Murdoch now is the Puppet Master
During his 60th rally as president, Donald Trump said, “Our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice, and rage. They want to destroy you, and they want to destroy our country as we know it.” This rhetoric directly mirrors what Fox News personalities regularly say.
via Trump’s extreme rhetoric at his rally was ripped from Fox News
Lachlan Murdoch is allegedly wary of having his network seen as the president’s personal Soviet-style Pravda
On the one hand, I’m glad Ms. Mayer’s story — rich with telling details as it is — exists in the world. And that fact that it was printed in The New Yorker has given it social media rocket fuel.
On the other hand, this feels so much like reading a weather report from 20 years ago that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
via Fox News ‘Outed’ As Trump Propaganda Unit? Really | Crooks and Liars
Politico later reported that it was Hannity’s seventh interview with the President, and Fox’s forty-second. Since then, Trump has given Fox two more. He has granted only ten to the three other main television networks combined, and none to CNN, which he denounces as “fake news.” Hannity was treated in Texas like a member of the Administration because he virtually is one. The same can be said of Fox’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch. Fox has long been a bane of liberals, but in the past two years many people who watch the network closely, including some Fox alumni, say that it has evolved into something that hasn’t existed before in the United States. Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor of Presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the author of “Messengers of the Right,” a history of the conservative media’s impact on American politics, says of Fox, “It’s the closest we’ve come to having state TV.”
For both Trump and Fox, “fear is a business strategy—it keeps people watching.” As the President has been beset by scandals, congressional hearings, and even talk of impeachment, Fox has been both his shield and his sword. his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, has largely stopped holding press conferences, but she has made some thirty appearances on such shows as “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity.” Trump, Hemmer says, has “almost become a programmer.”
Bill Kristol, who was a paid contributor to Fox News until 2012 and is a prominent Never Trumper, said of the network, “It’s changed a lot. Before, it was conservative, but it wasn’t crazy. Now it’s just propaganda.” Joe Peyronnin, a professor of journalism at N.Y.U., was an early president of Fox News, in the mid-nineties. “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” he says of Fox. “It’s as if the President had his own press organization. It’s not healthy.”
Shine, the Fox and White House payrolls actually do overlap. The Hollywood Reporter obtained financial-disclosure forms revealing that Fox has been paying Shine millions of dollars since he joined the Administration. Last year, he collected the first half of a seven-million-dollar bonus that he was owed after resigning from Fox; this year, he will collect the remainder. That sum is in addition to an $8.4-million
Source: The Making of the Fox News White House | The New Yorker
America’s State TV is Fox News (ODT)
via At Hanoi Trump Presser, Hannity Glorifies Failed Summit As ‘Reaganesque’ | Crooks and Liars
Who is out of control here not the man with the facts that’s for sure (ODT)
Listen to Tucker Carlson Flip Out After Being Exposed by Dutch Historian
How tight are Murdoch’s strings on Trump? (ODT)
In the real world it’s called pissing in each others pockets. Hannity actually declares over and over “I’m not news” (ODT)
Trump tells Hannity “you’re not fake news, actually. You are real news”
Will heads roll under Lachlan Murdoch? Dad won’t be too happy! (ODT)
Fox News spent 2018 giving advice directly to Donald Trump
According to ratings data released Wednesday by Nielsen, MSNBC’s prime-time programs averaged 2.578 million total viewers, easing ahead of Fox News Channel (2.240 million) and CNN (1.398 million). In the key demographic of viewers 25-54, the demo coveted by major national advertisers, MSNBC was #1, with 471,000 to CNN’s 415,000 and FNC’s 355,000–a rare third-place finish for Fox, which has held onto first place for years.
With four weekly wins in a row, MSNBC is on track to beat Fox News in prime (among total viewers and in the demo) for the month of December, with just days left to go.
Murdoch applies the same model with Sky News in Australia. Unchecked nationalism goes on unabated nightly after dark. In America they have an audience . In Australia one day they hope to.(ODT)
Tucker Carlson is attempting to stay the course amid an advertiser exodus from his Fox News program because of his racist commentary. Carlson had been a mouthpiece for white supremacy, and since being promoted to a prime-time slot on Fox, he has elevated fringe “alt-right” grievances into mainstream media.
But what are the consequences of airing unfettered, explicit white supremacy five nights a week on the top rated cable news channel in the U.S.? They’re that Fox News viewers, including the president, are exposed to extremist ideology that, thanks to the veneer of respectability a top-rated show carries, has become part of the acceptable spectrum of political discourse — but that actually puts marginalized communities under direct threat of material harm.
Unchecked white nationalism on Fox News facilitates radicalization
Carlson’s show shifts the Overton window toward fascism
White nationalist rhetoric poses a threat to the well-being of vulnerable populations
via What happens when the No. 1 cable news channel is steeped in white nationalist rhetoric?
Murdoch Media is a PR firm masquerading as News (ODT)
In response to controversy over Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro campaigning with President Donald Trump, the network claimed that it “does not condone any talent participating in campaign events. … This was an unfortunate distraction and has been addressed.”
Fox’s statement is a lie.
Sean Hannity has previously participated in campaign events this year
via Fox claims it “does not condone any talent participating in campaign events.” That’s a brazen lie.
Fox Business Network condemned comments by a guest on host Lou Dobbs’s show that critics saw as an antisemitic trope.
Chris Farrell of the conservative group Judicial Watch said in an appearance on Lou Dobbs Tonight that the caravan of Central American migrants seeking to reach the United States is organized by groups whose affiliates “are getting money from the Soros-occupied state department”.
Soros is a financier and liberal donor and activist who is frequently the target of antisemitic vitriol. Last week, a pipe bomb was found in his mailbox, allegedly sent by a Florida man who promoted rightwing conspiracy theories about Soros.
The Dobbs segment originally aired on Thursday, but drew notice after it was rebroadcast Saturday, after the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
Critics likened Farrell’s language to the term “Zionist-occupied government,” a trope used in white nationalist circles to suggest the US government is controlled by Jews.
via Critics accuse Fox of allowing language that fuels antisemitism | Media | The Guardian
History repeats itself, observed Karl Marx, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
In the 1950s the “red scare” warned of communists sympathetic to the Soviet Union lurking around every corner of the US. On Tuesday, the White House was back at it, this time raising the spectre of Marx, Bernie Sanders and working mothers in Sweden.
A pre-election report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers sounds the alarm: “Coincident with the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth [May 1818], socialism is making a comeback in American political discourse. Detailed policy proposals from self-declared socialists are gaining support in Congress and among much of the electorate.”
The paper also just happens to be “coincident” with the 2018 midterm elections. It does not take a wild leap of imagination to foresee a feedback loop in which the Fox News host Sean Hannity cites the study as evidence of socialism posing an existential threat, after which Donald Trump talks and tweets about the issue.
Entitled Opportunity Costs of Socialism, the report struck many observers as an attempt by Republicans to neutralise what could be the winning issue for Democrats – healthcare – cloaked in academese about Das Kapital and the follies of “Maoist China, Cuba, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)”.
via The socialists are coming! White House sounds alarm at rise of the left | US news | The Guardian
A White House spokesperson this week promised to “look into” a Fox News decision to cease broadcasting of Trump campaign rallies in full.
According to The Daily Beast, the White House is concerned about losing a key platform just before the midterms. Instead of airing the rallies in their entirety, the network has taken to showing abbreviated clips of the events.
Rallies in recent days have drawn significantly lower ratings, Politico reported. In some cases, Trump rallies have fewer viewers than regular Fox News programming.
A senior White House official reportedly said that White House Communication Director Bill Shine, a former Fox News executive, was expected to be in talks with the network about the decision to nix live Trump rallies.
The officials said that Shine would “look into that.”
via Trump Furious About Fox News’ Decision Not To Air His Rally Live | Crooks and Liars
In a move that signals even more cooperation collusion between Fox News and Trump, the White House counsel has granted a waiver for the “public interest” that allows Bill Shine, WH Communications Director and former Fox News executive to skirt the law and meet with Fox News. (Emphasis added.)
The Administration has an interest in you interacting with Covered Organizations such as Fox News,” wrote White House counsel Don McGahn in a July 13 memo (PDF) granting an ethics waiver to Shine, a former Fox executive. “[T]he need for your services outweighs the concern that a reasonable person may question the integrity of the White House Office’s programs and operations.”
Larry Kudlow, the White House’s top economic advisor, was also granted a waiver for his old stomping ground at CNBC.
Shine’s involvement with the sexual abuse scandals that rocked the network must have been good for his resume before Trump hired him.
How does the public interest come into this mess since Fox News routinely buries real news stories that are negative for the Trump administration and his surrogates in Congress and uses mostly TV hosts that not only embrace the Trump administration but fight over his affections.
via White House Waives Rule To Allow Bill Shine To Meet With Fox News | Crooks and Liars
It’s reasonable given Fox was the only media chosen to travel with Trump
This was a shocking revelation by Russian State media:
Stephanie Ruhle pointed out this morning that the Kremlin translation of Putin called Fox News “the network run by the president.”
This in addition to former Fox exec Bill Shine working for the White House and current Fox host Sean Hannity working for Trump.
It’s an utterly incestuous relationship.
via Trump TV? Russians Broadcast That Fox News Is ‘Run By’ Trump | Crooks and Liars
Trump a President who has never left the Locker Room (ODT)
While President Donald Trump’s appointment of former Fox News executive Bill Shine to a top communications role was unsurprising to critics, many denounced the selection as the latest signal that the president holds contempt for the concerns of women.
via ‘Sickening’: Bill Shine Goes From Covering Up Sexual Harassment at Fox News to Trump’s White House
As President Donald Trump’s administration implemented a new “zero tolerance” prosecution policy at the border that led to unprecedented and systematic separation of immigrant families and locking kids in cages, right-wing media flailed around trying to blame the administration’s policy on anybody or anything except Trump.
The president’s media enablers blamed Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, “the law on the book,” Democrats in Congress, the media, the families themselves, and even “the Illuminati of K Street” for the Trump administration’s policy
via Everything right-wing media tried to blame for the Trump administration’s family separation policy
I have visited that weird Fox bubble on occasion, walked the halls of what feels more like an Orwellian Ministry of Truth than a newsroom. Reality is cast to the side.
Now these two bubbles are as one. Fox and 1600 Pennsylvania have merged, now virtually indistinguishable from each other, and inside that newly created, gigantic toxic bubble sits a manchild oozing irrational exuberance as sycophants tell him he’s the greatest thing since Genghis Khan strode the Earth.
via Rudy G and Bubble Boy Trump: Call It Implausible Deniability | The Smirking Chimp
United States President Donald Trump has bragged about a crushing winning record in the estimated 3,500 legal cases he has been involved in over the past three decades, but Stormy Daniels has him twisted in knots.
The next time you hear Donald Trump bluster and harumph about something he’s angry about, you should assume Sean Hannity is his anger translator. Trump doesn’t need speechwriters as long as he can call up Hannity and get his lines for the next day.
The Washington Post’s Robert Costa, Sarah Ellison and Josh Dawsey published an excellent story today, outlining just how embedded Fox News personality Sean Hannity is with Donald Trump’s White House.
The mystery client that President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, fought in court to keep secret is Fox News host Sean Hannity, Cohen’s lawyer divulged on Monday.
via Sean Hannity is Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s secret client
Donald Trump’s legal fixer Michael Cohen has also been representing the firebrand conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity, one of only three private legal clients Cohen has taken on in the past year, his lawyer told a federal court on Monday.
Prosecutors suggested in their filing that while Cohen “holds himself out as a practicing attorney”, he is actually exaggerating the extent of his work in an attempt to cast a wide net of attorney-client privilege over the records seized by the FBI. Cohen denies this.
The justice department has “reason to believe that Cohen has exceedingly few clients and a low volume of potentially privileged communications”, McKay wrote.
Sean Hannity revealed as Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s mystery third client | US news | The Guardian
Oh my…Fox accidentally posts the truth for a change, and quickly takes it down.
Oopsy.
“This is the Fox television presidency all the way up and down.”
How can a television presidency be dangerous? Because it is solely about marketing Trump. Its only goal is to win. It is unconstrained by truth, reason, or the Constitution. It doesn’t give a fig about the public.
What’s worrying isn’t that Trump is now getting advice about policy from fanatics like John Bolton and Lawrence Kudlow. Trump has never cared about policy.
The real worry is that – with Robert Mueller breathing down his neck, and several special elections suggesting a giant “blue wave” in November – Trump is getting ready to do whatever it takes to maintain his power, even if that requires fanatical policies.
Trump is preparing for an epic war over the future of his presidency. This has required purging naysayers from his Cabinet and White House staff, and replacing them with bomb-throwing advocates like Bolton and Kudlow.
Fox News is preparing for the same war, and has made a parallel purge – removing Trump critics like George Will, Megyn Kelly, and Rich Lowry, and installing Trump marketers like Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, and Sebastian Gorka.
Advertisement
Trump and Fox News are also approaching the war with the same story.
Some of it is by now familiar: Liberals have opened America to hostile forces – unauthorized immigrants, Muslims, Chinese traders, criminal gangs, drug dealers, government bureaucrats, coastal elites (Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi), North Korea, Iran, and “political correctness” in all its forms.
Trump intends to protect America from these forces.
The new twist to the story– requiring the recent purges and a united front – is that these forces are conspiring with the FBI to oust Trump from the presidency.
The membrane separating Trump’s brain from Fox News has always been thin, but in coming months it’s likely to disappear entirely.
We all know Trump watches an inordinate amount of Fox News, beginning in the wee hours with “Fox and Friends,” which provides much of the fodder for his morning tweets.
President Donald Trump’s favourite TV network is increasingly serving as a West Wing casting call, as the President reshapes his administration with camera-ready personalities.
Mr Trump’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, is a former United Nations’ ambassador, a White House veteran – and perhaps most importantly a Fox News channel talking head. Mr Bolton’s appointment, rushed out late Thursday, follows Mr Trump’s recent effort to recruit Fox guest Joseph diGenova for his legal team.
Mr Bolton went on Fox News to discuss his selection and said it had happened so quickly that “I think I’m still a Fox News contributor”.
via How Donald Trump turned his presidential team into the ‘Fox News White House’ | The Independent
What Murdoch Media Mocks
via March for Our Lives Updates: Students Inspire Huge Rallies on Guns – The New York Times
John Bolton, a Fox News contributor, is reportedly under consideration to replace National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, likely because President Donald Trump enjoys his television commentary. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations whose tenure was marred by “his inability to make friends and build alliances,” is a Trump sycophant with a history of warmongering and conspiracy theorizing. He also chairs a think tank that’s been called “anti-Muslim,” and he has connections to anti-Muslim bigots.
Since his election, Trump has often privately expressed concern that the charges of Russian meddling undermine the legitimacy of his presidency. He has told associates that if he accepts the premise of Russian meddling, it would call into question the idea that he won the election on his own merits.
In news conferences, on Twitter and at campaign rallies, he has called the Russia investigation “fake news” and has repeatedly predicted that Mueller’s investigation will end without finding much.
via Russia indictments present new reality for Trump crying ‘hoax’
Fox & Friends has served as a safe space for Trump, often giving him fodder for his early morning tweets. The program also allows Trump to escape challenging interviews and serves as his first line of defens Fox & Friends gave almost no airtime to Trump’s anti-Muslim retweets
“There is nothing going on in Washington involving someone named Paul Manafort if that’s even a real name.”
Source: Stephen Colbert Mocks Fox ‘News’ For Not Covering Mueller Investigation | Crooks and Liars
Advertisers are dropping Sean Hannity
At this point, if a company is sponsoring Sean Hannity’s show, it is essentially supporting a Trump propaganda operation. It needs to stop.
Sean Hannity has a long record of right-wing chicanery, lies, and vitriol. But he has morphed into something more dangerous than just a partisan hack — he’s been exposed as a full-blown propagandist who conspires with the Trump administration to spread fabricated stories, smear detractors, and undercut the rule of law.
21st Century Fox (Fox News’ parent company) won’t hold him accountable. So, there are two options: 1) Do nothing; or 2) Take action to hold Hannity accountable.
Spreading misinformation is Hannity’s business model, and now he’s doing it on behalf of the Trump administration. His propagandizing has become so odious that he was condemned by some of his coworkers, who reportedly told The Daily Beast that the host was “’embarrassing’ the network” and that “some people need to be fired.”
It’s past time for Hannity to go. If Fox won’t fire Hannity, then advertisers should run as fast as they can, or else they run the risk of being complicit in his deceit and recklessness. Advertisers will get burned if they continue to associate with Hannity — plain and simple.
Sign up here to join the effort to encourage Hannity’s advertisers to stop financially supporting his propaganda.
It’s up to this grassroots movement — individuals, organizations, and hundreds of independent organizers — to keep up the pressure. Together, their efforts and your participation will have a tremendous impact.
———
Here are a few of Hannity’s top advertisers:
DirecTV
Dollar Shave Club
Mercedes Benz
Mitsubishi
NutriSystem
Don’t you wish Andrew Bolt was dependant on Advertising he’d be gone in a blink.
As the nation reels from Trump’s embrace of neo-Nazis, Fox News invites racist, anti-Semite Ted Nugent on for full hour
This is what Sean Hannity’s Fox News show is like on a daily basis. It’s pure propaganda, an effort to support the president at every turn, while castigating his enemies — particularly the press. His viewers are living in an alternate reality — one that he’s carefully crafted to benefit Trump.
Another Fox host suspended after report of sexual harassment
Source: Another Fox host suspended after report of sexual harassment
Donald Trump loves the safe space of Fox & Friends
Trump is unhappy with the message coming out of the White House, but that might have to do with the message itself
Source: President Trump eyeing Fox News producers and hosts to take over his communications team – Salon.com
President Donald Trump has dramatically shifted his stated rationale for firing FBI Director James Comey. But Fox News hosts have not wavered in their defenses of the president, maintaining the same narratives all week: Trump did nothing wrong, the media is overreacting, Democrats are hypocrites for criticizing the president’s actions, and th
Source: How Fox News Covered Trump Firing The FBI Director, In 51 Screen Shots
Fox News owner and CEO Rupert Murdoch is reportedly advising President Donald Trump on a near-daily basis at the same time as the Justice Department is investigating his company, an ethical breach that could undermine the credibility of the inquiry.The Justice Department is currently engaged in a wide-ranging investigation of Fox News.
Source: Murdoch Is Reportedly Advising Trump While DOJ Investigates Fox
CNN discusses the very cozy relationship between Donald Trump and State Run TV (Fox News).
Source: Will Donald Trump Put Fox News / Roger Ailes On Trial? Ha! | Crooks and Liars
