In his first TV interview outside Fox News since it emerged that he lied about his past reporting, Bill O’Reilly claimed his statements had been “accurate” and attempted to use his show’s ratings as proof that he is a trusted reporter.
“So we had a controversy there,” O’Reilly said on the March 24 edition of The Late Show with David Letterman, “and we put forth what my side was, they put forth what their side was, folks decided, and it worked out okay for me, and I got even more viewers.” In the edited clip, released before the show airs, O’Reilly used his show’s ratings to claim viewers trust him, saying, “I’ve been on the air 19 seasons, 15 years at number one, our ratings now are as high as they’ve ever been, so I think they do trust me and I’m glad they do.”
Despite O’Reilly’s claim that “what I said was accurate,” the Fox News host has been mired in controversy since news emerged of his numerous fabrications about his past reporting. O’Reilly has claimed he was in a “combat situation” in the Falklands, which is disputed by reporters and historians. The Fox host also said that he personally heard the suicide of figure in the JFK assassination, when in fact he himself said in a phone call that he was not in Florida at the time. And after it was revealed that O’Reilly’s claim to have witnessed the murder of nuns in El Salvador could not possibly be true because he arrived in the country after the murders occurred — a claim denounced as “reprehensible” by a lawyer who represented the victim’s families — O’Reilly explained that he only meant he had seen pictures of the murder, not the event itself. O’Reilly used a similar defense when questions arose about his claim to have seen “Irish terrorists kill and maim their fellow citizens in Belfast with bombs”: a Fox spokesperson said that O’Reilly meant he was shown photos of such bombings by Belfast police.
As Rachel Maddow has pointed out, O’Reilly’s defense “that it’s okay if they lie on the air as long as it rates” is absurd, even if his show’s ratings come close to those of popular TV shows like AMC’s Walking Dead-based talk show “Talking Dead” and Discovery Channel’s reality show about gold miners “Gold Rush.”
Could you imagine the world operating on News Corporations business model. Murdoch’s press owns 66% of the Main Stream Press on the East Coast of Australia. Which I might add all run at a financial loss. Murdoch doesn’t care he simply keeps them to garner political favour and influence in this country. His profits come from Foxtel and the pay to air TV cable channels he controls.
However his long term ambition is to change the media laws of the country to gain an even bigger concentration of media across all formats at the expense of any competition in particular government funded but independent public media the ABC. The ABC is the most trusted news and information source in the country with 85% citizen support. Should that happen the nature of how Australians get news and information will be changed forever as will the political landscape of Australia. The business, wealth, media and political class the 1% will have a fiefdom of their own.
Murdoch’s influence in the Anglosphere US,UK,and AUS is just far too much and dangerous particularly given the degree of non news he puts out
This is one of the most lie filled biased right-wing propaganda reports Bill O’Reilly has ever put out. It is full of nothing but right-wing spin and lies, and it ignores all the actual facts. O’Reilly even said The Iraq War “Was A Victory Until President Obama Mucked It Up” Which is just laughable.
Here is what the dishonest right-wing hack said:
http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/03/17/oreilly-iraq-war-was-a-victory-until-president/202933
And now here are the facts, point by point.
1) The Iraq war was a disaster and based on lies about WMD’s from Cheney and the bogus intelligence service he set up to feed lies about WMD’s to the media. O’Reilly claims everyone thought Iraq had WMD’s, which is a total lie, because at the time Scott Ritter (the actual weapons inspector in Iraq) was saying they did not have any. Among many others who said the very same thing.
You can read much more if you just google the facts about the Iraq war. And it all proves everything O’Reilly said is a lie in his attempt to slam Obama and defend Bush.
2) The creation of ISIS was a direct cause of getting rid of Saddam, that is a fact. Saddam had control of the country and he did not allow ISIS to operate in Iraq. Saddam also hated Al Qaeda and he did not allow them to operate in Iraq either.
This can be proven with many sources who are experts on Iraq, and some of them are even Republicans, including Colin Powell and Lawrence Wilkerson, who is a retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. They are both Republicans and they have said that ISIS would not be what it is today if Saddam was still in power in Iraq, and O’Reilly ignores it all.
3) And the biggest lie O’Reilly told, about Obama not leaving 10,000 troops in Iraq. That is garbage and total lies. Because Obama “pulled us out” under the terms of an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration. He was going to leave troops there and the Maliki government refused the terms of a Status of Forces Agreement that made U. S. forces immune to prosecution for crimes committed while occupying Iraq.
George W. Bush approved the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq in November of 2008, not Obama. In fact, Obama did not even take office until January of 2009.
The U.S.A -Iraq Status of Forces Agreement was a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008. It established that U.S. combat forces would withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and all U.S. forces will be completely out of Iraq by December 31, 2011.
George W. Bush agreed to it and signed it, President Obama had nothing to do with it, zero, because he was not even the President yet. And Bill O’Reilly never mentioned this fact one time, not once.
In November 2008, Iraq’s Cabinet approved the agreements; on 27 November, the Iraqi Parliament ratified them; on December 4, Iraq’s presidential council approved the security pacts. And under Obama they refused to change it and allow troops to stay, so Obama was forced to remove them from Iraq, he had no choice, because of the agreement Bush made and signed.
Under that agreement it was impossible for Obama to leave the 10,000 troops O’Reilly claims would have prevented ISIS. O’Reilly says Obama mucked it up by not leaving the troops, when he could not do it, and Iraq would not allow it. Because Bush put the SOFA in place and agreed to it, so how in the hell is that Obama’s fault?
Only a biased partisan right-wing hack could come to that conclusion, to do that you have to leave out all the facts, which is exactly what O’Reilly did. Then on top of that O’Reilly says we won the Iraq war until Obama mucked it up, so what did we win?
Iraq is and was a disaster, and nobody in their right mind thinks we won, even before ISIS was created. Only clueless Bush defending right-wing fools believe we won in Iraq. We attacked a country that did not attack us, based on lies about WMD’s, and it cost us billions and hundreds of thousands of deaths, not to mention creating the terrorist group ISIS, and it was all Bush’s fault.
So when Obama tells the truth about Iraq O’Reilly attacks him, ignores all the facts, and spins out some right-wing fairy tale about how it is all Obama’s fault for not leaving 10,000 troops in Iraq. When it was Bush who signed the SOFA, and even if we had left 10,000 troops the the experts say that would not have stopped ISIS anyway.
The problem was getting rid of Saddam, and that is a fact O’Reilly will never admit to, because he is a Bush defending fool. Bush did it, and Obama had no choice to pull the troops out because of the agreement Bush signed, and those are facts.
Lawerence Wilkerson said this: Before we invaded Iraq and sort of cemented the two sides and caused it to start. I think that was a disaster, invading Iraq in 2003, and we’re seeing the results of that disaster right now.
But I don’t think–that said, I don’t think that adding more American troops to it is the answer to the problem. The answer to the problem is a political answer, but it’s a political answer that’s very complex and would take a long time to work its way out.
It involves Ankara, it involves the Turks, of course, it involves Tehran and the Iranians, it involves Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council, it involves Lebanon, it involves all the region–and I don’t preclude Israel from being in there too–and taking on all the problems that are causing this Islamic State force to be supported by increasing numbers of Muslims, continue to be able to recruit, and recruit even better than before, and continuing to be able to prosecute its agenda in the region.
You don’t stop that with bombs. You don’t stop that with aircraft. You don’t stop that with troops on the ground, for that matter, unless you’re willing, as I said, to mobilize the nation and really go to war. The way you stop that is with political solutions to problems that are causing these people to do what they’re doing, and more importantly, causing Muslims all around the world to support them.
And I could fill this website for weeks with more stuff just like that, it all proves O’Reilly wrong, and proves he is a liar, and that he did it to make the Democrat Obama look bad while defending his Republican hero George W. Bush. O’Reilly is wrong about all of it, and left out all the facts that show he is wrong. Nothing he said was true, not a word, it was all right-wing propaganda.
If you think Bill O’Reilly suddenly got caught lying about a few things, and that he has not been caught lying before, you would be sadly mistaken. I have run this website for 15 years and the lies I have documented from O’Reilly are endless.
There are far too many to list, so I will show you about 100 of them.
1) O’Reilly bragged repeatedly he won two Peabody Awards hosting Inside Edition in the 90s. He won zero.
2) O’Reilly bragged that, woops, he actually had won a Polk Award hosting Inside Edition. He won zero of those, too. To be specific, the show did win that award–a year after O’Reilly left the show.
3) O’Reilly then said he never claimed to have won a Peabody Award. He actually did make that claim, repeatedly, using the award as proof that Inside Edition was not a tabloid show but very good journalism. He later admitted to making the original Peabody claim, but now he just says the Peabody guys are unfair liberals.
4) Repeatedly claiming he’s “an average guy,” O’Reilly has claimed that he came from nothing and “you don’t come from any lower than I came from on the economic scale.” Actually, O’Reilly’s mother has repeatedly talked to the press about regular vacations the family took to Florida, that O’Reilly and his sister went to private school and college with no financial aid, and that they lived in an affluent New York suburb. His Father was an oil company accountant who made $30,000 a year in 1980, which is equal to $100,000 a year today, which is upper middle class, not poor, or even close.
5) In 2006, O’Reilly boasted that he gets 6 million viewers every night. He got 2 million then. Today, he’s posting “slightly higher numbers” because he’s addressing the Argentina controversy–so he’s getting about 3 million viewers a night.
6) Responding to critics who say Fox News is too conservative, O’Reilly has long claimed to be a “normal guy” and a registered independent. It turned out, contradicting that claim, that he was a registered Republican.
7) He insisted that he is really an Independent and that when he registered to vote in 1994, there was no independent option and that he was “somehow assigned Republican status.” In 2004, comedian (now a senator) Al Franken went back and looked at O’Reilly’s voter registration form. Actually, there was an Independent option right next to the Republican box. O’Reilly had chosen Republican and then lied about it for the next decade on television.
8) NPR’s Mike Pesca reported O’Reilly’s political registration in 2001 on the radio. O’Reilly called it a hatchet job and said, “I’ve never heard of Mike Pesca.” Pesca had interviewed O’Reilly on tape for an hour for the report.
9) In 2004, O’Reilly said Iraq was producing chemical weapons in the run up to the 2003 Iraq war. They were not.
10) O’Reilly said Al Qaeda was working with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq even after the claims were widely disproven. They were not.
11) Early in the Iraq war, O’Reilly started a boycott of French goods in protest of the lack of French support for the war. In April 2004, O’Reilly said “they’ve lost billions of dollars in France according to the Paris Business Review.” Such a publication doesn’t exist and never did, first of all, and trade between the U.S. and France actually increased in the time between the war’s beginning and that statement. O’Reilly continued to brag about that successful boycott for years afterwards.
12) In an attempt to explain European opposition to the Iraq war, he said European media–the U.K., in particular–consists of state-controlled organizations led by liberal governments that deliver anti-American propaganda. In the U.K., meanwhile, the BBC was struck hard by controversy because they published reports embellishing the threat Iraq posed that misleadingly promoted the war–the same errant tale championed by the Bush administration. The chairman resigned.
13) O’Reilly claimed that former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean wanted to pull out of Iraq “immediately” in 2004. Actually, Dean said, “I think it was a mistake to go into Iraq in the long run. Now that we’re there, we’re stuck there, and the [Bush] administration has no plan for how to deal with it, and we cannot leave because losing the peace is not an option. We cannot leave Iraq.”
14) O’Reilly claimed President Bush never said “mission accomplished” regarding the Iraq war. Bush said that in 2003, never mind standing in front of an enormous “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier for a world-class photo op.
15) O’Reilly claimed the Iraq war was France’s fault because the country never pushed for weapons inspections. In fact, they did.
16) O’Reilly said the Dixie Chicks never recovered from the protests that followed their famous criticism of George Bush over the Iraq War. Meanwhile, they had the top-selling album in the country, the top-selling tour in the country, and won a Grammy.
17) In 2005, O’Reilly said “The secular progressive movement would like to have marriage abolished, that’s what this gay marriage thing is all about.” While it was clear even back then that this was a lie about the marriage equality movement, with broader legalization we can now look to 252,000 same-sex married couples as even clearer proof that marriage equality has always been about equality and not abolishment.
18) O’Reilly claimed that gay marriage killed straight marriage, particularly pointing to heterosexual marriage rates falling in Sweden after same-sex marriage was allowed in 1995. Actually, Swedish marriage rates rose following the passing of the law. Marriage rates are falling in the U.S., but it’s been dropping since well before any gay marriage law was passed in America.
19) O’Reilly said that, legally, gay marriage makes polygamy legal. After over 252,000 same sex marriages in the U.S., I’m still waiting on the man with 27 wives O’Reilly talked about.
20) When O’Reilly was accused of stoking hatred that led to Dr. George Tiller’s murder by an anti-abortion activist, O’Reilly said he never called Tiller a baby killer. He did, repeatedly. He said that when he used the words “tiller the baby killer” a million times over the years before his murder, he was just quoting what someone else said, and that since he quoted someone else he never said it.
21) He said the reason many, many, many of the Hurricane Katrina victims didn’t leave New Orleans before the storm was because they’re drug addicted and thugs who wouldn’t leave without a fix. Actually, many victims were poor and owned no vehicles. Reasons for staying vary, but drug addiction was never a significant contributor.
22) He said no one on Fox News ever claimed Obamacare would send people to jail for not paying health coverage bills. They did, pretty much every day
23) O’Reilly claimed Obama never ordered the military to assist during attacks on Benghazi. Obama did.
24) In a 2014 interview, Obama said that people believe verifiably false conspiracy theories about Benghazi because folks like you [O’Reilly] are telling them that. O’Reilly denied it–but, of course, he pushed the conspiratorial narrative every night.
25) He claimed poverty has gone up in the last half century despite the federal government spending trillions on social engineering. Wrong–poverty is down.
26) He said “the only reason to use marijuana is to get high.” Actually, it’s used for medical purposes in much of the United States. Marijuana helps to subdue pain for arthritis sufferers, for instance, or stop seizures in other individuals, including children.
27) Annoyed with legalization in Colorado, O’Reilly claimed the Denver Post actually hired an editor to promote pot. They hired an editor to report, not promote.
28) O’Reilly claimed no one but Fox News covered White House Communications Director Anita Dunn saying Mao Zedong was one of her favorite political philosophers. Lots of other media covered it, though perhaps not as much as he would have liked.
29) He claimed Obama failed to prosecute an easy voter-intimidation criminal case against the the New Black Panther Party because they didn’t want to charge minorities with violating civil rights. Actually, the Bush administration did that, the ruling to not prosecute came under Bush, before Obama even took office.
30) O’Reilly lies about taxes a lot. In an argument about taxes on the rich being too high, he said tax rates in New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles were much higher than what they actually were.
31) He said France and Germany taxed citizens at 80 percent. Actually, that’s double their tax rate.
32) In the lead up to the 2004 election, O’Reilly claimed the U.S. exported more goods than it imported because everybody wants our stuff, and we’re not wild about snails. That’s another snipe at France. In fact, we had a trade deficit, including with France.
33) O’Reilly made up a quote saying that liberal financier George Soros wanted his elderly father dead. Actually, Soros didn’t say that.
34) He claimed Democrats lost voters in the 2004 presidential election over its gains in 2000. Actually, Democrats gained 5 million voters.
35) O’Reilly claimed Bush won the 2004 election because Independents chose the Republican. Actually, Independents voted Democrat. And in the 2000 election Gore got more votes than Bush, but Florida voting corruption put Bush in the White House, and his brother just happened to be the Governor of Florida.
36) He claimed the Bush tax cuts didn’t create a budget deficit, and that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were the real reason behind the budget issues. Actually, Bush had a deficit before 9/11 or any war began.
37) O’Reilly claimed that Hillary Clinton didn’t go to a single funeral or memorial service of a 9/11 victim. Not true. Further, as senator of New York at the time, Clinton took on the causes of first responders and won the endorsement of two NYC firefighters unions for her support.
38) O’Reilly said that illegal immigrants were biological weapons that killed more people than 9/11. Shortly thereafter, he claimed he never said that.
39) Talking about Fox’s biases, O’Reilly said, “There is no talking points. There is no marching order. It doesn’t exist.” Go watch the movie Outfoxed and you will see that he was lying.
40) He said Fox News has more liberals than conservatives on air. Well, that flies in the face of common sense, because conservatives outnumber liberals by 10 to 1, if not more.
41) One of O’Reilly’s signature moments was screaming at the son of a 9/11 victim on air and then repeatedly claiming the son, Jeremy Glick, was a 9/11 truther who blamed America for the attacks. In fact, Glick said he believed that American support for the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s laid the groundwork for Al Qaeda. There’s a difference, and Glick was right.
42) O’Reilly said Bush didn’t oppose the creation of the 9/11 commission. He did.
43) O’Reilly likes to say there is a War on Christmas. To support that, he claimed red and green clothes–Christmas colors–had been banned by a public school in Texas run by fascism. That was not true.
44) Talking about the War on Christmas, O’Reilly claimed Circuit City was owned by Indians. It was never owned by Indians.
45) Did someone say War on Christmas? O’Reilly claimed that a public school changed the lyrics to “Silent Night” in order to secularize it. Actually, it was an entirely new song written on the old tune, changed by the former president of Ronald Reagan’s church and performed in churches around the country.
46) O’Reilly said Best Buy banned the phrase Merry Christmas. They didn’t.
47) O’Reilly claimed the income tax originated with Karl Marx. Actually, it existed before Marx was born.
48) During the Bush years, O’Reilly said the Clinton tax rates were higher than at any point since World War II. That’s a lie, taxes have been higher numerous times throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Especially during the Reagan years, top tax rates used to be 70%, they are now 36% and were 39% under Clinton.
49) O’Reilly claimed Jane Fonda turned notes smuggled by U.S. prisoners of war over to the Vietnamese. False.
50) In 2005, O’Reilly said the Bush administration was not engaging in torture. He pointed to a State Department report on human rights that criticized torture–except in the U.S. In any event, we can be sure now that torture took place.
51) In 2006, O’Reilly said there was no evidence the U.S. used electric shock torture. There was evidence then, and there is evidence now.
52) O’Reilly also claimed that Geneva Convention protections apply only to uniformed soldiers fighting for a recognized country, as opposed to stateless terrorists. That’s a lie. The Geneva Convention applies to everyone.
53) When O’Reilly gets things wrong, he’s exceptional at talking about how right he is. When he claimed federal housing assistance rose 1,400 percent from Clinton to Bush, he was off by 1,378 percent. When he was called out on it, he said these are hard numbers.
54) In 1986, Dick Cheney voted against a resolution calling to free Nelson Mandela from prison. Cheney has repeatedly said it’s because Mandela ran a terrorist operation, but O’Reilly has contradicted Cheney, saying that vote was cast in order to protect poor South Africans from sanctions.
55) One of O’Reilly’s favorite targets is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He’s famously stated that the ACLU supports pedophiles and a child’s “constitutional right to have sex with adults.” This is not at all what the ACLU does.
56) O’Reilly claimed that the liberal Boston Globe didn’t cover the rape of a 9-year-old girl. They did.
57) O’Reilly claimed that Hillary Clinton can write anything off against the Bill Clinton presidential library, thus giving her access to vast funds. Actually, the library’s finances are handled by the government.
58) Making the case that the Democrats went over the line in their questioning of the Bush administration, O’Reilly claimed that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) questioned Condoleeza Rice’s “respect for the troops.” Actually, Boxer questioned Rice’s “respect for the truth.”
59) O’Reilly claimed that Bush’s tax cuts meant that federal tax revenues will be more this year than at any time during the Clinton administration. Actually, the year 2000 had the highest inflation-adjusted revenue until 2013.
60) Following the recent massacre at Charlie Hebdo headquarters, O’Reilly said France brought terrorism on itself because they allowed no-go zones where Muslims don’t let outsiders in. That’s not true.
61) O’Reilly then claimed he never said there were no-go zones in France. He said exactly that.
62) While opining about black America’s problems, O’Reilly claimed the Irish and African-American experiences were equivalent because both had to leave their homelands and came to America with nothing. Actually, in case you don’t have a history book on hand, Africans were forced to leave in bondage, kept in slavery for hundreds of years, and then, after the abolition of slavery, were thoroughly and systematically oppressed by legal, economic, and social forces that often persist in some form to this day.
63) O’Reilly said the black dropout rate was worse at the end of the Clinton presidency than at the beginning. It was better.
64) Criticizing public broadcasting, O’Reilly said PBS is going bankrupt. Actually, PBS’s funding–both public and private–has doubled to about $500 million since O’Reilly first went on Fox in the 1990s.
65) While in a rant against public spending, O’Reilly claimed liberal Californians wanted the federal government to pay for plastic surgery for prisoners, particularly pointing to an inmate who had breast reduction surgery as a liberal cause that targeted our money. Actually, that inmate was having a tumor removed.
66) One of the great political attacks of our time was the 2004 Swift Boating of John Kerry, wherein a political group claimed that Kerry lied extensively about his service during the Vietnam War. Actually, Kerry didn’t lie. In any event, O’Reilly claimed the Swift Boaters had little impact in 2004 and that he hadn’t even seen them on cable news. In fact, Fox News (as well as CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC) covered Swift Boaters extensively. They were everywhere on cable news, especially Fox.
67) O’Reilly claimed that Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain Iraq war veteran and a prominent anti-war activist, lied and changed her story about a meeting with President Bush. She never changed her story.
68) O’Reilly said CNN does not have a single conservative commentator. That’s obviously not true; but even being charitable and looking specifically at the time when O’Reilly first said it–March 2005–commentators Jerry Falwell and Robert Novak said otherwise.
69) O’Reilly claimed that courtroom perjury is on the rise because they’ve done away with swearing on the bible before testimony. Actually, the bible is still used before courtroom testimony, and there has been no rise in perjury.
70) While criticizing the 9th circuit appeals court, O’Reilly said they had their cases overturned at a record rate. That’s a lie.
72) O’Reilly claimed that Thomas Jefferson would have mocked secular fools over separation of church and state. Actually, Jefferson famously wrote about his support for that separation.
73) During a heatwave in the southwest, O’Reilly said the dozens of dead homeless people could have found some place to cool off, but they were mentally incapable of taking care of themselves. Actually, the number of homeless outpaced the number of beds available by thousands.
74) Arguing about abortion, O’Reilly said a woman’s life could never be in danger during pregnancy. That’s obviously not true. He also claims to believe in freedom, but when you tell a woman that is not your wife or a relative she can not have an abortion, that is the opposite of freedom.
75) O’Reilly claimed most Republicans didn’t want NAFTA. Actually, most voted for it.
76) O’Reilly said he wouldn’t call Sean Penn anti-American. About 8 minutes after he had just called Sean Penn anti-American.
77) O’Reilly claimed he didn’t compare the Koran to Mein Kampf. He did and he continues to do so.
78) In 2001, O’Reilly claimed 58 percent of single mothers are on welfare. The number was 14 percent, less than a quarter of what O’Reilly claimed.
79) In defense of Florida governor Jeb Bush’s education policies, O’Reilly claimed 37 percent of state universities were black. The number was 18 percent, less than half of what O’Reilly claimed.
80) In 2001, O’Reilly said the U.S. gave more tax money to foreign countries than any other country. No, Japan gave more then. The U.S. gives more now, somewhat due to the fact that a country we invaded (Afghanistan) receives billions more in aid than any other nation.
81) When an army recruiter was murdered in 2009, O’Reilly said CNN didn’t cover the crime except for Anderson Cooper. They covered it, a lot.
82) O’Reilly said the cause of global warming is guesswork. Scientists disagree.
83) O’Reilly said that, unlike Viagra, birth control is a choice, not a medical condition. Aside from the fact that doctors say pregnancy is a medical condition, birth control is used to treat a range of other medical conditions as well.
84) O’Reilly once said no lies have ever been told about anyone on his show. (See above and below.)
85) G. Gordon Liddy organized the famous Watergate burglaries. He’s also fundraised for John McCain, and McCain accepted his money. During the 2008 presidential race, O’Reilly claimed McCain and Liddy have nothing to do with each other. That’s false, not only because of the fundraising but because Liddy interviewed McCain multiple times, even during that very campaign.
86) O’Reilly claimed that then-Sen. Barack Obama did not cast a vote condemning MoveOn.org ads that targeted Gen. David Petraeus and defended John Kerry. Obama did.
87) O’Reilly said “no law is going to prevent a woman from giving birth when she’s raped or has incest. No law. Ever.” He meant abortion, as clarified by this next sentence: “If there’s incest, if there’s violence in your home, you can go to the courts and they’ll decide whether you can have the abortion, not your parents, OK? Every law says it.”
88) O’Reilly claimed no prisoners died because of abuse at Abu Grahib. One did, his name was Manadel al-Jamadi.
89) During a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, O’Reilly said the New York Times editorial board wouldn’t criticize Israel because “American Jews are liberal.” They had already written three such editorials.
90) In 2008, O’Reilly claimed the NY Times cut 25 percent of its workforce because of criticism received for publishing an article about terrorism financing. They cut 2 percent, and the supposedly direct connection between the article and the cut was total speculation from O’Reilly, the very same speculation he claims to not allow in the no spin zone.
91) O’Reilly claimed Bush didn’t prohibit White House attorneys from appearing before Congress if transcripts were recorded. Bush did just that.
92) When O’Reilly saw a 2006 poll saying 53 percent of Americans viewed Hillary Clinton favorably, he said the poll wasn’t scientific. O’Reilly isn’t a statistician and that poll was scientific. To this day Hillary still has a majority that see her in a favorable way. O’Reilly even claims his website polls represent the views of the average American, even though they are unscientific and biased, and it says so right on the poll as you vote.
93) In 2006, O’Reilly said the National Security Agency (NSA) never tapped domestic phone calls. We already knew–and the White House admitted–that they tapped domestic phone calls without a warrant at that point but the rest of pandora’s box was yet to be opened.
94) O’Reilly said Mary McCarthy, a former CIA agent who leaked information to reporters, was accused of leaking information about the agency’s secret Eastern European prisons. She was never formally accused of that by the CIA, and the Washington Post maintains that while she did leak information to them, it had nothing to do with secret prisons. Instead, she reportedly leaked information about the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by the CIA.
95) O’Reilly said former Mexican president Vincente Fox used his nation’s army to traffic drugs across the border to the U.S. That never happened. Under Fox, Mexico used its army to fight a violent war with cartels.
96) O’Reilly said New York City teachers are told to ignore students who curse them out. As a former New York City student, I know that’s not true. But if that’s not enough, New York’s public discipline code explicitly points out punishment for obscene language.
97) O’Reilly claimed Democrats also took money from Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist famously convicted in in a vast corruption scheme in 2005. That’s a lie, because only Republicans received contributions from Abramoff.
98) O’Reilly claimed renewable energy was a waste of time because God controls the climate. He’s also said nobody can control the climate except God, so give a little extra at mass. That goes against what modern science has concluded: Human beings contribute to climate change.
99) Criticizing attempts to bring diversity to Christmas, O’Reilly said Santa Claus is white based on the myth’s roots in medieval Greece. Now think about this, Santa is not real.
100) One of the most vast and mind-bending lies O’Reilly has ever told came just this week. Nose pointed squarely up, O’Reilly said that he doesn’t believe in personal smears and that he doesn’t condone hate and guttersniping that implies politicians like Bush and Obama don’t want to serve their country.
While O’Reilly didn’t invent the TV smear, he raised it to a lucrative art. During the Bush administration, he targeted anti-war politicians with exactly this kind of personal smear. In one glaring example from the height of the Iraq war, he said, Nancy Pelosi and her acolytes, people who like her, they want us to lose in Iraq. They want there to be chaos in Afghanistan. They want this. They’re rooting against their own country. He also compares political opponents to Nazis pretty damn often.
And the biggest lie he has ever told is that he is a fair and balanced Independent, and his show is a no spin zone.
He is a biased partisan Republican who puts out right-wing propaganda 99% of the time with 97% Republican guests. It is all right-wing spin, all the time, with a liberal guest once a show, just so he has someone to yell at, and so he can claim to be balanced, even though he sometimes has zero liberals on a show, while having an average of 6 to 7 Republican guests per show.
Republicans Calling Sabotage Of Obama With Iran Letter A Disaster
By: Steve – March 15, 2015 – 11:00am
Some Republicans are admitting anonymously that the Senate GOP attempt to sabotage President Obama with a letter to Iran has turned into a disaster.
Politico talked to insiders within both parties about the letter, and some Republicans are realizing that they are in trouble:
One-third of Republican insiders believe that Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and his GOP colleagues — including several potential presidential candidates — crossed the line when they published an open letter to Iranian leaders warning about a possible nuclear deal.
“The GOP letter — while sound in substance — caused the debate to shift from the administration’s wrongheadedness to the GOP’s tactics,” said a New Hampshire Republican, who — like all 92 respondents this week — completed the survey anonymously in order to speak candidly.
“That’s not helpful.”
“Policy wise, the deal Obama is trying to cut is a bad one,” said another.
“Politically speaking, however, the letter has been a disaster. The Democrats have totally framed and owned the debate, and our GOP senators are getting pummeled.”
The letter has turned into a disaster of a story that is following Republicans wherever they go. Republican presidential candidates are being asked about it on the campaign trail. And Republicans who didn’t even have anything to do with the letter are being questioned about it.
Sen. Tom Cotton’s letter created an issue where one didn’t exist. It is a self-inflicted wound that is not healing. There is nothing that Republicans can say that will explain or excuse the letter. The excuse making has been so feeble that John McCain even tried to blame the weather for his decision to sign the letter.
The Republican opposition to any deal with Iran will now look partisan and petty. Republicans also shot themselves in the foot with Democrats by sending this letter. Senate Republicans were building a bipartisan consensus for passage of legislation that would have required any agreement to be reviewed and approved by the Senate, but that is now gone.
The level of disrespect in the letter has even shocked people who don’t follow politics, but who vote in a presidential election. The behavior of the Senate Republicans can’t be undone. There is no way to repair the damage, and Republicans might have cost themselves their Senate majority with this blatant act of sabotage.
But if you watch the Factor for your news you would hardly know any of this, because O’Reilly supported the letter and only did one short segment on it with one conservative guest only, who of course also supported the letter.
Now if Democrats had sent a letter like this to Iran under Bush, O’Reilly would have screamed bloody murder and lost his mind, and most likely called them traitors who should be voted out of office. Fox would have slammed them 24/7 as un-American and reported it for a week. And is a perfect example of the bias from O’Reilly and Fox, the very same bias they complain the rest of the media has.
House Republicans Have Exempted Themselves From Saving Their Emails
By: Steve – March 15, 2015 – 10:00am
Talk about the ultimate hypocrisy and double standards, the very same House Republicans who want Hillary Clinton to turn over all her emails have exempted themselves from saving their own emails.
The same House Republicans who want to subpoena Hillary Clinton’s emails have made sure that they aren’t required to save their own emails. AP reported this:
Congress makes its own rules, and has never subjected itself to open records laws that force agencies such as the State Department to maintain records and turn them over to the public when asked.
There’s also no requirement for members of Congress to use official email accounts, or to retain, archive or store their emails, while in office or after.
That’s in contrast to the White House and the rest of the executive branch.
But if the rules at federal agencies are unclear, at least there are rules. On Capitol Hill, there are almost none. That means that the same House Republicans who are subpoenaing Clinton’s emails as part of their inquiry into the Benghazi, Libya, attacks are not required to retain emails of their own for future inspection by anyone.
House Republicans are contemplating no less than three investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Some in the House have gone as far as to suggest that the full House could subpoena the Clinton email server.
The news that House Republicans have exempted themselves from the same standard that they are trying to hold Hillary Clinton has pushed this story from being ridiculous to absurdity.
How can anyone take the Republican anger over Clinton’s emails seriously when they took steps to exempt themselves from having to save any of their own emails?
If there is one thing that Americans have learned since Republicans took control of the House, it is that they should never be trusted. The Republican hypocrisy is par for the course for the party of do as I say, not as I do.
In the coming days and months, House Republicans are going to try to make a mountain out of the Clinton email molehill, but every time they mention emails, Boehner and company should be asked why they keep their emails hidden from the public.
And btw, none of this information has ever been reported by Bill O’Reilly, because he does not want you to know the Republicans are massive hypocrites with double standards.
Andy Levy Blows Up At Fill-In Red Eye Host Over Ferguson Comment
By: Steve – March 14, 2015 – 1:00pm
On Fox News Red Eye early Saturday morning, temporary Greg Gutfeld replacement Tom Shillue said this: “The Ferguson story just got real.”
He was referring to the shooting of two police officers in that city this week, which he deemed a more important story than the killing of Michael Brown, which sparked outage there that has lasted for months.
And btw, after officer Wilson was not charged by the corrupt Prosecutor and Grand Jury, O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly both predicted the Ferguson story would be over in a week or two, and they were both dead wrong. Proving just how clueless they are, because the DOJ report had not even been released yet, and the protests were not ending.
Levy said this: “I don’t understand how you think Ferguson just got real when those assholes shot the cops,” co-host Andy Levy challenged Shillue after he’d completed his monologue. “If you didn’t think it was real before then, you should have thought it was real after the DOJ report came out.”
In Levy’s words, that report proved what the protesters had been saying all along, that the “whole damn city structure was racist.”
“Why, because they gave out a bunch of traffic tickets?” The far-right stooge Tom Shill responded.
“Are you kidding me?” Levy replied. “Everything in that report was utterly reprehensible,” he added, saying conservatives can’t tout the Constitution and then ignore First and Fourth Amendment violations committed disproportionately against African-Americans.
“That stuff was disgusting.”
Notice that O’Reilly also pretty much ignored the DOJ report, he did one short segment on it with a conservative guest only. He never admitted he was wrong, and he never said he was sorry for saying the protesters were wrong to be doing the protests. O’Reilly even slammed tham as un-American and anti-police, and pretty much said they were protesting for no reason.
When the DOJ report proves they were right and O’Reilly was wrong, but he never admits it and never said he was sorry. Which is what O’Reilly does, every time liberals protest O’Reilly slams them and calls them un-American, even though they are usually proven right at a later time. But when conservatives protest he supports them every time and calls them great Americans, even though they are usually proven wrong at a later time.
Mistrust Is Growing: European Leaders Slam GOP Senators for Letter to Iran
By: Steve – March 14, 2015 – 11:00am
‘This is not just an issue of American domestic politics, but it affects the negotiations we are holding in Geneva,’ said German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
An open letter to Iranian leaders from 47 Republican senators has provoked sharp rebuke from European countries that are party to the nuclear talks.
Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier blasted the U.S. GOP senators on Thursday, telling journalists, “This is not just an issue of American domestic politics, but it affects the negotiations we are holding in Geneva.”
“Obviously mistrust is growing,” he added.
In addition, the Associated Press reported Thursday that unnamed diplomatic officials in France and London made similar criticisms of the open letter. “In Paris, a senior French diplomat said the letter made it hard on the American negotiators, who have been leading the talks with Iran on behalf of the rest of the group,” wrote journalist Matthew Lee.
The letter, organized by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and co-signed by 46 other Republican senators, directly threatened Iranian leaders that, if a nuclear deal were reached, it would not last after President Barack Obama leaves the presidency.
It immediately sparked broad censure–from from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to U.S. President Barack Obama to grassroots movements-with many charging it amounted to a call for military escalation and potentially war.
The missive was released less than a week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a controversial congressional address aimed at derailing ongoing talks between Iran and the P5+1 group of Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States, and Germany.
And of course O’Reilly ignores all this negative reporting about the letter, because he is a Republican and he does not want to make them look bad. In the one lousy segment he did on the letter O’Reilly had one Republican guest and no Democratic guest for balance. And of course that partisan right-wing stooge supported the 47 traitors in the Senate who sent it.
Mr. Fair and balanced, did a one sided biased segment on this BIG news story, with nobody as a guest to provide the counter point. And that was the only segment he did on the entire story, while the rest of the real media has been reporting it for a week almost every day.
Rolling Stone: Bill O’Reilly Is A Pathological Liar
By: Steve – March 14, 2015 – 10:00am
Here are some quotes from the rollingstone.com article about Bill O’Reilly where they call him what he is, a Pathological Liar.
A good rule of callout culture is to never target someone for the same things you do. No adulterer is more insufferable, after all, than the fire-and-brimstone minister. But when NBC anchor Brian Williams was exposed for fabricating stories of journalistic heroism, poor Bill O’Reilly just couldn’t help himself. There was Williams, garnering widespread acclaim for the kind of stories Bill had already been making up for years.
A real American doesn’t tolerate that kind of crap, and Bill O’Reilly is a real American. He has evolved into a post-fact reality, nightly defending a singular nation of fear and confabulation against all enemies foreign and domestic. He is a fiction more palpable than himself, and he can’t stop, because it’s all he has.
Some of the story is probably familiar to you. O’Reilly has lied high and low during his nearly 19 years at Fox News, but the latest round of scrutiny about his stories began with an article in The Nation questioning whether O’Reilly’s reporting aided in covering up a massacre in El Salvador in 1982.
Instead of primarily focusing on whether O’Reilly acted as a stooge for murderous conservative policy 14 years before his Fox gig, the media instead latched onto O’Reilly’s claims that he’d reported from a leveled town where no one was left alive or dead, when in fact The Nation’s article included O’Reilly’s CBS footage of a very much not-leveled town with at least eight people walking around in the background of his shots.
That article and O’Reilly’s pummeling Brian Williams inspired Mother Jones David Corn and Daniel Schulman to look closely at O’Reilly’s other tales of hazardous, daring reportage, including his claims to have been in a “war zone” during the Falklands War. Despite O’Reilly’s calling Corn a “despicable guttersnipe” and attempting to handwave away the accusations as a liberal hit job, Corn and Shulman’s charges have stuck.
The nearest O’Reilly (or any other American reporter) got to the war zone was 1,200 miles, and his fallback assertion that protests he “alone” covered in Buenos Aires constituted one have been debunked multiple times over by O’Reilly’s former colleagues. Worse, O’Reilly’s own footage contradicts his story that he had a gun pulled on him.
The hits keep coming. Former colleagues flatly deny O’Reilly’s story that he was attacked by rioters in the 1992 L.A. riots. His story that he witnessed bombings in Northern Ireland was denied by Fox News own spokesman.
Further, his claim that he was on the doorstep when a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald’s committed suicide was impeached by the fact that O’Reilly was in Dallas at the time, (another) 1,200 miles away from the shooting.
This constant churning of preposterous BS runs through O’Reilly’s career like discarded picnic food through geese, a steaming heap of compensatory fantasy meeting defensive wish fulfillment.
He turned a comfortable childhood in the post-war suburban planned community of Levittown (with regular Florida vacations) into an Oliver Twist-tinged struggle, to complete the Horatio Alger arc corporealizing him as the American dream: “You don’t come from any lower than I came from on an economic scale.”
Those who would dare wake him from it are met with violence. “I am coming after you with everything I have,” he told the New York Times’ Emily Steel. “You can take it as a threat.”
Once laid atop the patterns of O’Reilly’s real life, one is surprised to realize that Bill O’Reilly hasn’t actually murdered anyone yet. The second is this: that the stories Bill tells as fiction are nearly identical to the fictions he tells himself and his viewers. The Nation and Mother Jones might have caught him out on the details, but he was telling us he is a vengeful, unhinged fabulist this entire time.
What consequence is there for real journalistic organizations anymore when it comes to going after O’Reilly? They get called attackers? O’Reilly calls them attackers merely for reporting facts inconsistent with his epistemic bubble.
His fans aren’t going to watch or read those other sites or channels? They don’t already. By this point, O’Reilly has trained his audience to consider digesting independent news an act of race treason on par with slaveowners letting negroes learn to read.
The response will be the same no matter the offense, so go ahead and call Bill O’Reilly what he is. A pathological liar and a paper tiger elevated to a glass desk in front of millions of people he wants to be as scared as he is of the intruding world. Let him revel in being attacked, then keep calling him the same things, and repeating them until they’re the only Google search result anymore. What’s he going to do? Sue historicity?
O’Reilly isn’t a newsman, he’s a blue-eyed cirrhotic cyst erupting acid onto the brass rail at the Now I’ll Tell You What the REAL Problem Is Pub. He’s the guy who sits next to you and brags about how he’d kick the hell out of any thugs daring to bring violence into his neighborhood, stumbles off his barstool, goes outside, reflexively crosses the street to avoid two black kids on the sidewalk two blocks up, then drives home drunk.
He’s the guy who picks a fight with you if you correct him, then refuses to throw down because he “was Gold Gloves in college and doesn’t want to end you, man,” then backs away toward his driveway while trying to make eye contact with anyone he thinks is a friend and saying, “I feel sorry for him! I have a pool in my backyard.”
The Real Story About That Fox Most Trusted Poll
By: Steve – March 13, 2015 – 10:00am
From aattp.org:
Not since the days of Keith Olbermann’s reign at MSNBC has Bill O’Reilly resorted to such relentless attacks on the network. His perceived victimization by a media cabal that he says is simultaneously impotent and omnipotent is reaching psychotic levels. And all of this is due to the fountain of lies that he has been spewing for decades and for which he is now being called upon to answer.
O’Reilly’s latest retaliatory harangue came at the opening of Monday’s Factor where he set out to claim once again that everything he does is sanctified by God because he has high ratings (First Church of Nielsen the Redeemer). His Talking Points Memo, titled “Hating Fox News,” heralded a new Quinnipiac poll that O’Reilly bragged “shows that Americans trust Fox News more than any other TV news agency by a substantial margin.”
As anyone familiar with O’Reilly’s aversion to the truth would know, he did not tell the whole story. The same poll shows that Fox News is also the network that is least trusted by Americans. Now why do you suppose he left that out?
The fact that Fox received a vote of confidence from 29% of the poll’s respondents means that 71% trusted another network more. That is not exactly something of which to be proud. What’s more if you add up the two categories of positive responses for trusted networks (a great deal + somewhat), Fox News is second to the last. It beats only MSNBC by a mere 3%.
If anyone is “Hating Fox News” it is the majority of the American people who reject its frothing hostility, fear mongering, and perversion of the facts. But no one should mistake O’Reilly’s tirade for a reasoned commentary on the popularity of the media. This rant is a thinly veiled assault on those who are demanding that he come clean about the frequent lies he has told to portray himself as an intrepid reporter risking life and limb to bring truth to the people.
But rather than taking on his critics forthrightly, he takes a more cowardly approach by pretending to be a victim of powerful enemies seeking the destruction of his employer. He’s attacking a broader, ambiguous foe because he’s afraid to face his critics head on. And of course that foe is, in his mind, a humongous titan of evil, even though he also insists that it is a weakling that has no support and can’t compare to the superhuman powers of Fox News.
Somehow all of this makes sense in O’Reilly’s cartoon brain. However, his campaign against his critics consists entirely of bluster, distractions, and outright threats. That’s why in Monday’s program he never once addressed the growing number of documented falsehoods he has been caught telling.
He just continued boasting about his ample audience and the prominent role that Fox News plays in shaping the American media.
On that note, O’Reilly pulled back the curtain on the journalistic fraud that is Fox News. The facade of fairness and balance is just another one of the lies that are baked into the Fox mission. In this one episode O’Reilly repeatedly confessed to the unethical biases of Fox.
For instance, he said this:
“Our primetime programs set the political agenda.”
“The fact is that Fox News is now a deep threat to the progressive movement and the far left despises us so they are in full attack mode desperately trying to marginalize FNC.”
“There are just two national news agencies that challenge the progressive agenda with authority: the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Fox News Channel.”
“If FNC did not exist, America would be a far different place and the far left ideology would have a far easier time. But we do exist and now dominate the primetime news cycle. Not good news for progressive politicians, the liberal media, and crazed zealots on both sides.”
How are any of those overtly partisan statements consistent with the practice of professional journalism?
O’Reilly is admitting that Fox is a political advocate of the right. This is why most media observers regard Fox as nothing more than the PR division of the Republican Party. Additionally, O’Reilly’s analysis that Fox’s very existence is bad news for progressives flies in the face of reality.
Someone should inform him that President Obama was elected twice despite the existence of Fox which fought so hard against him.
There is one thing, however, that O’Reilly got right. America would be a far different place without Fox. There would be far less wingnut propaganda and conspiracy theories masquerading as news.
We wouldn’t have to deal with wild goose chases for presidential birth certificates or claims that snowballs disprove the scientific evidence of Climate Change. Mentions of Sarah Palin and Donald Trump would produce confused looks and replies of “Who?” And the Tea Party would still be a gathering of folks who appreciate brewed herbs and pastries.
White House Rips Senate Republicans For Their Treasonous Letter To Iran
By: Steve – March 12, 2015 – 11:00am
And newspapers all across the country are also slamming the 47 Senate Republicans who attempted to sabotage President Obama by writing a letter to Iran. So far 22 newspaper editorial boards have spoke about against the letter. Even some conservatives have said it was wrong, and at Fox Greta Van Sustern said she was against the letter.
The White House ripped Senate Republicans for their attempt to undermine negotiations with Iran, and stopped just short of accusing the 47 Republicans who signed a letter to Iranian government of treason.
Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked about the Senate Republican letter to Iran where they promised to undermine any agreement that President Obama makes on their nuclear program.
Earnest said this:
I would describe this letter as a continuation of a partisan strategy to undermine the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy and advance our national security interests around the globe.
The fact is that we have heard Republicans for quite some time, including the principal author of this letter, make clear that their goal is to undermine these negotiations. Again, that is not a position that I am ascribing to Sen. Cotton, that is a position that he has strongly advocated. He described it as a feature of his strategy, not a bug.
I think the other thing that is notable here is that when you have a letter that is signed by forty-seven senators of the same party being sent to a leader of a foreign country, it raises some legitimate questions about the intent of the letter. It’s surprising to me there are some Republican senators who are seeking to establish a backchannel with hardliners in Iran to undermine an agreement with Iran and the international community.
The Press Secretary stopped short of calling out the Senate Republicans for treasonous behavior, but his description of the Republican behavior of trying to undermine the goals and national security of the United States left little doubt about how the White House feels about this issue.
Senate Republicans are attempting to undermine the United States government by establishing communications with hardliners in Iran who promote and fund terrorism. Republicans have taken their campaign to undermine and delegitimize the President Of The United States global.
Senate Republicans have once shown their true colors, and those colors are not red, white and blue.
GOP Senators Who Signed Iran Letter Called Traitors By New York Daily News
By: Steve – March 12, 2015 – 10:00am
And yet, O’Reilly did a segment on it Wednesday night with a Republican guest from the American Enterprise Institute, and no Democratic guest for balance. It was a biased one sided segment where of course the Republican guest supported the Senate GOP letter. Which is what O’Reilly does, because he is also a Republican.
On the cover of its Tuesday edition, the New York Daily News featured a picture of four Republican Senators with the caption “Traitors” in huge bold letters underneath in response to the letter 47 GOP Senators sent to Iran undermining President Obama’s negotiations with the country.
The four Senators represented in the picture were Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR).
Paul and Cruz are 2016 Presidential candidates while Cotton is the freshman Senator who came up with the bright idea to write a letter to Iranian leadership informing them that any agreement reached with Obama could easily be revoked by either another President or Congress.
Accompanying the Daily News provocative headline was a scathing editorial calling all 47 Republicans who signed the letter “un-patriotic” and an “embarrassment to our nation.”
The paper’s editorial board stated that while they aren’t in total agreement with the White House regarding the potential nuclear pact with Iran, they condemn the Republican Senate’s betrayal of the Constitution.
They are an embarrassment to the Senate and to the nation.
How the executive and legislative branches come to terms in the event that Obama presents his version of a done deal to America will be of grave national and international concern. There will be no place for juvenilia, and there should not have been at this expectant juncture.
Rather than offer objections domestically in robust debate, as is their obligation, ringleader Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and his band trespassed on presidential turf by patronizing Iran’s leaders with the suggestion “that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.”
The plain intent was to sabotage Obama by pushing the Iranians into balking at a deal out of fear that a turn of the U.S. political wheel could doom the pact in the not-so-distant future.
Late Monday evening, Vice President Joe Biden released a blistering statement through the White House attacking the Republicans who took part in this treasonous stunt. He was really mad at Cotton for authoring the letter, pointing out that if this sabotages talks with Iran, then the very real possibility of war is on the horizon.
Biden: The author of this letter has been explicit that he is seeking to take any action that will end President Obama’s diplomatic negotiations with Iran. But to what end? If talks collapse because of Congressional intervention, the United States will be blamed, leaving us with the worst of all worlds.
Iran’s nuclear program, currently frozen, would race forward again. We would lack the international unity necessary just to enforce existing sanctions, let alone put in place new ones. Without diplomacy or increased pressure, the need to resort to military force becomes much more likely, at a time when our forces are already engaged in the fight against ISIL.
The President has committed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He has made clear that no deal is preferable to a bad deal that fails to achieve this objective, and he has made clear that all options remain on the table.
The current negotiations offer the best prospect in many years to address the serious threat posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It would be a dangerous mistake to scuttle a peaceful resolution, especially while diplomacy is still underway.
Cotton appeared on Morning Joe Tuesday morning to address Biden’s statement and defend the letter he wrote to Iran. Of course, he personally attacked Biden, claiming he’s been wrong on “nearly every foreign policy and security decision in the last 40 years” and telling the Veep to “respect the dignity of the Senate” by telling POTUS to submit any deal with Iran to Congress for approval.
Cotton also told the hosts that he would only agree to total nuclear disarmament of Iran — ummmm, they don’t have nuclear weapons yet — while stating Iran could not be negotiated with.
With those statements, Cotton was pressed by the panel that no diplomatic solutions or options would only leave military intervention. He finally copped to the fact that he would be completely fine with that, stating that Israel has done a good job with air strikes on facilities in Iran and America could join in with that.
To Scarborough’s credit, he pointed out during Tuesday’s broadcast that if he were still in Congress, he would not have signed on to this letter. Regardless of your personal feeling about the President or the philosophical disagreements you may have over foreign policy or tactics, you do not undercut the nation’s leader in their dealings with other countries.
That is potentially in violation of federal law. Many people have already pointed out that the 47 GOP Senators may have violated the Logan Act with their actions.
While I am not positive that is the case, one thing I do know is they violated the trust of the American people. They decided it was more important for them to act like little children in an attempt to embarrass the President of the United States than to allow him to find peaceful solutions to real-world issues.
Syndicated radio host Michael Berry commented on the beating of a teenage girl at a New York City restaurant by saying, “You know why white lives matter? Because that’s what white people believe. The dirty little secret is, black people don’t believe that black lives matter.”
On the March 12 edition of his Houston-based show, Berry described video footage of the beating, in which four girls attacked a 15-year-old girl at a McDonald’s in Brooklyn. At first, Berry claimed, “I’m not going to tell y’all the skin color because it’s not relevant.” After delivering his description of the brutal attack, Berry asserted that “you can blame this problem on anything other than the root cause. But the reality — and this is what makes people so uncomfortable with our show — is this one fact that we are about to state. We have people living in our country who are savages. Absolutely, positively savages. To engage in this kind of behavior.”
Listen:
http://mediamatters.org/embed/static/clips/2015/03/13/39063/ktrh_03122015_michelberryblacklives
Berry, who calls himself the “czar of talk radio,” has a daily show on Houston’s KTRH, an iHeartRadio radio station that airs on several other iHeartRadio affiliates around the country. He was No. 28 on Talkers Magazine‘s 2014 Heavy Hundred.
Berry has hosted several Republican politicians on his show including Sen. Ted Cruz (TX), who posted his interview with Berry on his Senate website, and current Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who appeared on Berry’s show while running for governor in 2013. In 2010, Berry interviewed former President George W. Bush.
Full transcript (emphasis added):
BERRY: I just posted a video. Four teens viciously beat — four teen girls viciously beat another girl in a Brooklyn McDonald’s as the crowd cheers. I’m not going to tell y’all the skin color because it’s not relevant. And you have no idea who it would be. As a McDonald’s full of people watches, four girls beat another girl so savagely. As one is pounding, another’s pulling the hair, another’s just taking — stepping back and — shot and step back, and a shot and step back, because she doesn’t want to actually have to get hit. They get her on the ground, and they proceed — I mean, it’s — they don’t kick her like you would kick from — you know, they don’t have a six-inch draw back. They don’t kick her like you’re kicking an extra point. No, no, they size it up like they’re trying to beat Tom Dempsey’s record. They get a running start. Wham, into the body. And this girl — I mean, in fairness to this girl, I doubt this is the first beat down she’s had, because four of them are pounding on her, and she steadily — just everything she can to hold her own. She’s 15 years old.
Now, somewhere, somehow, you can blame this problem on anything other than the root cause. But the reality — and this is what makes people so uncomfortable with our show — is this one fact that we are about to state. We have people living in our country who are savages. Absolutely, positively savages. To engage in this kind of behavior.
You’ll see the video. She’s thrown to the ground. The girls kick her, stomp her, and they’re calling her the B-word the whole time because somehow, you know, that — it’s important that you also say words when you’re doing it. And then a whole McDonald’s full — they’re loving it. She ends up — she’s cowering under a table. Finally, [at] some point, two dudes I guess felt like, “Well, I guess we better do something.” They grab her and get her out of there, but it’s probably 90 seconds, two minutes of just beating, just beating before it’s done.
Community activist Tony Herbert said, “The tenacity of placing something on video, to shoot a young lady being beat down by six or seven young women is ludicrous in our community.” Now, why they always got to bring Luda into this? He says, “The message has to be sent very clearly that this kind of violence will not be tolerated, whether in a mall or in restaurants, are [sic] those involved should turn themselves into authorities immediately.”
The owner of the franchise, Paul Goodman, said, “This was a really horrible incident, but one thing that can water down the terrible vision everyone just watched is a 20-pack of delicious Chicken McNuggets with your choice of sauce, a small, medium, or large fry, and a soft drink. Violence is very sad, but McDonald’s for lunch is always a happy decision. Black lives matter.”
OK, maybe he didn’t say that, but it would have been nice if he did. If maybe he had also stated that black lives matter. You know what‘s interesting is, you know, of course, you don’t need to say, “White lives matter.“ Because white people don’t walk up to white people, put a gun to their head, and blow them away. White people don’t drive past the home of other white people — or black people, for that matter — white people don’t drive past the home of other white people and shoot into the window, knowing there are children inside. White people don’t walk into a McDonald’s, and four, five, six, seven, eight, 10 of them beat the snot out of somebody for minutes on end. While everybody else cheers, hoots, hollers, and films it. WorldStar. Yeah.
You know why white lives matter? Because that’s what white people believe. The dirty little secret is, black people don’t believe that black lives matter.
“But Michael, the guy that works at my company, he’s the general manager, and he’s” — that’s not who I’m talking about. Chris Rock has made very clear there are different types of black people. And the general manager at your company, who’s black and a super-nice guy, doesn’t want to live amongst that either.
But we can’t deny the influence that this subculture is having on our society. You can go and hide behind your gates. Y‘all can hire a guard at night. But eventually, a Trayvon Martin‘s going to come walking through your yard, at night, on suspension from school. Because his dad has a good job, and he lives there. And he lives in a world of thuggery, and his dad doesn’t. That‘s actually — that was the case there. But he was a thug, who went to school with other thugs.
Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes’ 21st Century Fox owns and operates 28 stations in major media markets around the country. These stations might seem independent, but Fox uses them to push misinformation to viewers like you.
Watch this short video to see how Fox News impacts local stations:
Fox News executives can transmit key right-wing talking points to large numbers of people who don’t watch cable news. And with Fox-owned stations now reaching 37% of U.S. television audiences, that’s a huge opportunity for the conservative media.
Unfortunately for Murdoch and Ailes, we know their tactics, and we’re not going to let them slowly turn their stations into miniature versions of Fox News.
Here’s the headline from Variety: “‘The O’Reilly Factor’ has long been the most popular program in cable news, and the controversy surrounding host Bill O’Reilly’s war-reporting experiences has only helped elevate the show’s ratings.” Yes, that’s right. Fox News’s most famous host has been exposed (yet again) as both a serial fabricator and a bully to those who call him to account. Still, it’s all good. His ratings are rising to the point that, in the key demo that matters (adults 25 to 54), he now brings in four times the audience of his nearest competitor, CNN’s Anderson Cooper. (MSNBC is not even close.) The New York Times estimates that O’Reilly made over $100 million for Fox last year. Apparently, that entitles him to spout whatever nonsense he likes, with no accountability whatsoever, for a reported salary of $20 million a year. A pretty sweet gig, that.
I’ve argued in this space recently that, as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have been demonstrating all these years, the only way to treat Fox is as comedic material. How painfully ironic that, with Colbert gone (at least for now) and Stewart going, it’s more than ever time for the so-called real reporters of the mainstream media to finally wake up to the lesson taught by their journalistic superiors… at Comedy Central.
O’Reilly has dealt with these revelations in various ways. He has called the reporters “guttersnipes” and other funny names. He has painted his former colleagues as liars. He has claimed to be the victim of a left-wing conspiracy. And he has threatened a female reporter from the Times, promising: “I am coming after you with everything I have…. You can take it as a threat.”
To anyone who has paid attention to O’Reilly or any of the Fox “anchors” in recent years, none of this should come as a surprise. There are many precedents in O’Reilly’s career (including a lie about, and faux on-air apology to, yours truly). No doubt one could find plenty of similar fabrications, exaggerations and purposely misleading statements on any given Fox program. That is, after all, the purpose of the network. It flatters the ignorance and prejudice of its audience even as it corrupts the larger media discourse on behalf of those same ignorant prejudices (as well as the financial interests of Rupert Murdoch, its billionaire owner, and Roger Ailes, its president and CEO). Hence, unlike NBC, which at least evinced some embarrassment over Brian Williams’s serial fabrications, Fox is totally down with its lying, bullying, name-calling host. Indeed, a Fox anchor or host would be far more likely to lose his or her job for telling the truth. (Things you’ll never hear on Fox: “Yes, global warming is man-made and a genuine danger to the security of our nation and our planet.” “Yes, President Obama was born in the United States and is a believing Christian.” “Yes, that entire Iraqi WMD thing was nonsense.” “Yeah, OK, the security arrangements at the US Embassy in Benghazi are not really the job of the secretary of state, much less the president.”)
To recap briefly, the mainstream media and the liberal blogosphere have recently been filled with stories in which O’Reilly placed himself at the center of world-historical events—or in imminent danger—and was found to be full of it. Contrary to O’Reilly’s claims, he was more than 1,000 miles from the Falkland Islands during the war there. He did not see any nuns murdered in El Salvador. He did not cover the “troubles” in Northern Ireland. He was not threatened by rioters in Los Angeles, and he was nowhere near the suicide of a man who claimed to have information about the assassination of President Kennedy. For all we know, he may not even be named Bill O’Reilly (though there’s apparently no truth to the rumor that he stole the dog tags off a dead soldier in Korea).
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What is perhaps most disturbing about this story is the bifurcated reaction of the mainstream media. Almost no one who occupies a chair in a “respectable” media organization has taken the position that O’Reilly is a liar and Fox is filled with liars and it’s about time we stopped taking the network seriously as a news source. Rather, we hear from Politico’s Dylan Byers that “the Bill O’Reilly charges aren’t sticking.” Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine believes they have “backfired.” Jeremy Stahl in Slate says the case is “open to interpretation.” And a front-page New York Times analysis by Jonathan Mahler and Emily Steel describes O’Reilly as “a man who perhaps more than any other has defined the parameters and tenor of Fox News, in the process ushering in a new era of no-holds-barred, intentionally divisive news coverage.” The Times reporters leave it to the experts to decide whether what he says is true, though some of these experts—not incidentally, also cable-news veterans—are not so sure that it matters. “Bill’s credibility with his audience is not based on his record as a traditional journalist,” former CNN/US president Jonathan Klein told the reporters. “His credibility, in the view of his fans, is based on his trenchant analysis of the events of the day, his pulling no punches, his willingness to call it like it is”—which is apparently the way one defines lying, prevaricating and bullying in the world of cable news (and the Times’s “expert” sourcing).
With all the money it makes and all the viewers it misinforms, Fox News has become a kind of Frankenstein’s monster of the mainstream media’s own creation. O’Reilly, Ailes and Murdoch are not trying terribly hard to fool anyone. They know what business they’re in; they are feeding red-meat propaganda to (mostly elderly, white) right-wing knuckleheads. But the rest of the media allowed them to pretend to be an honest, albeit “controversial,” news organization, even as Fox sought to undermine the meaning of “news” in American political debate as well as in the professional canons that underlie it. And by consistently pretending these clowns are serious—well, now the joke’s on us.
![In western news discourse, the implication is western societies should be suspicious of Muslims, writes Elmasry [Facebook]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2015/2/11/259c9632f3cb4bd4b659a9b920674791_18.jpg "Chapel Hill shooting and western media bigotry")
Dr Mohamad Elmasry is an assistant professor in the Department of Communications at the University of North Alabama.
Three Muslim Americans were murdered on Tuesday in a University of North Carolina dorm room. The crime came on the heels of recent anti-Muslim attacks in Europe, carried out in apparent response to the January murders (committed by Muslims) of Charlie Hebdo journalists in Paris.
Western media outlets will likely frame the most recent perpetrator of what some speculate is an anti-Muslim crime in the same way they frame most anti-Muslim criminals – as crazed, misguided bigots who acted alone. If past coverage is any indication, there will likely be very little suggestion that the killer acted on the basis of an ideology or as part of any larger pattern or system.
But what if acts of anti-Muslim violence are consistent with at least some strands of current western ideology? What if Islamophobia has become so commonplace, so accepted, that it now represents a hegemonic system of thought, at least for relatively large pockets of people in some regions of the West?
Portraying Islam
Given what we know both about western media portrayals of Islam and Muslims on the one hand, and media effects and theory on the other hand, it would be foolish to dismiss western media representations as potential causal factors in anti-Muslim sentiment and crime. In fact, it is likely that anti-Muslim sentiment and crime are, at least in part, driven by one-sided, narrow, sensationalistic, and arguably bigoted western media portrayals of Islam and Muslims.
Many scholars – including Edward Said, Elizabeth Poole, Kai Hafez, Milly Williamson, Karim Karim, Teun Van Dijk, Kimberly Powell, and Dina Ibrahim, among others – have carried out academic studies examining western news coverage of Islam and Muslims.
Results suggest that Muslims are often portrayed in western news media as violent, backwards, fundamentalist and as threats to western civilisation. Western news coverage rarely highlights Islam except to show its possible relation to some atrocity, and Muslims are rarely mentioned in the context of news that is positive or benign.
Several studies have found that Muslims are portrayed as a homogenised body, lacking diversity and difference, with other analyses showing that news coverage of violent conflicts in the Muslim-majority world ignores context and circumstances, implying that Muslims are inherently violent and prone to conflict.
Inconsistent coverage
Other studies show inconsistent coverage of violent global and regional conflicts. When Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims are killed by Muslims, Islam is identified as playing a direct role. When Muslims are killed by Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims, however, the religious identity of the violent perpetrators is downplayed or ignored.
The ongoing conflict in Burma represents a good case-in-point. There has been little western news coverage on the recent persecution faced by Rohingya Muslims, who Human Rights Watch says have been subjected to mass killings; “crimes against humanity” and “ethnic cleansing”.
Notably – and in spite of the fact that each act of Muslim-perpetrated terrorism is condemned strongly by all notable Islamic universities, Islamic scholarly councils, Islamic organisations, Muslim governments, and prominent Muslim jurists – regular cries are heard from media personalities complaining that Muslims do not condemn terrorism.
Prominent media personalities
Remarkably, some prominent media personalities systematically ignore Muslim condemnations of terrorism and then scream loudly that Muslims aren’t condemning terror. Recently, both Rupert Murdoch and Piers Morgan claimed that it is primarily the responsibility of Muslims to root out and defeat the likes of al-Qaeda and ISIL.
| In much of the western news discourse, the implication always seems clear; western societies should be suspicious of Muslims – all Muslims. |
Ignored in these analyses, of course, are the facts that Muslims in many Muslim-majority countries are often preoccupied, battling brutal dictatorships (which are often propped up by western nations, including the US), acute poverty, and regular bombing campaigns, all of which have helped create the conditions under which groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL – both of whom kill many more Muslims than non-Muslims – thrive.
In much of the western news discourse, the implication always seems clear; western societies should be suspicious of Muslims – all Muslims. Various pundits have taken to prominent media to offer up inflated estimates of the number of Muslim terrorists, with some suggesting that “peaceful” Muslims are, in the first place, a minority, and, more importantly, only peaceful because they have misunderstood the teachings of their inherently violent religion.
Always ignored is empirical evidence – of which there is no shortage – showing that Muslims aren’t more violent than non-Muslims and that the overwhelming majority of Muslims believe terrorism to be an abomination.
The discussions carried out on television news programmes are not surprising given the structural problems associated with western news, and, importantly, the basic imbalance in sourcing. Why, for example, is Hamza Hansen, a top Muslim American public intellectual, not given a regular platform on news networks alongside anti-Islam bigots who have made careers out of dissecting Islamic textual sources they do not appear to be qualified to interpret?
Media portrayals
Importantly, western entertainment media portrayals also receive unfavourable scholarly evaluations. In the most comprehensive and systematic study of Hollywood movies done to-date, media scholar Jack Shaheen examined 100 years of Hollywood film representations of Arabs and Muslims.
He found that the majority of the 900 films he examined portrayed Arabs and Muslims as “brutal, heartless, uncivilised religious fanatics and money-mad cultural ‘others’ bent on terrorising civilised westerners, especially Christians and Jews”.
No one could reasonably suggest that western news and entertainment media organisations should ignore negative portrayals of Muslims altogether. This would be unreasonable, especially given the importance of global terrorism and the involvement of Muslims in their fair share of negative events.
It is not unreasonable, however, to ask for contextualised accounts, fairer portrayals, critical examinations of the root causes of terrorism, an increase in Muslim voices, and news coverage that does more to separate ordinary Muslims from groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL.
According to the scholarly literature, the patterns of representation are fairly clear. Some fair, balanced news coverage and sympathetic entertainment media portrayals of Muslims notwithstanding, Islam and Muslims are generally portrayed negatively and stereotypically, including in some of the most powerful western media.
At what point do we begin to hold media organisations at least partly accountable for the anti-Muslim sentiment that is gripping many western nations?
Or, more importantly, when will western media organisations hold themselves to account?
Dr Mohamad Elmasry is an assistant professor in the Department of Communications at the University of North Alabama.
The contempt for journalism has never been greater, both from within and without
Journalists must protect their sources. From whistleblowers revealing great secrets to exposés of everyday corruption and incompetence, few will talk if they fear they will lose their jobs or maybe more than their jobs. The police might arrest and jail them. In extreme cases, dictatorships or terrorists might kill them. Livelihood, liberty, life – all can be endangered when sources speak out.
The powerful sympathise. Lord Justice Leveson, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, David Cameron and the celebrities and media academics of Hacked Off have always said that they just wanted to stamp out abuses of media power, not investigative journalism. Leveson intoned that a free press was a “cornerstone” of our democracy. Politicians declared they wanted to “safeguard and promote good investigative journalism”, as Miliband put it. There was nothing to worry about, nothing at all. Millions of otherwise sensible people believed them.
Let me dispense with euphemism. The attacks on confidential sources and public-interest journalism by the secret police and Crown Prosecution Service are so severe, they prove that the assurances given after the hacking scandal were a pack of lies. The authorities have played on an understandable but disastrous confusion in progressive thinking. The tabloids are scummy and Rupert Murdoch is sinister, it runs.
Who wants to be on the side of vicious men who have wasted what little talent they had stalking celebrities? The only answer to this question is “no decent person”. Ask who wants to be on the same side as Murdoch and you receive the same reply. They were so wrapped up in their righteousness that they did not notice that the state was thanking them for their gullibility and seizing the chance to lock down and shut up.
All of those who thought that by going along with Hugh Grant they were making a stand against the Murdochracy ought to look at how Murdoch and the criminal justice system aren’t enemies but allies.
Murdoch’s great fear was that the hacking scandal would lead to a corporate prosecution of News International. As the journalists who hacked the phone of Milly Dowler and made Sienna Miller’s life a misery worked for News International, and as the executives of News International justified their princely incomes by saying that they were responsible for the organisation, a corporate prosecution was indeed essential. It would show that the Crown Prosecution Service wanted to punish the powerful, not just the hired help.
At the trial of six Sun journalists, which ended last week with the jury acquitting two and failing to reach a verdict on the other four, defence lawyers quoted Gerson Zweifach, News Corp’s general counsel. He feared a corporate prosecution of News International in the UK would destroy its American interests. (The US authorities are a little more willing to punish wrongdoing than the indolent Brits.) He had emergency talks with the Met in 2012. According to Scotland Yard, he told the police: “The downstream effects of a prosecution would be apocalyptic. The US authorities’ reaction would put the whole business at risk.” If you can get past his atrocious jargon – why can’t the managers of communications business communicate? – you will hear the panic in his voice.
He need not have worried. Murdoch cut a deal to save his wizened hide. The police had no more right to go into his offices on a fishing expedition than they have to come into your home. They would have needed a reasonable suspicion and a search warrant. Murdoch spared them the inconvenience. The team behind his clean-up campaign went through company records and threw out journalists and journalist sources to keep the cops happy.
Honourable reporters go to prison to protect their sources. Murdoch and his team sent their sources to prison to protect themselves and have tried to do the same to their journalists. As Nigel Rumfitt, QC for one of the six Sun journalists Murdoch tossed overboard, told Kingston Crown Court, the company had been “engaged in a wholesale cover-up for more senior people at the expense of the more junior”. Nothing that was divulged implicated editors of the Sun, current and past. Instead, he went for dispensable employees, who had made the mistake of putting their trust in him.
News International was like a copper’s nark, Rumfitt continued, but the case of Murdoch stood out because the prosecution allowed the informant to run the investigation. “The police can’t even get access to the documents controlled by News International. This prosecution was controlled and instigated by the prime suspect. It has been taken for a ride by a foreign-owned corporation of enormous power, influence and greed.”
Just so. But the British authorities are more than the dupes of corporate power. They have their own “agendas”, as we say. The Sun journalists were not accused of hacking but of paying public servants for stories, including stories that were clearly in the public interest: the Ministry of Defence giving soldiers in Afghanistan faulty rifles, and the revelation that the officer the police chose to liaise with the families of the schoolgirls Ian Huntley murdered was a consumer of paedophile porn. All for nothing. Despite spending millions more than they would on serious crime, prosecutors have yet to convict a Sun reporter.
The fear I had when I first read Leveson’s ill-thought-out report is now real. The authorities want to stop the public knowing what they ought to have a right to know. And it is not only the police doing it. As my colleague James Ball of the Guardian revealed, GCHQ routinely hacks British and foreign journalists’ emails and regards reporters producing “exposés either for profit or what they deem to be of the public interest” as a threat to the state only just behind terrorists.
Much needs to be done. Those liberals who followed Grant could make a fair start by engaging in overdue self-criticism. You assumed no dangers lay ahead. You must now accept that you were conned.
Here’s how. Imagine you are a potential source. You will have read of Murdoch’s team naming names, of the willingness of the spooks to treat legitimate public inquiry as a crime and perhaps, too, of the police agreeing to try to stand up a desperate defence of that proved liar Chris Huhne by seizing all the confidential phone records of the Mail on Sunday newsdesk. You have digested the reports and understood what they foretell. You are going to stay silent, aren’t you?
Cassius Methyl
January 20, 2015
(ANTIMEDIA) A series of Fox News segments were recently deemed to be inaccurate, and they were widely mocked in French media for being far from the truth, and for inciting hatred towards Muslims.
The news segments suggested that there were parts of Paris and other cities in Europe where ‘Islamic law was practiced’ and police and non-Islamic citizens were ‘fearful’ to go into these areas. Surprising to no one who is aware, Fox News was torn apart for making false claims about these alleged dangerous Muslim neighborhoods.
In response to this genuinely dangerous propaganda, the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, seeks to sue Fox News.
According to CNN, a rival propaganda outlet, “One Fox show, for example, displayed an inaccurate map of the alleged “no-go zones” in and around Paris. On another show, a guest who was identified as a security expert claimed that Birmingham, England is a “totally Muslim city where non-Muslims don’t go in.”
This was such a blatant lie that British Prime Minister David Cameron had to admit it was false. He said “When I heard this, frankly, I choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April Fools Day.”
Here’s another example of “experts” on Fox News playing no objective role, but the role of an agitator. They have assumed the role of seeking to justify war, homophobia, and Islamophobia.
A generic response was given by Fox News, saying it’s unlikely they would face consequences for lying.
“We empathize with the citizens of France as they go through a healing process and return to everyday life,” said Fox executive vice president Michael Clemente. “However, we find the mayor’s comments regarding a lawsuit misplaced.”
Fox has since publicly apologized for this “mistake” on various shows including Justice with Judge Jeanine. The repulsive clip, for sake of reference, can be viewed here.
Please share this with as many people as possible, especially those remaining few who still believe what Fox News or any other corporate media outlet says.
Ad featuring photograph of young woman in lingerie posed on a bed, headlined ‘Interns wanted’, since removed
News Corp Australia’s most popular magazine insert has advertised for fashion interns by using a photo of a young woman dressed in underwear on all fours on a bed.
The ad, since removed, was posted on Instagram and asked people who were interested in being a fashion intern to email their CV “or tag friends who might be good candidates”.
Murdoch’s glossy magazine insert, Sunday Style – which appears in weekend papers the Sunday Herald Sun and the Sunday Telegraph – conceded “an error in judgment” in posting the ad for interns.
“We made an error in judgment today with an image used in a recent Instagram post calling for interns that has since been taken down. We take our intern program seriously and apologise for any offence caused,” read a post on the Sunday Style Instagram feed.
The original post – featuring the ad – was deleted.
A spokeswoman for NewsLifeMedia, the company’s magazine arm, declined to comment and referred Guardian Australia to the apology on Instagram.
Sunday Style has a circulation of almost 900,000 and is the most popular glossy insert in the newspaper market. The magazine features style, beauty and celebrity stories.
The intern ad was lampooned on Twitter after being brought to light by an Age journalist, Suzanne Carbone, when she posted it on Twitter, although many Twitter users believed the original was a parody.
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