whyinthehell

Over the summer, James Pinkerton was paid by Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann to write her new book. At the same time, Pinkerton was also paid by Fox News to offer commentary on the presidential campaign, without disclosing his role in the Bachmann campaign.

Making matters slightly worse, Fox News knew about this, and urged Pinkerton to hide the truth about his role from the public.

Pinkerton said this week, “They said, ‘Don’t tell anybody,’ I said, ‘Okay.’ I told my superiors at Fox and they knew.”

Remember, Fox News presents itself as a legitimate, independent news organization.

…[T]here’s plenty of evidence that Fox News does deliberately slant its news coverage. For the past few months, Media Matters has released a series of internal emails from Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon that show Sammon pushing the network to take conservative and/or anti-Obama positions. During the 2008 election, Sammon spearheaded the notion on the air that Obama is a “socialist,” even though he privately admitted that the accusation was “far-fetched.” Sammon told Fox employees to refer to the “public option” as the “government option” during the debate over the Affordable Care Act, echoing the advice of Republican pollster Frank Luntz.

Following Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo, Sammon suggested the network focus on the fact that the president hadn’t used the word “terrorism,” even though he had discussed the issue. Sammon urged Fox News employees to present climate change data as controversial. The network’s coverage of the issue is incredibly slanted: 81 percent of Fox News guests oppose the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of greenhouse gases.

One can discern Fox News’ conservative slant merely by watching the network itself, of course. But the leaks offer concrete evidence of how that slant is developed. Stewart pointed out that the end result of all this is that Fox News viewers are consistently the most misinformed — an assertion Wallace didn’t challenge. As Steve Benen points out, that’s because it’s an assertion that happens to be true. When Stewart says the network follows “ideological marching orders,” he’s on pretty solid ground.

It appears that the Fox News graphic department doesn’t know what their own employees look like.

During a segment reporting that Sarah Palin was undecided on whether or not to jump into the 2012 presidential race, the news channel showed a photo of Tina Fey imitating the former Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008.

In 2009, Fox News management sent out a memo to employees saying that on-screen errors would no longer be tolerated.

Media Matters, as part of its guerrilla-style operation against Fox News, may have uncovered one of the most damaging revelations yet: Audio of the Fox exec in charge of political coverage admitting that he repeatedly speculated on the air during the 2008 campaign about Obama’s alleged socialist tendencies, even though he privately found the notion “far fetched…”

That’s pretty remarkable. Sammon is conceding that the idea did indeed strike him as far fetched in 2008, even though he and his network aggressively promoted it day in and day out throughout the campaign. And he’s defending this by pointing out that the idea ended up gaining traction, as if this somehow justifies the original act of dishonesty!

Now, Sammon is also claiming here that Obama’s behavior in office ultimately persuaded him that the original diagnosis of Obama as a socialist turned out to be correct after all. That in itself, of course, is also a ridiculous falsehood. But the bottom line is that he doesn’t regret having spread an idea he personally found far-fetched, because so doing helped ensure that the far-fetched idea ultimately gained widespread acceptance. That’s a peculiar attitude for a “news” executive, isn’t it?

…FOX News is a real threat to the democratic process in America. PERIOD. I’m not just talking about having a conservative point of view. They created an entire political movement called the tea party movement and not a word from the media about this. Even on TV today, pundits and pols call [teabaggers] a wild card in politics, but that’s silly, they make Newt Gingrich look like a moderate republican. When has a media outlet ever turned into an activist organization for one political party and recruited members by sending their hosts on location to do so?

I haven’t heard the media complain either that FOX is the only network that has access to the teabagger convention. Once again the Ailes machine chugs along and our country suffers for it as the MSM remains mute.