Disinformation » Fox News

Kermit the Frog & Miss Piggy Vs. Fox News (Video)

Good German — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:05:16 +0000

Fox News’ Visually Distorted Charts

JacobSloan — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:00:03 +0000

FlowingData points out a recent graphic from a story on Fox News showing the unemployment rate changes under Obama. The numbers are presumably correct, but do not seem to correspond to the rise and fall of the visual, in which, for instance, 8.6 is a higher number than 8.8 or 8.9. Ah, the “Fox Chart” — what does it mean? Is it a work of postmodern art?

Fox News Becoming More Liberal?!?

majestic — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:00:49 +0000

According to Gabriel Sherman at New York Magazine there are moves afoot to move Fox News Channel to the political center … I guess we’ll see.

When six GOP primary contenders descended on Fox News’ midtown headquarters for a “candidates forum” with a trio of red state attorneys general on Saturday night, the candidates probably expected tough questions about their positions. But they certainly didn’t expect to find a New York Times reporter roaming backstage.

Fox’s decision to allow Times scribe Jim Rutenberg into the building to confront the candidates in person threw campaign aides off guard, especially in the Romney camp, which went into “defensive mode immediately, insisting that the reporter stay far away,” as Rutenberg later wrote.

But the decision was just the latest example of what Fox head Roger Ailes recently called a “course correction” in an interview with Howard Kurtz of Newsweek. The Romney team’s debate-night tussle was the second embarrassing episode suffered by the candidate at the hands of Fox News in a week, after Bret Baier conducted a hard-hitting interview with Romney on November 29 that made news for several days. (After the contentious interview, Baier told Bill O’Reilly that Romney privately called his questions “overly aggressive” and “uncalled for.”) The network has also taken on the other GOP primary contenders. In July, Chris Wallace pointedly asked Michele Bachmann “are you a flake?” And in November, Fox gave a platform to Herman Cain accuser Sharon Bialek and her attorney Gloria Allred.

This chaotic and raucous primary season is demonstrating that Roger Ailes will put the interests of his network ahead of all else…

[continues at New York Magazine]

Fox News On Police Pepper Spraying: ‘It’s A Food Product, Essentially’ (Video)

JacobSloan — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 06:35:37 +0000

Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly break down the tumult between police and students at UC Davis: the police sprayed the sit-in protesters with a “food product.” O’Reilly adds, “I don’t think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police, particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus.” Hear that? Violent police crackdowns are basically a big, fun, good-natured food fight!

Keith Olbermann: Fox News is a ‘Political Whorehouse’ About Occupy Wall Street (Video)

bluemana — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:00:03 +0000

Guy sure is not pulling any punches since leaving MSNBC:

Bill O’Reilly Vs. Tavis Smiley & Cornel West on Poverty in America (Video)

bluemana — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 23:30:41 +0000

The Fox News #OccupyWallStreet Footage You Won’t See On TV

majestic — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:08:30 +0000

Respect for Drew Grant and the New York Observer for outing Fox News Channel’s selective editing of their OccupyWallStreet coverage:

Even if Geraldo Rivera was at the Zuccotti Park yesterday, Fox News has generally been a tad dismissive of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Foxnews.com (as of this writing) has no coverage of this national event on their front page stories. (Hard to imagine for a network that was so gung-ho about the Tea Party!) Red Eye‘s Bill Schulz went out to try to “prank” the protesters. Bill O’Reilly sent a producer minion out with the same mission: to belittle OWS’s cause by cutting up interviews to make people sound stupid.

Well, here is an interview that Fox News filmed, but doesn’t want you to see. The segment was shot on Wednesday for Greta van Susteren‘s show, (though it looks like the same producer from this O’Reilly segment questioning Michael Moore‘s anti-capitalist agenda) though the decision was made to leave it on the cutting room floor. The reason should be obvious pretty quickly.

The speaker giving Fox News the business is Jesse LaGreca, a vocal member of the Occupy Wall Street protests. This video comes courtesy of Kyle Christopher from OccupyWallSt.org‘s media team.

Now, no news organization is under obligation to air every interview they’ve filmed, especially when it makes them look bad. But you’d think that a “Fair and Balanced” network (that tells an interviewee that they are here to give them fair coverage to get any message they’d like to get out) would try to include at least a couple of opposing viewpoints to Mr. Shulz’s smarmy jokes or O’Reilly’s “infiltration” of the camp…

[continues at the New York Observer]

NewsCorp Blockers For Your Browser

JacobSloan — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:27:42 +0000

Afraid that you or your family could unwittingly stumble into the tentacles of the NewsCorp empire? Murdoch Block for Chrome and MurdochAlert for Firefox claim to keep you safe:

MurdochAlert warns you whenever you visit one of the 100+ Murdoch Family-controlled websites. If you’re not ready to block them all, MurdochAlert can warn you instead. Also it’s handy for identifying news sources controlled by the Murdoch Family.

NewsCorp agents in multiple countries have been arrested for hacking into the phones and computers of at least thousands of innocent people. Since the Murdoch family controls 100+ high-traffic domains, it is difficult for average users to know which sites could potentially place them at risk.

MurdochAlert identifies the domains that may place users at risk for Murdoch-related hacking. MurdochAlert shows a bottom warning box whenever you visit a Murdoch-controlled sited.

Rupert Murdoch’s Tabloid Hacked To Report His Death

JacobSloan — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:27:25 +0000

The woes keep piling on for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, as the homepage of its popular Sun paper was altered to feature an amusing fake report on the mogul’s committing suicide “in his topiary garden”. The Guardian notes:

News International websites for the Times and the Sun were taken down last night after hackers targeted the Sun’s web pages and redirected traffic to another page falsely reporting that Rupert Murdoch had been found dead. The breach was apparently the first hack of a major UK newspaper’s website.

The LulzSec hacking collective hacked the tabloid’s site, and also claimed to be “sitting on their [the Sun's] emails” and that they would release the emails on Tuesday.

Crikey! FBI Opens Inquiry Into Murdoch’s News Corp.

Join Or DIE — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 03:53:12 +0000

Richard A. Serrano, Jim Puzzanghera and Kim Geiger write in the LA Times:

The phone hacking scandal that has ignited a political firestorm in Britain jumped the Atlantic on Thursday as the FBI opened an investigation into whether British reporters tried to access cellphone messages and records of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in violation of U.S. law.

The preliminary probe further rattled the New York-based global media empire of Rupert Murdoch, who was forced this week to withdraw his $12-billion bid to take over Britain’s largest satellite broadcaster, and raises new questions about the future of News Corp.

U.S. officials said the FBI is trying to determine if a full investigation is warranted, and no evidence has yet emerged to confirm that News Corp. employees sought to hack phones in the United States. But the unfolding scandal sent the company’s battered stock down another 3% in trading.

Roger Ailes’ Secret Nixon-Era Blueprint For Fox News

JacobSloan — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:38:11 +0000

If you suspected that Fox News was nothing more than a decades-in-the-making Republican plot to pipe propaganda to unsuspecting rubes…you were right down to a tee. Gawker dug up this amazing find:

According to a remarkable document buried deep within the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the forerunner for Fox News was a 1970 plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to deliver “pro-administration” stories to heartland television viewers.

The memo is called, simply enough, “A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News”.

Fox News Twitter Account Gets Hacked Announcing President Obama’s Assassination

Pelliciari — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:02:46 +0000

With instant access to knowledge via technology, it’s easy to get the wrong news. While some hackers may expose a private tweet or e-mail, others create fake news, like the assassination of the American president. Los Angeles Times reports:

Former Rep. Anthony Weiner falsely said his Twitter account was hacked just before Memorial Day weekend. But over the holiday weekend, it looks like real hackers attacked the @foxnewspolitics verified account, one of several Twitter accounts run by FoxNews.com.

A group calling itself “ScriptKiddies” claimed responsibility for the hack and also declared it has ties to the international hacker collective Anonymous.

The Tweets began appearing just after 2 a.m. ET on Monday, July 4, an hour and date likely calculated to maximize the time the Tweets were up before the account owner noticed or could do anything about it. The fake messages announced the assassination of President Obama during a visit to Iowa, but there were no links to news reports on the incident.

More Tweets detailed the president’s condition and promised the shooter would be found.

The language of the messages did not match normal news style, sounding more like the amateur fiction it turned out to be.

[Continues at Los Angeles Times]

Glenn Beck Farewell Supercut

JacobSloan — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:17:53 +0000

In commemoration of Glenn Beck’s departure from the Fox News airwaves this week, Media Matters has compiled his top moments and catchphrases (which include, “Hello America!”; “I hope I’m wrong”; “the country’s on fire”; and, most disturbingly, “lemme get the frogs”) into fifteen straight minutes of hucksterism and insanity. In all honesty, if I’d known his show was this entertaining, I would have watched.

MoveOn Admits To Hacking Fox News

Pelliciari — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:47:52 +0000

Fox News’ ticker outside the New York building was hacked into, replacing the scrolling news with an activist message describing the lies being told by conservative groups. MoveOn, a progressive advocacy group, claimed responsibility for the prank which they are now using to promote a broad anti-austerity campaign that launches June 23.

Roger Ailes Bombproofed The Fox News Headquarters, Fearing Gay Terror Attacks

JacobSloan — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:29:54 +0000

Rolling Stone’s long piece on the evil mastermind is filled with all sorts of joyous nuggets, including the above. Additionally, an underground bunker called the “brain room” — with special security clearance needed for entrance — acts as a research center in which the cable network’s most fiendishly clever plans are developed:

Murdoch installed ailes in the corner office on Fox’s second floor at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was close to the street, and he lived in fear that gay activists would try to attack him in retaliation over his hostility to gay rights. (In 1989, Ailes had broken up a protest of a Rudy Giuliani speech by gay activists, grabbing demonstrator by the throat and shoving him out the door.) Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having “bombproof glass” installed in the windows – even going so far as to personally inspect samples of high-tech plexiglass, as though he were picking out new carpet. Looking down on the street below, he expressed his fears to Cooper, the editor he had tasked with up-armoring his office. “They’ll be down there protesting,” Ailes said. “Those gays.”

Befitting his siege mentality, Ailes also housed his newsroom in a bunker. Reporters and producers at Fox News work in a vast, windowless expanse below street level, a gloomy space lined with video-editing suites along one wall and an endless cube farm along the other. In a separate facility on the same subterranean floor, Ailes created an in-house research unit – known at Fox News as the “brain room” – that requires special security clearance to gain access. “The brain room is where Willie Horton comes from,” says Cooper, who helped design its specs. “It’s where the evil resides.”

Fox News & Bill O’Reilly Are America’s Most Trusted News Sources

bluemana — Wed, 25 May 2011 01:05:45 +0000

Paul Bedard reports in U.S. News & World Report:

In a stunning rejection of network news and nightly news anchors, cable news, driven by the Fox News Channel and mouthy Bill O’Reilly, is now the top most trusted source—by a mile.

In a new poll from Boston’s Suffolk University (PDF), more than a quarter of the nation says Fox is tops when it comes to who they trust the most and O’Reilly is the most believable.

“This poll shows two things: first, the network news have completely lost their brand. Second, the only network with any intensity is Fox News,” says Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center. “Bottom line: the more they attack Fox, the stronger it is getting,” he adds.

But at the liberal Media Matters, Executive Vice President Ari Rabin-Havt says the public’s trust in Fox is disturbing. A regular Fox critic, he says the poll reveals that “Fox News viewers trust the information that Fox gives them.”

The key finding in the telephone poll of 1,070 likely voters is that network news is dying. Some 28 percent say that they trust Fox News the most, followed by CNN at 18 percent. After that, the trust in TV news nose dives. NBC was third, at 10 percent, MSNBC fourth at 7 percent, CBS and ABC tied at fifth with just 6 percent.

Political Game Playing Promotes Partisanship Through Polarization

Danny Schechter — Fri, 13 May 2011 19:57:02 +0000

Fox News studio. Photo: Inside Cable News (CC)

Grrrrrrrr.

You can almost hear the growling in the background as the masters of attack politics go into action, virtually every hour on the hour, on the Fox News Channel. The issues they focus on are carefully selected by top executives and then broken down into highly politicized message points.

Their dominant emotion is annoyance, as expressed in sarcasm and scowling. Contempt is the underlying attitude.

The other side is usually not just wrong but plain stupid, almost unbelievable in its soft-headed naivete and distance from reality

A “what do you expect” question invariably tops off the argument which always ends with the Fox host a winner and the Democrat or social critic a loser on every level.

Standing on a podium, driven by self-righteous certainty, the finger pointers view the people they talk about, and talk down to, as below the intelligence threshold of people even worth arguing with.

As Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck have proven, in this universe, hyping the extreme and outrageous seems to attract audiences.

That leads to higher ratings and, the real goal, higher revenues.

Clearly they feel it is their duty to play Paul Revere, who warned Colonial America that, “The British are coming.” They warn their faithful against political deviations that might lead them astray.

What is hard to recognize, or often realize, is that the topics chosen are calculated and behind a strategy of using emotionally tested wedge issues to politicize by polarizing.

Political scientist, Alan Abramowitz, argues that polarization is good for America in his new book, The Disappearing Center:

“All the indicators we have show that polarization has actually contributed to increased engagement in politics, because people do perceive important differences and they think that there are big stakes in elections, he writes.”

He was asked if he thinks this is healthy for a democracy:

“Well, up to a point. I think that a certain degree of polarization is healthy in a democracy. It clarifies the choices people have in elections, and it helps voters to hold the parties accountable for their performance”

At the same time, other political analysts say, “The more polarized political parties are, the less most of us care about the political process”

Survey data shows that people often take polarized positions because they think they are expected to when they identify with a certain party. With the sincerity and beliefs of Democrats mocked and under constant vitriolic attack, who would want to be thought of that way?

If they have questions, they don’t raise them. It’s easier to parrot the party line.

Recall, it is politicians, not “the people” who define those issues. They rely on corporate -style market research and focus groups. They chose slogans and even language that often has a patriotic subtext. When government programs are likened to Socialism, it’s not surprising when people who consider themselves conservatives reject them even when they don’t really know what socialism is.

This is also true of what appears to be populist movements like The Tea Party whose agenda and talking points have been established by professional consultants, guided by political operatives and funded by conservative billionaires.

As one study put it. “In other words, since the parties are now more clearly divided – and on a broader set of issues – it is easier for people to split accordingly, without changing their own views.”

That’s the key point: “without changing their own views.” The dirty little secret is the discovery in many studies that the most systematic polarization appears only in mass partisanship: those who are politically active or identify themselves with a party or ideology tend to have more extreme positions than the rest of the population. But, at the same time, their core political views have changed very little. For example, many on the right depend on and support Medicare.

What’s also not always clear to folks on the left is that Fox News positions itself as an upholder of what are, at bottom, liberal American values. Hence their motto about Fairness and Balance. (They actually have more opposing views on their programs than channels like MSNBC.)

The LA Times understood this when writing, “Fox’s real ethos is not Republican but anti-elitist — a major reason it connects with so many Americans and annoys so many coastal elites. “There’s a whole country that elitists will never acknowledge,” Ailes once observed. “What people resent deeply out there are those in the ‘blue states’ thinking they’re smarter.”

This anti-elitism shows itself in Fox’s pro-U.S. stance in covering the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and its broadcasters’ use of terms such as “terrorist” instead of “militants.” Another aspect of Fox’s anti-elitism is that, “Christians, far from being seen as lunatics or curiosities (as too often is the case in the mainstream media) actually get some respect.”

So Fox plays a double game, concealing the most reactionary and partisan of perspectives in the appearance of populism. It is then packaged in the format of news programming and above the fray television driven by hot graphics, pretty blonds, and relentless posturing.

The formula works in attracting audiences while, at the same time, feeding into a political strategy of promoting partisanship through heightening polarization and political conflict.

No issue is too small to exploit. A week after the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden, Fox had found a new enemy to bash as a target in the nightly culture war behind its political war.

Michelle Obama had invited a rapper named Common to a White House poetry reading. Some of his lyrics, in the parlance of ghetto talk, appeared to suggest he approved of a cop killing. That’s all that Fox needed to hear. Program after program went on to attack this latest example of black racism.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart used video clips and his own free-style rapping to ridicule the distortions in their characterizations. He blasted Fox for “manufacturing outrage” and pumping a blend of propaganda he calls “foxygen” into the room. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly blasted back inviting Stewart to debate him and insisting that their focus only reflected their outrage over a pro-cop-killing artist being invited to the White House.

(Hip Hop radio personality Davey D reminds his audience that Fox never gets outraged by police brutality in black communities. He posted a thoughtful commentary on his Facebook page.)

Any objective person might concede the poet rapper was not calling for a jihad against cops. It didn’t matter because Fox viewers tend to believe what their TV heroes tell them. It looked like he was; there fore he was.

Soon, the facts no loner mattered in a cross-cultural battle of metaphor and misinformation. Fox had its new weapon of mass distraction to focus on and smear Obama with while ignoring the other big story of the day: the conviction of a billionaire Hedge Fund schemer accused on insider trading and conspiracy.

In Fox world the Free Market is holy, even when its not, and only big government (under Democrats, of course) is to blame for our economic woes.

In the end what we have is a cruel and deceptive game that appears to be informative when its not, presided over by professional actors and reactors. And like the old joke asks: “How do you know when they are lying?” The answer: “when their lips are moving.”

News Dissector Danny Schechter made the film, Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, about the financial crisis as a crime story.

OutFoxed: Obama Bin Laden

majestic — Mon, 02 May 2011 16:54:18 +0000

This picture tells you all you need to know about the bias of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV network (thanks Jeff Scott for sending it in). For those of you who need a refresher on just how “fair and balanced” Fox News is, take another look at Robert Greenwald’s classic Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.

Glenn Beck Leaving His Fox News Show

bluemana — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:31:16 +0000

Is he even too crazy for Fox News? Linda Feldmann writes in the Christian Science Monitor:

It’s the end of an era: Glenn Beck is leaving his daily talk show on Fox News later this year, he and Fox announced Wednesday. The show, called “Glenn Beck,” had seen a precipitous decline in ratings over the last year, and Mr. Beck’s departure was not unexpected.

Not long ago, the populist rabble-rouser of the right and self-described “rodeo clown” was flying high. Beck began at Fox a little more than two years ago, in January 2009, having jumped from CNN Headline News. Coincidentally, that was right before the birth of the tea party, and he quickly became one of the movement’s leading advocates. In March 2009, he launched the successful 9-12 Project, which sought to promote patriotic values. And last August, he drew tens of thousands of people from around the country to a rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, called “Restoring Honor.”

But over the last year, “Glenn Beck” has lost more than a million viewers from its 5:00 p.m. show, going from an average 2.9 million in January 2010 to 1.8 million in January 2011, according to The New Republic. Beck’s radio show has been dropped in several big cities, including New York and Philadelphia. TV advertisers started fleeing, including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and Wal-Mart.

Glenn Beck Considers Starting His Own Network

Pelliciari — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:33:47 +0000

Glenn Beck at the Restoring Honor rally in Washington, D.C.

Oprah Winfrey got her own network, now Glenn Beck is considering it. Will a network last if it only has it’s delusional audience to rely on? The New York Times reports:

The possibility that Glenn Beck will exit the Fox News Channel at the end of the year has prompted a big question in media circles: if he leaves, how will he bring his considerable audience with him?

Two of the options Mr. Beck has contemplated, according to people who have spoken about it with him, are a partial or wholesale takeover of a cable channel, or an expansion of his subscription video service on the Web.

Reports this week that Joel Cheatwood, a senior Fox News executive, would soon join Mr. Beck’s growing media company, Mercury Radio Arts, were the latest indication that Mr. Beck intended to leave Fox, a unit of the News Corporation, when his contract expired at the end of this year.

Notably, Mr. Beck’s company has been staffing up — making Web shows, some of which have little or nothing to do with Mr. Beck, and charging a monthly subscription for access to the shows.

[Continues at The New York Times]

Fox News To Fire Glenn Beck?

majestic — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:25:05 +0000

Photo: Gage Skidmore (CC)

The Week dissects a David Carr piece in the New York Times and comes to the conclusion that “the cable news giant may part ways with the conservative firebrand at the end of the year”:

Glenn Beck is obsessed with the coming apocalypse, but the real end times on the horizon may be for his nightly show on Fox News, reports David Carr at The New York Times. Senior Fox News executives tell Carr that the network is “looking at the end of [Beck's] contract in December and contemplating life without [him].”

Why? The conspiracy theorist has lost a third of his audience since last year, particularly in the younger demographic; he has drawn the ire of conservatives like William Kristol, and, says Carr, his show has “turned into a serial doomsday machine that’s a bummer to watch.” Could Fox News really be preparing to part ways with Beck?

It would be no surprise if it were true: Carr’s tale of tumbling audience figures and exasperated executives certainly rings true, says Steve Benen at Washington Monthly. But there’s more. Beck’s radio show has been dropped in “several major media markets,” his book sales have drooped, and “advertisers have abandoned him in droves.” It’s this last item that may be of particular concern to Fox — Beck “can’t get and keep any nationally recognized advertisers.” That is unsustainable.
“Fox News considers a post-Beck era”

This sounds like a negotiating tactic: Beck’s ratings are actually still pretty good, says Glynnis MacNicol at Business Insider. In fact, he beats every other prime time show on cable, “except three other Fox shows.” It’s far more likely that this story has been planted deliberately as an “opening salvo” in Fox’s contract negotiations with Beck. The idea that he’s about to be canned over ratings is “less than believable.”
“Sorry NYT, but this Fox News is trying to get rid of Glenn Beck because of ratings story doesn’t sound entirely believable”

Still, Beck’s appeal is on the wane: Beck’s audience is diminishing because his apocalyptic shtick has become depressing and demonstrably inaccurate…

[continues at The Week]

Streets Lined With Palm Trees In Fox News’ Coverage Of Wisconsin Protests

JacobSloan — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:25:19 +0000

Bill O’Reilly reports that the massive pro-union protests in the Cheese State are largely comprised of “professional left-winger” thugs bussed in to stir up violence. The Fox News camera crews caught footage of the intimation, physical attacks, and ugliness unfolding on the streets of tropical Wisconsin.

Colbert’s Reasoning For The Riots In Egypt

Pelliciari — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 22:28:51 +0000

Comedy Central’s February 14, 2011 broadcast of The Colbert Report, ridicules Glenn Beck’s reasoning behind the riots in Egypt. Instead, Colbert links the uprising to King Tut’s missing penis.

Fox News: Elie Wiesel is ‘Holocaust Winner’

ralph — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 07:20:24 +0000

This is one hell of a typo (it occurs around the 0:50 mark). Jon Bershad writes on Mediaite:

Wow. We all make mistakes and typos. There will probably be at least one in this post alone. However, some typos are worse than others. This is one of those typos. Last week, Fox & Friends had on Elie Wiesel to talk about human rights injustices. However, eagle-eyed viewer Young Manhattanite was rewatching the clip online and noticed that they accidentally combined “Holocaust Survivor” and “Nobel Prize Winner” in the chyron so as to identify Weisel as a “Holocaust Winner.” Again, wow.

Merry Christmas From Fox News… But No Other Holidays

majestic — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:37:24 +0000

Thanks to Tim Molloy at The Wrap for noticing yet another dig at Fox News Channel by the producers of The Simpsons:

Two weeks after “Simpsons” executive producer said the show would lay off Fox News for a while, the Fox News helicopter made another appearance on the show — this time with the words, “Merry Christmas from Fox News… but no other holidays.”

The copter flew over Springfield for the Nov. 21 episode with the slogan, “”Not Racist, But #1 With Racists,” and returned the next week with the slogan changed to “Unsuitable for Viewers Under 75.”

In an interview with TheWrap, Jean said the day after the copter’s second appearance that the show would leave Fox News alone for awhile. His comments came after a Fox News insider laughed off the jokes, saying at least “The Simpsons” was funny…

[continues at The Wrap]

Foxs’ Report On ‘War On Christmas’ Never Actually Happened

Pelliciari — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:00:16 +0000

Via Media Matters:

Fox & Friends reported that a school in central Florida had banned the “traditional Christmas colors” red and green from classrooms. In a statement to Media Matters, the school’s district spokesperson, Regina Klares, has denied this, stating, “There is not a ban on the colors red and green at Heathrow Elementary.”

Simpsons: Fox News ‘Not Racist, But #1 With Racists’

majestic — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:39:29 +0000

The boundary-pushing Simpsons team risk the wrath of Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp minions by bashing Fox News Channel (remember that the Fox network carries The Simpsons). As well as having a dig at FNC, the gang also suggest there’s a mainstream media conspiracy to create one crisis or another to take our minds off what’s “really” happening (as if!, right?). Check it out:

Fox News: Heaven Is For Real

JacobSloan — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 18:43:31 +0000

Fox News (no, not a local affiliate) interviews a four-year-old boy who visited heaven after slipping out of consciousness during an emergency appendectomy. While there he met his dead grandpa and Jesus, among others. Watch journalist Gretchen Carlson have her mind blown by this “amazing story.”

Fox’s Roger Ailes Calls NPR Nazis

majestic — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:16:56 +0000

Roger Ailes giving Congressional testimony

Way to go Roger, the rest of the media is going to love you more than ever. Sample quote from Howard Kurtz’s interview with Ailes for the Daily Beast, where he discusses the executives at NPR:

They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive.”

Elsewhere in the interview Ailes says Obama thinks differently from most Americans; defends Murdoch’s GOP donations; admits Glenn Beck sometimes goes too far; slams Jon Stewart as a conservative-basher; explains why he rode to Juan Williams’ rescue; and sees NPR as taxpayer-funded propaganda. The kind of man you’d like as your neighbor, right?

Part 1 of the interview here. Part 2 here.

Cee-Lo Green Changes ‘F-You’ Lyrics To ‘Fox News’ on “Colbert Report” Performance (Video)

ralph — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 06:51:33 +0000

On air, Cee-Lo Green changed the F-You to Fox News in this song from his third album The Lady Killer so here’s the unchanged version as the artist intended (via Colbert’s website):