Eyes On Fox News Network

A cable news junkie like I can get pretty jaded, particularly concerning Spin City: Fox News. So I found the viewpoint of Paula Garabedian Wall pretty interesting. She doesn’t get cable but had the occasion to take a friend’s advice to “watch Bill O’Reilly whom he [her friend] believes is the most truthful and factual commentator on the airwaves.”

“I watched O’Reilly and Hannity and some other loud white guys and beautiful blonde gals whose names I didn’t quite catch. There was a numbing sameness to their styles and behavior, a lot of seeming phony outrage, especially over Obama and Reverend Wright.” - Paula Garabedian Wall

A nice summary. Something tells me Ms. Wall won’t miss Fox News one bit.

May 10th, 2008
Categories: Commentary, Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor . Author: sknabt . Comments: No Comments

Right-wing activist Brent Bozell’s Business & Media Institute spliced an audio clip of an NPR interivew with Al Gore to make it appear he was blaming the tragic Myanmar cyclone on global warming. Naturally, the Drudge Report helped spread the disinformation.

I’m sure everyone will be suitably shocked that conservative Fox News not only repeated the lie but amplified it.

Where’s Bill O’Reilly screeching “do your own research” when we need him?

May 10th, 2008
Categories: Commentary, The O'Reilly Factor, Fox & Friends . Author: sknabt . Comments: No Comments

I hesitate to call Bill a liar. His gravity-sucking ego probably has the poor boy horribly deluded. Even so, it’s hard to explain his jaw-dropper of a defense of Dennis Miller’s post interview trashing of Hillary Clinton. Did I mention it was a “no spin” mugging?

Steve Young has the video and the details.

May 7th, 2008
Categories: Commentary, The O'Reilly Factor . Author: sknabt . Comments: No Comments

When (if?) Senator Obama appears on The O’Reilly Factor I have a question he can ask of host Bill O’Reilly. The gist of which is in this video courtesy of LiberalViewer:

It’ll keep O’Reilly from puffing up like a peacock as he scolds Obama for hiding from the news network Bill crows has been oh-so fair to the Democratic Senator.

May 6th, 2008
Categories: Commentary, The O'Reilly Factor . Author: sknabt . Comments: No Comments

According to TVNewser Senator Barack Obama plans an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor “if we can fit it in.” Will the Democratic masochism ever end? Probably as soon as Hillary counts all the voters she picked up from her encounter with America’s foremost demagogue, Bill O’Reilly, and realizes she has more than half her fingers left unused.

May 5th, 2008
Categories: Commentary, The O'Reilly Factor . Author: sknabt . Comments: No Comments

“Democrats are being idiotic by going on that network.” - Markos Moulitsas, creator of Daily Kos

Senator Obama did Chris Wallace’s show recently. Senator Clinton did him one better by facing off with right-wing junk yard dog, Bill O’Reilly.

“Coming Up on ‘FOX News Sunday’: Howard Dean, Terry McAuliffe and Joe Andrew” reads the headline over at Fox News. So what happened to the Democratic boycott of Fox News? Kevin Drum over at CBS News has a theory - or sort of a theory - I find scattered and unconvincing.

So why are Democrats really playing with right-wing Fox News?

This is the network I turned on this morning for, maybe, 15 minutes and first caught an advertisement for an upcoming Clinton body language segment on next Monday’s The O’Reilly Factor followed by a Hillary Clinton joke on Fox & Friends mocking her as a liar. Me, I changed channels. I’m, frankly, sick of Fox News’ bull.

However, who are the folks that keep their eyes glued to Fox News? Is this a Democratic target audience? Fox News would have you believe it is. My personal observation - hardly scientific - is the folks I know who watch Fox News are hardcore conservatives. Many are right-wing talk radio addicts. They hate Democrats with a passion!

I think Democrats will quickly learn appearing on Fox News as a general rule is pointless and just red blog fodder or right-wing talk radio fodder. Sure, Hillary Clinton appearing on The O’Reilly Factor grabs attention because it’s a case of climbing into the lion’s den of liberal bashers. But how many times can you dip into that well?

Fox News Sunday is a more interesting case. There’s the glaring example of the shameless whoring Chris Wallace did in his Bill Clinton interview where he ambushed him with a bunch of questions gleaned from, essentially, right-wing talk radio and the red blogs. Lesson learned, Chris hasn’t pulled any similar boners since I’m aware of. His show is pretty good. Of course, the credit here goes to the fact it’s a Sunday show featured on Fox’s parent mainstream entertainment channel (naturally re-broadcast on Fox News). It’s being sold to a broader audience.

So when I hear all these Democrats are appearing on Fox News Sunday it’s hard to get excited because the typical Fox News viewer isn’t the target audience nor is its broadcast limited to the comfortable conservative womb of the Fox News channel. I don’t blame Democrats a bit for appearing on it.

Appearing on Fox News proper? For Democrats it’s masochism.

May 3rd, 2008
Categories: Commentary, Fox News . Author: sknabt . Comments: No Comments

McCain’s statement about American troops remaining in Iraq for 100 years has been magnified by the Democrats during the primaries. Barack Obama particularly has been called on his use of it to imply the current Iraq war will continue long after we’re all kissing dirt. Of course, McCain was talking about a reduced military presence akin to our troops in Korea. Not that they’re a small matter.

Old news that. However, things are heating up even more now that, according to AP, the Democratic National Committee is now running this ad exploiting the issue:

NBC, MSNBC, and CNN have been contacted to pull the ad. Of course, Fox News isn’t on the list though, according to Crooks and Liars, they’ve been approached to air the ad. So you have the Democratic National Committee (and the 1st Amendment) tugging on one end and the Republican National Committee, Fox News’ conservative soul mates, on the other demanding the ads be pulled.

Anybody wish to place any wagers as to Roger Ailes decision?

April 29th, 2008
Categories: Commentary, Fox News, News . Author: sknabt . Comments: 3 Comments

O’Reilly: “OK, so who’s the guy who sets the world price of oil? Somebody has to set it at $125/barrel, it just doesn’t arrive at that number.”

Ben Mezrich: “It would be great if there were one such person-”

O’Reilly: “Look, there’s got to be that one person. If you don’t know him, that’s fine, neither do I.”

The one guy manipulating oil prices? Give me strength!

JMK at Workingclass Conservative points out the obvious:

“What Mr. Mezrich didn’t get a chance to say was that there is NO ONE person! Commodities futures markets are an open auction, where the price of various commodities are bid up and down according to various investors/speculators ‘bets’ based on the exiting information at hand.”

I guess I should be grateful O’Reilly didn’t dig out the old Rube Goldberg chart where all paths of liberal evildoing run through George Soros.

This post gets logged under “humor” even if it was completely unintentional on Bill’s part.

April 28th, 2008
Categories: Commentary, The O'Reilly Factor, Humor . Author: sknabt . Comments: No Comments

I’ve listed a link to Newsbusters since this blog opened. It’s a conservative media watchdog web site. I figured it was only fair since I also include a link to liberal Media Matters. Naturally, I poke around both sites and even have posted comments at Media Matters.

This week I decided to post some comments on Newsbusters. I should have known better. The first thing one will notice with Newsbusters’ comments is there’s no diversity of opinions expressed (as opposed to Media Matters which allows dissent). Anyway, I added a couple of comments of decidedly liberal perspective. No flames. Nothing nasty. I just expressed my opinion. Didn’t take long before I was banned as a “troll.” Intolerance plain and simple.

The term troll has a long history on the Internet, particularly Usenet newsgroups. In Newsbusters’ case, the term apparently means expressing any opinion contrary to their very narrow definition of conservative thought.

Newsbusters, of course, has a perfect right to restrict visitors to those who meet their conservative litmus test. Democratic Underground, a liberal discussion website I also provide a link to, unfortunately, has a similar limited policy. It’s one reason I stopped posting there. I saw a conservative’s post get deleted and lost my interest with the site (rarely I’ll check it out for news).

But there’s a huge irony here. Newsbusters is a web site dedicated to attacking what it perceives as liberal bias in the media. At the same time, it enforces conservative bias with an iron fist. As probably the leading conservative media watchdog, I think we can see where such an intolerant organization wants to take the media. Yep, if they achieved their goal of molding the media to their will, indeed, Fox News might begin to look “fair and balanced” after all.

I guess the lesson here is beware of conservatives advocating “fairness and balance” because, in point of fact, it’s the last thing on their minds.

By the way, I plan to continue to list Newsbusters’ link here. Unlike Newsbusters, I value diversity of opinion. Only comments caught by our automated spam filter are deleted here. All opinions are not just tolerated but appreciated.

April 25th, 2008
Categories: Commentary, News . Author: sknabt . Comments: 1 Comment

This hilarious look at Fox News says it all so requires no introduction by me.

Part 1:

Part 2:

April 20th, 2008
Categories: Commentary, Fox News, Humor . Author: sknabt . Comments: No Comments