Tricks, Lies, and Videotape

It’s just over a minute of footage, yet it careened through the noise machine and exposed the ignorance and dishonesty of Fox haters all over the interwebs. The source: Fox News Watch, a media analysis program hosted by Jon Scott. On Saturday November 13 the panel consisted of two liberals (Ellis Hennican, Judith Miller) and two conservatives (Jim Pinkerton, Liz Trotta). Among the subjects discussed was Sarah Palin’s TLC show about Alaska.

In addition to the program as it airs on Fox News Channel, the producers offer an extra online feature. They upload clips that let the audience hear the discussions that take place off-air, during the commercial breaks. In the break leading up to the segment involving Sarah Palin, the panelists chatted about Palin’s Alaska series, quoting some of the negative reviews that had been published. They could not and did not offer their own opinions about the series, as it hadn’t yet aired. This segment was published both on foxnews.com and on FNC’s youtube channel.

For some reason, various persons decided to download Fox’s official video and re-upload it as their own. The trickery worked. From the reaction of the Fox haters echo chamber, you would think someone had discovered the missing 18 minutes of the Watergate tapes. It was trumpeted as everything from a ‘leaked video’ to newly-discovered ‘outtakes’ from the program. They were off and running.

Raw Story eagerly described the clip as ‘leaked video’, as did AlterNet. Current TV cited Gawker who claimed:

The three guys are just sitting there akwardly, mentally loosening their collars and saying to themselves, "Whoo boy, I sure hope this doesn't get posted to the Internet.”

The prestigious Hollywood Reporter declared it to be a ‘rare leaked video’. DailyKos wondered:

Which little camera man will get his head chewed off for this?

While one of their genius commenters adds:

• Whoops! That wasn't supposed to get leaked! Grifter Sarah is going to have someone's head for that.

Christopher Weber at Politics Daily headlined that ‘Fox News Hosts’ are mocking Palin. We don’t know what programs Judith Miller or Liz Trotta host, but maybe they do in WeberWorld. Over at the newshounds (a site that claims to watch Fox), Ellen Brodsky made the bizarre allegation that the clip represented an ‘on air’ discussion! Meanwhile, one of her rocket scientist commenters parroted a different fabrication:

• We can assure you that the Fox "News" suits will make sure this "leaked" video never happens again. But these frauds can't monitor every Fox newsroom staffer. The videos shown on this fraudulent "news" organization are stored on hard drives in the server room. --Antoinette

The disinformation continued:

The Fox News Watch crew better learn to watch when the camera is rolling from now on, because they might soon feel the wrath of the Mama Grizzly.

Harvey Leach, a ‘highly experienced journalist and media trainer’, proclaimed:

The lesson - never assume you're not being recorded in a TV studio.

Another site exults:

They didn’t know the cameras were still rolling and the mikes were on. PRICELESS!

The Stir:

A couple of Fox News commentators didn't realize the cameras were still running.

And this gem from Vanity Fair:

One thing is for certain: When Fox News commentators Judith Miller and Liz Trotta made fun of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, they did not realize their mics were live and the camera was rolling.

No, it’s not certain. It’s the exact opposite. They knew the mics were live, knew the cameras were rolling, and knew the clip would be posted. News Watch has been uploading these commercial breaks for years. The host, Jon Scott, right in front of the panel, reminds viewers about them each week:

JON SCOTT: All right, we'll be talking about this one for a while. And if you want to hear what we're talking about during the commercial break, go to our website, foxnews.com/foxnewswatch.

If anything is crystal clear, it’s that everyone knew they’re being recorded and that the breaks are posted online. But that mattered not to Keith Olbermann. First he claimed that the video represented ‘outtakes’ from the program, i.e. parts of the show intended to be broadcast but edited out before airing. By the time Countdown aired, Olby dropped that in favor of a different lie:

OLBERMANN: If you ever wondered if they are true believers or just water carriers over at FOX—wait until you hear what they said about her when they thought the mics were off. They‘re water carriers....Our number two story tonight, what they say at Fox News about Sarah Palin when they think they‘re not being recorded.

Shameless. And then there’s Mediaite. The other day Managing Editor Colby Hall did a piece about FNC relegating coverage of Keith Olbermann’s suspension/reinstatement to just an online video. We emailed Mr Hall, pointing out to him that the story had been covered on Fox News Watch for two weeks in a row (it was mentioned again this weekend, making it three weeks in a row). Mr Hall replied with thanks, saying he’d update his story. There has been no update.

Which brings us to Mediaite’s handling of the commercial break video, where Matt Schneider escalates the falsehoods in his headline:

Fox News Pundits Unafraid To Attack Palin . . . During Off-Air Commercial Break

In other words, they wouldn’t dare criticize her when on camera, right Matt? You’ll find this same meme gleefully espoused by TPM and by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post. After a lengthy analysis about the hidden motives of the ‘leaker’ (an entirely fictitious premise), Stein goes on to add:

The surfacing of Miller and Trotta's segment does pose a bit of a problem for those conservatives who have howled in the past when other media personalities have been caught off camera trashing Palin.

Again with the being ‘caught’ off-camera (um, they weren’t off-camera at all, but never mind). Sam, they knew they were being recorded. We explained that to you in our email. What’s more Sam, we told you that they criticized Palin on air in the segment that followed.

What’s this? Yes, contrary to what Matt Schneider wants you to believe, they were not ‘afraid’ to speak critically of Palin on the air. In fact, they spoke more openly than in the ‘scandalous’ commercial break chit-chat. Here, exclusively from J$P, is the video you haven’t seen: the on-air segment that followed the off-air comments, complete with fair, balanced, and unafraid commentary on Sarah Palin. Plus, as a special bonus, it also includes one of the News Watch discussions of Keith Olbermann’s suspension that Colby Hall would have you believe never took place:

New Frontiers in Olbypocrisy

His suspension lasted two days; his suspension of the ‘worst persons’ segment lasted only a few weeks (as planned). Now Keith Olbermann is back on the air, feeling like Obi-Wan Kenobi: if you strike him down, he will be more powerful than ever. Attacking Fox News has always been a staple of his shtick. Before the Great Hiatus Olby, reading from his own prepared text, insisted that Brian Kilmeade made this statement:

All Muslims are terrorists.

Of course, Kilmeade said ‘Not all Muslims are terrorists’, but Keith ‘We Correct Our Mistakes’ Olbermann has yet to get around to this one.

On Thursday, Edward R Olbermann got back on his ‘worst person’ high horse to level his latest attack on Roger Ailes. In case you weren’t aware, Keith is the self-appointed schoolmarm of civility in discourse. From screaming at the President of the United States ‘You’re a fascist!’ to decreeing Fox News worse than Al-Qaeda and the KKK, Olbermann has shown his dedication to tolerance and respect. In this latest instance Olby was huffing in indignation over Mr Ailes comparing the NPR execs who fired Juan Williams to Nazis:

They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don‘t want any other point of view.

This was too much for Olby:

Golly. I wonder where Beck and O‘Reilly get the idea that it‘s OK to call everybody Nazis?

Well, maybe it comes from watching too much Keith Olbermann. Remember this?
There you see Keith Olbermann appearing before television critics, doing a pre-planned Nazi salute behind a picture of Bill O’Reilly. Olbermann’s repeated use of the Sieg Heil earned him a reprimand from the Anti-Defamation League:

While we understand that your aim is to entertain your audience by taking pot shots at Mr. O'Reilly, your repeated use of the Nazi salute has resulted in many complaints from our constituents, including Holocaust survivors and their families who find the use of this gesture offensive and repugnant in any context.... We believe that the use of gestures and imagery associated with the Nazis – even in jest – only serves to trivialize the Holocaust and denigrate the memory of the six million Jews and others who died as a result of Hitler's Final Solution.

So Keith’s rule is: Ailes bad, Olby Nazi salute OK. When Glenn Beck referenced the well-known ‘First they came for...’ poem, Keith ridiculed it as Beck’s ‘Nazi Tourette’s’. A few months later, Olby reeled off another of his ‘special comments’, and how did it begin?

They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up...

Beck cites poem: bad. Olby cites poem: Edward R Murrow-like brilliance.

You want more Nazi references from Keith? Here’s the Bush administration compared to the Third Reich:

After the Germans lost the First World War, it was the “back-stabbers and profiteers” at home, on whose lives the National Socialists rose to prominence in the succeeding decades and whose accused membership eventually wound up in torture chambers and death camps.... And now Mr. Bush, you have picked out your own Jefferson Davis, your own Dreyfus, your own “profiteer”.

How about upping the ante, comparing the Bush administration to war criminals convicted at Nuremberg?

Mr. Bush's new Attorney General, Mr. Mukasey, the one who has already taken four different positions on water-boarding, and who may yet tie that record on this subject of telecom immunity, he has a very personal stake in this.... Now it begins to look like the bureaucrats of the Third Reich trying to protect the Krupp Family industrial giants by literally re-writing the laws for their benefit. And we know how that turned out: Alfried Krupp and eleven of his directors were convicted of War Crimes at Nuremburg.

Hey, who’s just like the Nazis? Fox News!

And two or three of these people who did call up and mention my name actually got phone calls from FOX security. Which is, you know, fascinating if, you know, we‘re living in, say, Nazi Germany...

Who else is just like a Nazi? Floyd Abrams, prominent Jewish first-amendment attorney. And he’s not like just any Nazi, but a collaborator who betrayed his own country:

Floyd Abrams, who has spent his life defending American freedoms, especially freedom of speech.... He will go down in the history books as the Quisling of freedom of speech in this country.

That was classy. Among those who weren’t impressed: The Media Institute. They pulled no punches:

Given the actions Quisling actually took to facilitate the deaths of thousands of Jews, your use of that name to describe Floyd Abrams is an insult that far exceeds the word “traitor.” It is something far worse. Floyd Abrams is the foremost First Amendment advocate of our time. He also is Jewish. For any Jew to be compared to a Nazi collaborator is vile, but in the case of Floyd is simply beyond comprehension.... [We] look forward to your public apology to Floyd Abrams for your unwarranted personal attack.

Good luck with that.

Olbermann’s blast at Roger Ailes over a ‘Nazi’ reference got quite a bit of attention around the interwebs, but little was said about Olby’s own squalid history of Nazi comparisons. The most ironic write-up may be the one from Mediaite, where they enthused:

He took Ailes to task for his “Nazi” comments about NPR, which, frankly, was deserved. Criticize NPR all you want, but Nazi comparisons go beyond criticism, and despite his apology to the Anti-Defamation League, Ailes deserves to be called out on this one.

What a strange article. As Marty C Davis points out, Mediaite omitted a key fact:

TV news gossip site Mediaite fails to report Olbermann called Mediaite's founder's father -- prominent Jewish First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams - a Nazi - in January 2010. The Media Institute sent a letter to Olbermann slamming his judgment and demanding an apology.

So Mediaite no longer cares about the smear of Floyd Abrams? It’s so trivial it can be swept under the rug to cover up the hypocrisy of Keith Olbermann? In any event, when Olby goes off on his next tear (perhaps demanding Jerry Seinfeld apologize for the ‘Soup Nazi’) we hope you’ll recall the sordid sewer from whence Keith Olbermann speaks.

Lies, More Lies, and a Shaggy Dog

Ellen Brodsky of the newshounds is one of many who misrepresented that News Watch video, but there’s more to be said about the mongrels. Brodsky is up in paws because Laura Ingraham guest-hosted for Bill O’Reilly on Thursday night, and dared to spend a few minutes of the hour interviewing the ‘sickening’ John Yoo. As usual with Ellen, telling the truth is strictly optional:

Nobody got around to mentioning the fact that the prosecution was hampered by tainted evidence, thrown out because it had been obtained via “extremely harsh interrogation methods” – during the Bush administration.... In a mockery of Fox News’ “we report, you decide” motto, Ingraham failed to discuss the suppressed evidence or the interrogations.

Well, that’s quite an indictment of Ingraham. Or at least it would be if Brodsky were telling the truth. Contrary to Ellen’s claim that ‘nobody’ discussed the tainted evidence or interrogation methods, they were specifically detailed by Laura at the very top of the program. And further discussed as part of the interview just before the one with John Yoo, the interview with two opponents of military tribunals. So Brodsky claims that ‘nobody’, including Ingraham, discussed these issues--while carefully leaving out Ingraham’s opening statement along with an entire segment that gave views opposed to John Yoo’s! Talk about a lie of omission!

Here’s Brodsky again, this time complaining about interviewing attorneys:

Another night of demands for racial profiling in aviation security from people with no expertise in the field.

That’s an all-purpose smear for Ellen. If Hannity interviews attorneys, whine that they aren’t security experts. If they interview security experts, grouse that they have no legal expertise. There’s more:

I suppose hoping for real experts to discuss aviation security is asking too much from the "we report, you decide" network.

Brodsky adds:

It’s beginning to look like Fox News can’t find any security experts to argue one of their pet agenda items.

Fox didn’t interview security experts? What about this? Or this? Or this or this or this or this or this? At some point lying becomes so reckless it borders on pathological. And still there’s more:

There is a poll. The majority of Americans do not think racial profiling is justified and an even bigger majority think the body scan machines should be used. But don’t hold your breath waiting to hear about that from the “fair and balanced” network.

Really? That statement was false even before Brodsky typed it:

POWERS: 81% of Americans support the scanners in the CBS poll. So I think all the screaming and yelling about naked pictures, blah blah blah, really does not represent the way most Americans see this. Which is, they would rather do that than be blown up mid-air.

And don’t forget how Brodsky led off her description of the segment:

Another night of demands for racial profiling in aviation security...

This should not surprise you: the video reveals that nobody in the discussion defended, let alone demanded, ‘racial profiling’. Hannity never mentioned racial profiling. Allred spoke against it. Jay Sekulow mentioned it only once--to say he wasn’t calling for it either! So where did Ellen Brodsky get the notion that this was a ‘demand’ for ‘racial profiling’? Like so much of what she writes, she made it up!

Another favorite bit of bowser bushwa involves trying to gin up fake outrage over something that happens on Fox, regardless of the merits. We recall when the mutts were highly, really, genuinely offended over this onscreen banner:

House Dems Consider Less Restrictive Bill On Illegals

Can you spot the scandal? No, it’s not the use of the term ‘illegals’; that meme hadn’t been decided on yet. It’s something far more horrifying:

Fox insists on calling the Democrats, Dems... This is a derogatory term for Democrats.

How phony was this? The same newshounds writer herself used the ‘derogatory’ term ‘Dems’...and that’s far from the only example!

Now they’re at it again via Priscilla, who pens a post full of outrageous outrage over Greg Gutfeld and Andy Levy talking about ‘trannies’. Apparently this is ‘mocking’ the transgendered, even though the entire segment was wordplay, puns on the root ‘tran’, that didn’t mention trangendered people at all, let alone mock them:

The "N Word" is part of a lexicon of American hate words which now include "Tranny," a word which, for many in the transgendered community, is offensive. And while there is debate, in this community, about reclaiming this word as a means of empowerment, the reality is that when the word is used outside this community, it is frequently a term of derision and/or derisive humor....it still can be hurtful as is the "N Word.”

Funny, if ‘tranny’ is just as bad as the n-word, why do the newsmutts permit its use on their website? Check out this lively comment thread attacking Megyn Kelly (attached to a newshound post that was, yes, another lie). What do we find? Surprise!
Even though ‘tranny’ is as bad as the n-word, the biased bassets have left it sitting on their website for over two years. Here’s a more recent example:

While Sarah, with her trailer park Snookie pouf, could arguably be considered "hot" by those "white trash" males who do love a hot and compliant breeder, the notion that Ann Coulter is "hot," is, uh, rather perverse unless "Yes, I'm Right" is one of those "HomoCon" guys who thinks that Coulter is the right wing Judy Garland. (And if YIR is gay, then he's not coming out on this blog, LOL) If not, then, "Yes I'm Right," is definitely into the "trannie" look and there's obviously nothing wrong with trannies unless those who love them are good, Christian conservatives who have a problem with teh gay. But hey, whatever turns you on, Yes I'm Right. If you dig those big Adams Apples and manhands, go for it.

Definitely a ‘term of derision’, no? And as a bonus, incorporated as part of a homophobic slur against another person. This is actually a comment posted right here at J$P, by a staunch defender of the newshounds (OscarWilde1). But wouldn’t it be hilarious if the person who posted this tranny-talking rant turned out to be not just a newshound defender, but high-minded objector-to-the-term-‘trannies’ Priscilla herself? Indeed it would.

Follow. Internal evidence: Oscar’s phrases. ‘Good Christian’: favorite Priscilla phrase, appears hundreds of times. ‘Teh gay’: used by Prissy dozens of times. The more specific ‘problem with teh gay’: eight times. Is your spidey sense tingling yet? Ours was. We can see the IP information (IP address, ISP, and town) of people who comment here, and what do you suppose it revealed? Jinkies! The data for the tranny-talking ‘Oscar’ match up with those of newshound Priscilla! How do we know? Because Prissy herself has commented at J$P under her own name; ergo we have her data too. (And we know that was the ‘real’ Priscilla because she announced she would change one of her newshound posts and the change appeared.)

When we suggested ‘Oscar’ was in fact Priscilla, ‘Oscar’ asked us to post proof. We offered to post the data, but since (unlike the newshounds) we won’t publish private IP information without consent, we asked ‘Oscar’ for permission to do so. ‘Oscar’ did not give permission. We invited ‘Oscar’ to deny she is Priscilla. ‘Oscar’ has yet to respond to that invitation.

There are kindergarten books with dots harder to connect than these. Isn’t it obvious that the evidence shows Priscilla gleefully threw around ‘tranny’ insults and homophobic slurs at J$P? And then just days later turned around and posted a newshound attack full of concocted outrage against Greg Gutfeld, insisting that ‘tranny’ is hate speech and just as bad as the n-word? Would this not be the most glaring, supersized example of utter dishonesty and hypocrisy ever from the mongrels? You make the call.

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Tags: olbermann, newshounds, mediaite