Matt Stoller: Republican Propaganda Is Not News

[babylonsister]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0307/3109.html

Republican Propaganda Is Not News

By: Matt Stoller
March 13, 2007 04:27 PM EST


Over the past three weeks or so, the progressive movement – bloggers, Moveon.org, grassroots activists, filmmakers – pressured the Nevada Democratic Party to drop Fox News as the host of a presidential debate in August. In pursuing this short campaign, we made two basic arguments that were eventually accepted by party leaders.

First, we argued that Fox News is not a news channel, but a propaganda outlet that regularly distorts, spins, and falsifies information. Second, Fox News is heavily influenced or even controlled by the Republican Party itself. As such, we believe that Fox News on the whole functions as a surrogate operation for the GOP. Treating Fox as a legitimate news channel extends the Republican Party’s ability to swift-boat and discredit our candidates. In other words, Fox News is a direct pipeline of misinformation from the GOP leadership into the traditional press.

Thankfully, Fox News immediately proved our point with a press release after the debate cancellation that made the following remarkable claim: "News organizations will want to think twice before getting involved in the Nevada Democratic caucus which appears to be controlled by radical, fringe, out-of-state interest groups, not the Nevada Democratic Party."

This statement has all the hallmarks of a Fox News-style Republican talking point. First of all, it is falsified. The pressure campaign included out-of-state Democrats, but it was anchored by local party members, including Nevada Democratic Party executive board member Mike Zahara. And many Democratic activists in Nevada cheered at the decision to drop Fox.

After vigorous debate, the Nevada Democratic Party itself made the decision to cancel the debate, which directly contradicts Fox's claims. In addition, the release is partisan; calling bloggers and Moveon.org “radical” and “fringe” is a recognized Republican strategy, certainly not what one would expect from a legitimate news source.

Falsifying information that is favorable to Republicans and problematic for Democrats is a regular tactic of Fox News. Specific examples are breathtakingly dishonest, including the Obama Madrassa smear, Carl Cameron's false claims that John Kerry referred to himself as a “metrosexual” and “news anchor” Brit Hume repeating the false canard that the public does not trust the Democratic Party on national defense.

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[grannylib]

1. Many of us have been on to Fox Fraudcasting from the outset; now, I hope

the rest of the country will finally wake up and smell the shit these people are spewing.

I don't hold HIGH hopes, however...if the polls are to be believed, there are still about 30% of those polled who don't disapprove of the way Chimpy the Unelected Imbecile is handling things, so there really are an awful lot of stupid people still drinking heavily of the reich-wing kool-ade...and Fox feeds their misplaced sense of legitimacy.

[babylonsister]

2. Not just faux, but people like Limbaugh are brainwashing the brain dead. nt

[grannylib]

3. Yes, those whores too...I guess I keep lumping all of those lumps in with

the fiends at Faux, they're all of a piece. Just one huge overpaid overbearing factually-unencumbered useless brainless heartless gutless dickless soulless lump of excrement.