O'Reilly out at FOX!

[onekidanddone]

44 minutes ago, JMarie said:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/22/media/fox-news-staffers-seth-rich-dnc-sean-hannity/index.html

 

After reading the article, I have one thing to ask. How does one get integrity and Fox in the same sentence? 

[nvmbr02]

So Fox News retracted the Seth Rich story

And Sean Hannity is having a meltdown. First on the Radio and now on twitter. What a douche. 

 

 

[onekidanddone]

They can retract all they want, but the damage is done.  The family continues to be traumatized, the Fox Spews watching ass hats dig in deeper with their paranoia, and the sinviling piece of garbage Hanity  gets more attention for his next book. 

I often think this is SOP (standard operating procedure) at Fox.  Make up shit, get your followers frothing at the mouth, generate lots of attention and then say "Oh oops... our bad.... sorry"

[candygirl200413]

Hannity refuses to retract it either, and instead is going to talk about it more tonight on his show. A few months ago I was shocked that Fox's tagline is fair and balanced when so many of those reporters are actual scum.

[GreyhoundFan]

33 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

Hannity refuses to retract it either, and instead is going to talk about it more tonight on his show. A few months ago I was shocked that Fox's tagline is fair and balanced when so many of those reporters are actual scum.

Yeah, Faux is only fair and balanced if you are a reich-winger. Hannity is such a douchecanoe.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Questions Fox and the right need to answer"

Spoiler

On Wednesday, Fox News finally took down from its website a ludicrous conspiracy theory relating to the tragic murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich (which may very well have been part of a botched robbery). The story remained up and was an ongoing obsession for host Sean Hannity long after it was debunked by a range of sources and despite pleas from family members to stop besmirching Rich’s memory. Not until Tuesday did Hannity announce he was dropping the issue “out of respect for the family’s wishes.” That’s a crock, as anyone who is following Hannity’s gambit knows, because he has previously ignored countless pleas to stop.

Fox’s jaw-dropping unprofessionalism and dishonesty were matched only by its cruelty in subjecting Rich’s loved ones to a grotesque political plot. Fox put up the following bland statement:

On May 16, a story was posted on the Fox News website on the investigation into the 2016 murder of DNC Staffer Seth Rich. The article was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting. Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards and has since been removed.

There was no apology, no reference to Hannity. The statement raises more questions than it answers:

• What is this “high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting”? Who is responsible for maintaining such high standards?
• Does the alleged high scrutiny apply to Fox’s nighttime shows?
• How did the story manage to slip by this exacting scrutiny?
• How did it remain on the website and on Hannity’s show despite widespread calls to cease airing a debunked story?
• Who, if anyone, is going to be held accountable for this?
• Will Fox real-news cover the incident?
• How did widespread coverage of birtherism slip by Fox’s “high degree of editorial scrutiny”?
• Are evening shows’ coverage of the Russia scandal subjected to a “high degree of editorial scrutiny”?

The Hill reports:

Media watchdog group Media Matters For America on Tuesday published a list of Hannity’s advertisers — a long list that includes major companies like Allstate, Angie’s List, Bayer, Capitol One, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Mercedes-Benz and Publishers Clearing House.

While the list was published with little context and no call to action, it comes as Media Matters continues to blast Hannity for claiming, without evidence, that Seth Rich leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks and suggesting that Democratic campaigns or groups were behind his killing.

Unfortunately, the task of policing Fox is mainly left to liberal groups. Conservative media watchdogs have no stomach, it seems, for tackling a media operation that has become the scourge of journalism and of principled conservatism. Talk radio is likewise infected by conspiracy mongering and aversion to empirical data.

By contrast, some responsible conservative voices have condemned Fox’s conduct and/or pleaded with Hannity  to end his plunge into the sewer of conspiracy-mongering. Max Boot, for example, wrote, “Twenty-one years after the creation of Fox News, America is more in need than ever of a principled conservative TV channel — one that will be loyal to conservative ideals rather than to populist demagogues and that will rely on actual facts instead of alternative ones. Maybe, just maybe, this is the role that Fox can finally play if it is radically revamped by Rupert Murdoch’s sons.”) Becket Adams at the Washington Examiner wrote a column entitled, “That report about Seth Rich, the slain DNC staffer, is hot hunk of hokum.”

The episode is the culmination of a long trend at Fox, which began as an antidote to perceived liberal bias and has devolved into a cesspool of anti-immigrant hysteria, climate-change denial, cultist support for President Trump and assaults on “elites,” including legitimate news operations. The skimpy offering of legitimate news (e.g. Fox News Sunday’s interviews, “Special Report with Bret Baier”) has been subsumed to right-wing froth and faux news designed to cement a-factual dogma (e.g. “Fox & Friends,” “The Five,” Hannity, Tucker Carlson). When much of Fox programming abandoned coverage of the biggest story in decades — the possible obstruction of justice by the president — the facade of legitimate journalism crumbled.

Too many supposedly respectable conservative outlets, which used to be gatekeepers to keep out the kooks and racists from the movement, shy away from confronting the conservative media behemoth. Worse, many play a supporting role in echoing Fox’s paranoia about elites, hysteria about illegal immigration and cultural resentment (as if white conservative males are the most persecuted group in the country). The debasement of conservative debate and dumbing down of the Republican Party cannot be blamed entirely on Fox, talk radio and absence of adult supervision in previously upscale conservative circles, but its role in transforming the party of ideas into the party of “alternative facts” — better known as lies, rumors and crackpottery — cannot be overstated.

Yeah, Faux doesn't want to answer any legitimate questions.

[JMarie]

15 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The episode is the culmination of a long trend at Fox, which began as an antidote to perceived liberal bias and has devolved into a cesspool of anti-immigrant hysteria, climate-change denial, cultist support for President Trump and assaults on “elites,” including legitimate news operations. The skimpy offering of legitimate news (e.g. Fox News Sunday’s interviews, “Special Report with Bret Baier”) has been subsumed to right-wing froth and faux news designed to cement a-factual dogma (e.g. “Fox & Friends,” “The Five,” Hannity, Tucker Carlson). When much of Fox programming abandoned coverage of the biggest story in decades — the possible obstruction of justice by the president — the facade of legitimate journalism crumbled.

Quite possibly the best argument against Fox News.  Ever.

[Audrey2]

@GreyhoundFan, please let me edit the article you posted.

"Unfortunately, the task of policing Fox is mainly left to liberal groups. Conservative media watchdogs have no stomach, it seems, for tackling a media operation that has become the scourge of journalism and of principled conservatism. Talk radio is likewise infected by conspiracy mongering and aversion to empirical data."

(Sorry, I have difficulties creating a text box on my phone.)

Here's the translation:

After the last election when the man with the correct letter after his name won, we have gone from being the President's harshest, most outspoken critics to his most glowing syncopants (hugest fans). Our guy can do no wrong and we will always vocally support him and ignore all of his imperfections, that is if we can find them. If the liberal media has anything to say about him, we'll scream, "fake news", "liberal media", "snowflakes", "But Hillary..." Or "but Obama..." It is no longer our job to report accurate news or be government watchdogs.

[JMarie]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/hannity-on-attempted-advertiser-boycott-nobody-tells-me-what-to-say-on-my-show/ar-BBBv8w7?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Quote

Fox's Sean Hannity said on Wednesday that despite the loss of at least one advertiser, he isn't under pressure by Fox News management to back off a story involving baseless conspiracy rumors about the murder of Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich.

"I did it out of my own heart," Hannity said in an interview with HuffPost. "Nobody tells me what to say on my show. They never have and frankly they never will."

"I'm not that type of person you can say, 'Go on air and say this.' That's been the beauty of Fox News all these years," he continued. "They leave me alone."

The 55-year-old conservative and staunch supporter of President Trump also called a Media Matters of America decision to post a list of his Fox program's advertisers a "kill shot" in an attempt to take him out.

"There's nothing that I did, nothing that I said, except they don't like my position politically," he said. "They'll try to ratchet up the intensity of their rationale. It does not justify an attempt to get me fired. And that's what this is. This is an attempt to take me out. This is a kill shot."

Hannity lost one advertiser earlier in the day. Cars.com announced that it would immediately pull all advertisements from Hannity's 10 p.m. show, the announcement coming a day after the Fox host said he would stop discussing the story of Rich "for now."

"The fact that we advertise on a particular program doesn't mean that we agree or disagree, or support or oppose, the content," Cars.com said in a statement reported by BuzzFeed. "In this case, we've been watching closely and have recently made the decision to pull our advertising from Hannity."

Media Matters president Angelo Carusone told HuffPost that unlike his organization's effort to boycott advertisers of now-former Fox host Bill O'Reilly amid sexual harassment allegations, that despite posting the list his outlet isn't asking advertisers to boycott Hannity's program.

Right-wing news outlets have sought to link - without evidence - the 27-year-old Rich's death to Democrat Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the WikiLeaks release of hacked emails from her campaign and the DNC.

"Out of respect for the family's wishes for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time," Hannity said near the top of his 10 p.m. ET program on Wednesday.

The host changed the subject, instead continuing his criticism of media outlets for covering the investigation of Trump's campaign's alleged links to Russia. Members of Trump's campaign allegedly colluded to influence the outcome of the presidential election. Hannity called the investigation of the allegations hypocritical since no evidence has linked the two.

Later in his opening monologue, Hannity appeared to indicate that he may visit the Rich story again "at the proper time."

"Please do not interpret what I'm saying tonight to mean anything," he said. "Don't read into this. I promise you, I am not going to stop doing my job. To the extent of my ability, I am not going to stop trying to find the truth."

"That effort is not stopping in any way, shape, matter and form," he continued. "I am continuing the work I promised to do for you. And at the proper time, we shall continue and talk a lot more."

A spokesman for the Rich family said in a statement that they were grateful for Hannity for "respecting their wishes."

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@JMarie, even more have dropped out!

Spoiler

The automotive classified site Cars.com and several other companies pulled advertising from Sean Hannity’s Fox News show after he came under fire for promoting a conspiratorial account of the slaying of a former Democratic National Committee staffer.

“We don’t have the ability to influence content at the time we make our advertising purchase,” Cars.com said in a statement Wednesday. “In this case, we’ve been watching closely and have recently made the decision to pull our advertising from Hannity.”

The mattress maker Leesa Sleep, the exercise company Peloton, and the military financial services company USAA said they, too, were no longer advertising on Hannity’s show. Crowne Plaza Hotels, online mattress retailer Casper, and the video doorbell company Ring told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that they were backing out as well.

Ring told BuzzFeed News in a statement: “We are always evaluating and monitoring our advertisements to ensure they align with the Ring brand. As of May 23rd, we have asked our media buying partners not to place Ring ads on The Sean Hannity Show.”

Hannity had been one of the main purveyors of a widely discredited theory that DNC staffer Seth Rich was shot and killed near his home in Northwest Washington last year because he had supplied DNC emails to WikiLeaks. District police say Rich died in a botched robbery. His parents have pleaded with news outlets to stop speculating about his death.

Facing a wave of criticism over its reporting, Fox News retracted an article on Tuesday that said Rich made contact with WikiLeaks before he was shot.

At first Hannity refused to follow suit, telling listeners on his radio show, “All you in the liberal media, I am not Fox.com or Foxnews.com; I retracted nothing.” On his Fox News show Tuesday evening he said he would back off the story “for now,” but he continued to post cryptic tweets about Rich’s death.

The left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters published a list of Hannity’s sponsors on Tuesday — a move many interpreted as a call to boycott his show.

Hannity responded in a series of tweets saying “liberal fascists” were trying to bring him down.

... <whiny tweets about how the ebil libruls are out to get him>

“There’s nothing that I did, nothing that I said, except they don’t like my position politically,” Hannity told HuffPost Wednesday. “They’ll try to ratchet up the intensity of their rationale. It does not justify an attempt to get me fired. And that’s what this is. This is an attempt to take me out. This is a kill shot.”

Rich, a 27-year-old data analyst, was gunned down in the early hours of July 10 in Washington’s Bloomingdale neighborhood. Later that month, WikiLeaks published a cache of DNC emails, leading some commentators to speculate that Rich’s death was somehow related.

Investigators have not found Rich’s killer, but they have ruled out any connection to WikiLeaks.

On May 16, Fox News reported that Rich had leaked more than 44,000 DNC emails and more than 17,700 attachments to a now-deceased WikiLeaks director. The story, which cited “investigative sources,” was widely circulated on social media and among conservative news outlets.

In its retraction on Tuesday, Fox News said in a statement that the article “was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting.”

Rich’s parents, Mary and Joel Rich, have described the conspiracy theories surrounding their son’s death as a “nightmare.”

“Seth’s death has been turned into a political football,” they wrote in a Washington Post commentary. “Every day we wake up to new headlines, new lies, new factual errors, new people approaching us to take advantage of us and Seth’s legacy. It just won’t stop.”

Last month, advertisers fled former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s show en mass amid allegations that he had sexually harassed several women. Over the course of a couple weeks, dozens of companies pulled out of after a damning New York Times article revealed that he and Fox had paid $13 million over the past 15 years to settle five cases. Fox News ended its 20-year association with O’Reilly on April 19.

 

I would rejoice if Hannity is forced off the air.

[47of74]

Just saw this;

rawstory.com/2017/05/hannity-takes-abrupt-vacation-as-advertisers-continue-to-flee-his-fox-news-show/

Quote

Fox News host Sean Hannity is taking an early vacation this week right as advertisers have started fleeing his show.

Hannity announced in his Twitter account Wednesday night that he was taking a “long” Memorial Day weekend starting on Thursday, and he insisted that it had nothing to do with the growing backlash against him for pushing the debunked conspiracy theory about the murder of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich.

“My ANNUAL Memorial Day long weekend starts NOW,” Hannity wrote. “Destroy Trump/Conservative media breathless coverage starts! Did Hannity do last show?”

Refresh my memory - didn't Blowhole O'Really take an unplanned vacation before he got invited to leave Faux Spews? 

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, 47of74 said:

Just saw this;

rawstory.com/2017/05/hannity-takes-abrupt-vacation-as-advertisers-continue-to-flee-his-fox-news-show/

Refresh my memory - didn't Blowhole O'Really take an unplanned vacation before he got invited to leave Faux Spews? 

 

Yes. Yes he did...

Can anyone else hear those doomsday bells clanging for Hannity ever so faintly in the distance?

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Yes. Yes he did...

Can anyone else hear those doomsday bells clanging for Hannity ever so faintly in the distance?

I was actually humming this:

It may be premature, but I hope Hannity is forced out too.

[GreyhoundFan]

Interesting: "‘An absolute disconnect’: How a crisis at the top could hurt Fox News at its bottom line."

Spoiler

Rupert Murdoch has a headache. It’s called Fox News Channel.

Only a few weeks ago, the co-founder and chairman of Fox was presiding over a TV juggernaut. With a new, Fox-friendly president in office, the network recorded the highest viewing totals in its 21-year history — a strong indication that Fox was resilient enough to shake off the sexual-harassment scandal that forced out its other co-founder, the late Roger Ailes, last year and the subsequent departure of prime-time star Megyn Kelly in January.

But that was then.

Ever since, the most profitable and influential piece of Murdoch’s globe-spanning media empire has been billowing smoke. Murdoch dismissed Bill O’Reilly, the network’s top attraction, in April amid another sexual-harassment scandal. Then he cashiered Fox’s co-president, Bill Shine, who was accused of enabling Ailes.

For the past 10 days, as bombshells and bad news swirled around President Trump, Fox has all but sidestepped the story, prompting some of its viewers to head elsewhere (the top reference to the story on FoxNews.com’s homepage Wednesday afternoon: “Does it matter? No evidence of Trump ‘collusion’ with Russia as media shift focus”). Result: A resurgent MSNBC took the top spot in the news ratings for the first time in its nearly 21-year history last week. Fox finished a shocking third behind MSNBC and CNN among younger viewers.

On Tuesday, there was a new mess for Murdoch: Amid an outcry and threats of a lawsuit, Fox took the rare step of retracting one of its stories — a baseless report alleging that Seth Rich, a young Democratic National Committee staffer, was murdered last year in a conspiracy tied to the leak of DNC emails. The retraction put Fox at odds with its signature personality, Sean Hannity, who has pushed the discredited story on his prime-time program and has refused to admit error.

Hannity now faces an advertiser boycott — the kind that helped sink O’Reilly — as Wednesday afternoon, three sponsors said they had pulled their ads from his show.

The accumulating chaos leaves Murdoch, 86, with perhaps his biggest management challenge since the network’s inception. The media mogul took over Fox after he booted Ailes last year at the urging of his sons, James and Lachlan, who run Fox’s parent company, 21st Century Fox.

Murdoch has said little as Fox’s problems have unfolded. In the meantime, Fox’s rivals have been all too eager to highlight the network’s issues.

People at CNN and MNBC say Fox has hurt itself by not covering allegations of Russian involvement in Trump’s campaign and administration more aggressively, especially during the prime-time opinion programs that attract its largest audiences. That has left a big opening for, among others, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, whose program briefly was the top-rated on cable news last week.

“There’s an absolute disconnect” on the Russia story, said one cable-news manager about Fox. “They have an alternate reality going on over there and it’s hurting them. They seem to be trying their damndest not to face reality.”

Ongoing coverage of the president’s overseas visit and the suicide bombing in Manchester, England, may have given Fox a temporary reprieve, restoring the familiar cable order among viewers. But once the intensity of that story fades, Fox will be left with the same problem: How, or even whether, to cover the bad news surrounding a president whom many Fox viewers support.

A senior manager of another news network, also speaking on background to offer a frank assessment, quickly ticks off a list of 10 bullet points about what he believes ails Fox. Point No. 2: “They have no one with a vision to lead them, so their story selection is off.”

The split between Hannity and Fox’s news managers could be the most damaging, he said, as it could lead eventually to Hannity’s departure (Hannity is under contract until 2020). He speculates that Hannity could end up with personalities like O’Reilly and Glenn Beck on a rival conservative news channel, perhaps one started by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the fast-growing Baltimore-area TV company. “The one thing that [Fox has] going for them right now is that their current audience has no alternative,” he said.

Hannity said on Tuesday that he wouldn’t discuss the Seth Rich matter further “out of respect” for the family, which has strongly condemned his comments and Fox’s reporting.

A Fox News spokeswoman, Carly Shanahan, said ratings are “cyclical.” She said Fox still has higher ratings than its competition as measured over a full month.

Jeffrey McCall, a DePauw University professor who studies the news media, says Fox “needs to get itself out of the news. Being the subject of constant news stories rhetorically signals that there is more commotion going on in the organization than might really be happening.”

But he notes, “The handling of Hannity’s coverage of the Seth Rich story suggests that [Fox] is not managing its internal affairs effectively. . . . The messy handling suggests Fox’s brass is not on the same page with its longest running, most visible commentator.”

McCall expects Fox’s core audience older viewers to remain loyal, although not at the levels during the first three months of the year.

“If there are more personnel moves to be made,” he said, “they need to make them right away and then let the organization get back to its main function of providing news and analysis for people who are skeptical of traditional outlets.”

I hope MSNBC continues to beat Faux.

[JMarie]

Now Hannity's gone on a Twitter tirade against Rachel Maddow.  We'll have to see what he says about her on his show tonight.  That is, if he returns from his "vacation".

[onekidanddone]

1 minute ago, JMarie said:

Now Hannity's gone on a Twitter tirade against Rachel Maddow.  We'll have to see what he says about her on his show tonight.  That is, if he returns from his "vacation".

I think if she doesn't answer that might send him even more over the edge. Rachel ignoring the yelling man boy might be funny to watch.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Fox News just pulled Trump into an alternate reality"

Spoiler

Try to follow this dizzying sequence of events:

On Friday, The Washington Post reported that Jared Kushner sought to create a secret line of communication between Donald Trump's transition team and the Kremlin during a meeting with Russian diplomats in December.

On Saturday, national security adviser H.R. McMaster said at a news conference that he “would not be concerned” about such an arrangement and added that “we have back-channel communications with a number of countries.”

On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly told ABC News that “any channel of communications, back or otherwise, is a good thing.”

On Monday, Fox News Channel published an online article with no byline and a single unnamed source that claimed that Kushner, a senior White House adviser, did not try to set up a back channel after all.

On Tuesday morning, “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade posed a question to counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway: “Do you back up the Fox News report?” Conway refused. “I'm not going to get into any of that,” she said. Conway echoed McMaster and Kelly, saying that “they're not concerned” and that “back channels like this are the regular course of business.”

...

A short time later, Trump tweeted a link to the Fox News report that Conway had just declined to support, seemingly endorsing an alternative defense of Kushner that his administration spent three days not making.

What the heck is going on here?

The Fox News report is confusing on a number of levels. A network spokesperson insisted that the lack of a byline is not unusual and pointed to other instances in which individual journalists were not credited as the authors of news articles. The examples were essentially rewrites of wire reports, however.

Make no mistake: It is not normal to publish a supposed scoop without a byline. The only clue Fox News offered about the reporting was a note at the bottom of the story that said Catherine Herridge “contributed.”

The use of a lone anonymous source is also odd, in this situation. Unnamed sources who appear in news reports about the Russia investigation are typically granted anonymity by the media because they are discussing sensitive information without authorization and could be fired if caught. But a person speaking for the Trump administration could safely say on the record that The Post's original report was false. White House officials claim reports are wrong all the time.

This time, however, the White House did not say that The Post got it wrong. Instead, it argued that there was nothing inappropriate about what Kushner did.

The Fox News article did not merely contradict other reporting; it was out of step with the Trump White House, too. It's as though Fox News were trying to give its audience two ways to stand behind Kushner.

Option 1: He did it, but that's okay.

Option 2: He didn't do it.

Never mind that those two things cannot both be true. The bottom line is Kushner did nothing bad. Believe me.

Fox News did the same thing a couple of weeks ago after The Post reported that Trump shared classified information with Russian diplomats during a meeting in the Oval Office on May 10. Based on the coverage by “Fox & Friends,” viewers could choose to believe that the report was false or that it was true but not a problem because Trump, as president, has the power to declassify intelligence.

...

The amazing thing about the Kushner story is that Fox News has managed to pull Trump into its alternate universe. The president's tweet means that the White House has joined Fox News in simultaneously arguing two conflicting points.

 

Cognitive dissonance, thy name is Faux News.

[JMarie]

Oh great.  He's on, complaining about he's not going to stop investigating the Seth Rich's death, because that's what the family, as well as Murica, wants.  Then he started rambling on about that darn Russian conspiracy, showing the same news clips (from the past few months) that he shows EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.  How are his viewers not tired of his repetition??

[GreyhoundFan]

More alternate reality: "Fox News: New York Times boycotted Obama surveillance story. Fox News: Oops, maybe not."

Spoiler

Conservatives last week devoured a story by John Solomon and Sara Carter at Circa with this title, “Obama intel agency secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years.” The Obama administration, noted the story, had “routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall.”

That sort of misfeasance merited followup by the mainstream media, according to various voices on the right. NewsBusters scolded, “Nets Blackout Massive Constitutional Violations by Obama’s NSA.” PJ Media: “Shock: Complete MSM News Blackout on NSA Illegal Spying Bombshell.” Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist did a social-media roundup of the un-coverage:

... <tweets showing all the news stories in the MSM>

Fox News correspondent James Rosen also pushed the mainstream-media blackout notion on the evening news program “Special Report with Bret Baier.” On Thursday, he credited Circa for being the first to obtain the documents related to the NSA story, and then said this about the amount of pickup the revelations have triggered: “The sheer scale of the Fourth Amendment violations disclosed is staggering as was the sternness of the rebuke to the Obama administration delivered by the FISA court which ordinarily approves 99.9 percent of the government’s request for surveillance,” said Rosen. “As of a few minutes ago, however, Bret, the story had not been covered on The Washington Post, New York Times, nor any of the three nightly news broadcasts on the three broadcast networks.”

Baier responded, “Amazing.”

“Amazing” might describe the corrections that Rosen has since issued on Fox News airwaves.

On Friday, he attempted to correct the record in this manner:

Finally, I was in error when I stated on this program yesterday that the New York Times and the Washington Post had not reported on the FISA court’s admonition of the NSA for its own Fourth Amendment violations. Both newspapers covered the change in NSA practices instituted by the Trump administration. And the Times published nine words from the documents we’ve explored in much greater depth here in the ninth paragraph of a story that ran on page A-21 two weeks ago. I regret the error.

So that’s an insult wrapped in a correction. Clearly, someone out there — perhaps an enraged staffer or two at the New York Times — alerted Rosen to the snottiness of his “correction.” Because on Monday night’s program, Rosen corrected the correction:

Last week, we reported on recently declassified documents in which the FISA court sternly admonished the FBI for violations of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights during the Obama era. I made two errors. I said the Web site Circa broke the story and I said the New York Times and Washington Post hadn’t covered it. And my last attempt at a correction didn’t do it justice.

So here is take two. In fact, it was the New York Times Charlie Savage who first broke the NSA violations and the FISA court’s intervention in an exclusive that was published on Page A-1 on April 28. The Washington Post followed … with an article that cited the Times reporting.

Then on May 11, after the FISA court documents were declassified on the Website of the Office of Director of National Intelligence, Charlie Savage again reported on the matter for the Times, including quotations from the FISA court documents.

I regret those errors.

To recap, the New York Times: didn’t fail to cover the story. And didn’t cover the story only in slight detail. It broke the story and then explained it.

How did Rosen come up with this notion about the New York Times in the first place? Too much Twitter? He issued this statement to this blog:

I decided to issue a second, fuller correction because I recognized that my first attempt had not conveyed to our viewers that Charlie Savage of the New York Times had in fact broken the story well before the news outlet Circa, which I had inaccurately credited as having done so. The chief reason why the first correction proved inadequate was that I misguidedly tried to cram the relevant information into fifteen seconds’ time; ultimately, that concision sacrificed comprehensiveness, and so I decided, after some thoughtful exchanges with Charlie – a colleague I respect deeply, and a former guest of mine on “The Foxhole” – to take a second stab at it. This was the right thing to do in terms of both comprehensiveness and collegiality. I also posted both corrections on my Twitter feed, with all appropriate tags. Issuing corrections is never fun – as even the Erik Wemple Blog can attest – and I am grateful to be so inexperienced at it.

A nod to Rosen for extensive self-correction as well as for answering the question of the Erik Wemple Blog.

Charlie Savage, the New York Times reporter who broke the story, has among the most difficult jobs in Beltway journalism. It falls to him to detail in comprehensible terms how the National Security Agency implements Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which authorizes intelligence officials to “target the communications of non-U.S. persons located outside the United States for foreign intelligence purposes.” A key limitation on Section 702 surveillance is that it cannot be used to “intentionally target” U.S. citizens and even people “known to be” in the United States.

That very tension — the need to surveil foreign threats without scooping up U.S. citizens — is at the heart of Savage’s April 28 article. Under the headline “N.S.A. Halts Collection of Americans’ Emails About Foreign Targets,” Savage brought to light some surveillance developments with a long history. As the article explained, the tentacles of this surveillance extend all the way back to 2001, when the administration of George W. Bush birthed the Stellarwind program, which, as Savage noted, “bypassed statutes and court oversight.”

By 2007, when the Bush administration started implementing the program with the blessing of Congress and the oversight of a FISA court, it insisted on a broad application of its surveillance powers — a sentiment that’s hardly a surprise given the inclinations of then-Vice President Dick Cheney. The Bush people wanted to sweep up not only direct communications by foreign targets, but also communications among others that referenced those targets — so-called “about” communications. “Under the proposed method of conducting electronic surveillance, then, N.S.A. will be in a position not only to learn information about the activities of its targets, but also to discover information about new potential targets that it may never have otherwise acquired,” according to a 2007 statement from an NSA official cited by the New York Times.

All of this activity relates to NSA’s “upstream” surveillance. What’s that? It’s data supplied by “backbone” communications companies such as AT&T and Verizon. Cross-border communications featuring so-called “selectors” — like an email address — used by targets are forwarded to NSA. Here’s a slightly more involved explanation that comes from an NSA inspector general report:

...

The practice of vacuuming up “about” communications has spawned complications and excesses. In 2011, as Savage notes, the NSA disclosed to the FISA court that a byproduct of upstream “about”-style collection meant the agency was also sucking in thousands of purely domestic emails each year without a warrant. The court decided that practice violated the Fourth Amendment, then agreed to a fix that permitted it to continue. The solution included a rule that analysts would not be permitted to search for information about Americans within the raw repository of emails gathered from Internet switches. A report by the NSA inspector general found that the agency’s “controls” on this front “have not been completely developed.”

Rosemary M. Collyer, a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, hammered the NSA for “lack of candor” and cited the search problems as a “a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.” Even so, she reauthorized the program after NSA ended “about” collections.

Though Savage had explained all the foregoing in stories dated April 28 and May 11, a big chunk of the American newsphere treated Circa’s story of May 24 as something explosive and new. Part of the reason stems from the signposts installed by the Circa reporters. Sample this sentence: “More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa.” Bolding added to highlight language suggesting top-secret exclusivity.

Asked about that matter, Solomon told the Erik Wemple Blog that if Circa had gotten the document exclusively, the story would have said “obtained by Circa” instead of “reviewed by Circa.”

The Circa reporters could have saved the Internet a lot of panting if they had only linked to Savage’s story, not to mention The Post’s piece. Asked about that omission, Solomon responded that the New York Times story wasn’t enterprise reporting. It was “an announcement story,” Solomon told this blog. Savage’s April 28 story, however, preceded the NSA announcement. “Like many important details in the article he co-wrote, Solomon got that wrong,” says Savage in a statement to this blog. “The New York Times’ April 28 story was not a write-up of a N.S.A. announcement. Rather, based on sources, I learned what happened and we published an exclusive enterprise article around 1 p.m. on our website. The N.S.A. issued its statement about three hours later, as reporters at other news outlets were writing their own stories about the news.”

The Circa piece on the NSA under President Barack Obama was part of a trio of stories that also included a look at the CIA’s approach to unmasking and the FBI’s sharing of data with third parties. Springboarding off the New York Times’s “spot news” coverage, Solomon went deeper into the issues and focused on the violations of the surveillance rules, he says. “The violations didn’t get media attention,” he says. “That is irrefutable.”

Scolding the Erik Wemple Blog, Solomon said, “Come on, you’re in search of a story and making up a controversy. The New York Times and the Washington Post didn’t do anything exclusive.”

Right, except cover the story. First. Despite a wide-ranging “blackout.”

JIminy Crickets -- some of these Faux people are just in their own little world.

[GreyhoundFan]

Awww, poor Billy O: "National Geographic cancels latest adaptation of Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Killing’ series"

Spoiler

National Geographic has canceled production of “Killing Patton,” a filmed adaptation of the book of the same name by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, which chronicles the final year of World War II and the death of Gen. George Patton. It questions whether Patton’s death was an accident or an assassination.

The decision came less than two months after O’Reilly was ousted from Fox News after a string of sexual harassment claims against him became public, though National Geographic said the cancellation was a creative decision.

Fox News is a subsidiary of 21st Century Fox, which owns a majority stake in National Geographic.

“It was in development for a couple of years, and it was a difficult project to crack creatively,” National Geographic said in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter. “Like most projects in development, it didn’t go the distance, so we passed on it.”

The network previously created and aired four documentaries based on O’Reilly’s popular “Killing” series. Three focused on the final days and deaths of Abraham Lincoln, Jesus and John F. Kennedy. The network also adapted his book about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.

These documentaries performed strongly, averaging 3.1 million viewer in live-plus-same-day Nielsen ratings, Variety reported.

It is unclear what made this newest adaptation more “difficult to crack creatively” than the previous stories. The network is not making its executives available for interview, the Associated Press reported.

The network announced its decision to adapt “Killing Patton” in 2015, predicting a release date of 2019. At the time, O’Reilly spoke of the series’ “winning streak,” adding, “I’m very confident our continued partnership will yield a gripping film about General Patton’s tragic death.”

When O’Reilly’s ousting was announced in April, a National Geographic spokesman told Variety the “Killing Patton” adaptation was slated for 2019 and, “We’re focused on 2018 right now. We’re not making any decisions today.”

A spokesman from his publisher, Macmillan’s Henry Holt, said at the time, “Our plans have not changed” on O’Reilly’s future entries in the book series.

The newest “Killing” book, “Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence,” which will focus on the American Revolution, will be published on Sept. 19.

Regarding the sexual harassment claims, O’Reilly has long denied any wrongdoing.

I haven't read or watched any of the previous editions and don't have plans to change that in the future. I'm glad NatGeo has made this decision.

[fraurosena]

Get your eyes ready to roll!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Tucker Carlson really is a piece of work: "Tucker Carlson’s Bizarre Rant Over Lauren Duca"

Spoiler

For someone who says he doesn’t like Lauren Duca, Tucker Carlson sure talks a lot about her.

The Fox News host ended his show Friday night by bringing up the Teen Vogue columnist and political writer, yet again, for no apparent reason. This is now the third time Carlson has featured a segment on Duca during his show since their viral blow-up in December, when he spoke over her, attempted to belittle her work and told her to “stick to the thigh-high boots.”

In the most recent round of Duca-bashing, titled “The Problem With Lauren Duca,” Carlson dedicated a whole segment to tearing down the writer’s recent accomplishments, including her New York Times profile, her university commencement address and the heartwarming note that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent to her.

“The most remarkable thing about Lauren Duca is that, for a writer, she can barely write,” Carlson fumed. “And that’s a problem, even for someone paid to produce frothy political propaganda for a kids’ magazine.” 

Carlson’s attack on Duca, a former HuffPost reporter, appeared to take aim at her new op-ed column at Teen Vogue, which he unwittingly helped name: “Thigh-High Politics.”

The Fox News host continued his rant against Duca by reading more of her writing ― even though he apparently hates it ― resurfacing her old tweets and playing clips of her interviews on other shows.

Carlson then took credit for Duca’s popularity, joking that she could one day become president.

“Every time we mention Duca on this show, she gets more and more famous and more revered on the left,” he snapped. “Maybe next week she’ll be honored by the pope and the Dalai Lama. If we mock that, she could get the Nobel Prize for Literature.”

He added: “Fifteen years from now we could be making fun of President Lauren Duca.

Carlson’s outburst isn’t surprising. This week, he sparred with a Black Lives Matter activist with the same aggression. What is bizarre is his apparent obsession with Duca ― and many viewers of the segment were quick to point it out.

...

But Carlson’s dedicated coverage of Duca’s life may have had an unintended consequence. We’ll see what happens 15 years from now.

...

Some of the tweets are great.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Fox News Drops ‘Fair and Balanced’ Motto"

Spoiler

Fox News is “Fair and Balanced” no more.

In the latest sign of change at the cable news network, the “Fair and Balanced” motto that has long been a rallying cry for Fox News fans — and a finger in the eye of critics — is gone. The channel confirmed on Wednesday that slogan and network have parted ways.

“The shift has nothing to do with programming or editorial decisions,” the network said in a statement. Instead, the slogan was dropped in part because of its close association with Roger Ailes, a network founder, former chairman and the originator of the phrase, who was fired in August in a sexual harassment scandal.

The network said that “Fair and Balanced” was shelved as a marketing tool after Mr. Ailes’s departure. In its place is a new motto: “Most Watched, Most Trusted.”

Another Fox slogan, “We Report, You Decide,” has also been retired, although the network said that it returned occasionally.

Some viewers may be surprised. Several Fox News personalities still toss the phrase “fair and balanced” into on-air conversation, though it no longer appears in graphics. Gabriel Sherman, longtime Fox News chronicler, reported on New York magazine’s website that the motto was gone for good.

The new motto, “Most Watched, Most Trusted,” mimics the firm cadence of the previous slogans, but does not have their Ailes-tinged tone of defiance.

For conservative-leaning viewers, “Fair and Balanced” was a blunt signal that Fox News planned to counteract what Mr. Ailes and many others viewed as a liberal bias ingrained in television coverage by establishment news networks.

But the slogan also caused conniptions among liberal critics of Fox News, who viewed it as an intentional needling of anyone who might question the network’s view of the news.

Mr. Ailes, who died in May, created the slogan with both purposes in mind. He coined the phrase when he and Rupert Murdoch founded Fox News in 1996, and it stuck.

Executives at Fox News acknowledge that it is rebuilding.

This year, Fox News has continued its yearslong streak as the top-rated cable news station over all, beating its rivals MSNBC and CNN in total viewership.

But the loss of the anchors Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly has taken a toll in prime time. In May, MSNBC was the highest-rated network in a key industry category, weeknight viewers 25 through 54, for the first time in nearly 17 years.

On Wednesday, executives at Fox News played down the shedding of “Fair and Balanced,” saying that the move was strictly a marketing decision and that the network’s approach to news coverage had not changed.

One senior network official emphasized that the slogan was officially dropped last August and virtually no one had noticed.

They should add: "...by crazed right-wingers" to the "Most watched, most trusted" slogan.

[GrumpyGran]

23 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Fox News Drops ‘Fair and Balanced’ Motto"

  Reveal hidden contents

Fox News is “Fair and Balanced” no more.

In the latest sign of change at the cable news network, the “Fair and Balanced” motto that has long been a rallying cry for Fox News fans — and a finger in the eye of critics — is gone. The channel confirmed on Wednesday that slogan and network have parted ways.

“The shift has nothing to do with programming or editorial decisions,” the network said in a statement. Instead, the slogan was dropped in part because of its close association with Roger Ailes, a network founder, former chairman and the originator of the phrase, who was fired in August in a sexual harassment scandal.

The network said that “Fair and Balanced” was shelved as a marketing tool after Mr. Ailes’s departure. In its place is a new motto: “Most Watched, Most Trusted.”

Another Fox slogan, “We Report, You Decide,” has also been retired, although the network said that it returned occasionally.

Some viewers may be surprised. Several Fox News personalities still toss the phrase “fair and balanced” into on-air conversation, though it no longer appears in graphics. Gabriel Sherman, longtime Fox News chronicler, reported on New York magazine’s website that the motto was gone for good.

The new motto, “Most Watched, Most Trusted,” mimics the firm cadence of the previous slogans, but does not have their Ailes-tinged tone of defiance.

For conservative-leaning viewers, “Fair and Balanced” was a blunt signal that Fox News planned to counteract what Mr. Ailes and many others viewed as a liberal bias ingrained in television coverage by establishment news networks.

But the slogan also caused conniptions among liberal critics of Fox News, who viewed it as an intentional needling of anyone who might question the network’s view of the news.

Mr. Ailes, who died in May, created the slogan with both purposes in mind. He coined the phrase when he and Rupert Murdoch founded Fox News in 1996, and it stuck.

Executives at Fox News acknowledge that it is rebuilding.

This year, Fox News has continued its yearslong streak as the top-rated cable news station over all, beating its rivals MSNBC and CNN in total viewership.

But the loss of the anchors Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly has taken a toll in prime time. In May, MSNBC was the highest-rated network in a key industry category, weeknight viewers 25 through 54, for the first time in nearly 17 years.

On Wednesday, executives at Fox News played down the shedding of “Fair and Balanced,” saying that the move was strictly a marketing decision and that the network’s approach to news coverage had not changed.

One senior network official emphasized that the slogan was officially dropped last August and virtually no one had noticed.

They should add: "...by crazed right-wingers" to the "Most watched, most trusted" slogan.

"FOX News: This is all lies but you don't really care, do you?"

[Zola]

"All the lies you want to believe."

Friend of mine has a sister who eats, sleeps, breathes all things right wing and Republican. Among the more ridiculous stuff she claims are fact,beyond things like Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim, is that she believes Hillary Clinton is a robot. Seriously. She saw a video where Hillary turned her head a funny way that apparently confirmed it in her mind for her. That's really what she said. A robot, ffs! 

How can you have a logical, reasonable conversation with someone who would actually believe something like that? You can't.