A White House attempt to delegitimize Fox News – which in past times would have drawn howls of censorship from the press corps – has instead been greeted by a collective shrug.
That’s true even though the motivations of the White House are clear: Fire up a liberal base disillusioned with Obama by attacking the hated Fox. Try to keep a critical news outlet off-balance. Raise doubts about future Fox stories.
But most of all, get other journalists to think twice before following the network’s stories in their own coverage.
"We're doing what we think is important to make sure news is covered as fairly as possible," a White House official told POLITICO, noting how the recent ACORN scandal story started because Fox covered it “breathlessly for weeks on end.”
“And then you had a couple days of breast-beating from The Washington Post and The New York Times about whether or not they were fast enough on the ACORN story,” the official said. “And it's like: Wait a second, guys. Let's make sure that we keep perspective on what are the most important stories, and what's being driven by a network that has a perspective. Being able to make that point has been important.”
To some media observers, it’s almost the definition of a “chilling effect” – a governmental attempt to steer reporters away from negative coverage – but the White House press corps has barely uttered a word of complaint.
That could be because of the perception among some journalists that Fox blurs the line between reporting and commentary - making it seem like not the most sympathetic victim.
Fox denies its news coverage is slanted, and even White House aides say the network’s top correspondent there, Major Garrett, is a straight shooter. But in its non-news hours, Fox mixes in a steady diet of criticism of President Barack Obama by its prominent conservative commentators Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. It’s a formula that works for Fox, with the highest ratings in cable news.
And in fact, not everyone at the network is complaining at being elevated into Obama’s target-of-choice. Some of the lack of protest from the mainstream press may be driven by the sense that the assault on Fox is actually strengthening the network.
Fox officials didn’t respond to a request for comment. But on Monday night, O’Reilly and former Fox News Washington Bureau chief Brit Hume seemed to be reveling in the attacks by Obama’s aides.
“This is an effort in effect to quarantine Fox News and to discourage other media outlets from picking up on stories that originate here,” Hume said on “The O’Reilly Factor.” “My guess is it won’t work….Look at Glenn Beck, he’s having a field day with this.”
O’Reilly keeps a page on his own website that urges his audience “not to patronize or advertise with” 11 news outlets, including the St. Petersburg Times, the New Yorker, Newsday and MSNBC.
Some see the warring between the White House and Fox as a boon to both sides.
“This is a mutually beneficial deal,” said Paul Begala, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. “Fox's ratings keep going up, as they're seen as the voice of opposition to Obama. The Democrats need to do something to excite their base, which is suffering from a case of the blues.”
In the media world, the main reaction to the barrage of Fox criticism by the Obama White House has been less outrage, and more puzzlement as to what Obama’s aides hope to gain by taking on the network so forcefully.
A day after White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said other journalists should no longer treat Fox as a bona fide news outlet, the comments generated only a single, tangential question at the White House’s daily briefing for reporters.
Still, the comments set off alarm bells with some journalists and media analysts.
“I can never remember a White House urging news organizations to boycott other news organizations. That strikes me as unprecedented,” said Thomas DeFrank, a Washington journalist who has covered eight presidents and now serves as the bureau chief of the New York Daily News.
“I see it as bullying a news organization, by the time you get to telling ABC or some other news organization how they should behave to another news organization,” said David Zurawik, media critic for the Baltimore Sun. “Someone should tell them: you’re one branch of government. We’re something else over here. Don’t lecture us about how we should behave towards one another.”
The salvos from Axelrod and Emanuel built on remarks a week earlier in which White House Communications Director Anita Dunn accused Fox News of operating as “a wing of the Republican Party.”
“They’re not really a news station,” Axelrod told ABC’s “This Week.” “It’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming if you watch, it’s really not news….The bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way. We’re going to appear on their shows. We’re going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.”
“It’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective,” Emanuel said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “More importantly, is to not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization.”
The direct attacks, if leveled at another news outlet or by another White House might have aroused a torrent of criticism, but the flow of outrage from the Washington journalistic set has been more like a trickle.
“In the past, whether it was a Democratic or Republican president who stood up and attacked quote-unquote news organizations, the natural instinct of the Fourth Estate was to rally around and support that entity regardless,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist and communications aide in the Clinton White House. “The rest of the press corps winds up being the umpire on that.”
Lehane noted that the Clinton White House did campaign to de-legitimize some news outlets by drafting a “Conspiracy Stream of Commerce” report that traced the progress of anti-Clinton rumors from fringe media outlets to British newspapers to second-tier U.S. papers to major newspapers. However, Lehane said that lobbying was done one-on-one with individual reporters and not from the White House podium, to avoid triggering a backlash.
The Obama White House appears to have concluded that the media is now so splintered that an attack on one is no longer an attack on all. But other political veterans said they were baffled by the White House’s strategy.
“I’ve become more puzzled by the week about what this is ultimately all about,” said David Gergen, an adviser to four presidents who now teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School and is a paid contributor on CNN.
“It does seem to me when CNN, MSNBC or anybody else—over the air networks—report on the Glenn Beck-Van Jones fight, that’s legitimate news,” said Gergen, referring to Obama’s “green jobs” czar, who later resigned. “Fox was a player in the resignation of Van Jones…..I think it would be irresponsible to avoid that story.”
At least one prominent Washington journalist publicly embraced the White House’s anti-Fox crusade.
“By appearing on Fox, reporters validate its propaganda values and help to undermine the role of legitimate news organizations,” former Slate editor Jacob Weisberg wrote in Newsweek. “Respectable journalists—I’m talking to you Mara Liasson—should stop appearing on its programs.”
Liasson, a National Public Radio reporter who is a regular on Fox News’s “Special Report,” did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
White House grudges against news outlets and individual journalists have a long and storied history.
President John Kennedy asked the New York Times to transfer David Halberstam because of his critical reporting on the Vietnam War.
In 1987, a Newsweek cover about then-Vice President George H. W. Bush, “Fighting the Wimp Factor,” led Bush’s presidential campaign to freeze the magazine out.
DeFrank, then a Newsweek reporter working on the magazine’s campaign book, remembers taking a call from the vice president’s son, future President George W. Bush. “Tommy, I got bad news for you. You’re out of business,” he said.
In 2004, several news outlets, including the New York Times, complained that they were being excluded from Vice President Dick Cheney’s official plane because of dissatisfaction with their coverage. Cheney’s aides denied any purposeful snub.
Tom Rosenstiel, a former Los Angeles Times media critic who now runs the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said the Obama team’s explicit, public call for other outlets to ignore Fox was somewhat different from run-ins between past White Houses and specific news outlets. But he said that’s just an indication of a new media age.
“There was a time you could drop a polite line in a meeting in the Oval Office with White House reporters and ice a whole news organization. Not anymore,” Rosenstiel said. “You have to speak in blunt terms to consumers who are making the decision for themselves how much credence to give to things in different places.”
Still, Rosenstiel said no one should doubt that the White House’s critiques have a political agenda.
“You should beware of politicians playing press critic. There’s always an ulterior motive, even if they’re sincere,” he said. “They’re working the refs.”
Surprised no one posted this before... can't say I'm really surprised at what the WH is doing or the press' reaction though.
Hank Ringworm
10-21-09, 12:38 AM
Pretty frightening, pretty stupid. The Bush WH never went after MSNBC with such earnestness. Could you imagine if they did?
TheBigDave
10-21-09, 01:14 AM
The White House needs to issue an official Obama Seal Of Approval. It should be displayed prominently by all "legitimate news organizations".
kvrdave
10-21-09, 02:39 AM
So they are actually blaming Fox News for ACORN? :lol:
Obama/White House are so stupid for taking this stance, as it gives more press to Fox News because of this. I agree with Bob Beckel, a liberal who is a Fox News Analyst, he pretty much said, "If you want to ignore Hannity, O'Reilly, and Beck, they are opinion shows, but the don't ignore the news division, as you are trying to court ALL voters, and you want EVERYONE in this country to hear your point of view.
classicman2
10-21-09, 07:39 AM
Yet another dumb move by this White House.
Reminds me more of the Carter White House every day.
Pretty frightening, pretty stupid. The Bush WH never went after MSNBC with such earnestness. Could you imagine if they did?
MSNBC was allied with the war effort early on. Plus no one watches MSNBC. If a tree falls in the woods...
Mordred
10-21-09, 08:59 AM
Glenn Beck is having a field day with this.
<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5B2WD0D0nOU&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5B2WD0D0nOU&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>I'm not going to watch that video if Beck is killing that puppy in it. :(
mosquitobite
10-21-09, 09:00 AM
MSNBC was allied with the war effort early on. Plus no one watches MSNBC. If a tree falls in the woods...
So do you think this was a smart move by the WH?
I really see no good coming from it. None.
TheBigDave
10-21-09, 09:27 AM
MSNBC was allied with the war effort early on. Plus no one watches MSNBC. If a tree falls in the woods...
I seem to recall Chris Matthews asking everyone "Is it Vietnam yet?" before we even reached Baghdad. Here's an editorial he wrote in the SF Chronicle in August 2002:
TO IRAQ AND RUIN (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/08/25/IN239822.DTL)
As a whole, I think MSNBC played it pretty much down the middle until Summer 2006. By then, everyone was bashing Bush. Olbermann may have been spewing the most bile. But there were very few journalists left in the Bush Fan Club by then.
CRM114
10-21-09, 09:38 AM
I recall MSNBC firing the VERY anti-war Phil Donahue and bringing in Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough all around the same time.
mosquitobite
10-21-09, 09:46 AM
I recall MSNBC firing the VERY anti-war Phil Donahue and bringing in Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough all around the same time.
I don't mean to call you out specifically, but I am really interested in knowing how you (you being a far left liberal) feel about what the WH is doing here.
You're focusing on Hank's analogy about how the left would have been screaming if Bush had done this (which they would have regardless of whether you think MSNBC has a liberal bias or not).
This thread is about what the current WH is doing with regards to trying to shut down oppositional speech. I'm seriously interested in what a liberal thinks about it. (for one, I want to know if they're hypocrits in case a Republican tries it at some point in the future)
The Bus
10-21-09, 09:51 AM
I'm not going to watch that video if Beck is killing that puppy in it. :(
Who do you think they are, the panda-killing Del Monte Corporation?
CRM114
10-21-09, 09:51 AM
So do you think this was a smart move by the WH?
I really see no good coming from it. None.
I don't think anyone really knows or cares. With O'Reilly, Hannity, and Beck they have gone BEYOND any sort of bias that exists on other outlets.
BTW. Far left? :lol:
TheBigDave
10-21-09, 10:33 AM
I recall MSNBC firing the VERY anti-war Phil Donahue and bringing in Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough all around the same time.
Tucker didn't come in until Summer 2005. They brought in Michael Savage for a few months in 2003.
I don't know the story behind Donahue. At the time, MSNBC ratings were abysmal and shows were getting dropped all the time. His show only lasted 7 months.
I noticed this at Wikipedia:
Despite the show's cancellation, Donahue's willingness to dissent played a critical role in getting the Oprah Winfrey Show to rejoin the anti-war movement in November 2002. In September 2002, Winfrey praised Donahue saying “the bottom line is we need you, Phil, because we need to be challenged by the voice of dissent.”
Birrman54
10-21-09, 11:49 AM
Yesterday I watched Keith Olbermann talk about Balloon Boy, Rachel Maddow openly support Democratic congressional candidates during a discussion with David Wiegel, and Anderson Cooper was interviewing Eva Longoria Parker.
Lots of news to watch there.
slop101
10-21-09, 01:15 PM
Obama/White House are so stupid for taking this stance, as it gives more press to Fox News because of this. I agree with Bob Beckel, a liberal who is a Fox News Analyst, he pretty much said, "If you want to ignore Hannity, O'Reilly, and Beck, they are opinion shows, but the don't ignore the news division, as you are trying to court ALL voters, and you want EVERYONE in this country to hear your point of view.Unfortunately, Fox's news division is driven by the same editorial agenda as are the opinion shows, much more so than they are driven by actual news.
kvrdave
10-21-09, 01:38 PM
I'm not going to watch that video if Beck is killing that puppy in it. :(
I won't watch it if he lets it live.
DeputyDave
10-21-09, 01:57 PM
Wow the true colors here sure shine through. I would have a serious problem with the White House coming out against a pro-Jihadist, pro-KKK, pro-communism, or pro-Nazi news network. I guess that's because I actually value our rights as americans. It sickens me that liberals don't.
CRM114
10-21-09, 02:14 PM
It doesn't bother you that Roger Ailes sent memos to the newscasters TELLING them what their stance on the Iraq war was going to be? Telling them to be supportive of the war at all costs?
Just watching the network and knowing this information, one can surmise that the network is driven by a certain ideology. MSNBC has Scarborough. CNN has Dobbs. Fox has....a singular position which is dictated to them by management. It scares me that some cannot SEE this.
Nausicaa
10-21-09, 02:18 PM
So do you think this was a smart move by the WH?
I really see no good coming from it. None.
I don't think it's as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Obama voters by and large agree with the administration's stance, and most won't care if they're even aware of the 'controversy' to begin with. Meanwhile, most Fox News devotees that might care about this despise Obama regardless.
I personally think it would be best if the administration didn't do this sort of thing, but I don't think it's very damaging politically.
CRM114
10-21-09, 02:36 PM
They have a point on the ACORN nonsense. Either all of the media besides Fox is in on the vast left-wing conspiracy (which is laughable given the corporate media) or the editors and producers all over the country felt it was a marginal story at best.
Venusian
10-21-09, 02:47 PM
You think the ACORN stuff was nonsense?
CNN and others covered it so it wasn't only Fox who thought it wasn't marginal
CRM114
10-21-09, 02:51 PM
Thus the 4th and 5th paragraph in the story.
nemein
10-21-09, 03:01 PM
You think the ACORN stuff was nonsense?
CNN and others covered it so it wasn't only Fox who thought it wasn't marginal
But they were just unwillingly dragged into the story -rolleyes-
Venusian
10-21-09, 03:04 PM
I actually saw it on the web first. I don't watch tv news much but I saw a blurb about it on CNN one day. Don't watch Fox News at all so don't know what they showed.
When you have 24 hour news networks, I think there is plenty of time for them to mention scandal an influential organization like ACORN is involved in.
dork
10-21-09, 03:11 PM
Just watching the network and knowing this information, one can surmise that the network is driven by a certain ideology. MSNBC has Scarborough. CNN has Dobbs. Fox has....a singular position which is dictated to them by management. It scares me that some cannot SEE this.
That's an excellent point. You'd better hold on to Scarborough, MSNBC -- or the White House will go after you too!
kvrdave
10-21-09, 03:15 PM
Before we get state controlled media, we first have to see how the populace responds to state approved media. -wink-
RoyalTea
10-21-09, 03:32 PM
Just watching the network and knowing this information, one can surmise that the network is driven by a certain ideology. MSNBC has Scarborough. CNN has Dobbs. Fox has....a singular position which is dictated to them by management. It scares me that some cannot SEE this.
If Fox News had a one hour show with a liberal commentator, do you think that the ratings that show would generate would make it worth Fox's time?
mosquitobite
10-21-09, 04:14 PM
Before we get state controlled media, we first have to see how the populace responds to state approved media. -wink-
EXACTLY!
I can't believe people can't see that!
JasonF
10-21-09, 04:44 PM
The White House criticizing the press is absolutely unprecedented. Truly, this is the begining of the dictatorship.
Dana Perino may have the IQ of an ice cube, but she's pretty hot!
JasonF
10-21-09, 04:57 PM
Dana Perino may have the IQ of an ice cube, but she's pretty hot!
I do agree that she is America's Sexiest Ever White House Press Secretary (sorry, Joe Lockhart fans).
sracer
10-21-09, 05:01 PM
The White House criticizing the press is absolutely unprecedented. Truly, this is the begining of the dictatorship.
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Where's the part where Perino claims that NBC is not a legitimate news outlet? Your inability to differentiate between what the Obama administration is doing with Fox News and Bush admin did with NBC explains a lot.
classicman2
10-21-09, 05:46 PM
Scarborough is not on air many times. When he is, the show is dominated by views from the left,
I would be interested in seeing how many conservative, Republican guests that MSNBC has on during the day compared with the number of liberal, Democratic guests that Fox has on during the day. That obiously includes the evening also.
Where's the part where Perino claims that NBC is not a legitimate news outlet? Your inability to differentiate between what the Obama administration is doing with Fox News and Bush admin did with NBC explains a lot.
:up:
Rockmjd23
10-21-09, 07:18 PM
Ah, the old "but Bush did it too!" :lol:
wm lopez
10-21-09, 07:33 PM
I don't think it's as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Obama voters by and large agree with the administration's stance, and most won't care if they're even aware of the 'controversy' to begin with. Meanwhile, most Fox News devotees that might care about this despise Obama regardless.
I personally think it would be best if the administration didn't do this sort of thing, but I don't think it's very damaging politically.
If the voters by and large agree with Obama than how can FOXNEWS be number one instead of MSNBC? :rimshot:
wm lopez
10-21-09, 07:37 PM
If Fox News had a one hour show with a liberal commentator, do you think that the ratings that show would generate would make it worth Fox's time? Geraldo Rivera is a liberal. He is for the illegals if you remember when he and O'Reilly butted heads on t.v. that made news. Greta is not a conservative. Colmes is a liberal, Juan Williams is a liberal.
Sean O'Hara
10-21-09, 07:38 PM
Tucker didn't come in until Summer 2005. They brought in Michael Savage for a few months in 2003.
Not only that, but Tucker was against the war.
Sean O'Hara
10-21-09, 07:42 PM
Geraldo Rivera is a liberal. He is for the illegals if you remember when he and O'Reilly butted heads on t.v. that made news.
The guy who agrees with the last two Republican Presidential candidates about immigration is a liberal?
BKenn01
10-21-09, 08:16 PM
They have a point on the ACORN nonsense. Either all of the media besides Fox is in on the vast left-wing conspiracy (which is laughable given the corporate media) or the editors and producers all over the country felt it was a marginal story at best.
They are pissed because their little vote stealers got caught.
As for the other networks, I saw Brit Hume on Oreilly the other night and he pointed out the other networks arent happy about this because its like the White House is labeling all the them as good little lap dogs and no journalist wants that.
kvrdave
10-21-09, 08:20 PM
But they work so hard for the title. Must be some serious inner conflicts for them.
slop101
10-21-09, 09:56 PM
Does any of this really matter? To any one (other than Fox News)? At all?
Some perspective: Fox news has about 3-4 million viewers. There are over 307 million people in this country. I think it matters a lot less than it's being given coverage for.
TheBigDave
10-21-09, 10:03 PM
Of course, the White House has no problem with Olbermann and Maddow's style of journalism.
Maddow/Olbermann Invited to White House Chat with Obama, But Fox Isn't a News Organization?
Here's a curious turn in the White House vs. Fox News fight.
On Monday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow were among several people who attended an off-the-record briefing with Pres. Obama at the White House. Sources tell us other attendees at the two-and-a-half hour chat included Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gwen Ifill of PBS and Gloria Borger of CNN. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one from Fox News was in the room.
Of course, the White House has no problem with Olbermann and Maddow's style of journalism.
The Whitehouse has to keep the lackeys down on the farm.
orangecrush
10-21-09, 11:33 PM
I do agree that she is America's Sexiest Ever White House Press Secretary (sorry, Joe Lockhart fans).I agree. Sometimes I wish I had cable.
DeputyDave
10-21-09, 11:51 PM
The guy who agrees with the last two Republican Presidential candidates about immigration is a liberal?
Yes, which goes to show you that the last two Republican candidates were not conservatives. That is part of the reason we are in this mess.
kvrdave
10-22-09, 12:24 AM
Does any of this really matter? To any one (other than Fox News)? At all?
Some perspective: Fox news has about 3-4 million viewers. There are over 307 million people in this country. I think it matters a lot less than it's being given coverage for.
Considering the numbers the others get, it matters. If it didn't, The Obama wouldn't mention it.
Fox News has pulled off another dominant quarter, claiming the top 10 cable news programs in 3Q 2009 and growing against 3Q 2008, while CNN and MSNBC lost substantial portions of their election-boom audience.
Fox News averaged 2.25 million total viewers in prime time for the third quarter, up 2% over the previous year. That's more than CNN (946,000, down 30%) and MSNBC (788,000, down 10%) combined.
"The O'Reilly Factor" led all cable news programs with an average of 3.295 million total viewers for the quarter, up 12% over the previous year. "Hannity" (2.603 million, up 9%), "Glenn Beck" (2.403 million, up 89%), "On the Record with Greta van Susteren" (2.150 million, up 16%), and "Special Report with Bret Baier" (1.997 million, up 20%) rounded out the top five.
Meanwhile, flagship programs at MSNBC and CNN did not sustain their growth from 3Q 2008: At MSNBC, "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" averaged 1.087 million total viewers, down 12% from the previous year and "The Rachel Maddow Show" averaged 996,000 total viewers (Maddow began the program in September 2008, so a comparison for the quarter would be inaccurate; compared to September 2008, though, Maddow's September 2009 total viewer average is down 40%). At CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" averaged 1.005 million viewers, down 17% from the previous year and "Lou Dobbs" averaged 658,000 total viewers, down 24%. Larry King and Campbell Brown were both down just slightly in total viewers.
CNN in particular had a rough quarter in the primetime Adults 25-54 demo: the network dropped 39% compared to 3Q 2008, averaging 287,000 viewers.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/fox-news-dominates-3q-200_n_304260.html
If you go to the site, you can see the actual ratings and numbers. Fox actually has 12 of the top 13. You know what beats Olbermann out? The repeats of The O'Reilly Factor from 11pm to midnight. :lol:
Sean O'Hara
10-22-09, 01:05 AM
Considering the numbers the others get, it matters. If it didn't, The Obama wouldn't mention it.
If you go to the site, you can see the actual ratings and numbers. Fox actually has 12 of the top 13. You know what beats Olbermann out? The repeats of The O'Reilly Factor from 11pm to midnight. :lol:
And Red Eye beats everything MSNBC shows before Hardball.
Think about that -- Morning Joe gets beat by a show that comes on at 2 AM.
wm lopez
10-22-09, 01:49 AM
The guy who agrees with the last two Republican Presidential candidates about immigration is a liberal?
McCain is liberal.
Remember Rush said he would vote for Hillary instead of McCain.
And Glenn Beck said things would be worse with McCain in office than Obama.
brayzie
10-22-09, 01:50 AM
I think it's interesting that they brought up the ACORN story. That IS news. I have to wonder if a similar story that implicated an organization with conservative ties would be downplayed like that.
Me personally, I'm kind of surprised at what I've seen at FOX and MSNBC.
I think both FOX and MSNBC are biased and try to promote an agenda. But I don't believe that an administration should be trying to isolate one, the other or both. Shouldn't it be up to the people to decide what's a legitimate news organization and what's not? What does that say about American journalism if the White House feels the need to tell them what to think, what to report?
Hank Ringworm
10-22-09, 03:03 AM
And Red Eye beats everything MSNBC shows before Hardball.
Think about that -- Morning Joe gets beat by a show that comes on at 2 AM.
3 AM, actually.
Hokeyboy
10-22-09, 11:46 AM
If the voters by and large agree with Obama than how can FOXNEWS be number one instead of MSNBC? :rimshot:
Because emotional cripples constantly require reinforcement of their insecurities, whereas everyone else has actual lives? :shrug:
cpgator
10-22-09, 11:56 AM
Because emotional cripples constantly require reinforcement of their insecurities, whereas everyone else has actual lives? :shrug:
Why would someone even want reinforcement of their insecurities?
Dr Mabuse
10-22-09, 11:59 AM
You know Nixon did this, putting certain media outlets on his 'enemy' list and stuff.
Somehow it's not surprising that a Chicago politician who lined his administration with Emanuel and etc. would engage in the same.
kvrdave
10-22-09, 12:03 PM
I think both FOX and MSNBC are biased and try to promote an agenda. But I don't believe that an administration should be trying to isolate one, the other or both. Shouldn't it be up to the people to decide what's a legitimate news organization and what's not? What does that say about American journalism if the White House feels the need to tell them what to think, what to report?
Obama has shown a lot of naivete. A shocking amount, quite frankly. He acts as though it is a sin to disagree with him and to have different opinions, even from those he should expect to. I think he is a product of the Chicago political system and figured that the White House was probably the same way and was a bit surprised that it wasn't.
kvrdave
10-22-09, 12:06 PM
Because emotional cripples constantly require reinforcement of their insecurities, whereas everyone else has actual lives? :shrug:
More likely, conservatives and moderates find they are better off with radio and Fox rather than going to the newspapers, network news, etc.
And liberals have never had lives. They are busy protesting, drinking the bong water, and breaking the law when it suits their ideology.
classicman2
10-22-09, 12:09 PM
Bob Beckel, long time Democratic strategist, said that he had done polling that showed 50% of Fox's viewers were either Independents or Democrats.
JasonF
10-22-09, 12:34 PM
Obama has shown a lot of naivete. A shocking amount, quite frankly. He acts as though it is a sin to disagree with him and to have different opinions, even from those he should expect to. I think he is a product of the Chicago political system and figured that the White House was probably the same way and was a bit surprised that it wasn't.
You really don't know anything about Chicago politics, do you?
mosquitobite
10-22-09, 12:42 PM
You really don't know anything about Chicago politics, do you?
Do you?
All I know is one can go from community organizer to Senate to President in less than a decade! :up:
Why Is Chicago So Corrupt? - Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2149240/)
Bonus Explainer: How do we know that Chicago's so corrupt? The most straightforward way to measure corruption is to check the number of convicted local officials. Between 1995 and 2004, 469 politicians from the federal district of Northern Illinois were found guilty of corruption. The only districts with higher tallies were central California (which includes L.A.), and southern Florida (which includes Miami). Eastern Louisiana (and New Orleans) rank somewhat further down the list.
kvrdave
10-22-09, 12:55 PM
You really don't know anything about Chicago politics, do you?
I've seen movies. Call movies or TV a liar, and I will punch you in the throat.
JasonF
10-22-09, 01:08 PM
Do you?
All I know is one can go from community organizer to Senate to President in less than a decade! :up:
Why Is Chicago So Corrupt? - Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2149240/)
I was speaking not about corruption, but about the idea that President Obama is a product of the Chicago machine (he's not), or the idea that machine politicians are unused to criticism from the press (the press criticizes Mayor Daley all the time).
JasonF
10-22-09, 01:08 PM
I've seen movies. Call movies or TV a liar, and I will punch you in the throat.
Olberman and Maddow are on TV, therefore you agree with me that they tell the truth. Checkmate!
Dr Mabuse
10-22-09, 01:26 PM
Anyone read about David Cross doing coke while at a White House dinner?
Not sure if this is the right thread, but it had WH in the title so what the hell...
Exchange between Jake Tapper of ABC News and WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Tuesday. Other news organizations seem to be seeing this "WH vs. FOX" thing for what it is.
Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –
(Crosstalk)
Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.
Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –
Gibbs: ABC -
Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?
Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.
Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” -- why is that appropriate for the White House to say?
Gibbs: That’s our opinion.
mosquitobite
10-22-09, 01:47 PM
Exchange between Jake Tapper of ABC News and WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Tuesday. Other news organizations seem to be seeing this "WH vs. FOX" thing for what it is.
As for the other networks, I saw Brit Hume on Oreilly the other night and he pointed out the other networks arent happy about this because its like the White House is labeling all the them as good little lap dogs and no journalist wants that.
Maybe seeing Glenn Beck make fun of them for being pathetic watch dogs hit a little too close to home?
Hokeyboy
10-22-09, 01:59 PM
Why would someone even want reinforcement of their insecurities?
Are you kidding? Play upon the fears and insecurities of anyone, and you'll have a devotee for life. Like feeding a stray.
Hokeyboy
10-22-09, 02:01 PM
And liberals have never had lives. They are busy protesting, drinking the bong water, and breaking the law when it suits their ideology.
:lol: rotfl :lol: Dude that's everyone on the planet...
creekdipper
10-22-09, 02:05 PM
Because emotional cripples constantly require reinforcement of their insecurities, whereas everyone else has actual lives? :shrug:
If they received reinforcement of their insecurities, wouldn't that tend to make them feel more secure?
CRM114
10-22-09, 02:09 PM
Does the President of ABC News tell Jake Tapper what ABC News' (and thus Jake Tapper's) position on the war is?
Did the President of ABC News give political advice to the President regarding the war in Iraq?
Bluelitespecial
10-22-09, 02:12 PM
Does the white house not see that the war of words against fox news, is also insulting the viewers that watch it.
CRM114
10-22-09, 02:14 PM
You mean the ones who wouldn't vote for Obama in any scenario?
Bluelitespecial
10-22-09, 02:17 PM
^^^The 50% of viewers who are Democratic or independent, as well as republicans.
milo bloom
10-22-09, 02:31 PM
I think it's interesting that they brought up the ACORN story. That IS news. I have to wonder if a similar story that implicated an organization with conservative ties would be downplayed like that.
I'll give a flying flip about a couple of dumbasses caught in an entrapment scam on home video, when the media and congress ever fully and properly hangs groups like Blackwater/Xe and Haliburton out to dry.
Do you?
All I know is one can go from community organizer to Senate to President in less than a decade! :up:
Why Is Chicago So Corrupt? - Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2149240/)
I read something just the other day saying that if a conservative/Republican candidate had managed a feat like that, they would be lauded as a "go-getter" and for "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps", but since it's a democrat, that couldn't have possibly happened.
CRM114
10-22-09, 02:49 PM
^^^The 50% of viewers who are Democratic or independent, as well as republicans.
I watch Fox on occasion and trust me, I'm not insulted.
cpgator
10-22-09, 02:52 PM
I watch Fox on occasion and trust me, I'm not insulted.
:lol: Obama was not trying to insult his faithful followers.
Nausicaa
10-22-09, 02:59 PM
I read something just the other day saying that if a conservative/Republican candidate had managed a feat like that, they would be lauded as a "go-getter" and for "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps", but since it's a democrat, that couldn't have possibly happened.
But all of his achievment is obviously predicated on opportunities Obama didn't deserve. Just like Sonia Sotomayor, another affirmative action candidate. Whenever a minority achieves something, beware for the spectre of affirmative action is always near.
brayzie
10-22-09, 03:02 PM
I'll give a flying flip about a couple of dumbasses caught in an entrapment scam on home video, when the media and congress ever fully and properly hangs groups like Blackwater/Xe and Haliburton out to dry.
So if it's not about Blackwater/Haliburton it's not newsworthy?
Can't you be against both Blackwater AND ACORN employees attempting to assist alleged criminals?
From the videos I've seen it's more than a just two "dumbasses" caught in the undercover ACORN video.
I agree with you that the involvement of Blackwater and Haliburton are more important than ACORN. Regardless though, should newsworthy stories be buried just because nothings progressing with Blackwater or Haliburton?
You don't care that an organization with goverment funding has atleast 3 seperate locations (with 5 people across the 3 videos) that agree to help an alleged pimp and prostitute get tax refunds on 15 year old illegal immigrant prostitutes?
JasonF
10-22-09, 03:30 PM
I'll give a flying flip about a couple of dumbasses caught in an entrapment scam on home video, when the media and congress ever fully and properly hangs groups like Blackwater/Xe and Haliburton out to dry.
So if it's not about Blackwater/Haliburton it's not newsworthy?
Can't you be against both Blackwater AND ACORN employees attempting to assist alleged criminals?
From the videos I've seen it's more than a just two "dumbasses" caught in the undercover ACORN video.
I agree with you that the involvement of Blackwater and Haliburton are more important than ACORN. Regardless though, should newsworthy stories be buried just because nothings progressing with Blackwater or Haliburton?
You don't care that an organization with goverment funding has atleast 3 seperate locations (with 5 people across the 3 videos) that agree to help an alleged pimp and prostitute get tax refunds on 15 year old illegal immigrant prostitutes?
But remember what your original statement was:
I think it's interesting that they brought up the ACORN story. That IS news. I have to wonder if a similar story that implicated an organization with conservative ties would be downplayed like that.
That's what Milo Bloom is responding to. He's pointing out that you don't have to wonder: similar stories with Xe and Haliburton have been downplayed. The idea that ACORN is getting special protection from the so-called liberal media is nonsense. If anything, they are getting special attention, largely because conservative activists picked up on this story and started shouting about media bias, and the surest way to get the media to report on something is to have conservative activists accuse them of burying it due to media bias.
milo bloom
10-22-09, 03:36 PM
So if it's not about Blackwater/Haliburton it's not newsworthy?
Can't you be against both Blackwater AND ACORN employees attempting to assist alleged criminals?
From the videos I've seen it's more than a just two "dumbasses" caught in the undercover ACORN video.
I agree with you that the involvement of Blackwater and Haliburton are more important than ACORN. Regardless though, should newsworthy stories be buried just because nothings progressing with Blackwater or Haliburton?
You don't care that an organization with goverment funding has atleast 3 seperate locations (with 5 people across the 3 videos) that agree to help an alleged pimp and prostitute get tax refunds on 15 year old illegal immigrant prostitutes?
My issue with it is the weighting that groups like Fox news give the ACORN issue, putting it on par with Haliburton and the like. And it simply isn't equal. If I had to do a Sophie's Choice on the two: choosing between military contracters building facilities that electrocute our soldiers when they try to take a shower or raping co-workers and locking them in shipping containers so they couldn't report it, vs the alleged prostitution scam, I think that's an easy choice.
And for the ultra-bleeding heart liberal response: maybe the ACORN workers were simply taking pity on other people that have been brought up in a difficult socio-economic situation and are just trying to run a small business. Doesn't the right love small business owners ;)
But seriously, people like Fox and Republicans in the senate and congress making such a big fuss over defunding groups like ACORN, while not doing much about the others just affirms to me where their priorities are (here's a hint, they're somewhere where the sun don't shine).
Nausicaa
10-22-09, 03:52 PM
Not to mention that ACORN has recieved relatively little government funding. Something like $30 million over the last ten years. Maybe a lot to the organization, but a tiny sum as far as the gov't is concerned. Especially compared to the aforementioned defense contracts which are worth billions upon billions of dollars.
CRM114
10-22-09, 03:55 PM
:lol: Obama was not trying to insult his faithful followers.
I see we didn't read the thread again. :lol:
Dr Mabuse
10-22-09, 04:03 PM
Obviously this was the wrong thread to post that Cross thing in...
:lol:
classicman2
10-22-09, 04:04 PM
My issue with it is the weighting that groups like Fox news give the ACORN issue, putting it on par with Haliburton and the like. And it simply isn't equal. If I had to do a Sophie's Choice on the two: choosing between military contracters building facilities that electrocute our soldiers when they try to take a shower or raping co-workers and locking them in shipping containers so they couldn't report it, vs the alleged prostitution scam, I think that's an easy choice.
You don't believe an attempt to distort the electoral process in this county is somewhat important?
Nugent
10-22-09, 04:06 PM
My issue with it is the weighting that groups like Fox news give the ACORN issue, putting it on par with Haliburton and the like. And it simply isn't equal. If I had to do a Sophie's Choice on the two: choosing between military contracters building facilities that electrocute our soldiers when they try to take a shower or raping co-workers and locking them in shipping containers so they couldn't report it, vs the alleged prostitution scam, I think that's an easy choice.
And for the ultra-bleeding heart liberal response: maybe the ACORN workers were simply taking pity on other people that have been brought up in a difficult socio-economic situation and are just trying to run a small business. Doesn't the right love small business owners ;)
But seriously, people like Fox and Republicans in the senate and congress making such a big fuss over defunding groups like ACORN, while not doing much about the others just affirms to me where their priorities are (here's a hint, they're somewhere where the sun don't shine).
But your cool with ACORN promoting the whoring out/raping of 15 year old girls? :confused:
cpgator
10-22-09, 04:11 PM
I see we didn't read the thread again. :lol:
:lol: You are a faithful follower, not a Fox News viewer - therefore you shouldn't be insulted. Get it?
CRM114
10-22-09, 05:50 PM
You don't believe an attempt to distort the electoral process in this county is somewhat important?
Morons telling a fake prostitute how to avoid taxes is distorting the electoral process? rotfl
CRM114
10-22-09, 05:52 PM
:lol: You are a faithful follower, not a Fox News viewer - therefore you shouldn't be insulted. Get it?
No I was responding to the guy who said 50% of Fox's viewers are Democrat and independent and he was wondering if they would be offended. I'm one of those demographics and no I'm not. Read sequentially and it might make more sense.
classicman2
10-22-09, 05:52 PM
Voter fraud distorts the electoral process - don't you agree?
How many states is Acorn now under investigation for that very thing?
Birrman54
10-22-09, 06:00 PM
Voter registration fraud is not voter fraud.
Micky Mouse did not vote.
sracer
10-22-09, 07:00 PM
Voter registration fraud is not voter fraud.
Micky Mouse did not vote.
Riiight.
But dead people vote.
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Dead_people_voting
You are naive if you think that voter registration fraud isn't a prerequisite to actual voter fraud.
cpgator
10-22-09, 07:11 PM
No I was responding to the guy who said 50% of Fox's viewers are Democrat and independent and he was wondering if they would be offended. I'm one of those demographics and no I'm not. Read sequentially and it might make more sense.
I apologize for not being clear. I was trying to say that you are an Obama follower, and that you are not a Fox viewer. Therefore you would not be insulted.
Obama probably watches more Fox news than you. :lol:
wm lopez
10-22-09, 07:35 PM
Because emotional cripples constantly require reinforcement of their insecurities, whereas everyone else has actual lives? :shrug: Your answer could be used on way suck movies become hits at the box-office.
wm lopez
10-22-09, 07:37 PM
:lol: Obama was not trying to insult his faithful followers. But did insult some of those that voted for him.
Shoveler
10-22-09, 07:49 PM
Are you kidding? Play upon the fears and insecurities of anyone, and you'll have a devotee for life. Like feeding a stray.
Excellent point! This explains the overwhelming percentage of African Americans who support the Democrats. ;)
(NOTE: I realize this is already going to be targeted as a racist comment, despite it being an honest and accurate observation, and I definitely would omit the "stray" portion, I would never compare any group of people to stray dogs. Well, unless the stray dogs are chihuahuas, in which case the comparison is unavoidable ;) ).
jfoobar
10-22-09, 08:08 PM
You mean the ones who wouldn't vote for Obama in any scenario?
A lot of independents watch at least some Fox News, CRM. Many of them are sure to be quite concerned with the WH deliberately attacking a news organization based on their "opinion."
I am an independent and, until about 5 minutes ago, was actually pretty amused by this whole thing. Then I read that interchange between Gibbs and Tapper and suddenly find myself quite pissed off that the White House Press Secretary would basically dismiss Tapper's very valid questions with "that's our opinion."
I think I have demonstrated in prior posts here that I am not much of a fan of FN, but this is pretty dangerous ground that is being tread upon.
jfoobar
10-22-09, 08:12 PM
I don't think anyone really knows or cares. With O'Reilly, Hannity, and Beck they have gone BEYOND any sort of bias that exists on other outlets.
Without even mentioning the obvious (Maddow), have you seen Ed Schultz's show? It is revoltingly partisan. No network that gives an hour of prime time to Schultz can claim any high ground over Fox News at all, sorry.
jfoobar
10-22-09, 08:16 PM
I do agree that she is America's Sexiest Ever White House Press Secretary (sorry, Joe Lockhart fans).
I was always kind of partial to Dee Dee Myers back in the day, actually.
TheBigDave
10-22-09, 08:28 PM
White House attempted to bar Fox News from interviewing the Pay Czar.
Kudos to the other networks for standing up to the White House.
jfoobar
10-22-09, 08:42 PM
Kudos to the other networks for standing up to the White House.
:up: And this may prove to be the practical end of this petty anti-Fox revolution by the Obama White House. They really do need complicity from the other networks to make their crusade work and they don't appear to be getting it.
This should be a tremendous embarrassment for the Obama administration but it probably won't be.
Ky-Fi
10-22-09, 08:53 PM
Let me see, so far Obama has characterized me as a bitter person clinging to my guns and Bible, someone who listens to the wrong talk radio, someone who watches the wrong news, and now, in contrast to the free-thinking Democrats, I find out that I generally just do as I'm told :lol:
(I also love the way Obama has to bring on the southern drawl and "y'alls" when he's talking to the unwashed masses)
This strategy is going come back and bite them in 2012. Obama's claims of "bringing people together" may have worked in 2008. But it's going to get laughed at in 2012.
brayzie
10-23-09, 02:35 AM
But remember what your original statement was:
That's what Milo Bloom is responding to. He's pointing out that you don't have to wonder: similar stories with Xe and Haliburton have been downplayed.
I said:
I have to wonder if a similar story that implicated an organization with conservative ties would be downplayed like that.
"Similar story," meaning an undercover story involving a large scale organization that has employees assisting in alleged child prostitution, but with conservative/Republican ties.
Can you imagine if the employee's of banks who received bailouts got caught in trying to assist in alleged child prostitution?
@bout Blackwater/Xe,
I've read up about Blackwater/Xe but I haven't heard any major news channel touch up on it because I don't have a TV.
Was Fox the only one downplaying the story? Who, in your opinion, did follow the story with the amount of coverage it warranted?
@bout the other news channels sticking up for Fox,
I'm also impressed. I really dislike Fox News as a news channel but the White House shouldn't be telling people what's approved news and what isn't.
creekdipper
10-23-09, 09:03 AM
Let me see, so far Obama has characterized me as a bitter person clinging to my guns and Bible, someone who listens to the wrong talk radio, someone who watches the wrong news, and now, in contrast to the free-thinking Democrats, I find out that I generally just do as I'm told :lol:
You forgot to mention your antipathy toward people who are different from you. :rolleyes:
Ky-Fi
10-23-09, 09:45 AM
You forgot to mention your antipathy toward people who are different from you. :rolleyes:
Oh, yes, and also Michelle told me that my soul was broken.
Kudos to the other networks for standing up to the White House.
Here's a perfect example of Fox lying. The reason Fox was originally excluded from the Feinberg interview is ... FOX DIDN'T ASK TO INTERVIEW FEINBERG!!!.
Adding to the Fox News v. White House feud today is a dust-up over an interview with pay czar Ken Feinberg. Turns out, it was a sort of miscommunication, but the White House adds that if they had left Fox out it would be a case of "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"
The version Fox has pushed all day is that the network was excluded from an interview roundtable with Feinberg yesterday, and that bureau chiefs from ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN came to Fox's defense.
TPMDC dug into it, and here's what happened.
Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents, as they do with everything, asked to get the comments on camera. Treasury officials agreed and made a list of the networks who asked (Fox was not among them).
But logistically, all of the cameras could not get set up in time or with ease for the Feinberg interview, so they opted for a round robin where the networks use one pool camera. Treasury called the White House pool crew and gave them the list of the networks who'd asked for the interview.
The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn't on the list, was told that they hadn't asked and the crew said they needed to be included. Treasury called the White House and asked top Obama adviser Anita Dunn. Dunn said yes and Fox's Major Garrett was among the correspondents to interview Feinberg last night.
Simple as that, we're told, and the networks don't want to be seen as heroes for Fox.
TPMDC spoke with a network bureau chief this afternoon familiar with the situation who was surprised that Fox was portraying the news as networks coming to its rescue.
"If any member had been excluded it would have been the same thing, it has nothing to do with Fox or the White House or the substance of the issues," the bureau chief said. "It's all for one and one for all."
A Treasury spokesperson added: "There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing."
But the White House isn't backing down from its feud with Fox.
"This White House has demonstrated our willingness to exclude Fox News from newsmaking interviews, but yesterday we did not," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
An administration source wondered if the networks were annoyed Fox disclosed logistical negotiations since they are treated as off the record, but the bureau chief did not view this in the same light as discussions about, for example, the president going to Iraq.
As for the ongoing battle, Earnest said: "The president and other high ranking officials and people like Ken Feinberg have done interviews with Fox in the past and will do them in the future."
Without even mentioning the obvious (Maddow), have you seen Ed Schultz's show? It is revoltingly partisan. No network that gives an hour of prime time to Schultz can claim any high ground over Fox News at all, sorry.
Ed's on at 6p. That's not prime time.
Mad Dawg
10-24-09, 04:58 PM
Here's a perfect example of Fox lying. The reason Fox was originally excluded from the Feinberg interview is ... FOX DIDN'T ASK TO INTERVIEW FEINBERG!!!.
So, on other words...The White House (and Talking Points Memo) LIED!!!eleventy!one!!1!
Nugent
10-24-09, 05:29 PM
Here's a perfect example of Fox lying. The reason Fox was originally excluded from the Feinberg interview is ... FOX DIDN'T ASK TO INTERVIEW FEINBERG!!!.
It looks more like you just choosing to believe the "facts" of the organizations with which you agree.
If this is one of the examples of Fox lying, it's a rather poor one.
Chicken Little comes to mind.
wmansir
10-24-09, 05:40 PM
Here's a perfect example of Fox lying. The reason Fox was originally excluded from the Feinberg interview is ... FOX DIDN'T ASK TO INTERVIEW FEINBERG!!!.
Normally I wouldn't cite HuffPost as a news source, but according to this article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/24/fox-news-exec-on-attempte_n_332707.html) a FN exec claims they did request an interview and that Gibbs acknowledged Treasury made the mistake of excluding Fox from the list. As you see in a prior post, CBS reported that the pool organizations did get together and, in his words, say to the WH "That's it, you crossed the line". Also in your video Garrett, a WH approved real journalist, avoids blaming the admin but says he's never seen this happen in his 9 years at the WH.
I don't think this was a WH approved snub based on the WH's reaction, but I doubt it was an innocent mistake either. With the WH PR department running a coordinated effort to brand FN "not a news organization", they can hardly fault other departments for following their lead.
TheBigDave
10-24-09, 05:41 PM
Update from Mediaite:
Fox News: White House Apologized For Pay Czar Interview Snub “Mistake”
Mediaite has learned more about what happened with the decision by the Treasury Department to exclude Fox News in a round-robin of pool interviews Thursday.
But more importantly – there are more details emerging about the uproar over the initial decision, causing the Treasury Department to reverse their decision.
Fox News SVP of news and editorial programming Michael Clemente tells Mediaite the plan was to replace the Fox News interview with a Bloomberg interview instead. This was verified by an executive at another network. After the D.C. bureau chiefs at ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News discussed the decision, and pushed back at the unprecedented move, the Treasury Department relented and allowed FNC in. And according to Clemente, the decision was made by someone at the center of the White House vs. FNC feud. “They picked up the phone and called Anita Dunn, and Dunn said, ‘Fine let Fox in,’” he says of the Treasury Department.
“It was a very absolutely clear attempt to leave Fox out,” says Clemente.
The White House apologized to FNC yesterday for the move. “We were subsequently told it was a mistake by a low level person at the Treasury Department,” says Clemente. “Major [Garrett] was told that by Robert Gibbs and others.”
In the wake of the report Thursday on Fox News, the Treasury Department, a White House spokesperson and others have raised doubts about the original story, citing the fact that FNC did conduct the interview. “That’s what ultimately happened but that’s not what the initial planning was,” says Clemente. (Mediaite reporter Tommy Christopher has been in contact with Fox News before and after the publication of this article, and they cited the CBS Evening News report added to the article, rather than commenting directly.)
CBS News D.C. bureau chief Christopher Isham also serves as the pool chair. He tells Mediaite he convened a conference call and all the bureau chiefs agreed they were not comfortable with excluding one of the members of the pool in a pool interview.
The news has gotten a reaction from around the media world – with reports from CBS News and the AP, among others. And all show, once again, the White House losing the battle it has chosen to wage with Fox News.
I always thought prime time was 8p-11p. I guess if they want to make up their own label for whatever time there is, they have every right to do so, but I still think that's pretty odd.
Cheato
10-25-09, 08:02 AM
I will have to consider MSNBC the authority on what their own prime time lineup is. From:
Leading off the MSNBC primetime lineup is "The Ed Show," hosted by progressive radio talker Ed Schultz, 6-7 p.m. (ET).
Next.
I always thought prime time was 8p-11p. I guess if they want to make up their own label for whatever time there is, they have every right to do so, but I still think that's pretty odd.
I disagree. They shouldn't to take a commonly accepted term and redefine it to suit their advertising purposes. Can I call my new candy bar "calorie free" because I am not charging anything extra for the calories? No, I can't. Well, I am not sure if I could or couldn't legally, but if I did, I would be a deceptive asshole regardless. They should put a little TM symbol next to the word, and maybe respell it or throw in some odd capitalization or something: "MSNBC prYmEtYme(tm) lineup." Brack is right about prime time. (And now all the naysayers scuttle off to Google and Wikipedia to find sites to cite to back up their defense of MSNBC's right to redefine language.)
classicman2
10-25-09, 09:21 AM
Leading off the MSNBC primetime lineup is "The Ed Show," hosted by progressive radio talker Ed Schultz, 6-7 p.m. (ET).
progressive - :lol:
Why not use the correct term - liberal?
jfoobar
10-25-09, 10:14 AM
(And now all the naysayers scuttle off to Google and Wikipedia to find sites to cite to back up their defense of MSNBC's right to redefine language.)
Perhaps the normal naysayers just don't feel compelled to derail this thread and get into a debate about the merits of the various definitions of "prime time."
JasonF
10-25-09, 10:58 AM
progressive - :lol:
Why not use the correct term - liberal?
Correct term - :lol:
Why not use the proper words - proper words?
jfoobar
10-25-09, 11:00 AM
Correct term - :lol:
Why not use the proper words - proper words?
:lol:?? rotfl
Why not use the correct smilie, :dance:?
Goldblum
10-28-09, 11:13 AM
MSNBC was allied with the war effort early on. Plus no one watches MSNBC. If a tree falls in the woods...
...MSNBC will report it having fallen due to global warming.
Shoveler
10-28-09, 11:40 PM
Correct term - :lol:
Why not use the proper words - proper words?
Fixed (unless that is the font you reserve for lies spread by the White House and TPMDC ;) )
JasonF
10-29-09, 01:04 PM
Fixed (unless that is the font you reserve for lies spread by the White House and TPMDC ;) )
1. You're 4 days late.
2. Fixing posts is not allowed in this forum.
3. Way to miss the point of my joke.
4. It sounds way more like a miscommunication than a lie to me, since there seems to be no plausible motive for the White House to lie and say Fox never requested an interview then immediately grant an interview when Fox says "We'd like an interview."
Other than that, superb post.
Shoveler
10-29-09, 01:51 PM
1. You're 4 days late.
2. Fixing posts is not allowed in this forum.
3. Way to miss the point of my joke.
4. It sounds way more like a miscommunication than a lie to me, since there seems to be no plausible motive for the White House to lie and say Fox never requested an interview then immediately grant an interview when Fox says "We'd like an interview."
Other than that, superb post.
1. Sorry, I missed the expiration date on your post, didn't realize there was a statue of limitations.
3. Way to miss the point of my post.
4. No plausible motive?! How about because they knew how bad it would look if they said "Hell yeah, we denied Fox the interview... and we'd do it AGAIN!!!" They didn't grant the interview when Fox requested it, only after the other networks refused to go along with the blacklisting.
2. Saved this one for last because it will probably be lengthiest... You're absolutely right, and I should read and know the rules before posting. No excuse, I'm currently just a casual/infrequent browser and poster in this subforum, if I ever feel inclined to post again, I'll try to remember to revisit the rules before doing so.
HOWEVER.... (bear in mind that I am not claiming to have read the rules and crafted a post that skirted those rules. Had I acted responsibly, I would have constructed my post to avoid use of the "Fixed" gimmick)...
The rules state:
No "fixing" posts: This means when someone posts an opinion or point of view you're not allowed to edit or add a couple of words in the quoted portion and write "fixed" after it. This is done in order to limit misrepresentation, and since in most cases its use seems to be done in a manner that is tantamount to a threadcrap or personal attack, "fixed" posts are not allowed in the Political Forum. Such posts will simply be deleted by the moderators and continued abuse may lead to further action. The proper response is to quote the original post exactly and then make your comments outside of the quoted portion.
To address the 3 bolded sections of that rule...
1) I neither edited nor added to your words, they are verbatim; the rule does not state that you're not allowed to quote someone verbatim and write "fixed" after the quote
2) I agree that the post is not allowed (but only because I used the word "fixed"
3) I actually did quote the original post exactly, and then made my comments outside of the quoted portion (albeit after my inappropriate use of the word "fixed")
JasonF
10-29-09, 02:18 PM
1. Sorry, I missed the expiration date on your post, didn't realize there was a statue of limitations.
I'm just saying -- you come across as much less witty if you take four days to come up with a zinger.
3. Way to miss the point of my post.
Way to miss the point of ... wait, what were we talking about?
4. No plausible motive?! How about because they knew how bad it would look if they said "Hell yeah, we denied Fox the interview... and we'd do it AGAIN!!!" They didn't grant the interview when Fox requested it, only after the other networks refused to go along with the blacklisting.
Do you really think the White House is so inept that they'd try a ploy so easy to defeat, then immediately fold at the first sign of pushback? Probably you do. I disagree.
2. Saved this one for last because it will probably be lengthiest... You're absolutely right, and I should read and know the rules before posting. No excuse, I'm currently just a casual/infrequent browser and poster in this subforum, if I ever feel inclined to post again, I'll try to remember to revisit the rules before doing so.
HOWEVER.... (bear in mind that I am not claiming to have read the rules and crafted a post that skirted those rules. Had I acted responsibly, I would have constructed my post to avoid use of the "Fixed" gimmick)...
The rules state:
To address the 3 bolded sections of that rule...
1) I neither edited nor added to your words, they are verbatim; the rule does not state that you're not allowed to quote someone verbatim and write "fixed" after the quote
2) I agree that the post is not allowed (but only because I used the word "fixed"
3) I actually did quote the original post exactly, and then made my comments outside of the quoted portion (albeit after my inappropriate use of the word "fixed")
:lol: You'd make a great lawyer. FYI, that was meant as a compliment, not a personal attack.
jfoobar
10-29-09, 06:04 PM
:lol: You'd make a great lawyer. FYI, that was meant as a compliment, not a personal attack.
It doesn't matter how you meant it. It was still an insult.
At least one Democratic political strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration.
Political consultants are a staple of cable television talk shows, analyzing current events based on their own experiences working on campaigns or in government.
One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.
The message was, "We better not see you on again,'' said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue.''
In urging Democratic consultants to spurn Fox, White House officials might be trying to isolate the network and make it appear more partisan.
A boycott by Democratic strategists could also help drive the White House narrative that Fox is a fundamentally different creature than the other TV news networks. For their part, White House officials appear on Fox News -- but sporadically and with "eyes wide open,'' as one aide put it.
David Plouffe, the president's campaign manager and author of a new campaign book, The Audacity to Win, was scheduled to appear on Fox's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren last night as he promotes his book. His appearance, pre-empted by the breaking news of the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, has been rescheduled for Monday.
White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said Thursday night that she had checked with colleagues who "deal with TV issues'' and they had not told people to avoid Fox. On the contrary, they had urged people to appear on the network, Dunn wrote in an email.
But Patrick Caddell, a Fox News contributor and a former pollster for Democratic President Jimmy Carter, said he has spoken to Democratic consultants who have been told by the White House to avoid appearances on Fox. He declined to give their names.
Caddell said he had not gotten that message himself from the White House. "They know better than to tell me anything like that,'' he said.
Caddell added: "I have heard that they've done that to others in not too subtle ways. I find it appalling. When the White House gets in the business of suppressing dissent and comment, particularly from its own party, it hurts itself.''
THE REST OF THE ARTICLE IS A RECAP OF PREVIOUS EVENTS. READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE LINK BELOW.
So an anonymous Dem strategist, who is cirticizing the WH, but won't give his name because he doesn't want to upset the WH, is saying the WH doesn't want him on FN because this strategy will make FN seem even more partisan. Conversely, a close connection with the WH is able to reschedule an appearance on FN without retribution.
Furthermore, a FN guy says that he's also talked to other Dem strategists that say the exact same thing as the original Dem strategist, but he won't name names. Helluva article. Hard hitting.
kvrdave
11-07-09, 02:08 AM
4. It sounds way more like a miscommunication than a lie to me, since there seems to be no plausible motive for the White House to lie and say Fox never requested an interview then immediately grant an interview when Fox says "We'd like an interview."
You are painting yourself into a corner with this one. If Fox News never requested an interview, then every other news organization that has picked this story up don't know how to be journalists, because it is never mentioned by them. Also, if what you say is true, the WH apologized for absolutely nothing to appease Fox News. And all the other news channels in the pool stood up to the White House and made them "cave" over something that wasn't true. And the WH didn't tell the pool that Fox didn't request the interview.
That sounds more plausible to you than the WH simply escalating something they started?
C'mon, it is one thing to be a liberal or an Obama supporter, but this is devotional, apologist stuff that I wouldn't expect from anyone but Brack.
kvrdave
11-07-09, 02:11 AM
So an anonymous Dem strategist, who is cirticizing the WH, but won't give his name because he doesn't want to upset the WH, is saying the WH doesn't want him on FN because this strategy will make FN seem even more partisan. Conversely, a close connection with the WH is able to reschedule an appearance on FN without retribution.
Furthermore, a FN guy says that he's also talked to other Dem strategists that say the exact same thing as the original Dem strategist, but he won't name names. Helluva article. Hard hitting.
Kind of like Watergate. Just who the hell does Woodward think he is respecting his source. That's not journalism!!! Woodward and Fox News are the only people in the media to ever pass along information from someone who is only willing to do it if they can do it anonymously. This is a freaking first since Watergate.
C'mon, really?
Hank Ringworm
11-07-09, 03:08 AM
You are painting yourself into a corner with this one. If Fox News never requested an interview, then every other news organization that has picked this story up don't know how to be journalists, because it is never mentioned by them. Also, if what you say is true, the WH apologized for absolutely nothing to appease Fox News. And all the other news channels in the pool stood up to the White House and made them "cave" over something that wasn't true. And the WH didn't tell the pool that Fox didn't request the interview.
That sounds more plausible to you than the WH simply escalating something they started?
C'mon, it is one thing to be a liberal or an Obama supporter, but this is devotional, apologist stuff that I wouldn't expect from anyone but Brack.
JasonF will gladly paint himself into a corner, so long as he gets to repeat the administration's talking points. It's his thing now, if you haven't noticed.
Sean O'Hara
11-07-09, 10:26 AM
So an anonymous Dem strategist, who is cirticizing the WH, but won't give his name because he doesn't want to upset the WH, is saying the WH doesn't want him on FN because this strategy will make FN seem even more partisan. Conversely, a close connection with the WH is able to reschedule an appearance on FN without retribution.
Furthermore, a FN guy says that he's also talked to other Dem strategists that say the exact same thing as the original Dem strategist, but he won't name names. Helluva article. Hard hitting.
Yeah. Why would someone who's been threatened with professional blackballing by the White House want to remain anonymous when reporting the threat? Everyone knows anonymous whistle-blowers are cowards who should never be given credence.
JasonF
11-07-09, 10:39 AM
You are painting yourself into a corner with this one. If Fox News never requested an interview, then every other news organization that has picked this story up don't know how to be journalists, because it is never mentioned by them.
Welcome to the world of the modern media. Most "journalists" these days seem more interested in repeating talking points than doing any substantive work, and ill-informed opinion shouted as loudly as possible has replaced thoughtful and substantive analysis.
JasonF
11-07-09, 10:46 AM
JasonF will gladly paint himself into a corner, so long as he gets to repeat the administration's talking points. It's his thing now, if you haven't noticed.
I'd report this post to a Mod, but why bother? You'll get a warning, everyone will continue to make posts intended to score points rather than advance substantive discussion, and the people who can be counted on for intelligent discussion will continue to avoid this place.
kvrdave
11-07-09, 12:05 PM
Welcome to the world of the modern media. Most "journalists" these days seem more interested in repeating talking points than doing any substantive work, and ill-informed opinion shouted as loudly as possible has replaced thoughtful and substantive analysis.
C'mon, seriously? Maybe journalists are lazy today, but you still have the WH apologizing, etc. You can't really think this. I think you just don't want to believe that liberals can act this way....with enemies lists, etc.
I've said before that Obama seems to think that national politics can be played the same way that local politics can, and I don't think he is correct.
And I love you. :o
X
11-07-09, 12:59 PM
JasonF will gladly paint himself into a corner, so long as he gets to repeat the administration's talking points. It's his thing now, if you haven't noticed.You should address the issue instead of the person.
JasonF
11-07-09, 02:34 PM
C'mon, seriously? Maybe journalists are lazy today, but you still have the WH apologizing, etc. You can't really think this. I think you just don't want to believe that liberals can act this way....with enemies lists, etc.
Do I think the White House dislikes Fox News, or is treating them like the propaganda arm of the GOP? Absolutely. I simply don't think that in this particular instance, there was a deliberate attempt to freeze Fox News out of the pooled interview followed by an immediate capitulation. That doesn't make sense to me.
I've said before that Obama seems to think that national politics can be played the same way that local politics can, and I don't think he is correct.
How do you think local politics are played? How do you think the administration is trying to play things now? I've followed President Obama's career for a decade. Believe me -- he recognizes the differences between being a state senator, being a Senator, and being the President.
And I love you. :o
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. ;)
kvrdave
11-07-09, 08:18 PM
How do you think local politics are played? How do you think the administration is trying to play things now? I've followed President Obama's career for a decade. Believe me -- he recognizes the differences between being a state senator, being a Senator, and being the President.
I don't think he truly recognized how many people would be watching his every move and reminding him of the things he had said. I say that because I don't believe he is so genuinely opposed to telling the truth. I don't think he thought people would think twice about having bills online 3 days for public review, and I don't think he anticipated resistance, because he doesn't deal with it like a liberal, he deals with it like a Nixon.
This administration is all about getting a publicist and ad agency out of the press. See how ABC was treated, and then what they treated as newss
I will give this up because we obviously are both so far away from being even able to see a little of what the other believes as credible. This administration is with the press just like the head alien on V is. And the idea that the press stood up to a Fox mistake is laughable, and that the WH, in turn, apologized for a Fox mistake. If it was a Fox mistake, they needed to fight back, because this makes them look terrible to everyone who likes the idea of a press that keeps the powers honest. This story sounds so awful, and they just bent over and apologized when it wasn't true? Like I said, we are a long ways off. I'm against the Vs and you are joining their youth program. -ptth-
CharlieK
11-08-09, 12:31 AM
Kind of like Watergate. Just who the hell does Woodward think he is respecting his source. That's not journalism!!! Woodward and Fox News are the only people in the media to ever pass along information from someone who is only willing to do it if they can do it anonymously. This is a freaking first since Watergate.
C'mon, really?Your powerful "C'mon really?" really woke me up. This is all just as serious as Watergate. A WH administration is fucking with a news organization. Whatta scoop! We've never seen anything like it. God bless this brave anonymous American who's really sticking his/her neck out for such an important story.
Anonymous sources have their place, and at times can be invaluable, but they are used far too often today for even the silliest bullshit like this. The article highlights an anonymous Dem pundit bemoaning a WH trying to keep them off FNC, while the only attributable fact in the piece is about how someone close to Obama is rescheduling an appearance on FNC. You don't see a disconnect there? It's a shitty article.
kvrdave
11-08-09, 12:52 AM
I see the the bemoaning of someone wanting to keep their identity hidden, and it probably has to do with not wanting repercussions. I don't find that unusual. There was a bunch of it at the Fort Worth shooting. If you want people to speak about things that they don't really want to because they fear the consequences, you need to protect their identity. This isn't new, and if journalists want to find out more about a story, we always will.
Go google "condition of anonymity" and see if you think you would have those stories if you didn't have this. If you are a Dem pundit, you make money by being in good with the Dems. Wouldn't it seem very understandable to not want to be identified?
CharlieK
11-08-09, 01:11 AM
Probably not the result you were expecting, but interestingly this was the first article that popped up when I took your advice:
"Last week the Public Editor of The New York Times, Clark Hoyt, criticized the paper’s common practice of using anonymous sources, often in flagrant violation of its own policy. Drawing on several recent examples, Hoyt demonstrates that casually granting anonymity facilitates personal attacks without repercussion, provides cover for those who make false or misleading statements, and generally damages the credibility of the paper."
And while I agree with your post, the above is the crux of my problem with anonymous sources in the media. They're used far too often it seems with the goal of writing a sensational story as opposed to an even-handed, fact-based story.
creekdipper
11-08-09, 04:35 AM
I'd report this post to a Mod, but why bother? You'll get a warning, everyone will continue to make posts intended to score points rather than advance substantive discussion, and the people who can be counted on for intelligent discussion will continue to avoid this place.
Why not report the post & try to get the poster banned and silence him?
That's the approach the Obama White House would take.
Regarding your last "point": You seem to blindly defend the White House's attempt to avoid blame regarding the media gaffe, as if this administration has not already done some incredibly inept things (such as nominating Cabinet personnel with tax problems). In another recent thread, you totally misrepresented Deputy Dave's post in which he said Obama's speaking off the teleprompter made him "look like" a fool...which I got on first reading...and you implied that Dave was calling Obama a stammering fool. Those sort of things do not "advance substantive discussion"; rather, they simply come across as partisan comments that refuse to acknowledge any faults in your favored political party.
IMHO, your nit-picky comment about a humorous rebuttal to your red-letter day came across as being snarky & defensive rather than "substantive". Some posters may only check in occasionally & don't stay glued to the computer; for instance, I haven't checked the forum for days & only now saw this thread, which is already five pages or so. To me (although you apparently disagree), a posted comment is fair game for a response REGARDLESS of then the original post was made. For anyone to insult a poster and rank his 'wittiness' based upon the timeliness of the post seems to me to be a bit childish.
For someone who has been described as being brilliant, a genius, and uncommonly intelligent, Obama can come across as indecisive, vindictive, and short-sighted in some respects. One can't pin the blame on his advisors, either, since they were hand-picked by Obama himself.
It takes a large degree of gullibility to believe that the omission of Fox from any news events in which the rest of the WH pool of reporters is invited is merely a coincidence or "oversight". To me, the smart thing for a confident White House...one which is trying to prove that they are 'above the fray' and are taking the high road when being criticized...would be to make sure that their critics are not left out. Isn't that what "transparency" is all about? Instead, we hear words such as "Nixonian" being mentioned in the same breath as the way this incident was handled.
Not a great way for the White House to impress its intelligence and openness upon others.
creekdipper
11-08-09, 04:51 AM
Your powerful "C'mon really?" really woke me up. This is all just as serious as Watergate. A WH administration is fucking with a news organization. Whatta scoop! We've never seen anything like it. God bless this brave anonymous American who's really sticking his/her neck out for such an important story.
Anonymous sources have their place, and at times can be invaluable, but they are used far too often today for even the silliest bullshit like this. The article highlights an anonymous Dem pundit bemoaning a WH trying to keep them off FNC, while the only attributable fact in the piece is about how someone close to Obama is rescheduling an appearance on FNC. You don't see a disconnect there? It's a shitty article.
The use of anonymous sources is certainly debatable, although I felt the OP made a valid point with the Watergate analogy. I felt that his point was saying that people don't seem to have a problem with the use of anonymous sources as long as it's their axe that is being ground.
For the record, although you seem to disagree, I find the thought of the administration's trying to manipulate the news pretty frightening. It's not simply that they want to freeze out their opponents, it's the idea of sending a message to other news organizations that those who are critical of the WH may receive retaliatory treament that interferes with their main functions. The Fourth Estate has long served an important role in free societies. It's a stretch to make comparisons with Hugo Chavez, but the WH actions, though seemingly insignificant, are certainly in line with the same way of thinking of controlling the media & squelching dissent.
And it only serves to make the WH look petty and provide fodder for its critics.
JasonF
11-08-09, 11:34 AM
It is nice to see so many people leap to defend Helen Thomas, even if you are all a few years late to the table.
Snarkiness aside, President Bush diminished access for some media outlets and increased access for others. So did President Clinton. So did the first President Bush. So did President Reagan. And on and on. The idea that President Obama is some uniquely anti-press president, frog-marching us toward fascism by dismantling Fox News, is simply laughable.
CharlieK
11-08-09, 11:42 AM
The use of anonymous sources is certainly debatable, although I felt the OP made a valid point with the Watergate analogy. I felt that his point was saying that people don't seem to have a problem with the use of anonymous sources as long as it's their axe that is being ground.
For the record, although you seem to disagree, I find the thought of the administration's trying to manipulate the news pretty frightening. It's not simply that they want to freeze out their opponents, it's the idea of sending a message to other news organizations that those who are critical of the WH may receive retaliatory treament that interferes with their main functions. The Fourth Estate has long served an important role in free societies. It's a stretch to make comparisons with Hugo Chavez, but the WH actions, though seemingly insignificant, are certainly in line with the same way of thinking of controlling the media & squelching dissent.
And it only serves to make the WH look petty and provide fodder for its critics.
Just so I know where you're coming from, were you equally frightened by the way the Bush WH manipulated & colluded with Fox News with regards to promoting the Admin talking points; and the way they "froze out" MSNBC according to Perino? With respect, I'm simply curious if your position comes more from a principled place or partisan.
And I'm not approaching this with an axe to grind at all. My vote for Obama was more of a vote against Palin/McCain, and Obama has disappointed me so far. I realize the importance of anonymous sources, I just think they're being overused in ways I've already stated. Still, while I'm saddened by the state of the Fourth Estate, with the reach of the internet and the advent of online-only journalism, I think there will always be good work being done. So I'm not particularly worried about how this or any WH will affect things.
I do agree with you in that all of the time and energy the WH is expending against FNC is petty and a poor use of time.
kvrdave
11-08-09, 11:04 PM
Probably not the result you were expecting, but interestingly this was the first article that popped up when I took your advice:
"Last week the Public Editor of The New York Times, Clark Hoyt, criticized the paper’s common practice of using anonymous sources, often in flagrant violation of its own policy. Drawing on several recent examples, Hoyt demonstrates that casually granting anonymity facilitates personal attacks without repercussion, provides cover for those who make false or misleading statements, and generally damages the credibility of the paper."
And while I agree with your post, the above is the crux of my problem with anonymous sources in the media. They're used far too often it seems with the goal of writing a sensational story as opposed to an even-handed, fact-based story.
:lol: I actually saw that one when I googled. I will say that I think it is used far too often as well, but it seems to be used "evenly" so I don't see this as a big deal. We get more news than we ever have before and about more minor stories than ever before, so it only seems logical that this would increase to where it has.
X
11-10-09, 03:11 PM
And she's gone...
Dunn leaving White House, Pfeiffer takes over
White House communications director Anita Dunn will step down from her post at the end of the month and Dan Pfeiffer, her deputy, will take over, according to sources familiar with the move.
Dunn, a longtime Democratic media consultant, took over the job on an interim basis earlier this year when Ellen Moran abruptly left the post to take a job at the Commerce Department. Dunn will return to Squier Knapp Dunn, the consulting firm where she is a partner, but will remain as a consultant to the White House on the communications and strategic matters.
The move will be formally announced later today.
On Oct. 11, speaking on CNN, Dunn attacked Fox News as "a wing of the Republican Party." Her comments sparked a fresh battled between the White House and the network. In response to the criticism, Fox News executive Michael Clemente said in a statement that Obama's aides had decided to "declare war on a news organization."
A source inside the White House, who was not authorized to speak about strategy meetings, said at the time that Dunn went out front against Fox first and foremost because it was her job, but also because it potentially gave the administration the opportunity to distance itself from the flap with the Roger Ailes-led news channel once she leaves the communications job.
Pfeiffer began working for Obama in 2007 following Sen. Evan Bayh's (Ind.) decision not to pursue the presidency. He served a stint as the traveling press secretary for Obama's presidential bid but eventually took a slot overseeing the campaign's communications operation.
Prior to Obama, Pfeiffer worked for Sen. Tim Johnson's (S.D.) re-election race in 2002 and on then Sen. Tom Daschle's (S.D.) unsuccessful bid in 2004.
The passing of the baton from Dunn to Pfeiffer had long been expected within White House circles as she had made clear when she took the job that the "interim" in her title was meant to be taken literally.
Unlike when Moran left, the transition should be somewhat seamless as Dunn and Pfeiffer are longtime confidantes -- having worked closely in Daschle's political orbit for years.
The turnover in the communications director slot is the only change in Obama's senior staff with 10 months (or so) of his presidency having passed.
Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff and former Illinois Congressman, has made clear he would like to return to elected office at some point in the not-too-distant future and, if past presidencies are any guide there will be some further turnover in the senior staff over the next year or so.
Eyebrows were raised recently when David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, was asked in a live chat with the Washington Post about why he had not joined the Administration and responded: "I needed to take a couple years to re-balance and spend time with my family, knowing that perhaps in the future my life will need to get unbalanced again."
At least her husband will still have a job in the Administration, replacing Greg Craig.
crazyronin
11-10-09, 06:57 PM
And she's gone...
At least her husband will still have a job in the Administration, replacing Greg Craig.
I wouldn't worry about her employment prospects. I'm sure that John Podesta has a job waiting for her at the Center for American Progress.
JasonF
11-10-09, 07:15 PM
I wouldn't worry about her employment prospects. I'm sure that John Podesta has a job waiting for her at the Center for American Progress.
Or maybe she'll return to Squier Knapp Dunn, the consulting firm where she is a partner. But that's just a guess, based on nothing at all, and in particular not baed on the second paragraph of the article X posted.
If it's true (which I don't know one way or the other) but given the end of the clip from the Daily Show he kind of undermined his own argument by editing the footage as well. At this point we don't know what Fox actually showed, since I'm pretty sure the 300 wasn't part of it... Now if Fox did actually edit things like that, then they should be called out on that.
dork
11-11-09, 11:51 AM
If Fox News went out of business, would there even be a Daily Show anymore?
nemein
11-11-09, 11:54 AM
Here's the original post/video... pretty lame of Fox/Hannity to try something so transparent -ohbfrank- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,572549,00.html
CRM114
11-11-09, 12:25 PM
If it's true (which I don't know one way or the other) but given the end of the clip from the Daily Show he kind of undermined his own argument by editing the footage as well. At this point we don't know what Fox actually showed, since I'm pretty sure the 300 wasn't part of it... Now if Fox did actually edit things like that, then they should be called out on that.
Huh? The Daily Show showed you what Hannity showed. Why is there confusion? Typical Fox News propaganda.
nemein
11-11-09, 12:30 PM
The point is he could have made the point w/o the final punch line. Since by adding that the Daily Show already showed they were willing to edit the clip to get a laugh it brought into question whether or not anything else in the clip was edited. Now from the other link I turned up its obvious that they didn't but why even introduce the possibility. Or to put it another way, the Daily Show could have potentially done the exact same thing they are showing Fox did and people would have bought it just like some people bought what Hannity did.
sracer
11-11-09, 12:34 PM
Here's the original post/video... pretty lame of Fox/Hannity to try something so transparent -ohbfrank- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,572549,00.html
It's not pretty lame. It is downright offensive. They are no better (nor worse) than MSNBC.
CRM114
11-11-09, 12:36 PM
It's not pretty lame. It is downright offensive. They are no better (nor worse) than MSNBC.
Do you have evidence of MSNBC doing something similar?
CRM114
11-11-09, 12:38 PM
The point is he could have made the point w/o the final punch line. Since by adding that the Daily Show already showed they were willing to edit the clip to get a laugh it brought into question whether or not anything else in the clip was edited. Now from the other link I turned up its obvious that they didn't but why even introduce the possibility. Or to put it another way, the Daily Show could have potentially done the exact same thing they are showing Fox did and people would have bought it just like some people bought what Hannity did.
Except they are not a news show. And if they edited the original clip, it would defeat the comedy of the bit.
sracer
11-11-09, 12:38 PM
Do you have evidence of MSNBC doing something similar?
Yes... I have seen evidence, but I don't have it handy. Not that it matters since you would find some reason why when MSNBC did it, it is different.
nemein
11-11-09, 12:39 PM
They are a commentary show just like Hannity is right (except one is done for humor and the other is supposed to be more serious)? I don't watch either so I don't know. I didn't get the impression that Hannity was a strictly "news" program though...
nemein
11-11-09, 12:40 PM
Do you have evidence of MSNBC doing something similar?
Wasn't MSNBC the one that did the clip about the "racist" gun toting people at the Obama rally, where the gun toting guy was actually black (although that was never shown in the MSNBC clip)?
CRM114
11-11-09, 12:41 PM
Yes... I have seen evidence, but I don't have it handy. Not that it matters since you would find some reason why when MSNBC did it, it is different.
Sure I would. Handy to make such comments and not have anything to back it up. Business as usual around here.
CRM114
11-11-09, 12:43 PM
Wasn't MSNBC the one that did the clip about the "racist" gun toting people at the Obama rally, where the gun toting guy was actually black (although that was never shown in the MSNBC clip)?
Racists and gun-toters are mutually exclusive. But I'm still wondering when MSNBC spliced together two rallies as one completely misrepresenting a movement.
sracer
11-11-09, 12:47 PM
Racists and gun-toters are mutually exclusive. But I'm still wondering when MSNBC spliced together two rallies as one completely misrepresenting a movement.
You just proved my point. So things are only equivalent when they are identical. Business as usual around here.
CRM114
11-11-09, 12:53 PM
You just proved my point. So things are only equivalent when they are identical. Business as usual around here.
You're grasping.
The topic is misrepresenting political support. You claim MSNBC is just as bad. Prove it.
nemein
11-11-09, 01:07 PM
You're grasping.
The topic is misrepresenting political support. You claim MSNBC is just as bad. Prove it.
Shouldn't the topic be about misrepresenting the news, not just a specific rally?
Seems like they are cropping the image (not showing the guy is black) to match what they want to report rather than what happened. Seems similar to Fox using different footage to match what they want to report rather than what happened.
Spin away.
JasonF
11-11-09, 02:01 PM
There were actually multiple gun-toting people at that protest. The one MSNBC was reporting on was white. Another was black. I agree that the presence of the black guy with the gun completely undermines MSNBC's point, but they did not manipulate their footage to disguise the person's race.
I will also note that I remember it took several days for the complete picture to come out and for people to realize that their were multiple armed people at the event, so it is possible that MSNBC was unaware of the armed black person when they made this report.
Venusian
11-11-09, 02:06 PM
The organizer says it was a black guy:
http://www.getliberty.org/files/NBCFIRELETTER.pdf
they deliberately covered up the fact that the individual they were framing was himself African-American.
At 15 seconds in the lady says the AP reports that a dozen people in all at the event were visible carrying fire arms so they were aware there were multiple people there.
wishbone
11-11-09, 02:14 PM
I will also note that I remember it took several days for the complete picture to come out and for people to realize that their were multiple armed people at the event, so it is possible that MSNBC was unaware of the armed black person when they made this report.Does MSNBC use stock footage or does a producer with MSNBC put the clip together? My guess is the latter.
Are you talking about the black guy who took an assault rifle to an an Obama appearance in Arizona? His pastor is one of those guys stating publically that Obama should be killed.
Edit: I see from the video above it's the same guy
superdeluxe
11-11-09, 02:17 PM
It is amusing that Fox News beats the combined ratings of the other 3 cable networks.
X
11-11-09, 02:19 PM
Shouldn't the topic be about misrepresenting the news, not just a specific rally?Anything seen on Hannity should be taken as opinion (and in his case, a moron's opinion). Unfortunately, that MSNBC piece was on a news show, not an opinion show.
CRM114
11-11-09, 02:35 PM
So the only person with a gun was a black guy? Is that what is being argued?
Oh and that since Fox ran their bogus misrepresentation on an opinion show (one of their highest rated shows) it is perfectly legitimate to show a rally interspersed with pics from another rally with the word "EARLIER" on the screen?
Just love the deflection and the denial that Fox News is a propaganda arm of the right wing.
Venusian
11-11-09, 02:37 PM
So the only person with a gun was a black guy? Is that what is being argued?
Argued by whom?
I'm simply stating that MSNBC used footage in a deceiving way. They cropped the shot so you couldn't see the race of the guy and then talked about racial undertones. Similarly, FOX used footage in a deceiving way. They aired older footage while talking about a more recent rally.
superdeluxe
11-11-09, 02:39 PM
So an anonymous Dem strategist, who is cirticizing the WH, but won't give his name because he doesn't want to upset the WH, is saying the WH doesn't want him on FN because this strategy will make FN seem even more partisan. Conversely, a close connection with the WH is able to reschedule an appearance on FN without retribution.
Furthermore, a FN guy says that he's also talked to other Dem strategists that say the exact same thing as the original Dem strategist, but he won't name names. Helluva article. Hard hitting.
lol come on man, are you even trying? This happens all the time (Anon sources)
CRM114
11-11-09, 02:40 PM
Argued by whom?
I'm simply stating that MSNBC used footage in a deceiving way. They cropped the shot so you couldn't see the race of the guy and then talked about racial undertones. Similarly, FOX used footage in a deceiving way. They aired older footage while talking about a more recent rally.
Then they show the white guy with the microphone WITH A GUN.
Venusian
11-11-09, 02:41 PM
So the only person with a gun was a black guy? Is that what is being argued?
Oh and that since Fox ran their bogus misrepresentation on an opinion show (one of their highest rated shows) it is perfectly legitimate to show a rally interspersed with pics from another rally with the word "EARLIER" on the screen?
Just love the deflection and the denial that Fox News is a propaganda arm of the right wing.
:lol:
You're just proving post 167.
btw, I'm not defending fox news at all. They suck. I don't watch them. I'm just saying msnbc sucks too.
Venusian
11-11-09, 02:42 PM
Then they show the white guy with the microphone WITH A GUN.
Do you think MSNBC was being deceitful by cropping the race of the guy they first showed? Simple question.
CRM114
11-11-09, 02:46 PM
Please. Simply showing a gun on one guy who happens to be black (a nutty black who follows a preacher who thinks Obama should be dead) does not misrepresent the fact that there were a half dozen others with guns.
Venusian
11-11-09, 02:48 PM
:lol:
Yes, and it doesn't detract from their hypothesis on racism either.
sracer was right.
CRM114
11-11-09, 02:49 PM
Do you think MSNBC was being deceitful by cropping the race of the guy they first showed? Simple question.
I think the point was the assault rifle and not the owner. The fact that one guy was a nutty black guy doesn't change the story. Fox showing 40,000 people from another rally and saying they were there today protesting something entirely different is blatant misrepresentation.
Venusian
11-11-09, 02:50 PM
That wasn't a yes or no.
They were talking about racism, not just assault rifles.
CRM114
11-11-09, 02:51 PM
:lol:
Yes, and it doesn't detract from their hypothesis on racism either.
sracer was right.
:lol: So now racism is a hypothesis.
Venusian
11-11-09, 02:52 PM
:lol: So now racism is a hypothesis.
"white people showing up with guns" for racist reasons is a hypothesis.
CRM114
11-11-09, 02:59 PM
Q: Are there people showing up at Obama speeches carrying guns and/or racist propaganda?
Q: Were there 50,000 people at the health care rally?
Venusian
11-11-09, 03:02 PM
A: Yes to the "or". I don't know about any "ands"
A: No
CRM114
11-11-09, 03:05 PM
So there you go. You and sracer can reflect upon that post.
Venusian
11-11-09, 03:17 PM
I reflected. MSNBC cropped video because it didn't match the point they were making. Same as FOX.
CRM114
11-11-09, 03:23 PM
I reflected. MSNBC cropped video because it didn't match the point they were making. Same as FOX.
Except one point was true and one point was not. Interesting psychology at work here.
Venusian
11-11-09, 03:25 PM
white people showing up with guns for racist reasons is true?
[citation needed]
dick_grayson
11-11-09, 03:25 PM
I reflected. MSNBC cropped video because it didn't match the point they were making. Same as FOX.
yeah, but cropping and using entirely different footage aren't the same thing. the motive, perhaps, was.
Venusian
11-11-09, 03:26 PM
yeah, but cropping and using entirely different footage aren't the same thing. the motive, perhaps, was.
well duh they aren't the same things. one was also a video of a black guy with a gun and the other of a crowd, not the same thing either.
dick_grayson
11-11-09, 03:27 PM
well duh they aren't the same things. one was also a video of a black guy with a gun and the other of a crowd, not the same thing either.
I was referring to the manipulation of the video.....duh!
CRM114
11-11-09, 03:30 PM
white people showing up with guns for racist reasons is true?
[citation needed]
You answered YES when I asked you. One black guy out of at least a dozen armed convinces you there is no racism involved? The black guy negates all of the anecdotes of death threats and racist propaganda? Look around, man.
Venusian
11-11-09, 03:33 PM
I said yes to or, not and.
Show me where the other armed guys at that rally were racist.
SunMonkey
11-11-09, 03:41 PM
Except one point was true and one point was not. Interesting psychology at work here.
So there were no people at the rally? The rally did happen and many (10K or more) showed up.
It seems to me that what is "true" is that Sean Hannity used a clip to make it seem as if more showed up than actually did and MSNBC used a clip to make it seem as if more racists with guns showed up than actually did (if any).
CRM114
11-11-09, 03:42 PM
I said yes to or, not and.
Show me where the other armed guys at that rally were racist.
I would if that was Contessa Brewer's main point in that lone MSNBC report. Her statement was that guns at rallies only heightens the racist tension that is felt at these rallies via signs and tshirts etc.
CRM114
11-11-09, 03:43 PM
So there were no people at the rally? The rally did happen and many (10K or more) showed up.
It seems to me that what is "true" is that Sean Hannity used a clip to make it seem as if more showed up than actually did and MSNBC used a clip to make it seem as if more racists with guns showed up than actually did (if any).
If that were the case, the piece would have shown the dozen or so reported gun carriers.
Shoveler
11-11-09, 04:33 PM
If that were the case, the piece would have shown the dozen or so reported gun carriers.
Are you actually suggesting that the fact that they didn't show the dozen or so "reported" gun carriers adds credibility to their statement that there were a dozen or so gun carriers? That they would have shown all of them if and only if they were trying to inflate the racist count? I think I'm not understanding your point.
General Zod
11-11-09, 05:47 PM
http://www.drudgereport.com/siren.gif
Obama Grants FOXNEWS Interview, DRUDGE has learned; Major Garrett will conduct interview in China next week...
brayzie
11-11-09, 09:41 PM
MSNBC used a cropped image of a black man with a gun on his waist at the rally and then wondered about the racial overtones of "white people showing up with guns on their waists."
That's not really what I would define as "deceitful."
And even if it was, so what? What FOX did was way more deceitful.
jfoobar
11-11-09, 10:16 PM
And even if it was, so what? What FOX did was way more deceitful.
The "way more" is even debatable. What is not really debatable is:
1. What Hannity's show did here was very deceitful and astoundingly unethical
2. What MSNBC has or has not done in the past has nothing to do with how unethical it was.
Clearly, the astute response. Responding with any sort of animosity would have been a horrible move. Ignoring it altogether may or may not have been a bad move.
I don't personally believe that it was inadvertent, but proving otherwise would be impossible.
kvrdave
11-12-09, 12:17 AM
I don't personally believe that it was inadvertent, but proving otherwise would be impossible.
Plus, it may not jibe with our current beliefs.
wm lopez
11-12-09, 01:31 AM
It is amusing that Fox News beats the combined ratings of the other 3 cable networks.
It's more amazing that the majority of DVDTALK members watch the other 3 cable networks.:scratch2:
Paul_SD
11-12-09, 04:51 AM
Clearly, the astute response. Responding with any sort of animosity would have been a horrible move. Ignoring it altogether may or may not have been a bad move.
I don't personally believe that it was inadvertent, but proving otherwise would be impossible.
It absolutely WAS inadvertent. It's not like they keep past footage like this filed away with the date it was taken. It was probably just laying out on a table for the last couple months and some techie just grabbed it by mistake.
CRM114
11-12-09, 09:39 AM
Hannity responded on tonight's show:
An "inadvertent mistake." Give me a break! rotfl
sracer
11-12-09, 10:15 AM
It absolutely WAS inadvertent. It's not like they keep past footage like this filed away with the date it was taken. It was probably just laying out on a table for the last couple months and some techie just grabbed it by mistake.
:bdance:
rotfl
Good thing that techie didn't accidentally pick up footage of a memorial service.
Hannity spent the good part of last year's presidential election deliberately taking things out of context. This false footage is consistent with that.
dick_grayson
11-12-09, 11:35 AM
It absolutely WAS inadvertent. It's not like they keep past footage like this filed away with the date it was taken. It was probably just laying out on a table for the last couple months and some techie just grabbed it by mistake.
I'm pretty sure they use film and Steenbeck machines.....so that would make sense. ;)
dick_grayson
11-12-09, 11:37 AM
:bdance:
rotfl
Good thing that techie didn't accidentally pick up footage of a memorial service.
Or of, say, the gay marriage rally from last month...
Nausicaa
11-12-09, 01:46 PM
So, now that we've learned Blackwater executives planned to bribe away their murder of 17 innocent people, I wonder if we can expect Fox News to deliver weeks of breathless ACORN style hard-hitting journalism coupled with outraged opinion segments over the government's billion dollar contracts with these criminal thugs? Not only did they recieve hundreds of millions of dollars more in taxpayer dollars, but this story also has actual victims, and directly involves high level players in the organization.
So, now that we've learned Blackwater executives planned to bribe away their murder of 17 innocent people, I wonder if we can expect Fox News to deliver weeks of breathless ACORN style hard-hitting journalism coupled with outraged opinion segments over the government's billion dollar contracts with these criminal thugs? Not only did they recieve hundreds of millions of dollars more in taxpayer dollars, but this story also has actual victims, and directly involves high level players in the organization.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/middleeast/11blackwater.html?_r=2&hpSo you're looking for a monolithic news structure having each entity report exactly the same news?
Isn't one of the great things about our quasi-non-government-controlled news outlets that each is free to report on what it wants? Doesn't that help get all the news out there?
JasonF
11-12-09, 02:51 PM
So you're looking for a monolithic news structure having each entity report exactly the same news?
Isn't one of the great things about our quasi-non-government-controlled news outlets that each is free to report on what it wants? Doesn't that help get all the news out there?
You would think that, wouldn't you?
Here's a great piece by Mark Bowden that touches on this point in the context of a broader discussion on the role of the political operative in modern journalism.
The Story Behind the Story
If you happened to be watching a television news channel on May 26, the day President Obama nominated U.S. Circuit Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, you might have been struck, as I was, by what seemed like a nifty investigative report.
First came the happy announcement ceremony at the White House, with Sotomayor sweetly saluting her elderly mother, who as a single parent had raised the prospective justice and her brother in a Bronx housing project. Obama had chosen a woman whose life journey mirrored his own: an obscure, disadvantaged beginning followed by blazing academic excellence, an Ivy League law degree, and a swift rise to power. It was a moving TV moment, well-orchestrated and in perfect harmony with the central narrative of the new Obama presidency.
But then, just minutes later, journalism rose to perform its time-honored pie-throwing role. Having been placed by the president on a pedestal, Sotomayor was now a clear target. I happened to be watching Fox News. I was slated to appear that night on one of its programs, Hannity, to serve as a willing foil to the show’s cheerfully pugnacious host, Sean Hannity, a man who can deliver a deeply held conservative conviction on any topic faster than the speed of thought. Since the host knew what the subject matter of that night’s show would be and I did not, I’d thought it best to check in and see what Fox was preoccupied with that afternoon.
With Sotomayor, of course—and the network’s producers seemed amazingly well prepared. They showed a clip from remarks she had made on an obscure panel at Duke University in 2005, and then, reaching back still farther, they showed snippets from a speech she had made at Berkeley Law School in 2001. Here was this purportedly moderate Latina judge, appointed to the federal bench by a Republican president and now tapped for the Supreme Court by a Democratic one, unmasked as a Race Woman with an agenda. In one clip she announced herself as someone who believed her identity as a “Latina woman” (a redundancy, but that’s what she said) made her judgment superior to that of a “white male,” and in the other she all but unmasked herself as a card-carrying member of the Left Wing Conspiracy to use America’s courts not just to apply and interpret the law but, in her own words, to make policy, to perform an end run around the other two branches of government and impose liberal social policies by fiat on an unsuspecting American public.
In the Duke clip, she not only stated that appellate judges make policy, she did so in a disdainful mock disavowal before a chuckling audience of apparently like-minded conspirators. “I know this is on tape and I should never say that, because we don’t make law, I know,” she said before being interrupted by laughter. “Okay, I know. I’m not promoting it, I’m not advocating it, I’m … you know,” flipping her hands dismissively. More laughter.
Holy cow! I’m an old reporter, and I know legwork when I see it. Those crack journalists at Fox, better known for coloring and commenting endlessly on the news than for actually breaking it, had unearthed not one but two explosive gems, and had been primed to expose Sotomayor’s darker purpose within minutes of her nomination! Leaving aside for the moment any question about the context of these seemingly damaging remarks—none was offered—I was impressed. In my newspaper years, I prepared my share of advance profiles of public figures, and I know the scut work that goes into sifting through a decades-long career. In the old days it meant digging through packets of yellowed clippings in the morgue, interviewing widely, searching for those moments of controversy or surprise that revealed something interesting about the subject. How many rulings, opinions, articles, legal arguments, panel discussions, and speeches had there been in the judge’s long years of service? What bloodhound producer at Fox News had waded into this haystack to find these two choice needles?
Then I flipped to MSNBC, and lo!… they had the exact same two clips. I flipped to CNN… same clips. CBS… same clips. ABC… same clips. Parsing Sotomayor’s 30 years of public legal work, somehow every TV network had come up with precisely the same moments! None bothered to say who had dug them up; none offered a smidgen of context. They all just accepted the apparent import of the clips, the substance of which was sure to trouble any fair-minded viewer. By the end of the day just about every American with a TV set had heard the “make policy” and “Latina woman” comments. By the end of the nightly news summaries, millions who had never heard of Sonia Sotomayor knew her not only as Obama’s pick, but as a judge who felt superior by reason of her gender and ethnicity, and as a liberal activist determined to “make policy” from the federal bench. And wasn’t it an extraordinary coincidence that all these great news organizations, functioning independently—because this, after all, is the advantage of having multiple news-gathering sources in a democracy—had come up with exactly the same material in advance?
They hadn’t, of course. The reporting we saw on TV and on the Internet that day was the work not of journalists, but of political hit men. The snippets about Sotomayor had been circulating on conservative Web sites and shown on some TV channels for weeks. They were new only to the vast majority of us who have better things to do than vet the record of every person on Obama’s list. But this is precisely what activists and bloggers on both sides of the political spectrum do, and what a conservative organization like the Judicial Confirmation Network exists to promote. The JCN had gathered an attack dossier on each of the prospective Supreme Court nominees, and had fed them all to the networks in advance.
This process—political activists supplying material for TV news broadcasts—is not new, of course. It has largely replaced the work of on-the-scene reporters during political campaigns, which have become, in a sense, perpetual. The once-quadrennial clashes between parties over the White House are now simply the way our national business is conducted. In our exhausting 24/7 news cycle, demand for timely information and analysis is greater than ever. With journalists being laid off in droves, savvy political operatives have stepped eagerly into the breach. What’s most troubling is not that TV-news producers mistake their work for journalism, which is bad enough, but that young people drawn to journalism increasingly see no distinction between disinterested reporting and hit-jobbery. The very smart and capable young men (more on them in a moment) who actually dug up and initially posted the Sotomayor clips both originally described themselves to me as part-time, or aspiring, journalists.
The attack that political operatives fashioned from their work was neither unusual nor particularly effective. It succeeded in shaping the national debate over her nomination for weeks, but more serious assessments of her record would demolish the caricature soon enough, and besides, the Democrats have a large majority in the Senate; her nomination was approved by a vote of 68–31. The incident does, however, illustrate one consequence of the collapse of professional journalism. Work formerly done by reporters and producers is now routinely performed by political operatives and amateur ideologues of one stripe or another, whose goal is not to educate the public but to win. This is a trend not likely to change.
Writing in 1960, the great press critic A. J. Liebling, noting the squeeze on his profession, fretted about the emergence of the one-newspaper town:
The worst of it is that each newspaper disappearing below the horizon carries with it, if not a point of view, at least a potential emplacement for one. A city with one newspaper, or with a morning and an evening paper under one ownership, is like a man with one eye, and often the eye is glass.
Liebling, who died in 1963, was spared the looming prospect of the no-newspaper town. There is, of course, the Internet, which he could not have imagined. Its enthusiasts rightly point out that digital media are in nearly every way superior to paper and ink, and represent, in essence, an upgrade in technology. But those giant presses and barrels of ink and fleets of delivery trucks were never what made newspapers invaluable. What gave newspapers their value was the mission and promise of journalism—the hope that someone was getting paid to wade into the daily tide of manure, sort through its deliberate lies and cunning half-truths, and tell a story straight. There is a reason why newspaper reporters, despite polls that show consistently low public regard for journalists, are the heroes of so many films. The reporter of lore was not some blue blood or Ivy League egghead, beholden to society’s powerful interests, be they corporate, financial, or political. We liked our newsmen to be Everymen—shoe-leather intellectuals, cynical, suspicious, and streetwise like Humphrey Bogart in Deadline—U.S.A. or Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story or Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men. The Internet is now replacing Everyman with every man. Anyone with a keyboard or cell phone can report, analyze, and pull a chair up to the national debate. If freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, today that is everyone. The city with one eye (glass or no) has been replaced by the city with a million eyes. This is wonderful on many levels, and is why the tyrants of the world are struggling, with only partial success, to control the new medium. But while the Internet may be the ultimate democratic tool, it is also demolishing the business model that long sustained news*papers and TV’s network-news organizations. Unless someone quickly finds a way to make disinterested reporting pay, to compensate the modern equivalent of the ink-stained wretch (the carpal-tunnel curmudgeon?), the Web may yet bury Liebling’s cherished profession.
Who, after all, is willing to work for free?
Morgen Richmond, for one—the man who actually found the snippets used to attack Sotomayor. He is a partner in a computer-consulting business in Orange County, California, a father of two, and a native of Canada, who defines himself, in part, as a political conservative. He spends some of his time most nights in a second-floor bedroom/office in his home, after his children and wife have gone to bed, cruising the Internet looking for ideas and information for his blogging. “It’s more of a hobby than anything else,” he says. His primary outlet is a Web site called VerumSerum.com, which was co-founded by his friend John Sexton. Sexton is a Christian conservative who was working at the time for an organization called Reasons to Believe, which strives, in part, to reconcile scientific discovery and theory with the apparent whoppers told in the Bible. Sexton is, like Richmond, a young father, living in Huntington Beach. He is working toward a master’s degree at Biola University (formerly the Bible Institute of Los Angeles), and is a man of opinion. He says that even as a youth, long before the Internet, he would corner his friends and make them listen to his most recent essay. For both Sexton and Richmond, Verum Serum is a labor of love, a chance for them to flex their desire to report and comment, to add their two cents to the national debate. Both see themselves as somewhat unheralded conservative thinkers in a world captive to misguided liberalism and prey to an overwhelmingly leftist mainstream media, or MSM, composed of journalists who, like myself, write for print publications or work for big broadcast networks and are actually paid for their work.
Richmond started researching Sotomayor after ABC News Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos named her as the likely pick back on March 13. The work involved was far less than I’d imagined, in part because the Internet is such an amazing research tool, but mostly because Richmond’s goal was substantially easier to achieve than a journalist’s. For a newspaper reporter, the goal in researching any profile is to arrive at a deeper understanding of the subject. My own motivation, when I did it, was to present not just a smart and original picture of the person, but a fair picture. In the quaint protocols of my ancient newsroom career, the editors I worked for would have accepted nothing less; if they felt a story needed more detail or balance, they’d brusquely hand it back and demand more effort. Richmond’s purpose was fundamentally different. He figured, rightly, that anyone Obama picked who had not publicly burned an American flag would likely be confirmed, and that she would be cheered all the way down this lubricated chute by the Obama-loving MSM. To his credit, Richmond is not what we in the old days called a “thumbsucker,” a lazy columnist who rarely stirs from behind his desk, who for material just reacts to the items that cross it. (This defines the vast majority of bloggers.) Richmond is actually determined to add something new to the debate.
“The goal is to develop original stories that attract attention,” he told me. “I was consciously looking for something that would resonate.”
But not just anything resonant. Richmond’s overarching purpose was to damage Sotomayor, or at least to raise questions about her that would trouble his readers, who are mostly other conservative bloggers. On most days, he says, his stuff on Verum Serum is read by only 20 to 30 people. If any of them like what they see, they link to it or post the video on their own, larger Web sites.
Richmond began his reporting by looking at university Web sites. He had learned that many harbor little-seen recordings and transcripts of speeches made by public figures, since schools regularly sponsor lectures and panel discussions with prominent citizens, such as federal judges. Many of the events are informal and unscripted, and can afford glimpses of public figures talking unguardedly about their ideas, their life, and their convictions. Many are recorded and archived. Using Google, Richmond quickly found a list of such appearances by Sotomayor, and the first one he clicked on was the video of the 2005 panel discussion at Duke University Law School. Sotomayor and two other judges, along with two Duke faculty members, sat behind a table before a classroom filled with students interested in applying for judicial clerkships. The video is 51 minutes long and is far from riveting. About 40 minutes into it, Richmond says, he was only half listening, multitasking on his home computer, when laughter from the sound track caught his ear. He rolled back the video and heard Sotomayor utter the line about making policy, and then jokingly disavow the expression.
“What I found most offensive about it was the laughter,” he says. “What was the joke? … Here was a sitting appellate judge in a room full of law students, treating the idea that she was making policy or law from the bench as laughable.” He recognized it as a telling in-joke that his readers would not find funny.
Richmond posted the video snippet on YouTube on May 2, and then put it up with a short commentary on Verum Serum the following day, questioning whether Sotomayor deserved to be considered moderate or bipartisan, as she had been characterized. “I’m not so sure this is going to fly,” he wrote, and then invited readers to view the video. He concluded with sarcasm: “So she’s a judicial activist … I’m sure she is a moderate one though! Unbelievable. With a comment like this I only hope that conservatives have the last laugh if she gets the nomination.”
A number of larger conservative Web sites, notably Volokh.com (the Volokh Conspiracy, published by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh) and HotAir.com (published by conservative commentator Michelle Malkin), picked up the video, and on May 4 it was aired on television for the first time, by Sean Hannity.
On Malkin’s Web site, Richmond had come across a short, critical reference to a speech Sotomayor had given at Berkeley Law School, in which, according to Malkin, the prospective Supreme Court nominee said “she believes it is appropriate for a judge to consider their ‘experiences as women and people of color’ in their decision making, which she believes should ‘affect our decisions.’”
Malkin told me that her “conservative source” for the tidbit was privileged. She used the item without checking out the actual speech, which is what Richmond set out to find. He had some trouble because Malkin had placed the speech in 2002 instead of 2001, but he found it—the Honorable Mario G. Olmos Law & Cultural Diversity Memorial Lecture—in the Berkeley Law School’s La Raza Law Journal, bought it, and on May 5 posted the first detailed account of it on his blog. He ran large excerpts from it, and highlighted in bold the now infamous lines: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
Richmond then commented:
To be fair, I do want to note that the statement she made… is outrageous enough that it may have in fact been a joke. Although since it’s published “as-is” in a law journal I’m not sure she is entitled to the benefit of the doubt on this. The text certainly does not indicate that it was said in jest. I have only a lay-person’s understanding of law and judicial history, but I suspect the judicial philosophy implied by these statements is probably pretty typical amongst liberal judges. Personally, I wish it seemed that she was actually really trying to meet the judicial ideal of impartiality, and her comments about making a difference are a concern as this does not seem to be an appropriate focus for a member of the judiciary. I look forward to hopefully seeing some additional dissection and analysis of these statements by others in the conservative legal community.
The crucial piece of Richmond’s post, Sotomayor’s “wise Latina woman” comment, was then picked up again by other sites, and was soon being packaged with the Duke video as Exhibits A and B in the case against Sonia Sotomayor. Richmond told me that he was shocked by the immediate, widespread attention given to his work, and a little startled by the levels of outrage it provoked. “I found her comments more annoying than outrageous, to be honest,” he said.
In both instances, Richmond’s political bias made him tone-deaf to the context and import of Sotomayor’s remarks. Bear in mind that he was looking not simply to understand the judge, but to expose her supposed hidden agenda.
Take the Duke panel first: most of the video, for obvious reasons, held little interest for Richmond. My guess is that you could fit the number of people who have actually watched the whole thing into a Motel Six bathtub. Most of the talk concerned how to make your application for a highly competitive clerkship stand out. Late in the discussion, a student asked the panel to compare clerking at the district-court (or trial-court) level and clerking at the appellate level. Sotomayor replied that clerks serving trial judges are often asked to rapidly research legal questions that develop during a trial, and to assist the judge in applying the law to the facts of that particular case. The appellate courts, on the other hand, are in the business of making rulings that are “precedential,” she said, in that rulings at the appellate level serve as examples, reasons, or justifications for future proceedings in lower courts. She went on to make the ostensibly controversial remark that students who planned careers in academia or public-interest law ought to seek a clerkship at the appellate level, because that’s where “policy is made.”
This is absolutely true, in the sense she intended: precedential decisions, by definition, make judicial policy. They provide the basic principles that guide future rulings. But both Sotomayor and her audience were acutely aware of how charged the word policy has become in matters concerning the judiciary—conservatives accuse liberal judges, not without truth, of trying to set national policy from the bench. This accusation has become a rallying cry for those who believe that the Supreme Court justices should adhere strictly to the actual language and original intent of the Constitution, instead of coloring the law with their own modish theories to produce such social experiments as school desegregation, Miranda warnings, abortions on demand, and so forth. The polite laughter that caught Richmond’s ear was recognition by the law students that the judge had inadvertently stepped in a verbal cow pie. She immediately recognized what she had done, expressed mock horror at being caught doing so on tape, and then pronounced a jocular and exaggerated mea culpa, like a scoring runner in a baseball game tiptoeing back out onto the diamond to touch a base that he might have missed. Sotomayor went on to explain in very precise terms how and why decisions at the appellate level have broader intellectual implications than those at the lower level. It is where, she said, “the law is percolating.”
Seen in their proper context, these comments would probably not strike anyone as noteworthy. If anything, they showed how sensitive Sotomayor and everyone else in the room had become to fears of an “activist court.”
A look at the full “Latina woman” speech at Berkeley reveals another crucial misinterpretation.
To his credit, Richmond posted as much of the speech as copyright law allows, attempting to present the most important sentence in context. But he still missed the point. Sotomayor’s argument was not that she sought to use her position to further minority interests, or that her gender and background made her superior to a white male. Her central argument was that the sexual, racial, and ethnic makeup of the legal profession has in fact historically informed the application of law, despite the efforts of individual lawyers and judges to rise above their personal stories—as Sotomayor noted she labors to do. Her comment about a “wise Latina woman” making a better judgment than a “white male who hasn’t lived that life” referred specifically to cases involving racial and sexual discrimination. “Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences… our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging,” she said. This is not a remarkable insight, nor is it even arguable. Consider, say, how an African-American Supreme Court justice might have viewed the Dred Scott case, or how a female judge—Sotomayor cited this in the speech—might have looked upon the argument, advanced to oppose women’s suffrage, that females are “not capable of reasoning or thinking logically.” The presence of blacks and women in the room inherently changes judicial deliberation. She said that although white male judges have been admirably able on occasion to rise above cultural prejudices, the progress of racial minorities and women in the legal profession has directly coincided with greater judicial recognition of their rights. Once again, her point was not that this progress was the result of deliberate judicial activism, but that it was a natural consequence of fuller minority and female participation.
One of her central points was that all judges are, to an extent, defined by their identity and experience, whether they like it or not.
“I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences,” she said, “but I accept my limitations.”
Richmond seems a bright and fair-minded fellow, but he makes no bones about his political convictions or the purpose of his research and blogging. He has some of the skills and instincts of a reporter but not the motivation or ethics. Any news organization that simply trusted and aired his editing of Sotomayor’s remarks, as every one of them did, was abdicating its responsibility to do its own reporting. It was airing propaganda. There is nothing wrong with reporting propaganda, per se, so long as it is labeled as such. None of the TV reports I saw on May 26 cited VerumSerum.com as the source of the material, which disappointed but did not surprise Richmond and Sexton.
Both found the impact of their volunteer effort exciting. They experienced the heady feeling of every reporter who discovers that the number of people who actually seek out new information themselves, even people in the news profession, is vanishingly small. Show the world something it hasn’t seen, surprise it with something new, and you fundamentally alter its understanding of things. I have experienced this throughout my career, in ways large and small. I remember the first time I did, very early on, when I wrote a magazine profile of a promising Baltimore County politician named Ted Venetoulis, who was preparing a run for governor of Maryland. I wrote a long story about the man, examining his record as county executive and offering a view of him that included both praise and criticism. I was 25 years old and had never written a word about Maryland politics. I was not especially knowledgeable about the state or the candidates, and the story was amateurish at best. Yet in the months of campaigning that followed, I found snippets from that article repeatedly quoted in the literature put out by Venetoulis and by his opponents. My story was used both to promote him and to attack him. To a large and slightly appalling extent, the points I made framed the public’s perception of the candidate, who, as it happened, lost.
Several hours of Internet snooping by Richmond at his upstairs computer wound up shaping the public’s perception of Sonia Sotomayor, at least for the first few weeks following her nomination. Conservative critics used the snippets to portray her as a racist and liberal activist, a picture even Richmond now admits is inaccurate. “She’s really fairly moderate, compared to some of the other candidates on Obama’s list,” he says. “Given that conservatives are not going to like any Obama pick, she really wasn’t all that bad.” He felt many of the Web sites and TV commentators who used his work inflated its significance well beyond his own intent. But he was not displeased.
“I was amazed,” he told me.
For his part, Sexton says: “It is a beautiful thing to live in this country. It’s overwhelming and fantastic, really, that an ordinary citizen, with just a little bit of work, can help shape the national debate. Once you get a taste of it, it’s hard to resist.”
I would describe their approach as post-journalistic. It sees democracy, by definition, as perpetual political battle. The blogger’s role is to help his side. Distortions and inaccuracies, lapses of judgment, the absence of context, all of these things matter only a little, because they are committed by both sides, and tend to come out a wash. Nobody is actually right about anything, no matter how certain they pretend to be. The truth is something that emerges from the cauldron of debate. No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to mistake it for journalism. Today it is rapidly replacing journalism, leading us toward a world where all information is spun, and where all “news” is unapologetically propaganda.
In this post-journalistic world, the model for all national debate becomes the trial, where adversaries face off, representing opposing points of view. We accept the harshness of this process because the consequences in a courtroom are so stark; trials are about assigning guilt or responsibility for harm. There is very little wiggle room in such a confrontation, very little room for compromise—only innocence or degrees of guilt or responsibility. But isn’t this model unduly harsh for political debate? Isn’t there, in fact, middle ground in most public disputes? Isn’t the art of politics finding that middle ground, weighing the public good against factional priorities? Without journalism, the public good is viewed only through a partisan lens, and politics becomes blood sport.
Television loves this, because it is dramatic. Confrontation is all. And given the fragmentation of news on the Internet and on cable television, Americans increasingly choose to listen only to their own side of the argument, to bloggers and commentators who reinforce their convictions and paint the world only in acceptable, comfortable colors. Bloggers like Richmond and Sexton, and TV hosts like Hannity, preach only to the choir. Consumers of such “news” become all the more entrenched in their prejudices, and ever more hostile to those who disagree. The other side is no longer the honorable opposition, maybe partly right; but rather always wrong, stupid, criminal, even downright evil. Yet even in criminal courts, before assigning punishment, judges routinely order pre*sentencing reports, which attempt to go beyond the clash of extremes in the courtroom to a more nuanced, disinterested assessment of a case. Usually someone who is neither prosecution nor defense is assigned to investigate. In a post-journalistic society, there is no disinterested voice. There are only the winning side and the losing side.
There’s more here than just an old journalist’s lament over his dying profession, or over the social cost of losing great newspapers and great TV-news operations. And there’s more than an argument for the ethical superiority of honest, disinterested reporting over advocacy. Even an eager and ambitious political blogger like Richmond, because he is drawn to the work primarily out of political conviction, not curiosity, is less likely to experience the pleasure of finding something new, or of arriving at a completely original, unexpected insight, one that surprises even himself. He is missing out on the great fun of speaking wholly for himself, without fear or favor. This is what gives reporters the power to stir up trouble wherever they go. They can shake preconceptions and poke holes in presumption. They can celebrate the unnoticed and puncture the hyped. They can, as the old saying goes, afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. A reporter who thinks and speaks for himself, whose preeminent goal is providing deeper understanding, aspires even in political argument to persuade, which requires at the very least being seen as fair-minded and trustworthy by those—and this is the key—who are inclined to disagree with him. The honest, disinterested voice of a true journalist carries an authority that no self-branded liberal or conservative can have. “For a country to have a great writer is like having another government,” Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote. Journalism, done right, is enormously powerful precisely because it does not seek power. It seeks truth. Those who forsake it to shill for a product or a candidate or a party or an ideology diminish their own power. They are missing the most joyful part of the job.
This is what H. L. Mencken was getting at when he famously described his early years as a Baltimore Sun reporter. He called it “the life of kings.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910/media
slop101
11-12-09, 03:11 PM
There's just too many news organizations out there and not enough news, so they have to specialize. But that brings on a whole new set of problems.
Some of us remember having only three channels on TV. That's right. Three. And I'm only talking about the '80s here. So there was something unifying in the way we all sat down to watch the same news, all of it coming from the same point of view. Even if the point of view was retarded and wrong, even if some stories went criminally unreported, we at least all shared it.
That's over. There effectively is no "mass media" any more so, where before we disagreed because we saw the same news and interpreted it differently, now we disagree because we're seeing completely different freaking news. When we can't even agree on the basic facts, the differences become irreconcilable. That constant feeling of being at bitter odds with the rest of the world (regardless of which side you're on) brings with it a tension that just builds and builds.
CRM114
11-12-09, 03:13 PM
If we can't agree on basic facts, one of the two parties is lying.
X
11-12-09, 03:23 PM
You would think that, wouldn't you?
Here's a great piece by Mark Bowden that touches on this point in the context of a broader discussion on the role of the political operative in modern journalism.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910/mediaThat's quite tangental from the discussion of news organizations being able to report on what they want (whether they go through the effort is another thing), but it does somewhat address why I referred to them as quasi-non-government-controlled.
brayzie
11-12-09, 03:24 PM
So you're looking for a monolithic news structure having each entity report exactly the same news?
Isn't one of the great things about our quasi-non-government-controlled news outlets that each is free to report on what it wants? Doesn't that help get all the news out there?
I think the point was that FOX is severly biased.
I agree with the poster. I would like to see FOX, as well as other news organizations cover this story.
classicman2
11-12-09, 04:08 PM
I think the point was that FOX is severly biased.
I agree with the poster. I would like to see FOX, as well as other news organizations cover this story.
It's not just Fox that is severely biased.
JasonF
11-12-09, 04:11 PM
That's quite tangental from the discussion of news organizations being able to report on what they want (whether they go through the effort is another thing), but it does somewhat address why I referred to them as quasi-non-government-controlled.
It's not at all tangential to what you said:
So you're looking for a monolithic news structure having each entity report exactly the same news?
Isn't one of the great things about our quasi-non-government-controlled news outlets that each is free to report on what it wants? Doesn't that help get all the news out there?
We have five major television network news organizations. We have at least three major weekly news magazines. We have the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Tribune Company, and other news papers. In theory, it should work exactly as you say -- that a dozen news outlets will have a dozen different perspectives on what is worthy of reportage and how to approach that reportage. The reality, though, as that they almost always all publish the same damned thing, and they almost always all approach it in the same context (albeit not necessarily with the same viewpoint).
slop101
11-12-09, 04:14 PM
If we can't agree on basic facts, one of the two parties is lying.You missed the point. "The basic facts as they are presented" - it's not the same thing as what you're suggesting.
For example, take the same news story from MSNBC vs. Fox, and see if they're presented the same way. When both sides might be missing out on context and certain pertinent information, you're just going be be pointlessly butting heads.
X
11-12-09, 04:19 PM
It's not at all tangential to what you said:
We have five major television network news organizations. We have at least three major weekly news magazines. We have the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Tribune Company, and other news papers. In theory, it should work exactly as you say -- that a dozen news outlets will have a dozen different perspectives on what is worthy of reportage and how to approach that reportage. The reality, though, as that they almost always all publish the same damned thing, and they almost always all approach it in the same context (albeit not necessarily with the same viewpoint).Well then argue with the other people who are saying one outlet carries one type of story and another carries another.
JasonF
11-12-09, 04:36 PM
Well then argue with the other people who are saying one outlet carries one type of story and another carries another.
So you're looking for a monolithic message board structure having each poster argue exactly the same points?
;)
crazyronin
11-12-09, 06:29 PM
If we can't agree on basic facts, one of the two parties is lying.
I found that out recently when I started checking out MSNBC.
I don't watch either one because of their subtle/not-so-subtle propagandized news coverage.
What objective news channels do people here watch?
slop101
11-13-09, 12:24 AM
What objective news channels do people here watch?The bolded words are part of the problem. Start by reading and listening.
brayzie
11-13-09, 12:59 AM
Yeah, my dad does that.
He listens to talk radio whenever he's in the car and has read everything from Michael Savage to Sean Hannity.
slop101
11-13-09, 01:20 AM
I did not mean talk radio, or print articles from the same clowns on Fox and msnbc.
Try these:
http://www.npr.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
or sift through http://news.google.com/
brayzie
11-13-09, 01:44 AM
Thanks for the links.
What about the documentaries on PBS? Are those pretty good/objective?
slop101
11-13-09, 02:23 AM
Ideally, you should watch anything out there and be able to interpret them properly and arrive at conclusions seen through your own life-filter. And in order for that to as learned and objective as possible it helps to travel, meet and get to know as many people as you can.
brayzie
11-13-09, 02:35 AM
I do that now, but filtering all of it and then trying to compare it to everything else to figure out what's true, what's not is time consuming.
I don't mind reading up on solid facts and objective coverage, and then doing additional research.
But it can be frustrating listening to misinformation, propaganda etc.
There's only so many hours in the day.
nemein
11-13-09, 06:41 AM
I did not mean talk radio, or print articles from the same clowns on Fox and msnbc.
Yeah these people are completely unbiased -rolleyes- Frankly the only political "news" source I trust is CSPAN since it is directly from the politicians themselves. Everything else should be considered commentary IMHO.
mosquitobite
11-13-09, 08:31 AM
Yeah these people are completely unbiased -rolleyes- Frankly the only political "news" source I trust is CSPAN since it is directly from the politicians themselves. Everything else should be considered commentary IMHO.
I have to agree.
I do listen to NPR, not because I think it's unbiased, but because I like hearing the "other" side at times. I like to yell at the radio sometimes :D
classicman2
11-13-09, 08:40 AM
Yeah these people are completely unbiased -rolleyes- Frankly the only political "news" source I trust is CSPAN since it is directly from the politicians themselves. Everything else should be considered commentary IMHO.
Yeah these people are completely unbiased -rolleyes- Frankly the only political "news" source I trust is CSPAN since it is directly from the politicians themselves. Everything else should be considered commentary IMHO.
You trust the politicians? :eek: ;)
slop101
11-13-09, 03:50 PM
Yeah these people are completely unbiased -rolleyes- Frankly the only political "news" source I trust is CSPAN since it is directly from the politicians themselves. Everything else should be considered commentary IMHO.My mistake - I assumed it was obvious that I meant less biased than the norm, or somewhat objective instead of completely objective.
I'll not make that mistake again, and just spell everything out since it's apparent that people like you can only see one of two extremes and absolutely nothing in-between.
TheBigDave
11-13-09, 07:18 PM
MSNBC uses photoshopped pics of Sarah Palin.
Around the 1:00 mark they use a photoshop of Palin in a black miniskirt.
At the 2:04 mark they use the photoshop of Palin in a bikini holding a machine gun.
So we have FNC using alternate footage to make a Conservative event look better. And we have MSNBC using doctored photos (and video of the black teaparty guy) to attack Conservatives.
dolphinboy
11-13-09, 07:25 PM
MSNBC uses photoshopped pics of Sarah Palin.
Around the 1:00 mark they use a photoshop of Palin in a black miniskirt.
At the 2:04 mark they use the photoshop of Palin in a bikini holding a machine gun.
So we have FNC using alternate footage to make a Conservative event look better. And we have MSNBC using doctored photos (and video of the black teaparty guy) to attack Conservatives.
You seriously found the above clip to be an attack piece?
The clip on the miniskirt was gone before you really had time to see it and it was when they were discussing that she was hot. If they used a photo that wasn't really her, it's not even CLOSE to the same thing as what Hannity did accidentally on purpose.
crazyronin
11-13-09, 07:29 PM
MSNBC uses photoshopped pics of Sarah Palin.
Around the 1:00 mark they use a photoshop of Palin in a black miniskirt.
At the 2:04 mark they use the photoshop of Palin in a bikini holding a machine gun.
So we have FNC using alternate footage to make a Conservative event look better. And we have MSNBC using doctored photos (and video of the black teaparty guy) to attack Conservatives.
In the bikini 'shoop, she's holding a pellet gun. I have the exact same gun.
Buy: