Faux News: Who Says the USA Doesn't Have State TV?

[fraurosena]

4 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Huh. Only the people of London are British... Who knew?

[fraurosena]

Tucker is more  than ever. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A new name for the mango moron's favorite morning show:

 

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

A new name for the mango moron's favorite morning show:

 

I'm of the age where I remember soap operas being advertised as,"love in the afternoon". 

It seems like the Fox morning show should be called "morons in the morning" or "Trump's tweets".

[GreyhoundFan]

1 minute ago, Audrey2 said:

I'm of the age where I remember soap operas being advertised as,"love in the afternoon". 

It seems like the Fox morning show should be called "morons in the morning" or "Trump's tweets".

Or, instead of "Afternoon Delight", it could be "morning disgust".

A little Starland Vocal Band, just because:

 

[fraurosena]

Jealous, much?

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Ann's wit.

There were several good replies -- my favorites:

Edited June 28, 2019 by GreyhoundFan

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus. "You've got to be honest about what it means to lead a country, it means killing people." Trump will feel justified in killing Americans soon.

But, Tucker, how would you feel about that if you were the one that got killed? What's that? You're Trump's friend? Well, that won't help much, you know. I mean, Leader Kim had his own brother poisoned, and he threw his uncle to the dogs to be eaten alive as he watched. He's such a good leader of his country though. His people don't call him their Dear Leader for nothing. Right?

 

[fraurosena]

The only thing that's different is the lack of elation in the voices of the Faux's. Other than that, the propaganda is near identical. 

Excuse me while I go puke. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Boy, the hypocrisy is just crazy.

 

[JMarie]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Boy, the hypocrisy is just crazy.

 

I feel so bad for the interns (?) who had to plow through hundreds of hours of footage for this cornucopia of crap.

Edited July 2, 2019 by JMarie
Autocorrect

[GreyhoundFan]

9 minutes ago, JMarie said:

I feel so bad for the interns (?) who had to plow through hundreds of hours of footage for this cornucopia of crap.

I so agree. About 200 years ago, when I was an intern at a TV station, I had to do a lot of tiresome work, but nothing was as bad as coming through Faux news archives.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

To be fair, this is far from the only thing he doesn't "get": "Trump doesn’t get the Fox News scam"

Spoiler

President Trump showed on Sunday night that despite his years of expertise in watching news show after news show and despite having done dozens of interviews with Fox News anchors over the years, he understands little about the programming scam of his most loyal cable-news buddies.

Before getting into any of the unseemly nitty-gritty of the tweets, just pause to consider the broader picture: Here’s the president of the United States tweeting about the shortcomings of cable news on a Sunday night. A Sunday night, which is perhaps the deadest news time of the entire week. A Sunday night, when a president of the United States could be plowing through piles of briefings, government reports and studies. But Sunday night is just like any other part of the week for this president of the United States — a time to extract information from a low-information cable-news channel.

Sometimes it’s clear what Fox News segment prompted a particular tweet from Trump — quotes and the like give it away. Other times, the precipitating segment is less clear. It’s possible that Trump was griping about “Fox News Sunday,” the popular Sunday morning talk show hosted by Chris Wallace. On this occasion, Fox News’s Dana Perino was subbing for Wallace and welcomed Democratic presidential candidate Michael F. Bennet to talk current events, including his campaign platform. The program ran, on rerun, at 7 p.m.

“What we don’t need in my view, I think, is a president who’s so at war with American tradition,” said Bennet. “We don’t need a president who doesn’t believe in the rule of law. We don’t need a president who doesn’t believe in freedom of the press. We don’t need a president who doesn’t believe in the independence of the judiciary. We don’t need a president who believes he’s above the law, that he can do by executive order what Congress doesn’t do ... The stuff that he does, whether it’s coddling a dictator in North Korea or laughing with Putin about Russia’s attacks on our democracy — that’s stuff that if Barack Obama did one of it, he would been indicted 24 hours a day on Fox News and President Trump is applauded.”

Upon hearing that inventory, Perino asked for evidence:

PERINO: If I could just press — if I could just press you on two things.

Well, I won’t press you on — on — on the — on the freedom of the press. Like, he gets frustrated with the press but he hasn’t tried to prevent them from being able to do their jobs.

But on the rule of law, where you think that he is not for the rule of law?

BENNET: I think — first of all, on the freedom of the press, the fact that he hasn’t dealt with the fact that Saudi Arabia killed a journalist, and — and he said what a serious thing it would be if it turned out it was true that MBS was behind it. And our intelligence agencies said it’s behind it, and he does nothing except go there and coddle MBS, that is an illustration of what American values are. I think he’s tried to intimidate the press here in the United States. I think he’s been above the rule of law on the wall, you know. He declared an emergency to build his wall, his $6 billion wall.

The murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi by a team of Saudi thugs is just one freedom-of-the-press issue that Bennet could have cited. Others would be the White House’s unconstitutional attempt to strip CNN’s Jim Acosta of his hard pass to the White House grounds, the White House’s zeal for leak investigations, the elimination of White House press briefings, or the constant invocation of “fake news” to discredit unflattering news stories.

Maybe Bennet’s routine dismissal of Perino’s pushback infuriated Trump; maybe it didn’t. In either case, Trump for months has expressed concern that his cable-news network of choice would pause for so much as a second to listen to the voices from the other side. In May, for instance, Wallace did a town-hall event with Democratic hopeful and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, prompting this commentary from the most powerful man on Earth:

The next Fox News personality to receive a late-night phone call from Trump should explain to the president how the whole Fox News scam works. That is, the network was launched on the “fair and balanced” lie — the idea that while other networks provide slanted coverage, Fox News is the only place that shoots straight. (For a dramatization of this founding myth, try the new Showtime series “The Loudest Voice,” which is based on the reporting of Gabriel Sherman, chief biographer of late Fox News chief Roger Ailes.)

The truth is that Fox News has evolved into a two-headed monster. “Opinion shows” — “Fox & Friends,” “Hannity,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” for example — routinely twist the truth in service to President Trump. The so-called “straight-news” shows — which pull in far smaller audiences — attempt to counterbalance the propaganda, though an investigation by Media Matters for America found that the “news” side of the network quite routinely pushes conservative misinformation.

The trappings of a straight-news product give Sean Hannity the cover he needs to tell millions of people each night precisely what Trump wants them to hear. When Hannity and his fellow “opinion” travelers at Fox News sustain criticism for their distortions, the PR response invariably points to the ballast provided by the straight-newsers like Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday” and Shepard Smith’s daily afternoon program. It’s this very separation that allows Fox News to advance the claim that it’s just like a traditional newspaper consisting of news and opinion staffs.

Trump, however, has no patience for the dull make-believe news coverage in between the good stuff at Fox News. He wants his “Hannity” on Sunday night. What do you say, Sean?

 

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus.

 

[fraurosena]

Wut?

 

[JMarie]

10 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Wut?

 

He happens to love his job because he's probably in a cushy corner office with assistants and domestic help and a gigantic paycheck. Who wouldn't love that?

[Alisamer]

11 hours ago, JMarie said:

He happens to love his job because he's probably in a cushy corner office with assistants and domestic help and a gigantic paycheck. Who wouldn't love that?

Yeah it's easy for people who have plenty of money and choose not to retire because they get lots of vacation time and have a cushy fun job they enjoy to say stuff like that.

Let's put him in a 40+ hour a week factory job where he has to clock in and out, only take breaks at assigned times, stand all day, and only gets 10 days vacation per year with no sick leave, while making just enough money to keep afloat as long as there's no emergencies. Then let's see what he thinks about that study.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Fox News defends handling of lewd text messages from Fox Nation personality"

Spoiler

Fox News has something called a Workplace Professionalism and Inclusion Council (WPIC), a mechanism to stamp out the sexual harassment and retaliation that dogged the tenure of now-deceased Fox News chief Roger Ailes. The WPIC has several meetings a year, and its next session will have a full agenda.

Reporter Yashar Ali revealed in HuffPost on Thursday night the contents of lewd text messages sent by George Murdoch, a.k.a. Tyrus, a Fox News contributor and a host on streaming service Fox Nation, to Britt McHenry, a Fox Nation co-host who formerly worked at ESPN. The texts span the period from November 2018 to January 2019 — the launch period for Fox Nation. “Just pull your boobs out now why don’t you. Just grin and bare it,” said one of the messages surfaced by HuffPost. Another: “keep being negative and I’ll send you another dick pic.”

Tyrus and McHenry had co-hosted a show on Fox Nation titled “Un-PC.” But Tyrus disappeared from the show in April without explanation. The Daily Beast last month revealed that the quiet rearrangement of Fox Nation programming happened after McHenry had complained about the conduct of Tyrus, a former professional wrestler who wears unconventional clothing for his TV appearances. A subsequent Daily Beast article reported there was a sexual harassment component to McHenry’s complaint.

Fox News issued a statement to the Daily Beast: “While we are not at liberty to discuss the details of any employee matter, we follow strict protocols when matters such as these are brought to our attention, and we make no exceptions,” it said regarding Tyrus and McHenry, who is also a Fox News contributor. “The process works because of the extensive systems and measures we have instituted. This situation was independently investigated and we consider the matter resolved. We respect the confidentiality of all involved.” That alleged institutional commitment followed the scandals that erupted after former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson sued Ailes in July 2016 for sexual harassment. He was gone quickly. Onetime King of Cable News Bill O’Reilly also lost his throne to a number of settlements with female colleagues who complained that O’Reilly had harassed or harangued them. Both Ailes and O’Reilly denied the allegations; they received a combined $65 million in exit money.

Amid the turmoil, Fox News and its then-parent company, 21st Century Fox (now Fox Corp.), pledged to rebuild its entire HR apparatus, which had failed the news outlet during the Ailes era. Rather than serving as an avenue for addressing complaints from staffers, HR was a wholly owned subsidiary of Ailes himself, silencing and derailing employees who raised concerns. Those employees learned to keep their mouths shut. To banish that history, Fox News hired Kevin Lord — an HR executive with experience at Tegna, NBC News and General Electric — to manage its HR division and changed lines of reporting to prevent a recurrence of the corruption under Ailes.

The WPIC — an oversight panel including four independent executives — stemmed from the company’s settlement with a shareholder concerned with its management legacy.

What have those changes wrought?

The public record doesn’t smile on the company’s actions. As noted in Ali’s article, the response of Fox Nation to McHenry’s complaint was to draft a substitute co-host, Tom Shillue, for “Un-PC.” As for Tyrus, the company didn’t suspend him — a best-practices measure in HR — but rather moved him to his own Fox Nation program, “Nuff Said.” On his July 10 episode of “Nuff Said,” Tyrus chatted with Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy “about battling the NFL, critiquing pizza, and embracing his petty side.”

A Fox News spokesperson issued this statement to the Erik Wemple Blog: “As we have previously said, this matter was immediately and thoroughly investigated by an outside law firm that was charged with providing us with independent factual findings and recommendations for action based on all of the evidence. We have consistently done this in other employee matters of this nature. All protocols were followed and the recommendations we received were appropriate and promptly implemented. We respect the confidentiality of our employees and their involvement in any HR process and therefore will not comment on the results of the investigation.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Every time I think I couldn't loathe newt more than I already do, he does shit like this:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Fox News launders Trump’s most brazen lie"

Spoiler

At the top of his Wednesday night program, Fox News host Tucker Carlson apprised viewers that the usual script was getting tossed. “The President is speaking to supporters in Greenville, North Carolina. We will be taking portions of it live, especially the newsworthy moments,” said Carlson, as if the network’s producers could predict newsworthiness. “Right now, he is talking about the four radical freshman Democrats, Antifa, and more broadly, the direction the Democrats are moving. We are going to go back and listen in. It’s interesting.”

The “listen in” strategy sure did vacuum up a newsworthy utterance from President Trump: “Better health care. And we’ll also always protect . . . you have to remember this. Are you ready? Because they give us a bum rap,” said Trump. “Patients with preexisting conditions are protected by Republicans much more so than protected by Democrats who will never be able to pull it off.”

As Trump was feeding those lines directly from Greenville to Fox News living rooms around the country, the other two main cable news networks were doing their own thing, together: On CNN, host Anderson Cooper was discussing Trump’s politics of hate; on MSNBC, host Chris Hayes was discussing Trump’s politics of hate. Both of these networks have learned the perils of running the live remarks of a liar.

But Fox News? The more Trump lies, the better. And what a whopper they broadcast on preexisting conditions. Under the landmark health-care law passed during the Obama administration — the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare — "health insurance companies can’t refuse to cover you or charge you more just because you have a ‘pre-existing condition.’” The prohibition on discriminating against people with preexisting conditions — which is a lot of people — proved to be a helpful and popular reform.

Perhaps that’s why the president sought to take credit for it. Falsely, of course. The truth of the situation couldn’t possibly have been more contrary to what he told his rally attendees and Fox News viewers: Republicans fought Obamacare as it bumped its way through Congress in the early years of the Obama administration, and they continued doing so for the balance of the Barack Obama’s two terms in office.

These days, the Trump administration is backing a lawsuit that would invalidate Obamacare and its protections for preexisting conditions.

For the balance of the hour, Carlson continued letting Trump set the agenda, sneaking in a segment about abortion and Planned Parenthood. Once the president finished his remarks, Carlson invited a commentator to marvel at Trump’s extraordinary political instincts.

We’ve asked Fox News if the network ever set the record straight about the health-care lie; how it views these falsehood-filled rallies; and how to balance Trump’s words with fact-checking. We’ll update this post if we receive a response.

Coverage of the Greenville rally focused on another newsworthy moment, when Trump criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar — a Somalia-born U.S. citizen and Democrat who represents Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District — the crowd in Greenville began chanting, “Send her back.” The focus on this un-American and racist moment only thickened on Thursday as Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, attempted to distance himself from a spectacle of his own making. "I was not happy with it,” he said. “I disagree with it.”

The belated denial extends the shelf life of a story that began on Sunday, when Trump used Twitter to unleash racist attacks against Omar and three other first-term Democratic congresswomen of color. He instructed them to “go back” to their home countries, even though Omar is the only one of the four to have immigrated to the United States.

Amid the quite justified furor over the president’s racism, there has been some attention on what is perhaps the most consequential policy lie of the Trump years. The Associated Press did a fact check rebutting Trump’s claim that Democrats couldn’t “pull it off” when it came to preexisting conditions. “Democrats did pull it off,” noted the fact-check. Speaking on CNN on Wednesday night, Daniel Dale, the network’s recently hired fact-checking ace, busted Trump: “This is extraordinarily false, Don,” said Dale, speaking to host Don Lemon. “This is like up-is-down stuff.” What’s more, noted Dale, Trump and his people have presented no plan in case preexisting conditions protections fall away via a pending federal lawsuit.

But again, “send her back” has flooded the media zone.

The lesson from the foregoing is a disheartening one. A president as prolific in the pursuits of dishonesty and racism and misogyny can generate more awfulness than even a well-staffed national press corps can monitor, contextualize and denounce. During the early days of the Trump White House, this blog asked whether Trump could outlast the media. Days like Thursday suggest the answer is “uh-huh” — with a lot of help and encouragement from Fox News.

 

[FloraKitty35]

On 6/19/2019 at 10:42 AM, Audrey2 said:

I'm of the age where I remember soap operas being advertised as,"love in the afternoon". 

It seems like the Fox morning show should be called "morons in the morning" or "Trump's tweets".

My favorite name for Fox and Friends is Three Dipshits on a Divan.