Justin's Political Corner
A new book from Jonathan Alter claims that Fox News President Roger Ailes told producers to cut off the microphone used by Fox host Geraldo Rivera as he pushed back against Fox’s politicization of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Appearing on Fox & Friends the day before the 2012 election, Rivera accused The Five’s Eric Bolling of being “a politician trying to make a political point” with Bolling’s claim that the government did “nothing” in response to the attack.
The New York Times reports that Alter writes in the upcoming book The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies that “Ailes called the control room and told the producers to cut Rivera’s mic.”
Mediaite reports that their sources claim that Ailes never called the control room, but that Fox News Executive Vice President of Programming Bill Shine did. They go on to write, “Shine did not order Rivera’s mic to be cut. Instead his call was to urge the show to move on because the segment had come to its conclusion, as the EVP seemed to believe that two Fox personalities calling each other liars with an escalating tone made for bad morning television and could potentially alienate their audience if it continued.”
h/t: MMFA
Why does Fox News Radio reporter Todd Starnes think that it’s the the end of days?
Because a U.S. army officer sent an email condemning anti-gay hate speech.
Todd Starnes can go suck it!
A Fox News analyst invoked the discredited “death panels” myth to stoke fears that cancer clinics are turning away patients as a result of the 2010 health care reform law, even as those clinics say they are being forced to turn away patients because of automatic across-the-board budget cuts that took effect last month.
On April 5, Fox News analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss the story and blamed not only sequestration, but President Obama’s health care reform law, saying: “This is about people dying as a result of Obamacare and as a result of the sequester.” Johnson then claimed that Medicare growth reduction, which is in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), would lead to similar problems for Medicare patients. Later, Johnson used this situation to push the right-wing myths about “death panels” under the ACA.
ohnson’s claim that the ACA resulted in cancer patients losing chemotherapy treatment is groundless. The Post’s Kliff explained in her post how sequestration is solely responsible for this reduction in care.
Johnson’s claim that the ACA will cause reductions in care for Medicare beneficiaries is also false, and haslong been pushed by right-wing media. The ACA does not cut Medicare benefits - it actually reduces future payments in areas seen as inefficient or wasteful, and health care experts have said that it shouldn’t negatively affect the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries.
Finally, Johnson’s “death panel” fearmongering stems from a baseless right-wing myth that has persisted since mid-2009.
One of Scott Brown’s first acts as a Fox News host was to build a segment entirely around a GOP press release, a continuation of Fox’s long history of using Republican talking points to build their news.
Brown, a Republican former Senator, served as guest host on the April 1 edition of The O’Reilly Factor, where he immediately focused on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s “waste list,” meant to detail areas of government’s continued wasteful spending despite recent spending cuts and the closing of White House tours. Brown complained about a “dancing iPhone with robots,” “snail sex research,” and $1 million worth of puppet shows for kids.
H/T: MMFA
Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, previewing Sen. Marco Rubio’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech, Fox News political analyst Karl Rove labeled Rubio “the American experience” and declared him “probably one of the best communicators since Ronald Reagan.”
Over-the-top praise of Rubio on the network is nothing new. Rubio’s increasingly prominent role in the national political conversation is thanks, in part, to the help of Fox News, which has served as his primary cheerleader since his 2010 Senate campaign.
In recent weeks, Rove in particular has showered praise on Rubio and his role in the debate over immigration reform. His comparison of Rubio to Reagan on The O’Reilly Factor wasn’t even the first time he had done so on Fox’s airwaves this month; he made similar comments during a February 4 appearance on Special Report.
Rove isn’t alone in his adoration of the Florida senator. Fox personalities have fawned over Rubio on-air for years, boosted his 2010 Florida Senate run (including helping him fundraise on-air), hosted him for dozens of primetime appearances on the network, and repeatedly touted him as an ideal vice presidential pick for former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
When Marco Rubio declared his intention to run for the Florida Senate seat left open by Mel Martinez, he trailed Gov. Charlie Crist — then still a Republican — by a huge margin and seemed like a longshot candidate.
Less than a year and a half later, Rubio was elected comfortably. According to Rubio, his meteoric rise in the race is thanks in no small part to Fox News political analyst Karl Rove.
Appearing at a fundraising breakfast for Rove’s Crossroads political groups at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Rubio claimed it was “big news” when Rove personally donated money to his Senate campaign because it meant that ”someone of his stature would actually take a bet on someone who was such a long shot.”
Rove’s help for Rubio extended well beyond sending personal checks; the Crossroads groups poured nearly $3 million (by Rove’s accounting) into the race. During his fundraising pitch for Crossroads at the RNC, Rubio specifically praised the ads Rove’s groups ran in his favor, saying “you would turn on the TV and there were ads that created a clear distinction, and did so in ways that were meaningful.”
Rove wasn’t the only Fox personality that helped Rubio’s Senate run — the network practically went all-in for him.
During his Senate run, Rubio was also formally endorsed — in addition to being praised on-air — by several Fox personalities, including former contributors Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Rick Santorum. In addition to endorsing Rubio, Fox host Mike Huckabee gave material support to his campaign in the form of a $5,000 donation from his political group, Huck PAC.
h/t: MMFA
(via Think Progress: RNCTV’s Latest Sexist Attack Against Hillary: ‘Face Lift, Perhaps?’)
Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy took a shot at outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday morning, speculating that she underwent a face lift in the last two weeks. In a quick headline roundup, Doocy quipped that Clinton’s new website featured her “glamorous new face,” while Fox showed a side-by-side comparison of her website photo and a photo from Clinton’s exasperated testimony at the Senate’s hearing on the Benghazi attacks.
Is this the face of presidential ambition? Days after retiring as Secretary of State, somebody has launched a website for her, showing off this glamorous new face. Face lift, perhaps? Well, that’s fueling rumors about a run for president in 2016, but her aides say it’s simply a way for fans and the media to reach her.
Typical FNC.
Fox News “The Five” co-host Eric Bolling is adding to his duties at the network. According to Hal Boedeker at The Orlando Sentinel, Bolling will become the anchor of “Cashin’ In,” one of FNC’s weekend financial shows.
h/t: TVNewser.com
Sarah Palin has parted ways with Fox News, multiple outlets wrote on Friday.
Real Clear Politics was the first to report that Palin — who reportedly signed a $1 million-a-year contract with the network in 2010 — will not be renewing it. The New York Times’ Brian Stelter later confirmed the news with Fox News.
By the time her contract ended, it had been since mid-December that Palin had appeared on Fox News at all.
h/t: Huffington Post
(via Karoli at Crooks and Liars: Rachel Maddow Slams Conservative Fox Commentators and Other Right Wing Scammers)
Rachel Maddow’s long report on conservative scams could not have come at a better time. As I’ve followed the money throughout the years, I’ve noticed a pattern to the money trail that almost always includes scammy fundraising techniques at the heart of things.
As Rachel points out in this piece, Karl Rove uses his Wall Street Journal column and Fox News commentator position as a way to raise even more money for Crossroads GPS, his right-wing money machine.
Mike Huckabee has lots of different ways to raise a few bucks. Using his Fox News show and his gig as a paid commentator there, he’s launched various fundraising efforts such as this one, asking for donations to help keep the movement alive to repeal Obamacare.
Even ridiculous Dick Morris used his Newsmax and Fox News visibility to raise funds alongside Michael Reagan for the SuperPAC for America. Despite raising nearly $3 million from small donors, just over half was spent to oppose President Obama’s bid for re-election.
Here’s the framework:
- Get connected with a high-profile media outlet. Maybe even two or three.
- Make outrageous statements, raise your visibility.
- Point viewers and readers to your fundraising page.
It’s not limited to the likes of Rove, Morris and Huckabee, either. Ali Akbar’s National Bloggers’ Club is one of the best representations of the model. The Breitbart empire serves as one of the media outlets to conservative bloggers. For the past six months, any conservative blogger who writes about their current invented stable of villains finds a place to shine with the Breitbots.
Fox News Contributor Steven Crowder went to the right-to-work protests outside the Capitol in Michigan today looking for trouble, and succeeded in finding it. We know Governor Scott Walker considered putting troublemakers in the crowd during the collective bargaining fight in Wisconsin, and now Fox News appears to be doing the dirty work for Governor Rick Snyder in Michigan.
In an attempt to make the pro-union workers in Michigan look like violent thugs, Crowder put himself in the midst of a passionate crowd and made a nuisance of himself, shouting provocative questions at workers whose livelihoods are on the line, until he finally got clocked.
H/T: WeGotEd.com
When Fox News chief Roger Ailes sent one of his national security correspondents to interview then-General David Petraeus in 2011, chances are he didn’t want the full conversation to ever see the light of day — because if it did, the network’s claim of being “fair and balanced” could be forever buried.
As it happened, someone was recording. The Washington Post revealed Monday that Ailes had contributor K.T. Mcfarland deliver a message to Petraeus directly: run for president as a Republican and News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch will bankroll you.
Audio of the discussion, published by reporter Bob Woodward, was aired again Tuesday night by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who couldn’t quite figure out why such a “strange bombshell” of a story would run in the Post‘s “Style” section instead of near the front of the paper.
“That recording was made April 16th of last year,” she explained. “A week and a half later the president announced he was nominating General Petraeus to head the CIA. Right before the president announced him as his choice, the chairman of Fox News was urging the general not to take the job, not to take any job short of being [chairman] of the Joint Chiefs, saying he should run for president instead as a Republican against President Obama in this past election. And it’s all on tape.”
The moral of this story: Maddow explained that almost more than anything yet revealed, this audio makes it clear that Fox News “seriously is not like anything else in news. They are officially just a media arm of the Republican Party. They are a political operation serving the needs of the Republican Party. That’s okay, but we should stop thinking of them as something other than that.”
(via silas216)
The post-election soul searching going on inside the Republican Party is taking place inside Fox News as well. Fox News chief Roger Ailes, a canny marketer and protector of his network’s brand, has been taking steps since November to reposition Fox in the post-election media environment, freshening story lines — and in some cases, changing the characters. According to multiple Fox sources, Ailes has issued a new directive to his staff: He wants the faces associated with the election off the air — for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris — a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign — Ailes’s orders mean new rules. Ailes’s deputy, Fox News programming chief Bill Shine, has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris. Both pundits made several appearances in the days after the election, but their visibility on the network has dropped markedly. Inside Fox News, Morris’s Romney boosterism and reality-denying predictions became a punch line. At a rehearsal on the Saturday before the election, according to a source, anchor Megyn Kelly chuckled when she relayed to colleagues what someone had told her: “I really like Dick Morris. He’s always wrong but he makes me feel good.”
A Fox spokesperson confirmed the new booking rules for Rove and Morris, and explained that Shine’s message was “the election’s over.”
h/t: NYMag.com
