Fox News Channel

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 11:31am on Friday, November 13th, 2009

Glenn Beck Loses Legal Battle Over Parody Website

The Daily Beast reported on November 12, 2009:

"Few hosts go after their targets harder than Glenn Beck, but apparently he throws punches a lot better than he takes them.

This week, Beck lost a legal battle to take down a parody site devoted to mocking the talk-show host’s use of innuendo and rumor in going after his political enemies.

The domain name that provoked his ire was GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com, whose main page pledged to “examine the vicious rumor” alluded to in the site's title.

“I've long felt that Beck uses tactics like I satirized on the site,” Isaac Eiland-Hall, the site's owner, told The Daily Beast in an email interview. He says he found “particularly egregious” an incident during Beck's CNN career in which he told Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), a Muslim, that he longed to challenge the congressman by saying: “Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."

The full story:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-12/the-man-who-beat-glenn-beck

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 7:52am on Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Sean Hannity Admits That Fox News Used Fake Footage

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on November 11, 2009:

"Sean Hannity apologized on the air tonight, claiming the error was "inadvertent." That's hard to believe. It's a significant story because Jon Stewart understood something that many high-ranking traditional media editors still, sadly, do not understand.

That this kind of thing matters.

When Fox News runs misleading footage to make a conservative rally appear to be much, much better attended than it really was, that accomplishes several things.

It fires up the right-wing base -- the people that GOP wants to get rowdy at town hall meetings or flood congressional phone lines. And the bogus report also pressures wavering lawmakers, especially those centrist Democrats looking for any excuse not to support health care reform.

Using doctored footage to make a point is not news. It's propaganda, and in America that makes it a serious matter, indeed."

The full story:
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 7:14am on Monday, November 9th, 2009

White House to Democratic consultant: "We'd better not see you on [Fox News] again, the Los Angeles Times reports on November 8, 2009:

"The call had an intimidating tone, said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue."

Fox's senior vice president of news, Michael Clemente, countered: "Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, healthcare and two wars."

Fox's audience is by far the largest of the cable networks, with an average of more than 2.1 million viewers in prime time this year, according to the Nielsen Co. CNN is second, with 932,000 prime-time viewers.

The full story:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-fox8-2009nov08,0,507227.story

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 2:30pm on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Fox New is bad and un-American, Jacob Weisberg argues in the article "The O’Garbage Factor" published in the Newsweek magazine issue dated October 26, 2009:

"That Rupert Murdoch may tilt the news rightward more for commercial than ideological reasons is beside the point. What matters is the way that Fox's model has invaded the bloodstream of the American media. By showing that ideologically distorted news can drive ratings, Ailes has provoked his rivals at CNN and MSNBC to develop a variety of populist and ideological takes on the news. In this way, Fox hasn't just corrupted its own coverage. Its example has made all of cable news unpleasant and unreliable.

What's most distinctive about the American press is not its freedom but its century-old tradition of independence—that it serves the public interest rather than those of parties, persuasions, or pressure groups. Media independence is a 20th-century innovation that has never fully taken root in many other countries that do have a free press. The Australian-British-continental model of politicized media that Murdoch has applied at Fox is un-American, so much so that he has little choice but go on denying what he's doing as he does it. For Murdoch, Ailes, and company, "fair and balanced" is a necessary lie. To admit that their coverage is slanted by design would violate the American understanding of the media's role in democracy and our idea of what constitutes fair play. But it's a demonstrable deceit that no longer deserves equal time."

The full story:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/218192