johnny dollar's archive: jan-feb 2010

Double the standards, double the lies! Smear merchants beware: we tackle Media Matters and more in today's action-packed episode of Fox Haters Week in Review!

Mendacity Matters:
Sometimes it seems like David Brock's Media Matters is deliberately trying to single out Fox News. A shocking claim, but before you dismiss it out of hand, stay with us. On Friday they posted nine paragraphs about something that can be summed up in one sentence: FNC did not air the Haiti telethon. Their headline:

Fox News stands virtually alone in not airing Haiti benefit concert

What is "virtually alone"? Scores of cable channels aired it, but there are hundreds that didn't. Or maybe they're talking about cable news channels. But if so, why didn't Media Matters do a nine-paragraph post about Headline News? They didn't carry it either, yet Media Matters says nothing about them. Why?

The MMers go on to report what O'Reilly covered instead:

Bill O'Reilly aired segments about Sarah and Bristol Palin's "body language" during their Oprah interview, an interview with Glenn Beck about his first year at Fox News, and a segment on the "collapse" of the "far left media."

Is this summary somewhat incomplete? There's no mention of the interview with Dennis Kucinich, or the report from Haiti on rescue efforts from a collapsed hotel. Now why would Media Matters want to hide that information from their readers? Meanwhile Headline News was airing Nancy Grace and leftist comic Joy Behar; apparently that programming is perfectly acceptable to Brock's brigade: no nine-paragraph post!

This is not the only example of Media Matters targeting Fox to protect others. Chris Golas noticed this MM headline:

Fox Nation declares "Brown Win Could Cause Huge Stock Rally"

All the MMers tell you is that the Fox Nation story "linked to Newsbusters". But as Mr Golas observed, that's just a tad deceptive:

Media Matters does tell their readers that Fox Nation linked to Newsbusters but Newsbusters was writing about Jim Cramer...Jim Cramer works for CNBC!!

Mr Golas caught them pulling the same trick again, splashing a Fox Nation headline: "Is President Obama Bad for Business?" So who was Media Matters protecting this time?

The Fox Nation links to a Yahoo! News item which is actually from Bloomberg. The headline is: "Obama Seen as Anti-Business by 77% of U.S. Investors". Yeah, I really do wonder how Fox Nation came up with this headline...

The MMers went after O'Reilly's Friday Talking Points Memo as well, but in a rather curious manner. The TPM wasn't exactly exhaustive in length: less than three minutes. Yet Brock's boys decided that was too much information, so they used a familiar ploy. Cutting the TPM down to 20 seconds, they posted O'Reilly's conclusion--but none of the examples and data that he gave to support his conclusion! Here is some of what Media Matters didn't want you to hear:

O'REILLY: When the Massachusetts votes were being counted, Fox News had almost six times as many viewers as MSNBC in primetime, five times the audience of CNN.... The Factor at 8:00 on Tuesday night beat all of ABC's primetime programming that evening....

Writing in the Miami Herald, TV critic Glenn Garvin did tell the truth: If you watched CNN or Fox News last night, you got a balanced analysis of how Republican Scott Brown pulled off the political upset of the century...On MSNBC, you got practically every conceivable expression of venom against Brown and anybody who voted him.... It may be too much to expect NBC, these days reduced to a national wisecrack, to be embarrassed over the frothing lunacy that passes for news coverage at corporate stepchild MSNBC.

There's no way Media Matters was going to post that on their website. Keith Olbermann might complain. So it ends up on Brock's cutting room floor. Oh, another thing sliced out of the MM clip: this graph. Shocker.

Fun with Numb3rs:
We haven't visited the loony bin for a while, so we thought we'd drop in at o'reillysucks.com and play a numbers game. How long will it take us to come up with ten distortions, falsehoods, or lies, just on the front page? We begin...

The O'Reilly Factor is #4, it averages 3.2 to 3.8 million total viewers a week.

Actually, in December The Factor averaged 4.8 million total viewers a week (3.3 + 1.5). [1]

Then O'Reilly said the left-wing media is dying all over the place, when it was one radio station that went bankrupt.

Air America is not "one radio station". It's a network of radio stations. [2]

And not once in 8 years of Bush did O'Reilly say the USA is moving to the left.

Talking Points Memo: America Moves to the Left. [3]

The Republican Chris Wallace was on to discuss it, and he disagreed with O'Reilly.

Oops. [4]

Yes Fox News was the only cable news network to not show the telethon.

Already disproven. [5]

O'Reilly said he had almost 7 million viewers last night (Wednesday) that's a lie, he had exactly 4,632,000 million viewers Wednesday night.

O'Reilly attracted 6.7 millions viewers Tuesday (4.6 + 2.1). [6]

Billy had Lesly Jacques from Radio Haiti on to discuss it. And he said Kristof is right, and that O'Reilly is wrong.

Actually, when asked "Am I right", Jacques responded "Yes and no", agreeing with O'Reilly that money shouldn't be sent to the Haiti government. And Jacques flat-out said Kristof was wrong, particularly in his claim that conditions in Haiti had been improving. [7]

[Luntz] admitted he could not get any Coakley supporters for his focus group, and yet he did it anyway without them.

Luntz said several Coakley supporters cancelled their appearances, not that he couldn't or didn't get any. In fact the group was predominately Democrats, only four of whom crossed over to vote for Brown. [8]

O'Reilly had Carl Cameron and Bret Bair [sic] on to discuss the campaigns...a biased one sided report with three Republicans who work for Fox, with no Democrats, none.

Undocumented, made-up, and too stooopid for words. [9]

Then O'Reilly had the two Republican legal experts Lis Wiehl and Kimberly Guilfoyle on for the is it legal segment. And as I like to point out, there are no Democratic legal experts for this segment, just the two Republicans.

Guilfoyle's voter registration is unknown, though she was married to Gavin Newsome (D). As for Wiehl, it's no secret that she's a (D): her federal contributions have gone exclusively to Al Gore and other Democrats, plus she worked for the Democrats in the House of Representatives. [10] Q.E.D.

Sharp as a Hound's Tooth:
You'd think that people who claim to "watch Fox so you don't have to" would be at least minimally informed about their subject matter. Yet the cavalcade of newshounds ignorance marches on. Braniac Priscilla, writing about "smarmy" Bill Hemmer, somehow finds herself thrice referencing FNC reporter "Molly Lyons". Is she some relation to this person, who's only been on Fox for four years? Isn't that her name right up there on the screen in the very video Priscilla posted?

And then there's Julie Driscoll, suspected plagiarist. Her genius move was to pick apart a body language segment, prefacing her probing analysis with:

I'm not a body language expert, or a psychologist...

Point taken, remaining drivel ignored. Driscoll also showcased her smarts while ranting about O'Reilly's use a graphic from your humble blogger:

O'Reilly failed to note where Dollar's little picture came from – whether it actually generated from a legitimate polling source or whether Dollar just doodled it on a napkin...

Permit us to explain something for Julie's benefit. "Legitimate polling sources" survey the populace for opinions, trends, etc. The graphic had nothing to do with public opinion. It's a simple matter of elementary mathematics--taking a speech and dividing how many minutes were aired by its total time. You don't have to be smarter than a fifth grader to know how that works.

What week would be complete without another attempt by Ellen Brodsky to pull the wool over somebody's eyes? She asserts as fact:

Fox News was the only news network and almost the only network, period, not to air the Hope for Haiti telethon.

Already disproved. She cranks out a HeadLie:

Scott Brown Pimps His Daughters; Fox News Gives Him A Pass

The basis for this: in a segment with Greta and Carl Cameron, Greta was critical, but Cameron wasn't. Ergo, "Fox News" gave him a pass! Needless to say, Brodsky's brigade have posted no articles about FNC's subsequent coverage of the controversial remark. Once a lie is in place, it wouldn't do to allow contravening evidence.

And then comes this gem of dissembling from the dog pound's Queen Bee:

If Greta Van Susteren’s special on Scott Brown last night (1/22/10) wasn’t a slobbering love affair, then I don’t know what is. Van Susteren spent the full hour of On The Record supposedly “giving you the inside story” on Brown. Not surprisingly, it was all glowing.

Brodsky's proof: one segment, an interview with Sen-elect Brown. Remember last week, when Brodsky cited one interview to make a dishonest point, carefully leaving out a second, contrary interview? The old "lie of omission". This time, to paint the image of the "all-glowing" hour Ellen had to work overtime at leaving things out. The program was in large part biographical, but what about Greta's interviews, one with a Democrat who supported Coakley as well as one with a Boston Globe reporter? Not to mention Greta's characterization of Brown as "cocky". And why does Brodsky ignore the discussion of his "thin record" and his flip-flop on Cap-and-Trade? All these were part of the "all-glowing" hour--and all omitted by Ellen to further Another Hound Lie.

Finally, a special J$P shout-out to the sharpest knife in the kennel. We've mentioned this before, but with the election concluded there's a special resonance to this sharp, incisive analysis. Enjoy once more the wisdom of the dog pound's very own Priscilla:

Another Stupid Fox Nation Headline Says MA Democrats “Nervous” About Tea Party Candidate.... There is nothing remotely connected to MA Democrats being “nervous” except “polls” which show the race between Brown and MA Attorney General Martha Coakley tightening to 9 points. But hey, in Fox Nation wishes become reality and when reality bites, ya just make it up.

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