Remember
all the full-throated cheers the right-wing, gun-sucking “Zimmerman Is a Hero!”
crowd gave George Zimmerman after he stalked and killed young Trayvon Martin?
Remember how hard they worked to smear an unarmed teenage boy as a thug?
I’d
like to remind that crowd of Zimmerman’s subsequent lengthy history of
violence, and I can only hope they choke on it.
It’s
always been obvious to anyone with any sense that the end of Zimmerman's road
will be prison, if he’s not shot dead in the streets before he gets there.
Zimmerman's
estranged wife, Shellie Zimmerman, called 911 on Sept. 9, 2013, saying he had
threatened her and her father with a gun, the Orlando Sentinel reported. On an
audio recording of the 911 call, Shellie Zimmerman could be heard saying that her
husband had "his hand on his gun and he keeps saying step closer."
Shellie Zimmerman refused to press charges, and police said George Zimmerman
had smashed an iPad that was believed to have contained video of the
confrontation.
The
Second Domestic Violence Dispute
Zimmerman
was arrested on Nov. 18, 2013, after allegedly pointing a shotgun at his
girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, according to television station WESH. However,
prosecutors later dropped charges against Zimmerman after Scheibe reportedly
changed her story and refused to cooperate with authorities.
The
CNN Interview
In
an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo on Feb. 17 of this year, Zimmerman said he
was the "victim" in Martin's death. He refused to answer Cuomo's
question about whether he regretted killing Martin, citing a civil rights
investigation by the Department of Justice.
Signing
Autographs At A Gun Show
Zimmerman
"greeted people and autographed photos of him posing with his dog" at
a gun show in Central Florida on March 8, 2014, according to TV station WESH.
Organizers of the event reportedly had to change the location at least once
because of public backlash.
The
Neighborhood Watchman Returns
A
police officer discovered Zimmerman sitting in his parked pickup truck on July
28, 2014 outside of a motorcycle and gun shop in DeLand, Fla., according to the
Orlando Sentinel. The officer, Sgt. Chris Estes, questioned Zimmerman, who
reportedly said he had permission from the store's owner to patrol the area but
Estes was unable to verify this. The Daytona Beach News-Journal quoted the
store's gun manager who denied that Zimmerman was an employee of the store.
Additionally, the store released a statement saying that all reports saying
Zimmerman was working as a "Security Guard or Night Watchman" were
completely false.
The
First Road Altercation
Police
in Lake Mary, Fla. received a 911 call earlier this month from a man alleging
Zimmerman threatened to kill him during a road rage incident, according to TV
station WESH. The caller said Zimmerman started shouting expletives and death
threats at him while stopped at a light. WESH reported that police advised the
caller that it would be difficult to prove it was Zimmerman and charges were
never pressed. However, the following day, the same man called police, saying
Zimmerman had shown up at his work and he feared for his safety, according to
TV station WSVN. Zimmerman reportedly admitted he had exchanged words with the
man when he was confronted by police.
The
Thrown Wine Bottle
Zimmerman was arrested for
aggravated assault with a weapon on Jan. 9, 2015 after he allegedly threw a
wine bottle at his girlfriend, according to a police report. Officers located
Zimmerman on Jan. 9 and arrested him, charging him with aggravated assault.
Three days after his arrest, the woman, Brittany Brunelle, asked that all
charges against Zimmerman be dropped, the Associated Press reported on Jan. 30.
The
Second Road Altercation
On
May 11, 2015, police in Lake Mary, Fla. said that Zimmerman had suffered an
injury to his face after a shooting. The department said Zimmerman was struck
in the face after his windshield shattered when a man, identified as Matthew
Apperson, allegedly shot at him. Zimmerman was released from the hospital after
being treated, according to police. Lake Mary police said neither Apperson nor
Zimmerman had been arrested. While police wouldn't discuss the cause of the
shooting, they said that Apperson was the man allegedly involved in an
altercation with Zimmerman in September.
But as Ellen Brodsky notes, “With all the focus on Cliven Bundy's shocking comments ‘just wondering’ if African Americans were better off
under slavery, this seems a good time to remind people that Bundy is not the
first or even the second slavery apologist Hannity has found as a kindred
spirit. Hannity’s pal, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson has said, ‘Thank God for slavery’
and likened slave ships to flying coach in an airplane: ‘It’s a tough ride. But
you’re happy when you get to your desitination.’ Hannity also repeatedly
welcomed white supremacist Hal Turner on the radio who said ‘black people would
still be swinging on trees in Africa,’ were it not for slavery.’”
We all know, really, who George Zimmerman
is. Zimmerman is Zaroff, the antagonist in Richard Connell’s short story “The
Most Dangerous Game.”
Leslie Banks as Zaroff in "The Most Dangerous Game"
Both Zimmerman and Zaroff found
ways to indulge their fever for hunting and killing unarmed human beings. Unfortunately,
young Trayvon Martin wasn’t as canny — or as fictional — as Rainsford.
Zimmerman profiled an unarmed
teenage boy who had committed no crime, pursued and stalked him against police
instructions, frightened him, provoked a confrontation with him and then shot
him to death during a struggle.
Why? Because he, like Zaroff, is
evil. Those who support him are cheerleaders for evil. On some level, they know that. That's
why they're so nervously strident and unhinged about the case. They know
they're whistling past their own moral graveyards.
The Zimmerman case offered a
choice between justice and 21st century lynch law, and now we’ve seen which
Florida prefers. Zimmerman escaped justice through the device of a jury
instruction based on the “Stand Your Ground” law, legislation designed to
permit people like Zimmerman to provoke fights with the people they want to
murder.
In April 2008, Fox News presented a graphic showing that the Lincoln-Douglas Debates were between Abraham Lincoln and the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Hard to tell if that was a deliberate lie or just a complete contempt for history and accuracy. Better file that one under "Fox News Lies" and cross-reference it with "Fox News Thundering Ignorance."
The Lincoln incident itself, bizarre as it was, may not have been a mistake, but an attempt to convince the “folks” who watch Fox News that Lincoln's "opponent" was a BLACK MAN. Frederick Douglass was probably the 19th century founder of the Fox News bête noire ACORN, don't you think? Some say so.
Stupidity and racism had another collision on Fox News on the July 8, 2009, edition of Fox & Friends, during a discussion of a Swedish study showing that married people are less likely to get Alzheimer's, when co-host Kilmeade said that Americans don't have "pure genes" like Swedes because "we keep marrying other species and other ethnics."
He said, “Swedes have pure genes, because they marry other Swedes, because that’s the rule. Finland — Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society. In America, we marry everybody. So we’ll marry Italians and Irish.”
Kilmeade was forced to apologize for his "inappropriate" remarks on July 20. I'm sure he wasn't lying in this case, though. Kilmeade is just dumb enough to believe such racist claptrap.
The uglier the remarks get on Fox News, the less likely it is that the hosts are lying.
When then-Sen. Obama secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination for president, he and his wife Michelle exchanged a fist pound greeting before he gave his speech. Pitching an upcoming "body language expert" segment, Fox News host E.D. Hill referred to the exchange as a possible "terrorist fist jab."
On Feb. 26, 2012, unarmed 17-year-old African-American Trayvon Martin, a good student with no criminal record, was shot to death by “neighborhood watch volunteer” George Zimmerman.
Against police orders, Zimmerman pursued Martin, bravely pitting his 9 mm handgun against Martin’s bag of Skittles and can of iced tea.
Zimmerman was not initially charged by police, shielded as he was by a GOP- and NRA-backed “Stand Your Ground” law encouraging citizens to fire if they “feel threatened,” and the vicious race killing provoked national outrage and coverage.
But not, of course, on Fox News.
While CNN aired 41 segments on the case, and MSNBC 13, Fox News aired … one.
It took a while, but Fox News finally found their spin to shield the killer. Funny that Fox News was so reluctant to talk about the Trayvon Martin murder when it’s the logical culmination of everything Fox has been working toward for years.
There’s at least one time when you can be certain a right winger is being completely sincere, and that’s when he’s defending some guy who stalked and gunned down an unarmed black kid. That does reflect an American right winger’s true values.
Conservatives are extremely uncomfortable with the inconveniently glaring, unspinnable facts of the Trayvon Martin tragedy, so Bill O'Reilly wants the courts to "impose a gag order on the case."
The problem with that would be that because the police never bothered to arrest or charge the vigilante who chased an unarmed kid against police instructions and then shot him to death, THERE IS NO DAMN CASE IN WHICH TO IMPOSE ANY "ORDERS."
On Feb. 26, 2012, unarmed 17-year-old African-American Trayvon Martin, a good student with no criminal record, was shot to death by “neighborhood watch volunteer” George Zimmerman.
A leadership responsible to only an uninformed or partially informed electorate can bring nothing but disaster to our world.
— Edward R. Murrow
The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
— Marcus Aurelius
By Dan Hagen
The worst thing a journalist can do is to lie.
Beyond their duty to their employers, professionals have an overriding responsibility to the public. So you should not be able to hire a physician to murder someone, or an attorney to frame an innocent person in a criminal conviction, or an engineer to build a highway bridge designed to collapse.
And because the overriding responsibility of the profession of journalism is to provide honest, fair, relevant, factual reporting about matters of public importance and concern, you should not be able to hire a journalist to peddle partisan propagandistic lies as “fair and balanced” public truth.
American citizens must be assured of information that is not based on lies if they are to run this nation.
Infomercials on television ape the format of a news broadcast, with actors disguised as news reporters, in order to leech the small amount of credibility still retained by American journalism in order to hock magical investment schemes or miracle floor wax.
Fox News takes the same low road for an even lower reason – to confuse, mislead and deceive the American public about matters of national and global importance.
At Fox News, the public's supposed watchdog has been trained to savage the people it’s supposed to protect, and always while their backs are turned.
Fox News instructed its employees on the propaganda slant of the day in daily memos from former Fox News Senior Vice President John Moody and Fox News Managing Editor Bill Sammon. For example, they were ordered not to turn the 9-11 commission "into Watergate," to create "heat" for John Kerry on his "flip-flop voting record" and to lavish praise on George W. Bush for his "political courage and tactical cunning." Hence the uniformity of the channel’s lies.
Certainly Fox News is completely biased, frequently excluding Democrats entirely from its "fair and balanced" Sunday opinion panels. A week before the 2008 election, a memo to the news staff collected quotes from Obama’s autobiography, Dreams of My Father, that Sammon claimed contained “references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists,” along with “a couple of his many self-described ‘racial obsessions.'" They were to be used as fodder for "fair and balanced" Fox News attacks on the Democratic candidate for president.
This is not about mere “bias,” even though bias is the very breath of life to Rupert Murdoch’s and Roger Ailes’ cable news channel. Bias, which can sometimes be unconscious, is a tendency to thumb the scales of public debate.
Nor is this about mere “opinion,” even though Fox News has perversely interwoven that into virtually all aspects of its “news” reporting.
This is about telling lies concerning matters of objective fact – the deliberate crafting of partisan propaganda to be slipped into the public debate under the cover of a profession that is supposed to impartially uncover, verify and report the truth.
For example, which political party a politician belongs to isn't a matter of opinion. It's a fact Fox News lies about.
Fox News suddenly identified disgraced Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina as a Democrat on the very day he admitted his philandering.
A coincidence? But Fox News also suddenly changed Congressman Mark Foley's party affiliation from Republican to Democratic the very moment it was inescapably confirmed that Foley was sexually soliciting teenage male pages in Congress. On Dec. 20, 2012, Fox News even turned the fundamentalist Christian religious fanatics at the Westboro Baptist Church into "liberals" and "Democrats."
Fox News' White House correspondent Major Garrett was forced to apologize for another such “mistake” -- his fake HBO-Obama story. During the Nov. 4, 2009, edition of America's Newsroom, guest co-host Martha MacCallum started the fake story that President Obama watched an HBO special about himself instead of the Nov. 3 election returns. On the Nov. 4 edition of Studio B with Shepard Smith, Garrett apologized for "mishearing" press secretary Robert Gibbs and reporting the false information. In July 2013, Fox Business host Stuart Varney lied that federal studentloans are subsidized "at great cost to taxpayers," ignoring the fact
that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the federal student
loan program will contribute more than $50 billion in revenue to the Treasury
in 2013 alone.
On Jan. 2, 2010, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) was told he’d have the final word on health care in a debate with Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) -- but he never got to deliver it. After Franks argued that the health care bill was creating a "socialist government-run system," Sestak was given 20 seconds to respond -- only to have the screen go black in the middle of his first sentence. The satellite feed cut out before the Democratic congressman could actually make his case. A flustered anchor "apologized" for the "technical difficulties."
All just "mistakes," don't you imagine? But isn’t it funny how every "mistake" Fox News makes manages to falsely malign Democrats and/or shield guilty Republicans?
On April 27, 2004, Fox News star Bill O'Reilly — a constant liar — claimed that his call for a boycott of France had cost that nation "billions of dollars," citing reports in "the Paris Business Review" as evidence. No such publication exists or has ever existed. In fact, American imports from France actually increased after O'Reilly called for his boycott, which was meant to punish France for failing to endorse Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq under false pretenses. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in February 2004, the United States imported $2.26 billion in French goods and services, up from $2.18 billion in February 2002.
It was an attempt by O'Reilly to justify contemporary atrocities by U.S. troops in Iraq. Exposed as a liar, O'Reilly had Malmedy changed to "Normandy" in the transcript in a clumsy attempt to cover up his tracks.
By the way, I would argue that O'Reilly's Malmedy incident was no mere juvenile smear attempt. It was, initially, a particularly nasty lie that maligned U.S. troops in an attempt to explain away Republican policies of torture and war crime. The scrubbing of the transcript was a SECOND LIE designed to hide the first after it was exposed. Any scrubbing of transcripts is a prima facie lie that violates every standard of professional journalism.
George W. Bush's speechwriter David Frum admitted that the Republicans didn't regard Fox News as a news organization at all, but as a propaganda operation working for them. Fox News has done little or nothing to refute that charge.
Rewriting history on Aug. 6, 2008, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade denied that Bush ever tried to tie Al Qaeda to Iraq to justify his invasion, flatly stating that Bush “never even said there was a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.” On June 17, 2004, Bush told the press, “The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.”
Fox News lies with audio. On March 21, 2010, Fox News inserted fake video and audio of health care protesters into Rep. Bart Stupak’s press conference announcing that he would be supporting the health care reform bill. The fake audio made it sound as though the protesters were part of the event, threatening to drown him out.
In May 2010, Fox News video of President Obama’s speech at West Point erased cadets' applause after the president discussed ending the Iraq War. In the official video, cadets applauded after Obama said, “through their competence and creativity and courage, we are poised to end our combat mission in Iraq this summer.” In the Fox News version of the video, there is no applause but instead a strange and awkward pause.
Fox News lies with editing. For example, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace aired a corruptly edited video of President Obama's Sept. 12, 2012, Rose Garden address to push the Mitt Romney lie that Obama waited two weeks before calling the attack on a U.S. Consulate in Libya an act of terror.
Fox News lies with video. In November 2009, Fox News host Sean Hannity spliced in footage from the 9/12 rally on the Mall to make Michele Bachmann's Capitol Hill tea party look much, much bigger than it actually was. He was later forced to admit it.
On the Nov. 18, 2009, edition of Fox News' Happening Now, Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett described “pictures just coming into us” as “huge crowds” that have amassed while Sarah Palin is “promoting her new book.” The pictures that were supposedly “just coming in” were actually year-old video from the presidential campaign. The following day, co-host Jane Skinner was forced to apologize for "mistakenly" airing the fake crowd video.
On June 17, 2010, the day that Republican Rep. Joe Barton made his infamous apology to BP's CEO for the fact that the White House was making the corporation pay for poisoning the Gulf of Mexico, Fox News TWICE edited out his embarrassing, politically damaging apology. On Nov. 14, 2012, Fox News' The Five aired an out-of-context clip from Obama's press conference to make the false claim that he was "giving up on climate change." In fact, the president said the opposite about climate change, adding that we have "an obligation to future generations to do something about it" — but that contradiction of their lie was kept secret by Fox News.
And then there were the balmy palms of Wisconsin. In March 2011, O'Reilly presented footage purportedly showing angry, near-violent union protesters in Wisconsin, where the Republican governor was busy working to destroy public employee unions. Unfortunately, alert viewers could spot the palm trees in the background. This allegedly damning footage was of protesters in California. The real Wisconsin protesters were apparently too peaceful for O'Reilly. Reality is often so inconvenient for the scripted Fox News message. "The Fox News approach to
journalism doesn't just drive liberals crazy," Connor Friedersdorf observed.
"It's also bad for all who want Obama to be held accountable. It makes
conservative opposition to him dumber, less informed and less effective than it
would otherwise be, because O'Reilly's whole schtick is based on contrivance
more than substance."
Fox News lies even with word choice and inflection. Note how
Fox host Elisabeth Hasselbeck reported an unemployment report highly favorable
to the Obama administration in November 2015: “That’s right, Steve. Only 271,000 new jobs were
added last month. That is up from September as well. Analysts were expecting
more than 180,000 jobs for October.”
At times, the Fox News mask slips so badly that even the pretense of journalism is abandoned. Fox News lied when it passed off a Republican Party press release as its own reporting, complete with typo. During the Feb. 10, 2009, edition of Happening Now, Jon Scott claimed to "take a look back" at how the economic recovery plan "grew, and grew, and grew." In doing so, Scott referenced seven dates as on-screen graphics cited various news sources from those time periods. All of them came directly from a Senate Republican Communications Center press release.
A Fox News on-screen graphic even reproduced a typo contained in the GOP press release.
Reporting on a Washington 9-12 rally he promoted in 2009, Fox News host Glenn Beck rejected the crowd estimate of 70,000 offered by city authorities. Instead, he said, an amazing 1.7 MILLION people attended, citing a supposed study by the University of I Don’t Remember.
“We had a university, the university, I think it's the University of -- I don't remember which university it is -- um, look at the pictures,” Beck said.
After being called on a falsehood he told during his Restoring Honor rally in August 2010, Beck cheerfully admitted he lied because he "thought it would be a little easier.” Rhapsodically, Beck had claimed that he held George Washington's handwritten first Inaugural Address in his hands at the National Archives, but a spokeswoman at the institution said that is, of course, not permitted.
"Case in point: In
summer 2011, a story surfaced on the right-wing blogs that an auditor for the
Justice Department had found out some DOJ employees attending a meeting at the Capital Hilton in Washington, DC, had been served refreshments, including muffins for which the hotel charged $16 apiece," wrote Fox
News mole Joe Muto. "It’s no surprise that the story spread like wildfire
on the blogs and was soon picked up by cable news. It was a great story for the
right, reinforcing preexisting notions of government excess and willingness to
waste taxpayer money, the incompetence of the Obama Justice Department, etc.
One problem: It wasn’t true." The $16 was the price of a full breakfast,
including tip, as Hilton Hotels proved. And Fox News knew the story was a lie.
But do you think that stopped Fox news from "reporting" it? No,
O'Reilly reported it repeatedly as fact, for several weeks.
Some Fox News lies are so stupid that it’s difficult to believe they aren’t mistakes. But whatever they are, they remain hideously unprofessional episodes that, like Fox News’ deliberate factual lies, display contempt for the truth.
On June 24, 2010, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade posed perhaps the stupidest question ever uttered on the channel. "The president took a matter of hours to pick a commander in Afghanistan, so why is it taking months to plug the leaking oil?," he asked.
On a Dec. 4, 2009, episode of Fox & Friends, a graphic was displayed with the question heading: "Did scientists falsify research to support their own theories on global warming?" The results shown below indicated that 59 percent of people believed this was "somewhat likely," while 35 percent thought it was "very likely" and 26 percent considered it "not very likely."
In April 2008, Fox News presented a graphic showing that the Lincoln-Douglas Debates were between Abraham Lincoln and the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Hard to tell if that was a deliberate lie or just a complete contempt for history and accuracy. Better file that one under "Fox News Lies" and cross-reference it with "Fox News Thundering Ignorance."
Stupidity and racism had another collision on Fox News on the July 8, 2009, edition of Fox & Friends, during a discussion of a Swedish study showing that married people are less likely to get Alzheimer's, when co-host Kilmeade said that Americans don't have "pure genes" like Swedes because "we keep marrying other species and other ethnics."
He said, “Swedes have pure genes, because they marry other Swedes, because that’s the rule. Finland — Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society. In America, we marry everybody. So we’ll marry Italians and Irish.”
The uglier the remarks get on Fox News, the less likely it is that the hosts are lying.
When then-Sen. Obama secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination for president, he and his wife Michelle exchanged a fist pound greeting before he gave his speech. Pitching an upcoming "body language expert" segment, Fox News host E.D. Hill referred to the exchange as a possible "terrorist fist jab." In August 2012, Fox News host Dennis Miller fantasized on the air about throwing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi off a cliff.
On Aug. 6, 2009, Fox News star Glenn Beck “joked” that he'd like to murder Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by poisoning her wine, then had the transcript scrubbed to hide his statement.
O'Reilly suggested that the CIA should kidnap Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Pelosi, and perhaps even waterboard Pelosi, at a stop on his Bold & Fresh speaking tour on Jan. 23, 2010, in Westbury, NY.
In May 2008, Fox News pundit Liz Trotta, while discussing the idea of assassinating Osama bin Laden, confused his name with that of Barack Obama, then said, “Well ... both, if we could!,” and laughed happily.
Lucky that Fox News’ endorsement of assassination and torture hasn’t had any tangible results so far, eh? But are we sure about that?
The obscure Tides Foundation has been brought up several times on Beck's show, characterized as part of what Beck identifies as a conspiracy by President Obama and left-wing organizations to spread socialism. Then Byron Williams, an anti-government gunman, engaged in a shootout with police in Oakland, CA, while he was on his way to target Tides and the ACLU.
Naturally, Beck denied any connection.
On June 9, 2010, on Fox News, Beck exhorted his audience to shoot their political opponents in the head.
He said, “I will stand against you and so will millions of others. We believe in something. You in the media and most in Washington don't. The radicals that you and Washington have co-opted and brought in wearing sheep's clothing — change the pose. You will get the ends. You've been using them? They believe in communism. They believe and have called for a revolution. You're going to have to shoot them in the head.
"What Nixon did – and what Ailes does today in the age of Obama – is unravel and rewire one of the most powerful of human emotions: shame," said "Nixonland" author Rick Perlstein in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. "(Roger Ailes) takes the shame of people who feel that they are being looked down on, and he mobilises it for political purposes. Roger Ailes is a direct link between the Nixonian politics of resentment and Sarah Palin's politics of resentment. He's the golden thread."
It is a self-righteous sense of victimhood and not information that Fox News is peddling, and it shows in their audience. "According to recent polls, Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers," Rolling Stone noted. "They are 12 percentage points more likely to believe the stimulus package caused job losses, 17 points more likely to believe Muslims want to establish Sharia law in America, 30 points more likely to say that scientists dispute global warming, and 31 points more likely to doubt President Obama's citizenship. At the height of the healthcare debate, more than two-thirds of Fox News viewers were convinced Obamacare would lead to a "government takeover", provide healthcare to illegal immigrants, pay for abortions and let the government decide when to pull the plug on grandma. In fact, a study by the University of Maryland revealed that ignorance of Fox viewers actually increases the longer they watch the network."
Fox News propagandists routinely demand to be treated as "journalists" when they are trying to steal the credibility of legitimate reporters, then skate back behind their "pundit" label whenever they want to blatantly lie or advocate, say, torture or assassination. It's a dirty little dance they've perfected.
As Joseph Goebbels observed, "It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is, in fact, a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded to clothe ideas in disguise." In a nation seriously damaged by the Bush-Republican policies for which Fox News served as head cheerleader, THAT is the mission of Fox "News."
The lies of Fox News are the result of a deliberate News Corporation policy to pervert American news with as much corporate/Republican propaganda as they can get away with. The fact that they can get away with so much of it reflects the corruption of American culture -- what Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibbi called "...all the different species of lies that by the early 21st century Americans accepted as a matter of routine -- the preposterous laugh tracks in sitcoms, the parade of perfect-looking models used to sell products to the obese, the endless soap operas about the rich and the beautiful cruising the OC in Testarossas, marketed to a country in which 10 percent of the population lacks enough to eat."
The problem is that much of the white working class in 21st century America actually likes to be lied to, just as long as their prejudices are vigorously massaged by the people who are picking their pockets and robbing them of their rights.
Do Fox News’ lies have an insidious effect? Of course. During the summer of 2010, the White House was forced to insist that President Obama is a Christian who prays daily. A poll had showed that nearly one in five people said they thought Obama was Muslim.
No evidence had ever been published suggesting Obama was not a Christian, so what could explain that poll result? Maybe the fact that Fox News speculated that Obama was “secretly Muslim” in reports on Aug. 7, 2007, Jan. 29, 2009 and April 14, 2010, among many other dates?
"The whole point of Fox, Murdoch explained, was to 'dethrone' more traditional media outlets — outlets that did actual news reporting (Fox is dominated by talking-head commentators) and that were not expressly ideological (in the sense that Fox places itself at the service of the corporate-dominated and militarist wing of the GOP)," media critic John Nicholas noted. Fox News sells convenient fictions, and makes inconvenient truths disappear. For example, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's blundering in London was a major news story in 2012, but not on "fair and balanced" Fox News. They made it vanish.
Once, Fox News could not have gotten away with the blatant lies they are telling. But in the 21st century, they have two great advantages — a cowardly corporate media and a corrupted political culture that fear to expose them, and a low-information, poorly educated American audience that likes to be lied to. Fox News has high ratings for the simple reason that it lies.
The people who watch Fox News don't want honest reporting. They want to be told that liberals are always wrong, and that their own ugly little prejudices and hatreds are well-founded and perfectly justified. So that's what Fox News tells them.
I wonder if, when Fox News fans make the groundless, whining claim that, "Other news organizations lie, TOO," they realize they are admitting that Fox News is completely rotten, and that they prefer hearing lies that please them — and so themselves betray the truth?
Unfortunately, to deliberately deprive yourself of honest reporting makes as much as sense as trying to drive while wearing a blindfold. Both practices inevitably end up in a bloody crash.
As Hannah Arendt observed, “Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear." "Roger Ailes has helped kill conservatism in America, by never allowing it to criticize itself. When journalism puts power above truth it isn't, to coin a phrase, 'actual journalism.' It's propaganda. And I, like others in the Stalinist atmosphere, was just rendered invisible in the one-party state that is the GOP's media-industrial complex." No liberal uttered that last quote. It came from the conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan, who, unlike other right wingers, is afflicted by honesty and a willingness to state the obvious from time to time.
Fox News’ fans have little to say about all this, except to bark that “all news organizations lie” and immediately turn tail when you demand that they prove it. To make that intellectually dishonest claim without any evidence is merely a way of letting the actual, documented liars at Fox News off the hook. And that’s their intention.
