A small list of FOX lies and methods of distortions - for BeenThere.

canndo

Well-Known Member
- On the February 20th, 2012 edition of the Fox News show Hannity, Fox News contributor Karl Rove
(R-Fox News), repeated the falsehood that President Obama gave a ($2 billion) loan to Brazil’s
national oil company – Petrobras. According to Rove, “The president even gave a loan to Brazil. Why
do they need our money, they’ve got plenty of their own.”

- On the April 19th, 2012 edition of Fox and Friends, Steve Doocy deliberately misquoted a statement
made by President Obama during a speech he gave on the previous day. While interviewing Gov. Mitt
Romney, Doocy claimed the president had said, “Unlike some people, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon
in my mouth,” which gave the distinct impression that he had been referring to Romney. Romney
immediately pounced on the intentional misstatement as if the president had been talking about him.

- During a segment on the Fox News late night program Red Eye, Fox News Contributor Dana Perino
made the false claim that ABC’s Diane Sawyer had asked Gov. Mitt Romney about putting his dog Seamus
on the roof of his car. “That was her first question,” Perino claimed. “Not how are you going to
create jobs? What is going wrong? How will you turn things around? It was why did you let your dog
ride on the roof of the car,” she asked breathlessly. Such a claim against a member of the supposed
“liberal media,” would continue to advance the notion that news outlets other than Fox News aren’t
appropriately taking Romney seriously.

- On a number of Fox News shows on June 12th, 2012 Karl Rove, Steve Doocy, Sean Hannity and Patti
Ann Browne overstated and misstated the findings contained within a Federal Reserve Board Survey by
claiming that a 38.8 percent drop in the median net worth of Americans had taken place during “the
last three years.” (Read: It’s all Obama’s fault)

- On December 12th, In segment highlighting the current unemployment rate, a Fox News graphic
clearly showed the current national unemployment rate of 8.6% is HIGHER than 8.8%, and equal to 9.0%.

- On the October 6th, 2011 edition of Hannity, host Sean Hannity made the false statement that
President Ronald Reagan, “inherited a far worse economy than (President) Obama.”

- Mike Huckabee’s (R-Fox News) April 9th appearance on Fox and Friends contained the following,
well-documented, lie. That Planned Parenthood is “primarily an abortion provider.” Even after he was
corrected by one of the co-hosts, Huckabee refused to acknowledge he’d been spouting a falsehood
On the July 13th, 2011 edition of Fox News’ The Five, Eric Bolling pointed out that George W. Bush
never “fearmongered,” (a rather silly argument on its face), “I don’t remember any terrorist attacks
on American soil between 2000 and 2008,”

- On April 9th. Sarah Palin questioned why “President Obama would have spent $2 million not to show
his birth certificate.”

- Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) had called the U.S. Constitution “silly.” On the April 1st edition of
Fox and Friends, the hosts repeatedly lied about what McDermott had actually said, and omitted the
context in which he said say.

- On the March 30th edition of Hannity, Sean Hannity claimed that Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile
Richards had uttered a “falsehood” about her organization performing mammograms. Hannity used an out
of context interview to imply that Richards had said Planned Parenthood provides breast examinations,
when she was clearly saying it provides access to them.

- March 23rd edition of Hannity, Fox News Contributor Karl Rove claimed during a conversation about
the U.S. involvement in Libya, that “American troops have never been under the formal control of
another nation.Why should we start now?”

- On the March 18th, 2011 edition of Hannity, Sean Hannity claimed, “The deadly radiation leaking
into the atmosphere from Japan’s nuclear crisis isn’t just heading for the United States, it’s
already here.”He went further by claiming, “DHS officials have confirmed that two flights departing
Tokyo — one bound for Chicago, the other for Dallas — set off radiation alarms when they arrived in
the US yesterday. Now in Dallas, tests indicated the presence of low radiation levels in travelers’
luggage, and in the aircraft’s cabin filtration system.”

- Hannity’s warnings didn’t end there. “Now this as the Golden State braces for a potentially
dangerous radioactive plume coming from Japan,” he claimed.

- On the February 23rd, 2011 edition of Fox News’ America Live, the show’s host Megyn Kelly claimed,
“ They’re no longer going to be enforcing this federal law (The Defense of Marriage Act) that’s on
the books, passed by Congress, signed by President Clinton and still very much a law.”

2003:
March 14: On The Fox Report anchor Shepard Smith reports that Saddam is planning to use flood water
as a weapon by blowing up dams and causing severe flood damage.
March 24: Oliver North reports that the staff at the French embassy in Baghdad are destroying
documents

March 28: Repeated assertions by Fox News anchors of a red ring around Baghdad in which Republican
Guard forces were planning to use chemical weapons on coalition forces. A Fox "Breaking News" flash
reports that Iraqi soldiers were seen by coalition forces moving 55-gallon drums almost certainly
containing chemical agents.

April 7: Fox reports that U.S. forces near Baghdad have discovered a weapons cache of 20
medium-range missiles containing sarin and mustard gas. Initial tests show that the deadly
chemicals are not "trace elements."

April 9: The crowd around coalition troops toppling the Saddam statue in Baghdad looks strangely
sparse despite the network's assertions to the contrary. The perspective is always in close and even
then there is no mob storming the statue to hit it with their shoes. Just a handful of people. It's
constantly asserted that there's a huge crowd

April 10: Fox "Breaking News" report of weapons-grade plutonium found at Al Tuwaitha

April 10 (2:59 EDT): A report noting with surprise "how little" the Iraqis were celebrating the
coalition invasion. [An interesting contradiction of the allegations of widespread celebration just
the day before with the toppling of the Saddam statue.]

April 10 (3 p.m. EDT: Reporter Rick Leventhal) Fox "Breaking News" report: A mobile bioweapons lab
is found. Video of a tiny tan truck—about the size of the smallest truck that U-Haul rents – which
had its cargo bed and fuel tank shot up with bullets after a looter tried to drive it away. Repeated
assertions that this is most definitely a "bioweapons" lab. A graphic sequence is shown of a large
Winnebago-type vehicle that is massive compared to the tiny truck found. The irony of this escapes
the Fox newscasters and defense "experts."
April 10: To show that France is in bed with Saddam Hussein, Fox begins running old footage of

Saddam Hussein's September 1975 trip to Paris to meet with Jacques Chirac and tour a nuclear power
plant. [Because Fox strives so hard to be "Fair and Balanced," it's all the more curious how it
fails to inform its audience about another trip four years later, this one to Baghdad on December 19,
1983 made by Reagan envoy and then former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld (see pic below). The
network again, because it's so very "Fair and Balanced," also inexplicably forgot to tell its
audience about another trip by Rummy to Baghdad, this time on March 24, 1984, the very same day that
a U.N. team found that Iraqi forces had used mustard gas laced with a nerve agent on Iranian
soldiers. Rummy obviously wasn't too concerned about the charges of gassing, as in 1986 when he was
considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination of 1988, he listed his restoration of
diplomatic relations with WMD-using Iraq as one of his proudest achievements.

April 7: Repeated ominous footage of barrels buried in a below-ground shed near Karbala. The
implication is that the Iraqi landscape is replete with these types of shelters, all of them brimming
with evidence of chemical weapons. [These were revealed to be agricultural chemicals as well.]

April 13: Fox Graphic: "Bush: Syria Harboring Chemical Weapons."

April 15: Fox analyst Mansoor Ijaz claims that the top 55 Iraqi leaders (along with the whole stash
of chemical and biological WMDs they have taken with them) are now living it up in Latakia, Syria.
[This is the same 55 that appeared on the deck of cards and is still being captured – far from all
living it up in Syria.] On The Fox Report anchor Shepard Smith completely breaks with any pretense
of objectivity and openly mocks actor Tim Robbins after playing an excerpt of Robbins' speech to the
National Press Club. "Oh, that was so powerful!" Smith mocked. [Impressive objectivity there, Mr.
Smith.]

April 16: Fred Barnes on Special Report with Brit Hume blames the looting of the Iraqi National
Museum on the museum staff. [Right now there are so many claims and counterclaims about the looting
it's hard to tell what happened. In a Fox segment on May 19 a coalition official asserted that
170,000 items were definitely not missing. Of course he refused to give a ballpark estimate of what
was missing, which he'd surely have in order to plausibly deny that the original estimate was wrong.]

May 22 (5:54 a.m. CDT): Richard King, a military doctor, appears on Fox and Friends with promises by
the show's hosts that he will verify that the Jessica Lynch rescue wasn't staged. King doesn't prove
anything. He states that he arrived at Saddam Hospital the day after the rescue, concedes damage and
mal-treatment of doctors at the hospital, and that he "was told " that the hospital was guarded by
hostile forces but doesn't specify who told him. [The testimony of the hospital staff contradicts
this last hearsay.]


Five polls showing that FOX viewers are less informed:

1. Iraq War. In 2003, a survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the
University of Maryland found widespread public misperceptions about the Iraq war. For instance, many
Americans believed that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been involved in 9/11, or that it possessed weapons
of mass destruction prior to the U.S. invasion. But not everyone was equally misinformed: "The extent
of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news," PIPA reported.
"Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have
misperceptions.” For instance, 80 % of Fox viewers held at least one of three Iraq-related
misperceptions, more than a variety of other types of news consumers, and especially NPR and PBS
users.

2. Global Warming. In a late 2010 survey, Stanford University’s Jon Krosnick found that "more
exposure to Fox News was associated with more rejection of many mainstream scientists’ claims about
global warming, with less trust in scientists, and with more belief that ameliorating global warming
would hurt the U.S. economy." Notably, there was a 25 percentage point gap between the most frequent
Fox News watchers (60 %) and those who watch no Fox news (85 %) in whether they think global warming
is “caused mostly by things people do or about equally by things people do and natural causes.”

3. Health Care. Earlier this year, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a survey on U.S.
misperceptions about health care reform. The survey asked 10 questions, and compared the "high
scorers"--those that answered 7 or more correct--based on their media habits. The result was that
"higher shares of those who report CNN (35 percent) or MSNBC (39 percent) as their primary news
source [got] 7 or more right, compared to those who report mainly watching Fox News (25 percent)."

4. Ground Zero Mosque. In late 2010, two scholars at the Ohio State University studied public
misperceptions about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”—and in particular, the prevalence of a series
of rumors depicting those seeking to build the mosque as terrorist sympathizers, anti-American, and
so on. The result? “People who use Fox News believe more of the rumors we asked about and they
believe them more strongly than those who do not.” Respondents reporting a “low reliance” on Fox News
believed .9 rumors on average (out of 4), but for those reporting a “high reliance” on Fox News, the
number increased to 1.5 out of 4.

5. 2010 Election. Late last year, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) once again
singled out Fox in a survey about misinformation during the 2010 election. Out of 11 false claims
studied in the survey, PIPA found that “almost daily” Fox News viewers were "significantly more
likely than those who never watched it" to believe 9 of them, including the misperception that “most
scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring.”

How Fox News distorts the news - a primer:
1. Panic Mongering. - This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is
never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking
moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself,
the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren’t activated, you aren’t
alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest
way to bypass the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don’t think
rationally. And when they can’t think rationally, they’ll believe anything.

2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. - Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead,
they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person’s credibility,
motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is
off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem
attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the
ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. “liberals,” “hippies,”
“progressives” etc. This form of argument – if it can be called that – leaves no room for genuine
debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.

3. Projection/Flipping. - This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the
argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you’re using and then accusing your opponent
of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists
are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the
phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It’s often called upon when the
media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.

4. Rewriting History. - This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their
worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive
scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin’s
mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie
about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic
minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally
rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they’ll often speak with such authority that the
casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.

5. Scapegoating/Othering. - This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It’s technically a
form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category.
The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can
then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm
that may befall them as a result.

6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. - This is more of what I’d
call a “meta-frame” (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways
news is reported constantly. For example, terms like “show of strength” are often used to describe
acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009.
There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to
make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force – it can turn wars into sporting events.
Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence – whether manifested
in war or debates about the Second Amendment – are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony)
moral. Violence becomes synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.

7. Bullying. - This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be
employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people
who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the
subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into
submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being
berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The
bully is then able to interpret that as a “win.”

8. Confusion. - As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less
confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the
logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow
along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated
thinking, thereby giving the user’s claims veracity in the viewer’s mind.

9. Populism. - This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one
of “the people” and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always
“elitist” or a “bureaucrat” or a “government insider” or some other category that is not the people.
The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand
in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that
accused “elitists” are almost always liberals – a category of political actors who, by definition,
advocate for non-elite groups.

10. Invoking the Christian God. - This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics,
the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and “real Americans” (those
are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not.
Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn’t love
those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all
Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It’s a cheap and easy technique used by all
totalitarian entities from states to cults.

11. Saturation. - There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being
ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated over and over, it must be everywhere
and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. “Saddam has WMD.” Veracity and hard data have no
relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the
same message over and over, regardless of whether it’s true or if it even makes sense, e.g., “Barack
Obama wasn’t born in the United States.” If something is said enough times, by enough people, many
will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox’s own slogan of “Fair and Balanced.”

12. Disparaging Education. - There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and
intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher
education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks
as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of
intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. The disdain for education and other
evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is
why they are so viscerally demeaned.

13. Guilt by Association. - This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have
used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here’s how it works: if your cousin’s
college roommate’s uncle’s ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev’s niece’s
ex-boyfriend’s sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.

14. Diversion. - This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in
a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where
most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in
a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they’ll talk about wanting to focus on
“moving forward,” as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to
this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to
the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of
projection/flipping.

http://foxnewsboycott.com/fox-news/propaganda-techniques-used-by-fox-news/ (Fox Methods)
 

Doer

Well-Known Member
Now they are talking about blinding all Muslim Sheiks.... what is that about?

Who will blind them?

Oh, and who has the LIES list for CNN, MSNBC, the majors, New York Times. Wall Street Journal, The Army Times? The Christian Science Monitor?

Who is keeping track? Anyone but me?
 

beenthere

New Member
[h=2]A small list of FOX lies and methods of distortions - for BeenThere.[/h]-
Nice touch on you weaseling out of my request canndo.
I asked you to prove Fox News spins or lies MORE than the rest of the media outlets. All that time you spent and it's still a FAIL!
 

canndo

Well-Known Member
Nice touch on you weaseling out of my request canndo.
I asked you to prove Fox News spins or lies MORE than the rest of the media outlets. All that time you spent and it's still a FAIL!

That IS more than anything I have experienced on the other side. As always, you play games. You want to prove the MSM lies and spins more? show me a list that is longer.
 

canndo

Well-Known Member
Cut and paste. No stoner could be that fucking out there..................... http://truth-out.org/news/item/1964:fourteen-propaganda-techniques-fox-news-uses-to-brainwash-americans

He is just parroting the same old shit both sides dump on us

If you followed the other thread, I stated (without cutting and pasting), that Fox had lost its status as a news organization. I was asked to prove it, now how exactly might I do so without cutting and pasting? I don't think that referencing particular points of lie or distortion is... parroting the same old shit.
 

abandonconflict

Well-Known Member
Nice touch on you weaseling out of my request canndo.
I asked you to prove Fox News spins or lies MORE than the rest of the media outlets. All that time you spent and it's still a FAIL!
worthless.

Again you move the goal post and declare victory. You have nothing.
 

canndo

Well-Known Member
worthless.

Again you move the goal post and declare victory. You have nothing.

I am willing to go do the research if I figure that some honest debate might come of it. Beenthere's bait and switch (well half a a bait and half a switch), is further evidence that he stands only on a lack of substance. I maintain that FOX lies, Beenthere maintains that FOX lies no more (or less) than any other news organization. I am asked now to prove such a thing - by reviewing ABC, NBC, CNN and MSNBC I suppose. But he will come out now and say that I must not have done as much research on the other stations.


ABC - Lied about Bachman calling for a ban on porn, it lied about polarbears dying as a result of global warming and it lied about Tony Scott having brain cancer. It seems to have misrepresented a Glen Beck Quote.

NBC - none other than what are listed below.


CNN - http://cnnlies.blogspot.com/

Now what I can't find is specific incidences, recurring misrepresentaions on the scale I listed for FOX.

Keith Olbermann lies about SIOA freedom rally against Islamic mega-mosque
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/06/keith-…

Keith Olbermann lies, says Sarah Palin is a socialist and described Alaska that way
http://24ahead.com/blog/archives/008242.…

CNN lies, misleads (11/15/07 Democratic debate edition)
http://24ahead.com/blog/archives/007248.…

Rachel Maddow lies: Fox had absolutely nothing to do with the Shirley Sherrod story
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/rachel-madd…

In Exposing ACORN ‘Lies,’ Maddow Leaves Truth On the Cutting Room Floor
http://bigjournalism.com/sright/2010/04/…

Keith Olbermann Lies About Kenneth Gladney Attack
http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/20…

CNN Lies About Bunning Filibuster, Republicans Cringe And Cower
http://www.24thstate.com/2010/03/cnn-lie…

CNN Lies About Bible Burning
http://powip.com/2010/09/seiu-terror-lat…

Even Obama can’t put up with CBS’ lies about Bush
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/obama-canno…

Obama lies to CBS on Iran nuclear evidence; CBS publishes lies in conspiracy for unlawful war
http://www.examiner.com/la-county-nonpar…


Many of these are opinion, and many more are lies not from the news organization but claims that Obama lied.




In short, I believe, unless Beenthere can create his own list - whichhe will not, I have made my point.
 

mr2shim

Well-Known Member
Nice touch on you weaseling out of my request canndo.
I asked you to prove Fox News spins or lies MORE than the rest of the media outlets. All that time you spent and it's still a FAIL!
I'm 100% certain you aren't 50. You're 25 MAX. Your posts reek immaturity.
 

beenthere

New Member
I'm 100% certain you aren't 50. You're 25 MAX. Your posts reek immaturity.
Is this where I'm suppose to come back with an immature insult mr2shim?
If you were an honest person you would have #1 stayed out of this argument or #2 admitted canndo is spinning his ass into the ground. BTW, you are correct, I'm not 50!
 

desert dude

Well-Known Member
- On the February 20th, 2012 edition of the Fox News show Hannity, Fox News contributor Karl Rove
(R-Fox News), repeated the falsehood that President Obama gave a ($2 billion) loan to Brazil’s
national oil company – Petrobras. According to Rove, “The president even gave a loan to Brazil. Why
do they need our money, they’ve got plenty of their own.”

- On the April 19th, 2012 edition of Fox and Friends, Steve Doocy deliberately misquoted a statement
made by President Obama during a speech he gave on the previous day. While interviewing Gov. Mitt
Romney, Doocy claimed the president had said, “Unlike some people, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon
in my mouth,” which gave the distinct impression that he had been referring to Romney. Romney
immediately pounced on the intentional misstatement as if the president had been talking about him.

- During a segment on the Fox News late night program Red Eye, Fox News Contributor Dana Perino
made the false claim that ABC’s Diane Sawyer had asked Gov. Mitt Romney about putting his dog Seamus
on the roof of his car. “That was her first question,” Perino claimed. “Not how are you going to
create jobs? What is going wrong? How will you turn things around? It was why did you let your dog
ride on the roof of the car,” she asked breathlessly. Such a claim against a member of the supposed
“liberal media,” would continue to advance the notion that news outlets other than Fox News aren’t
appropriately taking Romney seriously.

- On a number of Fox News shows on June 12th, 2012 Karl Rove, Steve Doocy, Sean Hannity and Patti
Ann Browne overstated and misstated the findings contained within a Federal Reserve Board Survey by
claiming that a 38.8 percent drop in the median net worth of Americans had taken place during “the
last three years.” (Read: It’s all Obama’s fault)

- On December 12th, In segment highlighting the current unemployment rate, a Fox News graphic
clearly showed the current national unemployment rate of 8.6% is HIGHER than 8.8%, and equal to 9.0%.

- On the October 6th, 2011 edition of Hannity, host Sean Hannity made the false statement that
President Ronald Reagan, “inherited a far worse economy than (President) Obama.”

- Mike Huckabee’s (R-Fox News) April 9th appearance on Fox and Friends contained the following,
well-documented, lie. That Planned Parenthood is “primarily an abortion provider.” Even after he was
corrected by one of the co-hosts, Huckabee refused to acknowledge he’d been spouting a falsehood
On the July 13th, 2011 edition of Fox News’ The Five, Eric Bolling pointed out that George W. Bush
never “fearmongered,” (a rather silly argument on its face), “I don’t remember any terrorist attacks
on American soil between 2000 and 2008,”

- On April 9th. Sarah Palin questioned why “President Obama would have spent $2 million not to show
his birth certificate.”

- Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) had called the U.S. Constitution “silly.” On the April 1st edition of
Fox and Friends, the hosts repeatedly lied about what McDermott had actually said, and omitted the
context in which he said say.

- On the March 30th edition of Hannity, Sean Hannity claimed that Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile
Richards had uttered a “falsehood” about her organization performing mammograms. Hannity used an out
of context interview to imply that Richards had said Planned Parenthood provides breast examinations,
when she was clearly saying it provides access to them.

- March 23rd edition of Hannity, Fox News Contributor Karl Rove claimed during a conversation about
the U.S. involvement in Libya, that “American troops have never been under the formal control of
another nation.Why should we start now?”

- On the March 18th, 2011 edition of Hannity, Sean Hannity claimed, “The deadly radiation leaking
into the atmosphere from Japan’s nuclear crisis isn’t just heading for the United States, it’s
already here.”He went further by claiming, “DHS officials have confirmed that two flights departing
Tokyo — one bound for Chicago, the other for Dallas — set off radiation alarms when they arrived in
the US yesterday. Now in Dallas, tests indicated the presence of low radiation levels in travelers’
luggage, and in the aircraft’s cabin filtration system.”

- Hannity’s warnings didn’t end there. “Now this as the Golden State braces for a potentially
dangerous radioactive plume coming from Japan,” he claimed.

- On the February 23rd, 2011 edition of Fox News’ America Live, the show’s host Megyn Kelly claimed,
“ They’re no longer going to be enforcing this federal law (The Defense of Marriage Act) that’s on
the books, passed by Congress, signed by President Clinton and still very much a law.”

2003:
March 14: On The Fox Report anchor Shepard Smith reports that Saddam is planning to use flood water
as a weapon by blowing up dams and causing severe flood damage.
March 24: Oliver North reports that the staff at the French embassy in Baghdad are destroying
documents

March 28: Repeated assertions by Fox News anchors of a red ring around Baghdad in which Republican
Guard forces were planning to use chemical weapons on coalition forces. A Fox "Breaking News" flash
reports that Iraqi soldiers were seen by coalition forces moving 55-gallon drums almost certainly
containing chemical agents.

April 7: Fox reports that U.S. forces near Baghdad have discovered a weapons cache of 20
medium-range missiles containing sarin and mustard gas. Initial tests show that the deadly
chemicals are not "trace elements."

April 9: The crowd around coalition troops toppling the Saddam statue in Baghdad looks strangely
sparse despite the network's assertions to the contrary. The perspective is always in close and even
then there is no mob storming the statue to hit it with their shoes. Just a handful of people. It's
constantly asserted that there's a huge crowd

April 10: Fox "Breaking News" report of weapons-grade plutonium found at Al Tuwaitha

April 10 (2:59 EDT): A report noting with surprise "how little" the Iraqis were celebrating the
coalition invasion. [An interesting contradiction of the allegations of widespread celebration just
the day before with the toppling of the Saddam statue.]

April 10 (3 p.m. EDT: Reporter Rick Leventhal) Fox "Breaking News" report: A mobile bioweapons lab
is found. Video of a tiny tan truck—about the size of the smallest truck that U-Haul rents – which
had its cargo bed and fuel tank shot up with bullets after a looter tried to drive it away. Repeated
assertions that this is most definitely a "bioweapons" lab. A graphic sequence is shown of a large
Winnebago-type vehicle that is massive compared to the tiny truck found. The irony of this escapes
the Fox newscasters and defense "experts."
April 10: To show that France is in bed with Saddam Hussein, Fox begins running old footage of

Saddam Hussein's September 1975 trip to Paris to meet with Jacques Chirac and tour a nuclear power
plant. [Because Fox strives so hard to be "Fair and Balanced," it's all the more curious how it
fails to inform its audience about another trip four years later, this one to Baghdad on December 19,
1983 made by Reagan envoy and then former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld (see pic below). The
network again, because it's so very "Fair and Balanced," also inexplicably forgot to tell its
audience about another trip by Rummy to Baghdad, this time on March 24, 1984, the very same day that
a U.N. team found that Iraqi forces had used mustard gas laced with a nerve agent on Iranian
soldiers. Rummy obviously wasn't too concerned about the charges of gassing, as in 1986 when he was
considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination of 1988, he listed his restoration of
diplomatic relations with WMD-using Iraq as one of his proudest achievements.

April 7: Repeated ominous footage of barrels buried in a below-ground shed near Karbala. The
implication is that the Iraqi landscape is replete with these types of shelters, all of them brimming
with evidence of chemical weapons. [These were revealed to be agricultural chemicals as well.]

April 13: Fox Graphic: "Bush: Syria Harboring Chemical Weapons."

April 15: Fox analyst Mansoor Ijaz claims that the top 55 Iraqi leaders (along with the whole stash
of chemical and biological WMDs they have taken with them) are now living it up in Latakia, Syria.
[This is the same 55 that appeared on the deck of cards and is still being captured – far from all
living it up in Syria.] On The Fox Report anchor Shepard Smith completely breaks with any pretense
of objectivity and openly mocks actor Tim Robbins after playing an excerpt of Robbins' speech to the
National Press Club. "Oh, that was so powerful!" Smith mocked. [Impressive objectivity there, Mr.
Smith.]

April 16: Fred Barnes on Special Report with Brit Hume blames the looting of the Iraqi National
Museum on the museum staff. [Right now there are so many claims and counterclaims about the looting
it's hard to tell what happened. In a Fox segment on May 19 a coalition official asserted that
170,000 items were definitely not missing. Of course he refused to give a ballpark estimate of what
was missing, which he'd surely have in order to plausibly deny that the original estimate was wrong.]

May 22 (5:54 a.m. CDT): Richard King, a military doctor, appears on Fox and Friends with promises by
the show's hosts that he will verify that the Jessica Lynch rescue wasn't staged. King doesn't prove
anything. He states that he arrived at Saddam Hospital the day after the rescue, concedes damage and
mal-treatment of doctors at the hospital, and that he "was told " that the hospital was guarded by
hostile forces but doesn't specify who told him. [The testimony of the hospital staff contradicts
this last hearsay.]


Five polls showing that FOX viewers are less informed:

1. Iraq War. In 2003, a survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the
University of Maryland found widespread public misperceptions about the Iraq war. For instance, many
Americans believed that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been involved in 9/11, or that it possessed weapons
of mass destruction prior to the U.S. invasion. But not everyone was equally misinformed: "The extent
of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news," PIPA reported.
"Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have
misperceptions.” For instance, 80 % of Fox viewers held at least one of three Iraq-related
misperceptions, more than a variety of other types of news consumers, and especially NPR and PBS
users.

2. Global Warming. In a late 2010 survey, Stanford University’s Jon Krosnick found that "more
exposure to Fox News was associated with more rejection of many mainstream scientists’ claims about
global warming, with less trust in scientists, and with more belief that ameliorating global warming
would hurt the U.S. economy." Notably, there was a 25 percentage point gap between the most frequent
Fox News watchers (60 %) and those who watch no Fox news (85 %) in whether they think global warming
is “caused mostly by things people do or about equally by things people do and natural causes.”

3. Health Care. Earlier this year, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a survey on U.S.
misperceptions about health care reform. The survey asked 10 questions, and compared the "high
scorers"--those that answered 7 or more correct--based on their media habits. The result was that
"higher shares of those who report CNN (35 percent) or MSNBC (39 percent) as their primary news
source [got] 7 or more right, compared to those who report mainly watching Fox News (25 percent)."

4. Ground Zero Mosque. In late 2010, two scholars at the Ohio State University studied public
misperceptions about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”—and in particular, the prevalence of a series
of rumors depicting those seeking to build the mosque as terrorist sympathizers, anti-American, and
so on. The result? “People who use Fox News believe more of the rumors we asked about and they
believe them more strongly than those who do not.” Respondents reporting a “low reliance” on Fox News
believed .9 rumors on average (out of 4), but for those reporting a “high reliance” on Fox News, the
number increased to 1.5 out of 4.

5. 2010 Election. Late last year, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) once again
singled out Fox in a survey about misinformation during the 2010 election. Out of 11 false claims
studied in the survey, PIPA found that “almost daily” Fox News viewers were "significantly more
likely than those who never watched it" to believe 9 of them, including the misperception that “most
scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring.”

How Fox News distorts the news - a primer:
1. Panic Mongering. - This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is
never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking
moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself,
the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren’t activated, you aren’t
alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest
way to bypass the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don’t think
rationally. And when they can’t think rationally, they’ll believe anything.

2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. - Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead,
they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person’s credibility,
motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is
off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem
attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the
ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. “liberals,” “hippies,”
“progressives” etc. This form of argument – if it can be called that – leaves no room for genuine
debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.

3. Projection/Flipping. - This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the
argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you’re using and then accusing your opponent
of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists
are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the
phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It’s often called upon when the
media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.

4. Rewriting History. - This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their
worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive
scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin’s
mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie
about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic
minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally
rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they’ll often speak with such authority that the
casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.

5. Scapegoating/Othering. - This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It’s technically a
form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category.
The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can
then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm
that may befall them as a result.

6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. - This is more of what I’d
call a “meta-frame” (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways
news is reported constantly. For example, terms like “show of strength” are often used to describe
acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009.
There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to
make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force – it can turn wars into sporting events.
Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence – whether manifested
in war or debates about the Second Amendment – are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony)
moral. Violence becomes synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.

7. Bullying. - This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be
employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people
who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the
subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into
submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being
berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The
bully is then able to interpret that as a “win.”

8. Confusion. - As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less
confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the
logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow
along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated
thinking, thereby giving the user’s claims veracity in the viewer’s mind.

9. Populism. - This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one
of “the people” and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always
“elitist” or a “bureaucrat” or a “government insider” or some other category that is not the people.
The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand
in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that
accused “elitists” are almost always liberals – a category of political actors who, by definition,
advocate for non-elite groups.

10. Invoking the Christian God. - This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics,
the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and “real Americans” (those
are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not.
Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn’t love
those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all
Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It’s a cheap and easy technique used by all
totalitarian entities from states to cults.

11. Saturation. - There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being
ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated over and over, it must be everywhere
and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. “Saddam has WMD.” Veracity and hard data have no
relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the
same message over and over, regardless of whether it’s true or if it even makes sense, e.g., “Barack
Obama wasn’t born in the United States.” If something is said enough times, by enough people, many
will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox’s own slogan of “Fair and Balanced.”

12. Disparaging Education. - There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and
intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher
education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks
as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of
intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. The disdain for education and other
evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is
why they are so viscerally demeaned.

13. Guilt by Association. - This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have
used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here’s how it works: if your cousin’s
college roommate’s uncle’s ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev’s niece’s
ex-boyfriend’s sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.

14. Diversion. - This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in
a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where
most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in
a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they’ll talk about wanting to focus on
“moving forward,” as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to
this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to
the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of
projection/flipping.

http://foxnewsboycott.com/fox-news/propaganda-techniques-used-by-fox-news/ (Fox Methods)

All of the stuff you quoted is from Fox editorial shows, i.e. opinion shows. Opinion pieces are not news, they are... opinion pieces.

Do you know what news is, Canndo?

Are all of you liberals really this dumb, or dishonest? Do you see conservatives quoting Ed Schultz and crying about how biased MSNBC news is?
 

beenthere

New Member
All of the stuff you quoted is from Fox editorial shows, i.e. opinion shows. Opinion pieces are not news, they are... opinion pieces.

Do you know what news is, Canndo?

Are all of you liberals really this dumb, or dishonest? Do you see conservatives quoting Ed Schultz and crying about how biased MSNBC news is?
Trust me, he knows the difference, one thing I can say about canndo is, he is not a dummy!

Here is the original challenge I gave to canndo.

Back up this statement canndo, with some fact please.
Let me see you prove that Fox has been any more untruthful in reporting the news then CNN, CBS, NBC, PBS, ABC.

I'll be waiting!
Now, let's see anyone point out where canndo has proved this!
I call BS on the bullshiter!

This is about as disingenuous as it gets for a guy who proclaims to fair and looking for the truth!
 

ink the world

Well-Known Member
Those arent all opinion shows that he cited.

I don't see how "Breaking NEWS" is supposed to be opinion, when they actually use the fucking word NEWS. Britt Humes show is supposedly a news show. I'm not gonna continue, if you read what he cited thou you'd know it was hardly all from opinion shows.
 
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