WOW! So it’s not just progressives who can see the FOX News slant. So much for “Fair and Balanced”.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) suggested on Sunday that Fox News is biased against his campaign, charging that the network highlights commentators who have been critical of his run for the presidency.

In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace pressed Thompson on how some conservatives have lambasted Thompson’s campaign and showed clips of Fox conservative commentators Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes criticizing the former senator.
[...]

Thompson, in a firm, but measured tone, scolded Wallace: “…for you to highlight nothing but the negatives in terms of the polls and then put on your own guys who have been predicting for four months, really, that I couldn’t do it, kind of skew things a little bit. There’s a lot of other opinion out there.”

Thompson should be pissed. Everyone knows FOX News favors Rudy.

FOX “News” “journalist“, Brit Hume, seems to think that Democrats are bringing about the loss of the war in Iraq. Shouldn’t a journalist know better than this? Shouldn’t a journalist be smarter than this? One would think so!

I think Brit does, in fact, know better. This is what makes Brit both a shill and a loser.

FOX News’ resident shill and loser, Brit Hume

shill -noun 1. a person who poses as a customer in order to decoy others into participating, as at a gambling house, auction, confidence game, etc. 2. a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty. loser -noun 1. a person, team, nation, etc., that loses: The visiting team was the loser in the series. 2. Slang. a misfit, esp. someone who has never or seldom been successful at a job, personal relationship, etc.

From Media MATTERS:

Summary: Echoing previous comments by conservative media figures suggesting that Democrats want the United States to lose the war in Iraq, Fox News’ Brit Hume asserted: “The American people don’t like the Iraq war, they probably never will. But they’re not rooting for us to lose; they don’t seem invested in our losing the way the Democrats so often do.” Hume offered no evidence that any Democrats are “invested in our losing” or “rooting for us to lose” in Iraq.

cross posted from Crooks and Liars

On Sunday’s edition of “Fox News Sunday”, William (PNAC) Kristol takes the ball and delights in telling Fox;s fellow Kool-Aid drinkers that “Hillary…..bad!!!”.

Follow the link to the full story and video of another right-wing, neo-con, fearmongering nutball.

Crooks and Liars

Fox Snooze is at it again! this time with their drumbeating to bomb the Middle Eastern country of Iran into the stone age. Robert Greenwald’s work is heroic and tireless to point out the injustices and idiocy of right-wing neocon war-mongering.

Enjoy and be informed! - JS

from Media Bistro

“Anchorwoman” to Join O’Reilly

Lauren Jones, the bikini model-turned anchorwoman is making her TV debut a couple of nights early. The controversial Fox reality show “Anchorwoman” premieres Wednesday night, but Jones will be a guest on The O’Reilly Factor tonight.

B&C’s Michael Malone writes about the show, and how it caused quite a dust-up in Tyler, TX. Cameras followed the former WWE diva during a 30-day try-out at the CBS affiliate. But, as Malone writes, even the president of the company that owns Tyler’s Fox affiliate is outraged: “They’re making a mockery of the news department.” “We’ll run Anchorwoman, but I have reservations” said Sheldon Galloway, president of White Knight Broadcasting.

And here’s kicker: “Jones attracted new viewers that stuck around and may help ratings when July Nielsen sweeps numbers arrive soon.”

This reporter says in her closeup that this is the first time in 2 years that she talked to normal Iraqi people in an open air market. However the rest of the report shows a hugely grim view of what needs to occur logistically just for her to do that. The 82nd Airborne surrounds her as do several helicopters as she admits they had more security than did John McCain in his visit to an Iraqi market a few months ago. The reporter is amazed that she can actually speak to shoppers and the rest of the report says things are awful. Apparently the reporter did not believe her own story.

H/T Joe for this post!

from MEDIA MATTERS

On the August 7 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity answered Alan Colmes’ question, “Most people want national health care. Don’t they?” with a flat “No.” Colmes said he wanted guest Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, to answer his question. Luntz did not answer whether the public wanted “national health care,” instead claiming that people want “control. What they want is the ability to determine their doctor, their hospital, their pharmaceutical plan, and their insurance company.” In fact, polling from May and June found that a majority of the public wants a national health insurance program. Moreover, one of those polls, conducted by a Democratic polling firm, found that a majority of likely voters favored universal health insurance even if it limited choices among health care providers.

Several polls taken in May and June found that a majority of respondents favored a government program to provide health insurance to all Americans:

* In a May 4-6 CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, 64 percent of respondents said they “think the government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes.”

* In a May 31-June 5 poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the Kaiser Family Foundation, 53 percent of respondents said they wanted a presidential candidate to propose “a new health plan that would make a major effort to provide health insurance for all or nearly all of the uninsured,” even if it “would involve a substantial increase in spending,” in contrast with 21 percent in favor of a “new health plan that is more limited and would cover only some groups of the uninsured BUT would involve less new spending” and 17 percent in favor of “[k]eeping things basically as they are.”

read more and see video with Putz and Vanity HERE

Even though this is from Fox News, this IS pretty damn funny. - JS

from Oliver Willis

This is the kind of content we have to look forward to as Fox prepares to launch the Fox Business Channel. From this past weekend’s “Forbes on Fox“, the panelists just got done answering the ludicrous question of whether the uptick in the stock market was a “major” victory over Al Qaeda (because clearly a bull market is the best way to avenge 9/11) and then the conversation went even further off the rails as Fox News contributor and Forbes Magazine publisher Rich Karlgaard asserted that the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq wasn’t so bad because, hey, they volunteered to serve their country.

You’ll also notice how Fox anchor/host David Asman does his best to cut off and talk over the one panelist who isn’t toeing the right-wing line. That sort of thing is just not allowed on Fox News Channel.

Remember, the right claims that they’re the only ones who “support the troops” (and the media backs them up on it like the lapdogs they are).

read more and see the Fox News Video at Oliver Willis.com

But of course he will. I doubt Murdoch would have went through all the trouble without some knowledge his desire to eventually control all information was in the bag.

A right-leaning Supreme Court and a FOX News stranglehold on information… can you say “GAME OVER”?

Dow Jones board signs off on sale to Murdoch

$5 billion deal still needs to overcome Bancroft family opposition

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire News Corp. has reportedly reached a tentative agreement to buy Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

NEW YORK - The fate of Dow Jones & Co. now rests with the Bancroft family, the company’s longtime controlling shareholders, who must decide whether to sell the publisher of The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., a global media conglomerate that owns Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox News Channel.

The board of Dow Jones said late Tuesday it was ready to sign off on Murdoch’s proposal to buy the company for $5 billion. However, the key remains with the Bancroft family, whose three dozen members have been deeply divided over whether to sell to Murdoch. The are expected to meet Monday to discuss the deal.
[...]

If the Bancrofts do sink the deal, it would surely result in a sharp drop in Dow Jones shares and the likelihood of shareholder lawsuits.
[...]

Family members have been concerned about the potential of the Journal’s coverage to be affected by corporate interests, and they initially rebuffed Murdoch’s offer, only to reconsider later. They insisted on, and received, a commitment to create an oversight board which must approve the hiring or firing of top editors at the Journal.

MSNBC.com

by Roddy Scheer
from E/The Environment Magazine

Robert Greenwald and his company Brave New Films are fast becoming members of my personal heroes list. - JS

A grassroots coalition of environmental, religious, and activist groups launched a campaign last week targeting the Fox News Network for spreading misinformation about global warming. The campaign is urging Home Depot, which has pledged concern for the environment, to stop advertising on Fox.

Led by the Sierra Club and documentarian Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films, the campaign kick-off includes a short video-”Fox Attacks: The Environment“-and an online petition to Home Depot, both posted on the new website FoxAttacks.com.

“Fox consistently spreads misinformation about global warming and denies the problem exists,” says Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. “We have a very real, urgent problem that scientists tell us we need to respond to immediately. The fact that Fox is ignoring widely accepted science on global warming is irresponsible and dangerous. Fox is effectively accelerating global warming by delaying efforts to solve the problem.”

Besides the Sierra Club and Brave New Films, the coalition includes Progressive Christians Uniting, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, American Family Voices, Campaign for America’s Future, Campus Progress, the California Council of Churches, the National Organization of Women, and MoveOn.org Civic Action.

from Think Progress

In April, Think Progress noted that Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends” aired at least eight segments about a fake news story claiming a school in Maine had formed “an anti-ham A-response plan-” after a Muslim student complained of being harassed with a ham steak. After the Fox report, the school’s superintendent received threatening calls and hate mail. He’s now suing Fox News:

Lewiston School Superintendent Leon Levesque is seeking $75,000 in federal court in Portland to deter what his attorney Bernard J. Kubetz characterized as irresponsible reporting by Fox News Channel. […]

“It appears to me that Fox News acted in a grossly irresponsible way and took some information that was really not very plausible, did not do any substantial fact-checking, and put it out as hard news,” Kubetz said. […]

Fox did a brief on-air retraction, but Levesque called it unsatisfactory. A Fox News spokesman in New York said the company does not comment on pending lawsuits.

NEW YORK - Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said Tuesday it has received an unsolicited bid from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. to buy the company for $60 per share, or $5 billion.

Shares of the financial news publishing company soared after the cable news channel CNBC reported news of the offer earlier Tuesday.

After opening at $37.12, the shares jumped $20.95, or 58 percent, to $57.28 before being halted on the New York Stock Exchange for news pending. They had traded in a 52-week range of $32.16 to $40.08 before Tuesday’s news.

Dow Jones said in a brief statement that its board had received the proposal from News Corp. to buy the company with either cash or a combination of cash and News Corp. stock.

Dow Jones is controlled by the Bancroft family through a special class of shares and cannot be taken over without their consent. The company said in its statement that its board and members of the Bancroft family were evaluating the proposal, and that there was no assurance it would lead to a transaction.

Spokesmen for Dow Jones, News Corp. and the Bancroft family did not immediately return calls seeking additional comment.

Like other newspaper publishers, Dow Jones’ shares have been beaten down over the past few years amid sluggish advertising and as more readers and advertising dollars move to the Internet.

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

If there’s anything Fox News loves more than liberals, it’s black liberals, not to mention African-Americans in general. The same goes for gays, Muslims, and all God’s Children. Overall, the Fox News crew are a credit to their… profession.

Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars posted on some news from New York Times blog The Caucus on 3/29/07:

Fox News Channel is announcing today that it has cut a deal with the Congressional Black Caucus Institute to sponsor two debates, one with Democrats and another with Republicans in the 2008 presidential race.

As many of you might remember, Nevada Democrats and Majority Senate Leader Harry Reid were slammed by liberal blogs for agreeing to a Democratic debate with Fox News a few weeks ago, and backed out of the deal under pressure. Liberal activists complained that Fox News was slanted toward Republicans, would distort the debate, and should be shunned. The breakpoint occurred when Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, in a joke at an an awards dinner, poked fun at President Bush for confusing Senator Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden. (Mr. Obama later said he didn-t take offense, but many in the blogosphere did.)

As Crooks and Liars notes, the group Color for Change is not happy with this development, and has issued a statement:

“The CBC Institute’s decision is shamefully out of step with most Black voters, and we will continue to push on the CBC Institute to drop this deal.” Rucker goes on to say, “Every presidential candidate now must decide whether to legitimize Fox - a network that calls Black churches a cult, implies that Senator Barack Obama is a terrorist, and uses the solemn occasion of Coretta Scott King’s funeral to call Black leaders A-racist.’ We will be launching a petition at www.ColorofChange.org asking presidential candidates to attend the CBC Institute’s CNN debate and reject the Fox debate.”

Here’s that petiton.
Read more »

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

To continue The Chart Project, despite all those rightwing charges about a “liberal media,” it seems fairly rare to see true “liberals” on mainstream television. It’s pretty common to see a strident, hardcore rightwinger paired with a moderate and relatively civil, measured Democrat. This may be partially due to most news outlets- corporate ownership, which tends by its nature to be establishment or bourgeois (to resurrect a seldom-used term in the States). This also may be because the United States has grown more conservative in bent in the last fifty years or so, at least in self-perception and by self-identification (although on actual policy issues, Americans tend to lean liberal). There’s also no major socialist party in the United States, unlike many other industrialized nations, but more to the point, America lacks programs such as universal health care that are common in many foreign major players on the world stage.

Of course labels such as “liberal” and “progressive” are contentious, and can mean different things to different people, even in a single country. Plus the “hawk” versus “dove” divide, as contentious as those terms are as well, is probably a more important dichotomy than any other currently in American politics, even though it’s often ignored, obscured, or just poorly covered by most of the mainstream media, who think almost exclusively in Democrat-Republican terms (as covered in “The Chart That Explains It All!” ).

There’s also an inherent flaw with a spectrum like this, even though it gives more nuance to the normal binary oppositions of Democrat-Republican and liberal- conservative. For example, a one-dimensional scale like this doesn-t allow the flexibility of a two-dimensional grid that considers both social and economic liberalism/conservatism:
Read more »