Posts Tagged ‘Fox News’

World Public Opinion has released a study looking at the knowledge of Americans on several issues. These are rarely flattering for the country, and this study is no different.

What is of note is that Fox News viewers were much more likely to be misinformed. From alternet.org:

* 91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
* 72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit
* 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse
* 60 percent believe climate change is not occurring
* 49 percent believe income taxes have gone up
* 63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
* 56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout
* 38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
* 63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)

These percentages are significantly higher than non-Fox viewers.

It isn’t the first study to find that Fox News viewers are misinformed, and it likely won’t be the last. When you push an agenda and ignore facts, this is bound to happen.

Enjoy knowing they have the most viewers. See comments for correct information.

Adam Feser

I was catching up on some Daily Show episodes today and stumbled on what was one of the funnier clips in some time. Jon frequently calls Fox News out when they’re being hypocritical, or, in the case of Fox and Friends, dumb (seriously, it’s like their goal is to provide clips for Jon and Stephen). So Fox is now trying to stir up anti-Park51 sentiment, and they do it in this case by saying one of the funders is a radical that funds radical madrassas and is generally a bad guy. They never say his name or show a picture. It turns out he is the second biggest shareholder in News Corp., Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, meaning he is Rupert Murdoch’s partner, meaning he is a partial owner of Fox News, meaning he makes money from them, meaning they are funding Park51 and the madrassas and whatever else they claim he’s into. John Oliver and Wyatt Cenac have a great debate over whether it’s stupidity or evil that caused them to neglect this part of the story.

I’m going with evil (though Oliver makes a convincing stupid argument).

Enjoy continued hate mongering as a distraction.

Adam Feser

You may have heard that News Corp., the group that owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post, gave $1 million to the Republican Governor’s Association. It probably seems worse than it is. A lot of groups give money to both parties. It does, however, make for a fun opportunity to parody Glenn Beck’s mission of following the money to whatever communist is trying to destroy the country. Here it is:

Enjoy Husker fever.

Adam Feser

Barack Obama recently signed a nuclear arms reduction pact with Russia. The pact has us both reducing our nuclear arms by a third (so that we have over 1,500, I believe). There is also a pledge that we will not use nuclear weapons on non-nuclear states or states that are adhering to the principles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

This, of course, means several countries are not a part of the new agreement. Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel would not fit the criteria laid out.

This has led to Republicans pitching a fit about reducing arms and big scary monsters out there that will now overtake us and pillage our cities. One such person was Sarah Palin. She compared it to getting into a playground fight, letting someone punch you in the face, and not retaliating. Because, you know, you should be able to respond with a nuclear bomb to being punched in the face. And those gosh darn wars are just so cute, like those danged childhood fights. I remember this one time Trig (or Trip or Shoot or Flyfish or whatever his name is) got punched in the face. Since schools have reduced arms and students’ rights to carry them, Trig couldn’t even shoot the kid. Instead he just punched back, it was broken up and they went to detention. Can you believe that?

But I digress. When Obama was asked about Palin’s comments, he said, “I really have no response to that. The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues.” Prodded further about Republicans fears, Obama continued, “What I would say to them is, is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff are comfortable with it, I’m probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin.”

Check and mate. (Now king me.)

But if you want to see just how ridiculous the reaction to Obama’s agreement with Russia is and how predictably awesome Fox’s coverage is, there is no one better than Jon Stewart. Enjoy yet another hilarious Daily Show clip in which he exposes how one-sided Fox’s coverage is and just how ignorant Reagan-worshipers are of his actual stances.

I also want to say/ask this: Why would we need nuclear weapons to respond to a non-nuclear attack? Why? Have we not proven our ability to destroy a country completely without nuclear weapons? We hang out in doors and fly remote-controlled planes that devastate countries. If we get punched in the face, to use Palin’s horrible analogy, we are more than capable of killing the person with any number of weapons. But we need the option to nuke a country? Really? Someone who agrees with these people explain to me how the nuclear option is necessary. Because the notion seems dumb to me.

Enjoy knowing we still have enough nukes to destroy the world.

Adam Feser

Update: If more people would realize that what Coburn says is true, we’d have less stuff like this going on.

Tom Coburn had a town hall with some fiery guests, and he shocked many of them with his defense of Nancy Pelosi. When he discussed his policy differences with Pelosi, he called her a nice lady. The crowd booed and hissed, and he replied, “Come on now. She is nice – how many of you all have met her? She’s a nice person.”

He has a great point here, and we’re all guilty of forgetting it. Just because we disagree with someone does not mean they are evil. I try to remind myself (and you) that we all have friends that hold positions opposite our own, and this means that any politician that we disagree with could be our friend.

Although I hate Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann and believe they are insane, but I don’t have any friends that crazy.

Coburn also had harsh words for Fox News. A woman complained that she would be thrown in jail for not getting insurance, and Coburn quickly said that is not the point. “The intention is not to put any one in jail. That makes for good TV news on FOX but that isn’t the intention.”

He also said, “So don’t catch yourself being biased by FOX News that somebody is no good. The people in Washington are good. They just don’t know what they don’t know.”

A valid point from a man I rarely agree with.

Enjoy a free MLB Extra Innings preview.

Adam Feser

Remember Megyn Kelly and others wouldn’t stop talking about how Democrats were “ramming” health care reform down the throats of an American public that didn’t want it? Times have quickly changed.

I wrote earlier about how the poll numbers change pretty quickly under some scrutiny, and now there is even more evidence Americans support the plan.

Gallup has found that a majority of Americans support the bill’s passage.

I wonder if Megyn will use that poll to grill those that would attack health care reform.

Enjoy this.

Adam Feser

Update: Even Fox News chief Roger Ailes admits that the Obama administration has legitimate complaints.

Sarah Palin was on Leno’s show, and she called out the media for not having “the fairness, the balance in there.” She actually said those words. Then she went on to say she went to Fox News because they don’t put opinion in their hard news stories. Because they never have reporters say snow disproves global warming and big bad Gore and several other such things.

So Jon Stewart went to turned to Megyn Kelly’s show, which is in the “news” portion of FN’s day (which is 8:00 a.m -3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.). Jon checks the coverage of her show, America Live, on the day of the Health Care Summit to see if it lives up to its billing as showing both sides of every story.

I doubt anyone would be surprised to find that her show is hardly balanced.

Fox just makes it easy when they come out and say we’re going to show both sides evenly. And it’s even easier when Sarah Palin says that’s why she went there. Because it shows obvious balance when all Republican politicians and strategists go there as soon as they’re done campaigning or they quit their job to help their state by spreading crazy death panel lies or doing stand-up that actually makes Leno look funny. Speaking of which, Jon discussed Palin’s stand-up, too. (Spoiler, Alaska is cold and different than Hollywood.) Jon gives her way more credit than I can, and his piece also includes Romney on Letterman. Maybe I just couldn’t stand how she stood up for Jay in the whole Conan-gets-screwed fiasco. As if I needed more reason to dislike her she sees herself as a Jay Leno-type figure.

Enjoy the Fox defenders below either claiming no bias or talking only about MSNBC.

Adam Feser

Jon Stewart recently went did an interview with Bill O’Reilly. There was the usual Bill making fun of Jon’s stoned viewers and such, but there were some good points.

Jon is good at giving reasonable answers to questions and also pointing out just how silly a question like “How is Obama doing?” can be. To Bill’s credit, he’s okay taking on a light tone with Jon. But when Jon starts talking about the problem (which Jon calls genius) with Fox, Bill uses two examples of people that won’t go on his show as total vindication.

It looks like they couldn’t fit the entire interview into the show, but it’s still worth watching.

The part where O’Reilly compares Fox to a newspaper, which also has opinion, cracks me up. Is the opinion on the front page of a newspaper and does it take up nearly the entire newspaper? MSNBC is also guilty of this. It makes you wonder whether or not they should just be called 24-hour opinion channels.

Enjoy doppelganger week (mine has been John Belushi).

Adam Feser

Fox News will now be seriously attempting to stop making errors. Stewart busted Hannity for footage that made a protest look much bigger than it was, and they made a similar mistake later in the week. It appears the final straw was using the wrong Palin cover, instead showing the cover of a book mocking her.

I wonder if they will actually be canning people for screw-ups like this.

Enjoy the Huskers Big 12 North Division Championship.

Adam Feser

Palin spoke in Wisconsin recently and her paranoia seeped out. There were no cameras, cell phones, laptops, press, etc. allowed, but politico did get in. Palin discussed some changes that have been occurring, such as moving the phrase “In God We Trust” from the center of new coins to the edge.

This theory apparently comes from a chain e-mail (which have proven so reliable, as seen on this blog). The obvious point she was making here is that Democrats are secularizing America. The problem is that Democrats were not responsible for the move. She asked, “Who calls a shot like that? Who makes a decision like that?” As Fox News points out, the Republican Congress and George W. Bush are responsible for that. Oops.

Also, she rambled about death panels again.

It’s nice to see Fox expose a lie like this. Now if they’d just fact check Glenn Beck (somebody should at that network should).

Enjoy knowing she holds no office.

Adam Feser