johnny dollar's archive: may-jun 2009

Falsifiers, four-flushers, and anti-Fox fanatics beware. It's the latest edition of Fox Haters Week in Review.

Take the Fox Haters Challenge!
Can you get your head into the twisted psyche of the newshounds? A few days ago they slammed a foxnews.com article for an outrageously "false" headline, designed to make people think Sen Specter was going to lose the next election. So take a look at this selection of headlines, all genuine, and see if you can spot the one in question, the blatant example of Fox news bias singled out for opprobrium by the whippets:

• Toomey gains on Specter in poll
• Specter's numbers dip
• Poll: Specter's lead in Pennsylvania shrinks
• Specter's GOP Challenger Gains Ground, Poll Shows
• Quinnipiac Poll: Toomey Gaining Ground On Specter

Think it over and make your choice. All will be revealed below.

Author! Author!
What better way to slam the eeevil Fox empire than by dissecting one of their articles for the obvious bias and propaganda dripping from every syllable? So it is that we find this headline:

Fox News Slams Obama Over Broadway Date Night

And more:

This is, as you might (should) expect from Fox News, incredibly stupid. First, the only Republican criticism cited comes from the RNC. No specific Republicans are quoted.... What's wrong with going to see a show in New York? The Fox News article lists shows the Obamas could have seen in Washington. But so what? Are they only allowed to enjoy themselves, only allowed to seek out entertainment, inside the Beltway?... Fox News, like the RNC -- and Fox News is pretty much just an organ of the Republican Party anyway -- is both deeply partisan and anti-Obama, and, here as elsewhere, it rarely passes up an opportunity, even one it makes up on its own, to smear the president. In a time of economic crisis, it is Fox News that is wasting everyone's time and diverting attention away from what really matters.

Of course the credulous lemmings take bunkum like this at face value:

• Great post! I couldn't agree with you more.
• Well written and comprehensive rebuttal of yet another wishy washy attack on Obama from Fox. It's wonderful to see the pathetic stories Fox is forced to trump up to try and discredit Obama. They really are getting desperate and it's brilliant to see!
• If wasn't so hilarious, it would be sad.

As you might have guessed by now, none of these geniuses bothered to check who wrote the story. That's right, the article in question was not written by Fox News at all, but by that "organ of the Republican party": the Associated Press! It has or will run on hundreds of websites and papers all over the country. Here it is from the AP itself. If it weren't so hilarious, it would be, well, still pretty funny.

No Separation of Church and Hate
If you were to believe the claptrap churned out by the newspoodles, you might get the impression that they are outraged when critics "smear" people by talking about or even mentioning their religion (except maybe when the target is Bush). But the biased bassets don't practice what they preach--it seems they like nothing better than to needle people on Fox about their faith:

• Fox&Friends Gretchen Carlson is a Christian.
• Good Christian Carlson.
• Steve Doocy (who is a Christian and plays one on TV)
• Is Hannity a Catholic?
• It will give Christian Bill O'Reilly a chance to view the pics
• So-Called Christian Hosts Drool Over Saddam's Imminent Demise
• And today, we have professional Christian Miss California, Carrie Prejean
• Gretchen Carlson is a devout; but angry Christian

Priscilla (the most Christian-obsessed hound in the kennel, with the possible exception of Ellen) objected to Carrie Prejean in the above for interviewing a couple whose home Bible study group would be fined unless they applied for a permit. "More persected Christians" cackled Prissy, not noting all the other news organizations covering the story, including the dastardly AP. And when Priscilla attacked Gretchen Carlson as "devout but angry"? That was part of a post claiming that Ms Carlson "smeared" Child Fund International. Unfortunately the video reveals no smears or lies, except the ones from Priscilla.

Brodsky's Blunders
With Ellen Brodsky back from vacation the hive is buzzing with dispatches from the Queen Bee. In a particularly incisive bit of analysis, she boasts that she has found proof of FNC "mixing opinion with fact". Her jaw-dropping case in point: Hannity! Is it possible she still doesn't know the difference between news programs and commentary shows? Does she confuse newspaper editorials with the front page reporting? A tip for Ellen: what happens in Dilbert is not true. Elsewhere, she calls a report on an Obama slip of the tongue a "smear", without even bothering to contend that anything in it was untrue!

But this week's classic Ellen embarrassment has to be this bit of tomfoolery:

Why Did Fox News Bury Petraeus Interview?

Martha MacCallum's exclusive interview with Gen Petreaus aired Friday on The Live Desk, but Ellen's got it in her head that somehow FNC has been trying to cover it up:

Gen. David Petraeus gave Fox News' Martha MacCallum what Crooks and Liars termed a blockbuster interview.... So how did the "fair and balanced" network treat this news? By burying it. You can't find it on the front page of Foxnews.com or Fox Nation (screen grabs after the jump).

The screen grab from foxnews.com posted as "proof" shows the top sliver of the page (less than four inches of content). That's all we know about it because Ellen herself didn't take it. Someone sent it to her.

Ellen posted her exposé Saturday night after 9:00 pm. The actual interview was conducted on Thursday, reported on Thursday night, and aired Friday. So Ms Brodsky offers up a screengrab from almost a day and a half after it was shown (and two days after it happened and was first reported on) as proof that it's been "buried"? Never mind all the promotion it was given. Never mind that it was on the front page when it was still news. If it's not there two days later it's "buried!"

But it looks like it's not only FNC out to bury the story. When Ellen's tripe appeared we immediately took screenshots of the front pages on a few other news outlets (and not just the top four inches either). What a shock! CNN buried the story too. As did MSNBC. The Washington Post must be in on it too. And even the newspaper of record, the New York Times, is part of the cover-up. In fact, we couldn't find any story on the interview in the Times. More proof they're all in it together! After all this interview was not just "newsworthy"--it was a "blockbuster!" Crooks & Liars says so. And that means it has to stay on the front page for two days. Or three. Or maybe for a full week.

You'd think if Ellen wanted to show FNC "burying" the story she would have made screengrabs of foxnews.com when the interview was still news. Those of course would have destroyed her entire argument, but there's another factor as well. For Ms Brodsky to do that would mean she would have to have considered it important on her own, before Crooks & Liars told her it was. And that apparently wasn't the case. Because despite all the on-air promotion, all the coverage online, and the posting of both parts of the interview (three times as long as the C&L snippet) on the front of the foxnews.com video page, neither Ms Brodsky nor any of the other mongrels wrote a post about it. That's right, the site that claims "we watch Fox so you don't have to" ignored it completely, for almost two days. Fox "buried" the story? No, Ms Brodsky, they were all over it. You and your alleged Fox-watchers ignored and spiked the story, a remarkable performance for a site that claims to "watch Fox" but doesn't know something is newsworthy until they read it in another blue blog.

The Fox Haters Challenge: Revealed
Back to our lead item, the false and misleading Fox headline, designed to make people think Specter is "losing his Senate race". You could pick the distorted, biased, propagandistic Fox headline out of that group of five with no trouble, right? Here they are again, this time with the sources identified:

• Toomey gains on Specter in poll [Pennsylvania Ave]
• Specter's numbers dip [Politico]
• Poll: Specter's lead in Pennsylvania shrinks [CNN]
• Specter's GOP Challenger Gains Ground, Poll Shows [Fox]
• Quinnipiac Poll: Toomey Gaining Ground On Specter [KDKA]

Don't be disappointed if you guessed wrong. There was hardly any substantive difference between FNC's headline and the others. Fox nowhere suggested that Specter was "losing his race". That's another hound lie from the Top Dog of deception, Ellen Brodsky, once again barking up the wrong tree.

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