Why don't conservatives fact check MSNBC?
July 08, 2010 9:36 am ET by Eric Boehlert
Last night, Bill O'Reilly claimed that "people lie on MSNBC every day." O'Reilly made the claim as a fact and wondered why anyone would believe what they see and hear on the oh-so-liberal MSNBC. (Not to mention what they read at Media Matters.)
O'Reilly's comment raises a point that has been puzzling me for years, as far-right media critics set their sights on MSNBC for being an alleged liberal bastion of misinformation. (Y'know, that liberal bastion that just banned Markos for making Joe Scarborough upset.)
Here's the riddle: Why don't conservative fact check MSNBC every day and catalog all the supposed lies that the news channel peddles? Listening to partisans such as O'Reilly, the liberal misinformation is practically jumping off the screen at MSNBC, and especially during primetime when the news channels hosts left-leaning anchors. So why don't conservatives detail all the lies and regularly post their findings online?
I mean, that's what we do at Media Matters all day long in terms of the Fox News misinformation. We routinely publish at least a dozen items a day, sometimes twice that, plainly detailing how the right-wing channel distorts the news and spreads propaganda. So why doesn't O'Reilly fact check Rachel Maddow's show every night and detail the lies she tells? Or why doesn't the Weekly Standard, for instance, pitch in and fact check Countdown and call out all the falsehoods host Keith Olbermann and his guests concoct at 8 p.m.?
Why doesn't the right-wing fact check MSNBC? Not just whine about MSNBC, but show conclusively how the cable channel makes up liberal lies.
I'm pretty sure the answer is that nobody on the far-right fact checks the liberal "lies" at MSNBC, and especially during primetime, because MSNBC doesn't routinely broadcast them. Unlike Fox News, MSNBC's programming is not built around fitting as much provably inaccurate information into hour-long broadcasts as is humanly possible. In others words, MSNBC is not in the propaganda business the way Fox News is.
But if O'Reilly thinks I'm wrong, than he ought to fact check MSNBC, starting tonight.
That's why I routinely mock people who make allegations but don't provide any documentation to back themselves up by saying "thanks for providing evidence - oops, that's right, you didn't provide a single example to back up what you're saying."
I guess their favorite concrete example is Dan Rather, though his story was factually accurate; he just got suckered into using allegedly fake documents.
True, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are noticeably liberal, but they seem to be on the right side of reality most of the time. I'm not aware of any blatant falsehoods coming out of MSNBC.
1. Dan Rather's story was NOT factually accurate
2. Rather was not suckered. He was out to prove a version or what he thought was reality, not to report a story and see where it leads.
3. The documents were not Allegedly fake...They were fake....its thats simple.
Yet the liberal media and their kool aid drinkers like nerzog have a problem. What really happened does not fit the liberal cover story. So no the documents are referred to as allegedly fake......the story was basically accurate. NO. There was a time when the Media did not run with a half truth. When the Liberal Media was born, the crap that passed as the Rather story became the norm. The liberal norm. It was ok to attack the President based on a half truth, and a documents that look kinda real. How sad.
Rather, most likely, WAS suckered. The fact that the DOD documents were released literally within days of the Rather story does smack of Rove involvement. He pulled similar stunts in Texas before anyone on the national scene had ever heard of him. Do I know that Rove set this up? No, but I do know that he had done similar things in the past.
This has nothing to do with liberalism or conservatism, it has to do with dirty politics.
Like "Death Panels" or "Obama Refuses International Aid", or "Kagan Barred Military Recruiters" or "DOJ Has Not Explained New Black Panthers Decision".
That's just a random sampling from only the past couple of days. And before you claim it's a result of the Rather story: those half-truths and lies started from the far-right Fox fans and dittoheads a long, long time ago.
But then he WAS fired, Rather was swiftly and unceremoniously dropped by the network. What more could be done? One error like this and his decades long career was promptly ended. Whether or not you feel this was appropriate or not, strong punitive action was taken against the offender.
Meanwhile, right wing media tell lies and distortions and create fake and misleading stories every single day. No one gets fired, except maybe a junior news producer getting caught literally warming up the crowd at a political rally.
Vicious attacks against children and family members of political figures they dislike are dished out. Laws, votes, and records are distorted and conflated daily. Calls for revolution and overthrow of the government are served up along with unsubstantiated accusations of nefarious plots with no concrete evidence daily. Misleading polls are proudly displayed. Blatant political attacks are "cleverly" headlined in the form of a question. Wild rumors started by their own media allies are given credence as fact.
All of these ethical lapses and abuses of the public trust are documented daily, and nothing is done about them. Spare us the outrage over Dan Rather's forged documents. He was swiftly fired and the fallout from that incident became a positive for the Bush campaign as it was then ignored that the contentions of that story were most likely true. At the very least, that narrative became accepted in the mainstream media.
Show us these examples of liberal media lies and distortions please. More importantly, show us an example where the distinguished career of a journalist wasn't terminated because of it.
I always found it interesting that, within an hour of the Sixty Minutes story, Troglodyte bloggers were denouncing the documents as forgeries based on the f***ing font used. As if these guys saw the documents on television and simultaneously cried "That font wasn't available on typewriters in 1973!" GMAFB. It was obviously a setup.
The only thing we don't know is who orchestrated it, though we have some pretty good suspicions.
Never mind that the term was wrong, but his facts were right. I ran across an almost countless number of posts from those so eager to celebrate this suggesting that it "proved" a pattern of slander against the right wing--without, of course, providing any other examples of such slander.
A note to those loyal, NeoCon marionettes who grace us with their views. Claims of death panels, FEMA camps, the discovery of WMD, and any and all things concerning a mythical "Crime Inc." conspiracy--those are intentional lies and deliberate distortions. A guy tripping over his own tongue--not so much.
Note to Fox; Tina Fey using Sarah Palin's actual words--funny.
Anything that brings a chuckle to your key demographic target, namely the prized over 50, conservative windbag, admitted prescription drug abuser, radio hate show host who recently picked up another trophy wife category--most likely not funny.
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IMHO
It makes no sense at all, I realize that. Here's something that might help.
It's the trap that awaits all who think that ANY ideology is inherently good. Some are better than others, but no one should let any ideology do their thinking for them. And the only thing that really makes liberalism "better" is that it doesn't really have any sacred dogmatic assumtpions that MUST be accepted and CAN'T be questioned. It is not simply the automatic opposite position of conservaticve one. It's a completely different METHOD of thinking. Conservtaives assumes a point and then evaluate evidence, Liberals evaluate evidence THEN make their point.
And with liberals ANYTHING is fair game. Conservtaives cannot say the same.
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IMHO
Liberals have nooooooo sacred dogmatic assumptions......unless you are Bob Casey and dont toe the party line on abortion. In that case you dont get to use the mike.
Liberals support all views........unless its on the radio. Then they tag it "hate radio" and try to get the feds to implement the "fairness doctrine" to shut it down.
Face the facts eddie. The differences between the parties are fewer than ya think. while your ideology may be so far left it is almost right, your elected leaders want the same thing as the right wing wants. Re-election.
Rush, Hannity, Beck, Quinn . . . nothing conservative in their comments, just hate. They lie, they know they are lying and they don't care. As long as they can convince a significant number of people that they are speaking TRUE "conservative" thought, they make money. That's all the care about.
Hate sells . . . reasoned discourse does not. It's not volatile enough.
Untrue. Liberals support the right of all people to develope their own view, provided it's based on facts and logic. Liberals do not support views based on bias, prejudice, and personal interest.
Untrue. Liberals appreciate ALL communications methods, but oppose when they're being used to dupe the public.
Untrue. Liberals only tag radio programs that consistently compartmentalize segments of society to promote division and adversarial environments as hate radio. Limpaugh ("liberals"), O'Reilly ("far left"), Hannity ("unrepentant terrorist"), Beck ("Marxists", "Communists", "Nazis") have made fortunes creating an adversarial environment.
Untrue. There has been no general movement by liberals to re-implement the fairness doctrine.
Untrue. The fairness doctrine shuts nothing down, it merely guarantees the opportunity for an opposing view during opinion broadcasts.
5 lies in 2 sentences. Don't you people have any self-respect? Regardless, how is anyone expected to debate issues when it would take so long just to iron out basic facts?
They are completely absurd. They think they're so right, and yet they can't even grasp the very concepts they're debating. At that point, you're WRONG no matter WHAT your position is! Because you're not even living in reality!
If you can't make your case without spouting SELF-EVIDENT nonsense, YOU DON'T HAVE A CASE!
(But hey: Why let FACTS get in the way of SACRED, DOGMATIC ASSUMPTIONS?!)
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WHAT these people think is not nearly as intellectually offensive as HOW they think!
Fairness doctrine: A few noted liberals have mentioned this in casual passing over the last few decades, and so therefore to the right winger this constitutes a massive authoritarian conspiracy to "shut down" conservative talk radio.
Socialized medicine: Even before it was whittled down into the package of republican compromises, no one was ever talking about socialized medicine. Reforming the way health care COVERAGE was dealt with in order to stop runaway predatory practices yes...socialized medicine, nope.
Taking away your guns: There is not now, nor has there ever been an effort by "liberals" to take away the right to own firearms. These types of laws are still wisely left to the states and municipalities and generally reflect the needs of community safety versus respect for the rights of hunters and responsible citizens.
Yet conservatives around the nation believe that there is a plan in the works to shut down conservative talk, socialize the medical profession and take away your guns...how has this come to pass?
Because the simple meme is what sways Fox Republican Army voters. These are the same folks you all know who are too (lazy, stupid, uneducated, religious, dogmatic, afraid, INSERT FAVORITE ADJECTIVE) to even try to be an informed voter. I have family members and friends who sometimes send me right-wing email screeds that are easily debunked but to whom I rarely respond (unless particularly egregious), and contrary to their need to bombard me with their worldview, whom I don't feel any need to "challenge" regularly.
Lest we get too "elite", there are similar folks on the left, there are just fewer of them and they don't have a mainstream TV and Radio propaganda networks. And as noted here, when comparing MSNBC to Faux, the "liberal" arguments are generally more grounded in fact.
Now that is great for a good morning laugh. See if I say the Reagan was a crummy president, that is an opinion. If I say he was the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, that is a lie. Sort of like saying that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim or Clinton is a rapist. You guys have gone far beyond sacred dogmatic assumptions to just pulling stuff out of you a$$ to win.
Dude - nobody cares what YOU said. (Or didn't say.) You're an insignificant faceless blogger at best (like me) or an anonymous poster at the most realistsic. (And a troll at worst, although I certainly don't think that.)
The problem is that, while "most" of the right wing didn't say these things, MANY PROMINENT RIGHT WINGERS HAVE: Ann Coulter, Mike Savage, Glen Beck, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limabugh, Mstt Drudge, Sean Hannity, Michelle Bachman, and many others... Have either given voice to these things themselves, or given a legitimate platform for someone else to voice these baseless accusations from, unchalleneged.
It's absurd for you to call (essentially) "RW'e lie a lot" a "strawman." There's this website that you should check out that does a pretty good job documenting these very things.
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Nice try - but all those strawmen you see? You're looking at their BACKS. That's YOUR ARMY!
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Debbie Schlussel: Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always A Muslim
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Seattle PI: Majority of Republicans: Obama is a Muslim
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[Gurley] What should we remember about Bill Clinton?
[Coulter] "Well, he was a very good rapist. I think that should not be forgotten."
He'd probably have had the gall to ask me for some, and I REALLY didn't feel like doing the legwork this morning. (Just got back from vacation, and I'm exhausted from it! LOL)
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So, THANK YOU for having my back!
2) I never said they "support all views." You're distorting my words.
3) Your comments RE talk radio all COME FROM talk radio. A this point it's barely worth even TYPING that there is no serious push to reinstate the farness doctrine. BUT - your admission that it would "shut down" talk radio is rather telling... One's argment can't be all that strong if the slightest bit of scruntiny or merely STATING the opposing school of thought on the matter "shuts you down." Just sayin'. (I appreciate the unintentional honesty though!)
4) Last time I checked there was no "Liberal" party. I made no statements in my post - AT ALL - about the Democrats. (Or the Republicans, for that matter.) I am a political independant. I lean liberal (heavily) and TEND to vote Democratic (these days, though I haven't always), but: I am NOT a Democrat, because - as you said: The differences between the parties are few.
And I'm cutting your statement short there, because that's the only part you really got right. From your response, there's scant evidence that you even READ my post, let alone UNDERSTOOD it, and you not only have shown little to no knowledge about what I think, you show very little interest in actually trying to know or understand what I think, and even less in changing how YOU DO.
Typical conservtaive, but thank you for propving my point. If you'd like to try and explain what assumptions liberals hold to be "sacred" and "unquestionale" the way conservtaives do - reagarding religion, taxes, defense, terrorism, America's inherent goodness, etc, for example... I'd love to see you try. But the fact is that none of our positions come from orthodoxy. (And pretty much ALL of yours do.) If you think you have one, I'd love to see it, but you'll have to do a LOT better than "Bob Casey," especially HERE, on the very site that in the business of debiunking RW talking points like that one.
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But again, thank you for proving my point.
That was 2008. So now it's 18 years.
UNION-TRIBUNE: [Pete] Wilson was not invited to speak at the convention in retaliation for his support for abortion rights, and then-Massachusetts Gov. William Weld withdrew from a prime-time speaking slot, claiming the Dole campaign sought to censor his abortion-rights views.
And the burden of proof is not on ME to prove that he wasn't. It's up to HIM (or you, or anyone making this point) to prove that he WAS.
Here's your evidence:
1) He's anti-abortion.
2) He didn't speak.
3) He says (2) was because of (1).
That's a nice theory, and it happenes to fit the few facts he's presetned, but neither you nor he are consdieraing any alternative explanations. Nor does y'all deal with the fact that OTHER anti-abortion Democrats DID speak at that convention. (Which is evidence against his allegation.)
I'm not taking his word/judgement, yours or MMFA's. I'm merely evaluating the evidence I have available to me and reaching my own conclusion on the matter. You might want to try that yourself sometime. (Even if it IS a liberal thing to do.)
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Thinking for youself is FUN! And I'd rather be RIGHT that be conservative or liberal ANY DAY.
1) You're ignoring that fact that OTHER pro-life democrats spoke.
2) How many pro-gay rights, or pro-choice, or socially liberal (libertarian) Republicans ever get to speak at their conventions?
3) This entire line of reasoning is comepletly irrelevant because YOU are talking abot the DEMOCRATS while my original post was about LIBERAL THINKING AND PHILOSPHY. The two are not the same.
That a political party did not want to cause party division at their convention is an apt criticism of our overall political process. It says nothing at all about liberalism or conservatism. It says nothing about ANY political IDEOLOGY. All it says ANYTHING about is the PROCESS. And both PARTIES are "guilty" of it. (Of being politically pragmatic anyway.) But it has nothing to do with liberalisam or conservatism.
And you lot do this ALL THE TIME. You can't effectively assail a liberal's position, so instead you assail the Democrats. And in doing so you fail to realize that you demonstrate that Democrats are at their WORST the more they're ACTING LIKE REPUBLICANS. And guess what? WE HATE IT WHEN THEY DO THAT TOO!
But "democrats" and "liberals" are NOT the same thing, despite what your sacred, dogmatic assumptions tell you.
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IMHO
Ultimately, political parties are allowed to choose who gets to speak at their conventions. Political parties are not beholden to any sort of law that requires person X gets to speak at event Y, or anything of the sort.
There seems to be strong evidence that Casey was was not allowed to speak for a number of reasons, and it was decided by party leaders that they didn't want him to speak. There also seems to be strong evidence that the republican party has done similar things with their conventions when it comes to pro-choice speakers. This decision is left up to the political party and there is no mandate that says they have to let anyone speak if they don't wish them to.
Now, we can dwell on whether or not you think it was politically motivated or not (shocking to think a choice of speaker at a political party rally would be politically motivated...I know!), but that doesn't mean anything. Just as you and I don't have a "right" to a three hour a day talk show on the public airwaves to disseminate our ideology, you and I don't have the "right" to a prime time speaking slot at any political party convention.
He refused to support the party's ticket. No one was going to speak at the convention who wasn't going to support the ticket. That's just common sense and I can't imagine any party having speakers at their convention that wouldn't support the ticket. Nothing else matters beyond that. You don't support the ticket, you're not going to speak. Period. End of discussion.
Casey claimed that abortion was the reason and might even have believed it. However, his claim would have carried more weight if there wasn't that one huge, glaring, completely valid reason to exclude him staring us all right in the face.
Gee, it's just so-o-o-o hard to figure out who might be right!
Beck: Obama "has aligned himself" with "every enemy of our country," "our Constitution" and "freedom as we know it"
How would you tag those?
I sometimes wonder if they actully READ THE ARTICLES, or if they're just here to look at the pictures of naked women.
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LOL
It's funny, you've been defending the hate talkers on this thread. Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity . . . they all claim to know everything about every single topic. None of them have more than a high school education. Oh, Hannity completed a few college classes, but was apparently a lackluster student as were Beck and Limbaugh. They hold themselves out to be experts and scholars. They are not. How do you explain that away?
I mean... Why on earth should you link to the original source material to show that someone has been misquoted, or taken out of context, or that video has been deceptively edited.
And how can you say we "IGNORE anything that does not agree with [us]"? That's absurd to post here - on a website dedicated to DEBUNKING and DEALING WITH all that stuff that "disagrees with us." But to a point, you're right: Once it's been proven false, we do tend to ignore.
Now... You MIGHT have a point with some articles here, (there's definitely been things that have left me scratching, or shaking, my head) but I've never seen any evidence of it [from you.] If you teach half as badly as you debate here, either public education actually is as bad as [you lot] claim it to be, or your students should be asking for their tuition money back.
I sincerely hope that you were using the word "students" symbolically, or else I fear for the state of education in this country.
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OTOH, if you really ARE a teacher, read my last blog post (What's really wrong with this country.) You might find that you agree with it whole-heartedly.
More straw to sweep up. Not all the liberals here claim to be scholars.
Yet they seem able to ignore anything that does not agree with them,
Standard projection, as proved elsewhere.
used fixed polls like Kos did,
This has already be shot to pieces above. By the way, if you want to discuss fixed polls, you need to take Fox to task for the ones that add up to 120%, or practically the entire blogging career of Andrew Malcolm.
and somehow its [sic] all good.
Goodness, even more straw. Name one person here who claimed what happened to Kos was "all good." I won't wait for an answer, because, as usual, you will undoubtedly chicken out and ignore the question.
I use articles here all the time to demonstrate to my students the wrong way to conduct research and build arguments.
A functional illiterate without the simplest grasp of history or logic has... students?! Now I really fear for the next generation!
We have the nakeds here? I really need to upgrade my computer.
See that Search window up there, pov? Type in "Obama". There's enough examples of right-wing talk radio hate there for a week's reading.
Btw, look up the definition of "staw (sic) man" while you're at it.
How about you stop bringing up the one or two examples from the past that may or may not prove some measure of liberal bias or misinformation going unchallenged in the media, (though let's face it, those examples you bring up have generally been given thorough airtime and coverage, generally negative I might add)and start talking about the hundreds and hundreds of documented and demonstrably proven cases of conservative bias and misinformation that go unchallenged.
Yeah, just "2."
The two LOUDEST, MOST PROMINENT, MOST INFLUENTIAL VOICES IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT!
Just "2."
And are you seriously suggesting it was JUST THEM?!
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Are you derranged?!
I don't support the fairness doctrine, but I do support much stronger radio ownership restrictions. Even since radio ownership regulations were relaxed in 1996, Clear Channel, which is behind most of your beloved syndicated talk shows, has been monopolizing the market while driving out diverse local opinion shows in favor of it's stale, mass-produced right wing product. To have one corporation own so much of radio is an affront to democratic society.
p.s. I see you've whined about "straw men" elsewhere in the thread, here's a perfect example of a real straw man.
Bob Casey was denied the mike in 1992 because he refused to endorse the Democratic ticket. It had nothing whatsoever to do with abortion; 8 different anti-abortion pols did speak at that same convention.
Liberals support all views........unless its on the radio. Then they tag it "hate radio" and try to get the feds to implement the "fairness doctrine" to shut it down.
The fairness doctrine was an effort to expand the range of voices heard over the public airwaves, not contract them, and, in spite of a lot of right-wing mythology over the years, it has had no serious advocacy from anyone for decades, and hasn't been the subject of a single real legislative effort in that same time.
Face the facts eddie.
Perhaps you should take your own advice before embarrassing yourself further.
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Left Hook! The Blog
http://lefthooktheblog.blogspot.com/
You've hit the nail on the head Eddie. Liberal media bias to a conservative means not presenting the "conservative" platform or politician in a positive light, and/or not presenting the "liberal" side as wrong and outrageous.
A great example was during the inauguration of President Obama. Every president gets a big sappy love-fest as they are sworn in to the oval office for the first time. It's been like this since television coverage of these events became a part of the American tradition. However, since the media weren't using this as a platform to denigrate Obama, many conservatives conflated the coverage as proof that the mainstream media were "in the tank" for Obama.
Since their dogmatic thinking is based on the premise of blind allegiance to a battle of absolute good VS evil...it's difficult to even have reasonable debates with them.
Here's something you might really like. I'm pretty proud of that one.
Here's a more stodgy version, dealing with the idea of sacred, dogmatic assumptions.
I'd love to hear your (or POV's) opinion about either of those.
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IMHO
Eddie, you are right on
That guy's an idiot. ;)
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LOL
When I listen to Rush, I can almost hear the polar opposite of what he'd be saying if 1) it was Bush or 2) obama did what rush wanted ..
Always trying to take away freedoms, them libs are.
The question isn't why O'Reilly doesn't fact check anyone. The question is: Why does O'Reilly's cult following need for him to lie like that?
The answer:
1) Ratings
2) A lot of people are sadly afflicted with a need to feel they bear no responsibility towards the world in which they live in. Conservative talk and news presents a worldview to them where they are all victims who have no reason to examine themselves or take any responsibility for the world they live in. All the problems in the world are created by "others" who want to destory your way of life through nefarious and evil intentions. A false dichotomy is presented to the viewer where there is "YOU" and the "OTHERS", and the "OTHERS" aren't entitled to the same security, platform and rights you are because they are "different" from "YOU". The solution to this problem, is of course to support the people who stand for "YOU" against the diametrically opposed "OTHERS" who seek to continue to cause all the worlds problems by virtue of being different from "YOU".
One only needs to look at the Irag war as proof. Bush & Co had a preconceived notion, then they conveniently found a way to make the facts fit.
I have no issue with people who espouse a conservative ideal - I may fundamentally disagree with it, but we're all entitled to our own opinions. What I despise is that we have Fox, Beck, Limbaugh, et. al. who deliberately use their opinions as fact, intellectual dishonesty, and lies to "prove" their beliefs are 100% correct because reality won't support it. Congitive dissonance anyone?
Those who watch this have their misconstrued beliefs reinforced - which in turn hurts this country because you can't have a civil discussion when one party refuses to acknowledge facts that contradict their own personal belief.
But you forgot to include tax cuts as the magical elixir that fixes anything - deficits, unemployment, homosexuality, wars, etc.
I'm reading "The Elminationists". (David Neiwert) Its quite chilling. Recommend to anyone who thinks we can 'all just get along". They (the right) doesn't want to coexist. They want us GONE.