Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

THE CONTINUING DISHONESTY OF FOX NEWS

UPDATE: CORRECTION: It was a technical error, and nothing more, that led to the applause being omitted from FoxNews.com video of President Obama's speech to West Point cadets. The network says that a video editing error was to blame for the missing applause. A video editor took two separate clips that were meant to be used as sound bites that included what's known as "padding" at the end of them. Padding allows producers to fade in and out of segments without sound. h/t HuffPost

It took a while for FOX to respond to this technical error that happened almost a week ago.  Okay.  It was a glitch, but when we review FOX's past behaviors in editing videos, it was a logical conclusion that the omission of the applause was deliberate.  Past behaviors are usually a good indication of present and future behaviors.


ORIGINAL POST:

We've caught this fake news station many times altering video, broadcasting misleading or stupidly wrong information, and indulging in blatant lies.  Yet people continue to watch this disgrace of a teevee cable station--in fact it is the most watched in cable news.  That fact alone should make us all dispair for America.

Here's FOX News, once again, presenting an altered video of President Obama giving a speech to the graduation class at West Point.  You'll notice a moment of silence after Mr. Obama praised America's military and their accomplishments--and you'll see Mr. Obama looking back and forth over the crowd as it remained silent.

Fox News apparently couldn't stand the reality of hearing those in the audience applaud and cheer Mr. Obama, so they edited out their approving gesture to make this look like an embarrassing moment for the president.  [You can see it @ :48 in the video.]






Those who continue to watch and support this cable "news" program that promotes lies and distortions and idiots like Glenn Beck deserve all the miasmic slop it serves up each and every day for their noncritical consumption.

More from ThinkProgress:

"He [President Obama] also praised American troops for their performance in Iraq. “A lesser Army might have seen its spirit broken,” he said, adding that “through their competence and creativity and courage, we are poised to end our combat mission in Iraq this summer.” At that point, cadets and the audience applauded for at least 12 seconds (starting at roughly the 10:24 mark here). However, as Michael Moore observed, video from the speech on FoxNews.com edits out that applause entirely, making it appear as if Obama is bizarrely staring silently for a long period of time."

Media Matters’ Jamison Foser asks, “Now, maybe Fox didn’t intentionally remove the audience applause. Maybe Fox’s video used a direct feed from Obama’s microphone, and it simply didn’t pick up audience noise. But if Fox didn’t intentionally try to make Obama look silly, why did it choose a 2-minute clip — out of a 32-minute speech — that portrayed Obama looking silently around the room, seemingly for no reason?”


 
Fox News apologizes for dishonest splicing of Joe Biden clip

After misleading Palin footage, FOX institutes zero tolerance on-screen errors

FOX fudges poll numbers

FOX edits Joe Biden clip to distort what he actually said


More on FOX News:  A call out from a Republican Congressman:

"This morning, Fox and Friends characterized Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) Create Jobs & Save Benefits Act as a “$165 billion bailout” of union pensions. “It has been decades since you’ve seen an administration so prone to the influence of unions as this one is. I’m not going to say this is owned by the unions, but their influence on this administration is simply enormous,” Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney claimed of the legislation, which is actually designed to partition “specific types of union pensions that are deemed to be insolvent.” Later in the day, the network went after House Republicans for co-sponsoring similar legislation in the House. On America Live with Megyn Kelly, the network showed a chart of the nine Republicans supporting the measure and questioned their sanity.

This didn’t go over well with Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH), a co-sponsor of the House measure, who took to the floor this afternoon to criticize Fox for its coverage. “I think as a Republican, I’m supposed to love Fox News and hate MSNBC,” he began. “Now, I’m going to tell you, I do hate MSNBC, but something just happened on Fox News that compelled me to come to the floor”:

LATOURETTE: They’ve run this diagram and it really is a, I think, blaspheming my good friend Pat Tiberi from Ohio and indicating that there are nine Republicans supporting a bill that will bail out unions. Well, that’s nonsense and I don’t know who the pin head and weenie is at Fox News that decided to put that story together. But the true facts of this piece of legislation are as follows. This bill will save the taxpayers by saying to those corporations that have union pension plans, if you find yourselves in a bind, rather than thrusting that upon the taxpayer, it spreads out over five years the ability to bring those pension plans up to speed. That’s good government, it’s a good bill. It’s a good Tiberi bill and I don’t know what they’re doing at Fox News, but they should stop smoking it and get back to reporting the facts."

Again, I ask:  Why does anyone with even half a brain watch FAUX cable news?  People!  FAUX is not a news organization, it's the propaganda arm of the GOP--and they can't even get that right!


"All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.”

7 comments:

Dave Miller said...

Shaw, your previous story is pretty newsworthy too. Do you think FOX will be broadcasting it as part of the continuing effort to be fair and balanced with reporting the news?

libhom said...

The irony is that the end of the "combat mission" doesn't mean an end to the occupation or the war. Those will go on.

Even when Faux News is getting what they want, they still are playing these games.

Leslie Parsley said...

Like I've said, Fox should have to register as a lobbyist for the GOP.

Anonymous said...

FOX news is the most watched cable news station in America.

It continues to lie, distort, and make things up.

There is no hope for a country this stupid.

YO BO said...

Fox News was never about news--it's about propaganda and trashing BO.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous @ 9:12 p.m. is right; if this is how stupid the country is, we really are screwed. Stupidity is the single scariest thing about living in America today. Hands down.

Dave Miller said...

The fact that they cleverly put News in their title, does not make FOX a news channel anymore than when the Disney Channel has a "news show" and it is all about their theme parks or aspiring actress/singers.