johnny dollar's archive march 2010

Princes, patriots, propagandists, poseurs, poppycock, and private parts? They're all part of the mix in the latest action-packed edition of Fox Haters Week in Review!

Saudi About That:
We begin our whirlwind tour of the echo chamber with a visit to the newshounds, where Priscilla claimed that Bill O'Reilly "defined Jehmu Greene as 'Baby Killer'" (to see how dishonest that is, just compare that headline to what O'Reilly said). Most recently Prissy turned her talents to another subject:

Is Fox News now an arm of the Vatican? The reason why I’m asking is that while they employ a Roman Catholic priest, Jonathan Morris, as a “Religion Correspondent”

Um, that's false. FNC's "religion correspondent" is Lauren Green. Fr Morris is simply a contributor. You know, like Joe Trippi or Ellis Henican.

they employ no other clergy from any other religious denominations...

Apparently Prissy forgot about this guy. Still that's not as bad as last week, when we caught her calling him part of an all-white newsroom!

Ellen Brodsky again uncritically parrots what some other site said:

Rupert Murdoch has enthusiastically welcomed as his 4th largest FOX shareholder a Saudi Prince who blamed the U.S. for the 9/11 attacks, funds families of suicide bombers, and reportedly has other shady ties to the extremist Wahhabi jihadist movement.

What are these "shady ties"? Unclear, but does Brodsky thinks the Prince's investments (Apple, Euro Disney, Motorola) and donations to Harvard, Cornell, and The Louvre are all part of a diabolical plan to establish a Wahhabi Caliphate? Ellen cites a column by Joseph Trento, which begins with Trento complaining that his appearance on Fox & Friends wasn't made into a foxnews.com video:

Normally such appearances end up as clips on the Fox News Web site.... Curiously, I was quoted in a written piece on the site that got a fair amount of pick-up, but no video.

Trento's premise is, of course, false. Only a fraction of the segments on F&F are posted online. Only six videos from Friday's three-hour show, for example. But never mind, Trento says it's because he mentioned Saudi funding of terrorism that he didn't get to see his face on foxnews.com. Taking a cue from AIM, a hard-right advocacy group, Trento blames Saudi Prince Alwaleed, a minority investor in News Corp:

The prince has repeatedly defended his homeland as a problem-free place. What he has failed to mention is that he has personally donated huge amounts of money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Well, not exactly. The reference is to a government-run telethon organized to aid Palestinians who were casualties of Israeli attacks during the battle of Jenin. They deny that any money went to families of suicide bombers, and there is no evidence that it did. Ellen's source continues to complain that FNC is just not anti-Arab enough, citing an outdated piece by Frank Gaffney to kick it up a notch: DirecTV is going to have Arab programming. Oh Noes!

Prince Al-Waleed’s Rotana Audio Visual Company, which operates TV channels in the Middle East, has signed a deal with DirecTV, the TV-satellite firm controlled by News Corp.... As a result, it would seem Rotana will be able to beam its programs into U.S. cable boxes without interference from federal regulators, or anybody else…

Um, how would that be different from any other cable or satellite channel? Federal regulators have no control over the content of cable/satellite channels. That's why MSNBC can "beam its programs into US cable boxes without interference from federal regulators" too. It's called freedom of speech. And by the way, why all this high dudgeon over DirecTV adding Arabic channels? Try comparing them to Dish Network and then ask yourself: why all the fuss over DirecTV but not Dish? Maybe because Rupert Murdoch runs DirecTV? Well no, that's another inaccuracy. Murdoch and News Corp gave up their interest in DirecTV years ago.

Around the Interwebs:
We stopped by the loony bin (aka oreillysucks.com) to see how hard it would be to catch them this week. The answer: not very:

Not once is a Republican ever mentioned in the dumbest thing of the week segment. It's always Democrats....

Yeah, right:

• Gutfeld picked Rev. Pat Robertson, who infamously claimed that...
• Fox News' Juliet Huddy picked Republican Congressman Joe Wilson...

Undeterred, they try a variation on the same theme:

O'Reilly sure has a strange idea of what a patriot is, a patriot to me is someone in the military, a policeman, a fireman, an EMT worker, a emergency room doctor who saves lives every day, etc. Those are real patriots, yet you never see O'Reilly name them patriots

Chalk up another one for the sucksters:

• Wednesday's Patriot: South Carolina police officer Marcus O'Shields, who pulled a woman from her car...
• Friday's Patriot: Sgt. Derick Beatty, an Army combat infantryman from Abingdon, MD....
• Tuesday's Patriot: Emergency medical workers such as those who showed up promptly when a guest fainted...
• Monday's Patriot: 19-year old PFC Ross McGinnis, who posthumously received the Medal of Honor...
• Thursday's Patriot: Army Sergeant Michelle Saunders, who earned a Bronze Star...

No less silly than the sucksters, but way more widely read, are the sites that are plugging a concocted controversy--and not even a recent one. It's all about this screengrab, suddenly bouncing all over the Fox Haters echo chamber. That bastion of sophisticated journalism, Wonkette:

Fox News Needs To Mind Its Own Business

Buzzfeed labels it the "Fox News Question Of The Day", while another site characterized it thusly:

Fox News ran this strange poll....

Guyism picked up on the same theme:

But then you see a poll question like this asking “How often do you think about picked up other people’s private parts?” on the channel and, well, suddenly it becomes hard to be open minded.

Someone went through a whole lot of trouble to drag out this graphic again. What's it all about? The question quoted is from a survey given to elementary students in Palmdale. FNC reported (years ago) on a court ruling in that case. Wouldn't it have been nice if these sites, instead of claiming that Fox was "running a poll", just told the truth?

Media Matters Matters:
This week we find David Brock's Media Matters hyping a story about a DNC web ad built around Fox News footage. FNC filed a copyright claim and the ad was pulled from youtube. So MM proclaimed it to be "another example of Fox News' favoritism for the GOP" because the RNC put up a 43-second clip from Fox and it "remains on YouTube".

First off, both MM and their source, Huffington Post, are pretending that they know nothing about the Fox News crackdown on youtube videos, one that has actually targeted right-leaning websites. Not to mention when Fox demanded that the McCain campaign stop using its video clips? Needless to say that sort of perspective is not appreciated at Media Matters, who made a stink about this DNC clip but didn't even bother to report the McCain flap. There is a postscript to this little tale. Politico reported that the RNC clip cited by MM and HuffPo had also been taken down:

"Just as we took the DNC clip down for copyright claims, we asked the same of the RNC," Fox spokeswoman Irena Briganti emailed a Politico editor after I inquired about the videos.

Note that HuffPo updated their story with this information. Media Matters didn't. Just as Chris Golas predicted.

Meanwhile, MM continues its practice of turning just about anything on Fox into an instant scandal du jour. The first victim: Bret Baier. In a grapevine segment he reported on charges that a Senate candidate in Nevada could be there to siphon votes from a stronger candidate. Baier's brief mention of this development gave both sides of the story, but MM was still shocked, shocked that Fox would even report the story:

Baier brings conspiracy theory that Reid is "in cahoots with" NV Tea Party candidate to Special Report

Of course FNC was hardly alone in covering this charge (see The Washington Post and CNN). But it was Fox that got singled out.

Then there's Brian Wilson, who reported on the Texas textbook controversy. MM "exposed" this outrageous claim:

Special Report says "social conservatives" were "successful at reshaping textbook standards" in Texas

What's so appalling about that? MM doesn't say, and certainly doesn't explain why Fox deserves their scorn while these guys don't:

• USA Today: Texas education board backs conservative curriculum
• The Guardian: Texas conservatives rewrite history
• Miami Herald: Conservatives prevail in vote on Texas school curriculum

MM launched a similar salvo at Steve Doocy:

Fox & Friends' Steve Doocy baselessly claimed that Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) is offering a way to pass health care reform legislation "without actually voting on it."

Compare that to what Doocy actually said:

DOOCY: Louise Slaughter, who is the chair of the House Rules Committee -- she has apparently got this idea on how the House can vote on this bill without actually voting on it.

Doocy was talking about passing the Senate bill, but MM dishonestly changed his statement to the vague, generic term "health care reform legislation". Why? So they could claim he was wrong when he wasn't:

Contrary to Doocy's claim that the House "can pass the health care bill without actually voting on it," the House already passed health care reform legislation on November 7, 2009.

It's not contrary to Doocy's claim at all. MM lied about which bill Doocy was talking about. By the way, he is hardly the only person to make this point (see The Detroit News and Politico). Again, we mention those other news outlets because this attack, like the other examples noted above, are part of a special category of MM stories. These are the ones that Media Matters preposterously labels as "Only on Fox"!

Spot something you'd like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email! fox news nh mm