Democrats — This Is How You Treat Fox News!
Rep. Keith Ellison called out Sean Hannity in an interview yesterday that was supposed to be about the sequester. Ellison starts after watching a lead in that plays stupid scary music over a mashup video intended to show President Obama in a bad (not objective! not both sides do it!) light:
“I mean, you know, quite frankly, you are the worst excuse for a journalist I’ve ever seen. Quite frankly, you are the worst excuse for a journalist I’ve ever seen. …What you just displayed was not journalism. It was yellow journalism. It wasn’t anything close to try to tell the American people what’s really going on. I mean it’s just shocking.
…Every journalistic ethic I have ever heard of was just violated by you.
…You are a shill for the Republican party. …You alibi them 100% of the time.”
Called.Him.Out.Son. This, really, is how you treat the Fox Noise entertainers — don’t let them get away with pretending they are journalists. The following is TPM’s highlight reel of the entire 10 minute interview. If you have the 10 minutes, you should see the whole thing.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIVW_0ZYGA0[/youtube]
Not that it matters, but it’s about time. I’ve never seen the Fox puppets even attempt any sort of balanced journalism. They may cry about MSNBC, but they at least they call the POTUS & Democrats out when they disagree. They also DO try to show balanced journalism, however most right wingers don’t want to answer to what the majority of Americans think so they stay away. Go figure!
@B.P.K… Some MSNBC talking heads do others don’t. Just like there are some relatively reasonable people at Fox. (take Shep Smith or that woman who got in Rove’s face election night. Meghan Kelley I think it is.)
Is it any different than Al Sharpton stating on-air that he would never critize the president… or the discussion on MSNBC about whether Obama should be on Mount Rushmore or have a special mounument just in his honor. I don’t disagree with Ellison. Hannity is a disgrace. But let’s put it in perspective. You could make the same comments about every word that comes out of Ed Schultz’s mouth.
Just because MSNBC doesn’t exactly equal Fox doesn’t mean it’s any better at all.
Comparing Ed Shultz to Sean Hannity is like comparing a chevy to a yugo
While a chevy may have a few issues overall its a decent car. Yugo were junk from the begining. Hannity is in a class by himself
Just because MSNBC doesn’t exactly equal Fox doesn’t mean it’s any better at all.
Both have a lot of entertainment value and the show must go on… sometimes when people look fake, it’s because they are.
Ironically if you want investigative reporting that’s usually more significant and rooted in reality then check the multiple stream media/Youtube or even Russian TV and Press TV. I don’t really have time for the mainstream (inc.) military industrial media in America anymore. Although I did happen to see O’Reilly giving Rubio advice on how to be fake in the mainstream media recently, he even waved his hand like it was some Jedi/Jesuit mind trick in the mainstream media world… where perceptions are reality.
Hannity is in a class by himself
He could be a parody, if he wasn’t real.
All the media meets my expectations. It almost entirely entertainment or opinion. What I would like, but do not expect, are facts and information and a modicum of “why”, without the commentary, slant, and snark. Obviously, I do not get that from any of the current sources. People are fans of either Fox or MSNBC, as extreme examples, because they provide “news you can choose” which serves to validate viewers opinions and philosophy.
One thing I have noticed, and have been waiting for the right topic to write about it, is that my perception is that Fox spent the entire first four years of the President’s first term, referring to him as “Obama.” In his second term, they seem to be referring to him as “President Obama.” I’m not sure my perception is reality though. Has anyone else noticed that?
My take on that, if it is true, is that Fox decided to legitimize Obama’s presidency for whatever reason. Maybe they are trying to become mainstream or something.
+1 Dave.
What passes for TV news is entertainment, opinion, ratings wh*ring (local broadcast), and / or the right’s self-reinforcing echo chamber.
I almost never bother with any televised news coverage. I don’t mind a bias, but present the facts fairly before you introduce your ‘spin’. That’s why I love NPR’s news coverage. Without ratings pressure, they can take the time to dive deeper into a topic. Yes they have their bias, but I’ve always been able to extract the facts from their coverage, and correct for the bias.
I like Current TV and I second RT, Russian TV. Most foreign news, BBC, France 24 or NHK from Japan, are superior to most American news. As to MSNBC, Rachel Maddow is excellent.
All of the channels I mentioned are on Comcash, err, Comcast.
BBC News is quite good, CNN International used to be fantastic (I haven’t seen it in a long time) and I also like the real news bits of Al Jazeera. AJ also has its whacko news slots, but the news operation is quite good.
And those of you working on the equivelence of FOX with MSNBC, you’ll need to do this before you can do that:
Show us where the MSNBC execs control the daily editorial content of that station in the way that Fox does. This is the source of all of their bias and why they are widely accused of being the PR arm of the RNC.
The only way you can get to the “both sides do it” canard is if you think of FOX as real news of some sort. And you’ll have to point me to the news organizations who send their reporters and producers marching orders on the daily to plump for or work to undermine specific initiatives by the government.
@Andy – You only think Schultz is a Chevy because you agree. Making fun of Fox is pointless. Absolutely no point to it. Do you think Ellison’s take down changed one mind. I don’t. The only thing it accomplished was fleeting amusement. Big deal.
And as I said, Fox is far worse. Not much redeeming quality at all. MSNBC at least has Maddow and Chris Hayes. But fucking hell MSNBC just hired Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod! Masters of half truths and subterfuge. That’s news? You get the honest story? That’s a joke. Actually it’s worse than a joke. It’s disgusting.
“All the media meets my expectations. It almost entirely entertainment or opinion.”
“you’ll need to do this before you can do that: Show us where the MSNBC execs control the daily editorial content of that station in the way that Fox does.”
Actually, no I don’t because I was not attempting to create an equivalence of the type “MSNBC is the same as Fox”
Sometimes you can take things at face value instead of searching for hidden meanings, trap doors, and other ulterior motives. It was an observation not an attack.
MSCNBC is in the entertainment business. So is Fox. David Frum’s term for was the “conservative entertainment complex.” Fox caters to a certain constituency. MSNBC, and indeed most of the other media do that as well. We don’t need to attach a conditional label such as “conservative” or “liberal” for all of them to be the “entertainment complex.”
“All the media meets my expectations. It almost entirely entertainment or opinion.”
It’s not an equivalence, but they are all the same.
Right.
Equivalence: “the relation holding between two statements if they are either both true or both false so that to affirm one and to deny the other would result in a contradiction ”
I could list the ways in which they were equivalent (both television, both “news”, similiar formats, et al) but that wasn’t the issue. I said all media were primarily entertainment. They are all ratings driven. In that, I believe I am correct. Through your lens, that means I said that MSNBC does the same as Fox, which I did not say, nor do I believe. You see everything through some kind of lens in which you find hidden meaning. Understood.
Ah yes, pedantry. So lets have some more — we aren’t dealing with relations between statements, right?
But making all of the media entertainment with criteria that you define lets you sit on that oh-so-above-it all centrist high horse. There isn’t much about the current TV news environment that interests me, but there are programs who do work at some real information or context or even news. Claiming that it is all entertainment without “facts and information and a modicum of “why” is largely about striking a pose.
Through your lens, that means I said that MSNBC does the same as Fox, which I did not say, nor do I believe.
Which is pretty interesting, since there were multiple people talking above my post, so how do you get that I was talking to just you? Unless you were feeling your pose a little threatened there.