John Kerry appears on Fox. The Outfoxed gals invent quotes and tell lies. It's another edition of When Hounds Attack!

On Monday George Bush spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars; today it was John Kerry's turn. Kerry's speech was covered live by Fox, but the newshounds (another fine product from the Outfoxed mafia) are compelled to criticize:

...at 11:09am (EDT), FNL went to a split-screen format so they could display carefully selected portions of Kerry's military record on the right-hand half of the screen while continuing to show Kerry speaking on the left-hand half.

And this is evil because...why, exactly? Because the factoids were "carefully selected"? Apparently the newspoodles want Fox to show "carelessly selected" facts. Note that they don't point to anything specific about the content of these items. Wonder why?

Question: has anyone ever seen them do that during a Bush speech? I certainly haven't.

Apparently they don't consider any of the State of the Union addresses to be a Bush speech.

Later on during the speech, at 11:23am (EDT) instead of the lower banner paraphrasing what Kerry was saying (which is FNL's usual practice for all other live coverage), that banner displayed snippets from Bush's speech on Monday about redeployment & how that will reduce the stress on US troops.

For all of fifty seconds.

By 11:30am (EDT), FNL was back to showing banners that displayed "facts" about Kerry's military record (some of which they got wrong, like his discharge date).

No, the banner went back to Kerry after just fifty seconds at 11:24 am. And did they get his discharge date wrong? Here's what FNC put up:

January 3, 1970: Kerry Requests Discharge
Kerry Was Discharged in March 1970

What does John Kerry say? His website gives his timeline of service:

January 3, 1970 - Kerry requests discharge
March 1, 1970 - Kerry’s date of separation from Active Duty

As soon as Kerry's speech ended, at 11:33am (EDT), FNL cut back to the studio -- heaven forfend that viewers see an audience cheering, clapping & shaking Kerry's hand...

This is false, so easily demonstrable that one can hardly consider it anything other than a deliberate lie. The FNC cameras continued to show John Kerry accepting audience applause, shaking hands with veterans, and waving to the crowd for nearly a full minute after his talk concluded.

...where Brigitte Quinn immediately tried to insinuate that the vets' reponse to Kerry had been less enthusiastic than their response to Bush.

Two lies in one sentence. Read carefully exactly what Ms Quinn said in total on this point and see if you can detect the "insinuation":

QUINN: It was interesting trying to monitor the reaction that John Kerry got vs the reaction President Bush got. It seemed, on balance--
ASMAN: Sometimes live television is good for things like that. Sometimes you have to wait for the cameras that were panning the audience.

Later David Asman did an interview with former Sen Fred Thompson:

Asman's softball questions put words in Kerry's mouth (e.g., "Kerry said that Bush has divided the nation")...

Now maybe you think that, like every other honest writer and ethical reporter, when the newspups put quotation marks around a sentence, that means they are giving you an exact quote. That is a rule no reputable journalist would violate:

Never use quotation marks around a paraphrase. Quotation marks are reserved for direct, word-for-word quotes only.

But when you write for the newshounds, you don't need no stinkin' rules. Here are the "softball" questions Mr Asman posed in this interview, including the one the media mastiffs misquoted:

ASMAN: The main charge, it seems to me, when you take everything that Kerry said about Bush together, is that Bush has divided the nation on Iraq.
ASMAN: He questions why we would be pulling 12,000 troops out of Korea just at a moment when dealings with North Korea are so tense.
ASMAN: He also suggested...that he would bring more allies to our side, in this fight against terrorism, and specifically in our battles in Iraq. What do you say to that?
ASMAN: All right Senator, we'll have to leave it at that.

... & allowed Thompson nearly 5 minutes of free air time to push the GOP line.

It's possible to describe 3.5 minutes as "nearly 5 minutes". But we think most people would call it "nearly 4 minutes". But hey, compared to dishonest quotes and out-and-out lies, what's one more bit of jiggery-pokery to the anti-Fox terriers?