baucus bill — and they’re already scheming on how to better their lot.
So Obama is willing to kill meaningful reform for the sake of Olympia Snowe’s vote. Here’s how the President responsed to the bill’s passage, which he hailed as a victory:
President Obama appeared in the Rose Garden late Tuesday afternoon to hail the Senate Finance Committee’s passage of a health-care overhaul bill – singling out Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Me.) for her “courage” and “seriousness of purpose.”
As expected, the White House claimed victory in achieving a bipartisan bill with the addition of Snowe, the only Republican so far to sign on to the effort. Obama said the bill “enjoys the support of people from both parties,” leaving aside how narrowly bipartisan the vote was.
Are you kidding me?! Mr. President, YOU’RE the one showing courage, by betraying all your core supporters who obviously misjudged your character during the campaign. Do you believe for a second we’re going to let you window dress this as some kind of ‘reform’?
Here’s what Olympia Snowe had to say today on the public option:
While emphasizing that she still opposes the so-called public option, Snowe said on CBS TV that she could foresee a government-run plan that would “kick in” if private insurers failed to live up to expectations that they keep premiums in check.
“I think the government would have a disproportionate advantage” in the event of a government-run option, Snowe acknowledged.
It appears the White House is now gung-ho about pushing for final legislation that accommodates Olympia Snowe’s preferences — never mind what the American people want. ALL to garner her single vote. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said on CNN:
He [Nelson] expects “some version of the public option” to be in the final bill, though he said it may hinge on Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME).
“Olympia Snowe of Maine is quite key here,” Nelson said. “And if her vote is critical in the future, then she may insist what is a kind of public option.”
Because God knows how horrible it would be if a Health Care Reform Bill got passed without that single Republican vote.
The Status Quo And How Washington Ensures It
A major impasse appears to exist these days between Democrats and Republicans on virtually every issue. On the surface, it would seem it’s all ideology-based. But upon closer inspection, their hostilities are, in large part, incited by media-manufactured outrage, where partisan vitriol and ideological demagoguery drowns out all thoughtful discourse. Unfortunately, our country is in […]
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William Safire’s Contribution to ‘Gestural Politics’
David Bromwich’s latest column recounts: 1. Safire’s reshaping of American journalism: He became the leading practitioner of the gestural politics of journalism. And in doing so, he revamped the accepted manner of the New York Times columnist. No more the formality and reserve and the magisterial airs of a James Reston; everything now had to […]
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Watch: Fox ‘News’ People Push The Same Lies As Fox Commentators
The Fox News Channel’s core line of defense against White House assertions that they are not a ‘news’ organization, but propagandists, can be summed up by Bill O’Reilly’s Oct. 13 — O’Reilly Factor ‘Talking Points’:
Well, Bill, it appears Media Matters has taken you up on your challenge. They’ve put together this scathing compilation of Fox News clips, first displaying your channel’s wing-nut commentary lies, and then it jumps to your hard news team where these same lies are being elevated to ‘real factual issues’:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRx5ethd8JU[/youtube]
And if you’d like to see some more, the Huffington Post has put together “The Ten Most Egregious Fox News Distortions” — ten separate clips of Fox ‘hard’ News doing its routine misinformation thing. Scroll through all ten and vote for the most egregious distortion of the lot.
Bill, there’s the evidence. Now what were you saying about ‘bloviating’?