Around the Interwebs

Remember Eric Alterman? He’s an old hand at attacking Fox News. In 2008 he published a piece at the Center for American Progress that smeared Bill O’Reilly by blaming him for promoting a controversy that O’Reilly never even mentioned!

Now he’s back with a new Fox attack, conveniently timed. He complains that ‘political candidates’ work for Fox (which is untrue; when people become political candidates they leave Fox) and that other channels can’t get interviews with them. Well, why didn’t the other channels sign them instead? Alterman seems to have no objection to Harold Ford (MSNBC) or Howard Dean (CNBC) not being available to other channels. But then ol’ Eric has to go from being dense to being dishonest:

Recall that when Fox ran Andrew Breitbart’s deliberately doctored video over and over that was designed to falsely portray Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod of having bragged to an NAACP audience of discriminating against whites when she was saying just the opposite, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack panicked and fired her right away, without bothering to get to the truth himself.

Total, utter lie. She was fired before one frame of that video ran on FNC. When are the Fox haters going to stop regurgitating this falsehood?

You may recall Eric Boehlert’s loony notion that interviewing a candidate means that you’re contributing to their campaign. Because Fox interviewed Christine O’Donnell Eric decided that was like giving her campaign $1.2 million. The inanity of this desperate argument has been exposed, but we’re always up for a new take on Boehlert’s boehloney, and Chris Golas obliges. He points out these stats from the Washington Examiner, detailing how many Presidential interviews the networks have been given since Obama took office:

• 25 - NBC (including CNBC, MSNBC)
• 16 - ABC
• 15 - CBS
• 8 - CNN (including CNN Espanol)
• 4 - Fox

Mr Golas then applies BoehlertLogic and finds:

So Barack Obama was on NBC-owned channels 25 times. Not only that but an interview that was broadcast on every NBC owned network (NBC CNBC, MSNBC, USA, Bravo, Sci fy). Current ad rates times number of minutes Obama was on. Now since the last time was among a number of networks and it was commercial free, we add the amount each network lost in the half hour of the interview. How high would that number be? 5 million dollars? More?

Perhaps Mr Boehlert, being a ‘Senior Fellow’ at Media Matters, can have one of his underlings compute that figure and publish it in his next column. Ya think? Eric fans, stay tuned. We’re not done with him yet.

In our last FHWiR we touched on the media campaign to demonize the Chamber of Commerce; it seemed to kick into high gear just about when News Corp made a contribution to them. You’d think a member of the CoC donating to the CoC would be, well, unremarkable. No, not if it can be used to attack Fox News. Enter Think Progress, who as part of a sloppy, dubious accusation about foreign money, proclaimed the following:

As of Sept. 15th, the Chamber had aired more than 8,000 ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates alone, according to a study from the Wesleyan Media Project.

This allegation can be found all over the echo chamber: Daily Kos, Media Matters, The New Republic, Alternet, Common Dreams, The Guardian, even Politico. Many of these sites link to the Wesleyan Report, but it appears none of them bothered to read it!
1. The report on Senate candidate spending does not break out the Chamber of Commerce contribution.
B. The CoC mention in the Wesleyan Report says nothing about spending on GOP Senate candidates--it’s in a table of top interest group spenders.
III. The 8,000 ads cited cover all candidates the CoC supports--not just Republicans--as well as ads not for candidates at all but for issue advocacy.
All these sites echoing the same concocted talking point and nobody bothered to look at the actual study? Or was it something else?

And then there’s this person who hates Fox News, who goes on other news channels to slam FNC. Who runs a website that repeatedly promotes the ‘Fox News boycott’. But then they have this book. What to do? See for yourself []

Stupid...No, Really Stupid Hound Tricks

Putting falsehoods and misrepresentations into a headline is the oldest trick in the book for the newshounds. They’ve done it so much there’s a name for it: a HeadLie. Priscilla is a master at these, like suggesting (without a speck of evidence) that some vandal was ‘a Fox News fan’. Even better is this one:

Bill O’Reilly Attacks “Liberal” Media For Being Soft On Islam

It won’t surprise you to learn that O’Reilly didn’t suggest anyone was ‘soft on Islam’. While moderating a panel, Christiane Amanpour allowed a guest to call for Sharia Law and for the flag of Islam to fly over the White House. Bill O’Reilly said she should have challenged that statement. Now if Prissy wants to claim that amounts to O’Reilly objecting to ‘being soft on Islam’, then she apparently believes that statement represents Islam--not radical Islam but Islam itself. Hmm, who’s the Islamophobe here?

Priscilla adds that Amanpour was right and O’Reilly wrong, because when moderating a panel, the host should never challenge any statements made. Which is odd, given that the bowsers keep complaining that Hannity didn’t challenge something or other said on one of his panels. One rule for Fox, one rule for everyone else? Don’t try to make sense out of it. It’s hound logic.

Ellen Brodsky, joined by ‘Aria’ (who told The Lie of the Week in our last FHWiR) team up for this one:

Beck was suggesting certain people who had done nothing more than hold political views Beck disagreed with should be deprived of their Constitutional rights.

Beck’s words:

I cannot believe I live in a country that can have… 300 communists, socialist, radical revolutionary groups endorsed by the president and endorsing the president and the Democratic Party meet on the mall. You want to talk about hate...

He didn’t say anything about them not being allowed to meet, or that they didn’t have the right to assemble. Beyond the idiocy of Ellen/Aria’s bizarre misinterpretation, there’s the fact that Beck has repeatedly made this perfectly clear:

I support their right to gather. I support their right to stand and be heard. I support their right to let people hear and see who they are. That's all I asked. All I asked for was we have a right to be heard, we have a right to stand, we have a right to have people hear us. And that's all they're doing and they have that right and we as citizens have the responsibility to listen and then choose.

Priscilla comes up with a legal analysis of stupefying ignorance, trying to equate broadcasts of news and comment with ‘God Hates Fags’ protesters showing up at funerals of total strangers. It is legally brainless, and Prissy adds dishonesty to the doltishness:

It’s too bad, Bill, that you didn’t interview attorneys Megyn Kelly or Lis Whiel about the cases that you cited because the facts were different and unique to the cases...

How odd that Priscilla would say that. Bill O’Reilly did interview Megyn Kelly about the matter, one night earlier, and she carefully distinguished the case O’Reilly cited from the Westboro protests. Is Priscilla claiming this didn’t happen? That segment was on the same show where Bill interviewed Mr Snyder and his attorney. And we know Prissy was watching because she did a post about that Snyder interview. In fact, as that interview ended, O’Reilly announced that up next was Megyn Kelly to discuss the case further. And now Priscilla wants people to believe the segment with Megyn never happened?

If you think that’s bizarre, there’s this:

America Live host Megyn Kelly and Fox News contributor Andrea Tantaros were in a snit Friday (10/8/10) over a Newsweek cover story about Sarah Palin – not because of its very critical content but because the cover photo of Sarah Palin had not been retouched to get rid of blemishes, facial hair, etc.

There’s just one thing wrong: it’s not true. No such segment aired on 10/8/10. The first clue might have been the discussion of Palin as a current governor. Then there’s the fact that in the clip Megyn is teamed with Bill Hemmer. Or how about the video: it’s not widescreen, the format FNC has been using for over a year. Oh, and there’s the fact that the site where the clip came from clearly dates it as: 10/8/08. Oops.

Ellen Brodsky posted this time-warp classic, with a hat-tip to--whom else?--’Aria’. And Brodsky had no clue that it was two years old and couldn’t possibly have aired on Friday 10/8/10? Remember, these are the people who claim ‘we watch Fox so you don’t have to’? If that’s true, how is it they don’t have the faintest idea what aired on Fox just two days ago? The newshounds: even their slogan is a lie.

The Lie of the Week

As promised, we return again to Media Matters ‘Senior Fellow’ Eric Boehlert. His latest mission: to prove FNC is not fair and balanced by claiming MSNBC is. A tall order, but Eric provides but a small hook for his argument: Chris Matthews once challenged a guest for always supporting Democrats. And therefore:

MSNBC is not just like Fox News.

Boehlert then issues a challenge of his own:

Please find that clip from Hannity, or The O'Reilly Factor, or Glenn Beck or Fox & Friends, where the Fox News anchor turns to a GOP-friendly guest and chastises him/him [sic] for being too pro-Republican all the time.

Of course, we could turn that around and issue a challenge to Boehlert: show us a clip from Olbermann, Schultz, or Maddow where they berate a Dem-friendly guest for being against the Republicans all the time. While Eric is hunting up those examples, entertain yourself with this clip:


In the no-spin zone, there is no accusation of partisanship more severe than to be called an ideologue and a kool-aid drinker. We have to wonder why Mr Boehlert ignored this. He’s a Media Matters ‘Senior Fellow’ and the clip is from Media Matters’ own website!

But Eric outdoes himself with this:

MSNBC regularly features open debate, whereas Fox News does not.

Eric Boehlert has proven himself to be extraordinarily fluent in lying about Fox News. But this? Stunning. Boehlert published this claim on the morning of October 7. Let’s go to October 6, just one day before Eric claimed that there is no debate on FNC. Watch these clips, all from 10/6/10, and decide for yourself if Eric Boehlert has been caught red-handed telling The Lie of the Week []:



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Tags: mediamatters, boehlert, huffpo, thinkprogress, newshounds, kos