Pinkerton falsely claimed CNN showed photo "still" juxtaposing Falwell and Hitler
SUMMARY: On Fox News Watch, Newsday's James Pinkerton asserted that, during its coverage of Rev. Jerry Falwell's death, CNN featured "a picture of Falwell and [Adolf] Hitler together" as "kind of their idea of what he [Falwell] ought to be." In fact, the image appeared in archived footage of a demonstration in which protestors held placards featuring the faces of Falwell, Hitler, and other prominent political figures.
On the May 19 edition of Fox News' Fox News Watch, Newsday columnist James P. Pinkerton asserted that, during its coverage of Rev. Jerry Falwell's May 15 death, CNN featured "a picture of Falwell and [Adolf] Hitler together" as "kind of their idea of what he [Falwell] ought to be." When host Eric Burns asked Pinkerton what CNN "sa[id] when they ran the picture," Pinkerton responded that "[t]hey didn't," adding, "[A] picture is worth a million words." Pinkerton also said, falsely, that the image was a "still" of "Falwell and Hitler together." In fact, the image to which Pinkerton referred appeared in archived footage of a demonstration in which protesters held placards featuring the faces of Falwell, Hitler, and other prominent political figures -- each emblazoned with the word "GUILTY." CNN aired the video as part of a broad segment on Falwell's supporters and opponents. CNN did not, as Pinkerton suggested, air photographs of Falwell alongside those of Hitler, in an attempt to equate Falwell with the former leader of the Third Reich.
In criticizing CNN's treatment of Falwell, Pinkerton credited the conservative Media Research Center (MRC) with having highlighted the image in question. Indeed, on May 16, Tim Graham, the MRC's director of media analysis, wrote on his weblog at NewsBusters -- an MRC Web project -- that CNN "prominently included old protest video that placed a large illustration of Falwell's face next to a large illustration of Hitler's face." The headline to Graham's post falsely accused CNN of "juxtapos[ing]" the images of Falwell and Hitler, when in fact it was the protesters who did so.
During the May 15 edition of CNN Newsroom, CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley reported on Falwell's legacy, describing him as a "visionary to conservatives" and a "Lucifer to liberals." After reporting on Falwell's personal history and airing a video clip of former President George H.W. Bush describing him as a "loyal friend," Crowley went on to discuss Falwell's record of "provocative" statements: "AIDS, he said, was God's punishment to homosexuals. September 11, that was God's punishment, too, unleashed on the America of abortionists, feminists, pagans, and gays. Falwell apologized for that one, blaming a lack of sleep, asking for the lord's forgiveness." This portion of the segment was accompanied by the archived footage of the protest featuring Falwell's image next to Hitler's.
In his May 16 post, Graham wrote, "CNN aired the Falwell-Hitler video ... lovingly for 15 seconds," and he pointed to Crowley's report on Falwell's death as an example of the media "stick[ing] to a script of liberal bias" because, he added, it "emphasize[d]" what the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation described as "Falwell's history of denigrative comments and examine[d] the cultural progress toward inclusion, acceptance and respect that he fought against."
From the May 19 edition of Fox News' Fox News Watch:
ELLIS HENICAN (Newsday columnist): No, and I love all this misty talk, and I think some of it's even true. But, let's remember, there was another side to this guy that wasn't quite as charming as the fellow, Cal [Thomas, syndicated columnist], that you recall from the '80s.
He could say some awful stuff. I mean, he could be mean-spirited and ugly and, frankly, it hasn't surprised me, amid all the hosannas after his death, that there has been some commentary that's been a little harsh about the guy. It's the life that he chose, which was to be a bare-knuckles rhetoritician [sic] out there saying some -- and I think Jane [Hall, American University journalism professor] mentioned a couple of them -- some awful stuff. But when you live that life, you can't be surprised that upon death, there's a little more than tears.
PINKERTON: So, for example, CNN, as the MRC.org noted, they had a picture -- a montage of Falwell, and they had a little picture of Falwell and Hitler together. That was kind of their idea of what he ought to be. But that was relatively rare.
BURNS: Wait a minute, who had a picture?
PINKERTON: CNN.
BURNS: And what did they say when they ran the picture?
PINKERTON: They didn't -- a picture is worth a million words, and it was just -- the photo -- the still was Falwell and Hitler together.
From the May 15 edition of CNN's Newsroom:
CROWLEY: Son of an alcoholic who sold bootleg whiskey during Prohibition, father of a movement to restore America as God's country, a big thinker from small-town Virginia, growing his 35-member Thomas Road Baptist Church into a congregation of thousands, and then millions, as the fundamentalist reverend, raised on radio preachers, pioneered a new evangelism, the TV pulpit, beaming his Old-Time Gospel Hour into American homes, turning living rooms into pews.
Jerry Falwell said he found Jesus in 1952. He found politics in 1979, forming the Moral Majority to lobby against abortion rights, gay rights, pornography, and a host of social issues. He claimed credit for helping elect Ronald Reagan and a string of officials down the government ladder.
FALWELL: We have a goal of 200 of our people running for office this year at different levels across the country.
CROWLEY: A visionary to conservatives.
FALWELL: We admire and respect you -- the president of the United States.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: Jerry, I am glad to have been introduced by a loyal friend.
CROWLEY: A Lucifer to liberals.
PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: In a very Christian way, as far as I'm concerned, he can go to hell.
CROWLEY: Pilloried by a high priest of porn in the pages of Hustler.
FALWELL: I personally was anguished -- am anguished -- am still hurt.
CROWLEY: Always provocative. AIDS, he said, was God's punishment to homosexuals. September 11, that was God's punishment, too, unleashed on the America of abortionists, feminists, pagans, and gays. Falwell apologized for that one, blaming a lack of sleep, asking for the Lord's forgiveness.
Through the decades, his targets ranged from terrorists to Teletubbies: Purse-toting, lovably lavender Tinky Winky was an agent of the homosexual agenda.
Thank goodness Rev. Falwell alerted us to the Tinky Winky scourge.
Amen to that Julia, without the good rev. countless children may have grown up watching the Teletubies and decided to be gay.
I mean, without Tinky Winky we would not have gay people, right? Oh wait, there were gay people before the Telebubies? Must have been those Bugs Bunny cartoons (you do realize Bugs Bunny dressed in drag all the time?)
Rudy Giuliani must have been influenced very heavily by Bugs.
"Beware the purple triangle!"
Was Reverend Falwell's angle
"Tinky Winky is Gay!"
Is what he would say,
Cause Gay baiting is all he could dangle.
Julia, that one was for you! Hope you like...
Snoop, I likey.
Don't be so quick to dismiss Pinkerton's knowledge of Hitler, since he fought him back during his days with Sgt Fury's Howling Commandos.
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/pinkertonpercival.htm
Of course Falwell wouldn't like Pinkerton since Stan Lee has stated that he was their first (closeted) gay character. Which would also mean, in the world according to Falwell, that Pinkerton was partially responsible for 9-11. Sure the above is a bit of a stretch, but little more so than Pinkerton's contortions to show that CNN was conflating Falwell with Hitler.
The really funny thing about this is that they are trying to paint CNN as liberal! LOL.
There is a point where rhetoric ceases to be spin and becomes an outright lie. Pinkerton floundering for something relative to add to a group analysis reached it.
What else do you expect from Faux News? Factual reporting? Ain't gonna happen.....
The Hitler picture was a "JOKE" and the Cons fell for it...A JOKE. You Cons have no sense of humor.(re: Limbaugh)
I see no problem with CNN running this footage. Pinkerton is making a huge leap here as to if some nefarious motive was involved. I seriously doubt that anyone was attempting to link Hitler to Falwell.
Falwell was a controversial figure and in presenting his life all aspects, good & bad should be covered.
Well, some guy at some protest somewhere apparently wanted to make that link...
This appears to be the old-media equivalent of blaming a blogger for some offensive comment left on their site.
(my own comparison, were I to make one, would not be to der Führer -- Hitler comparisons are so overplayed -- but to Mullah Omar)
I was thinking more like Joseph Goebbles, the minister of propaganda.
Hitler has only got one ball,Göring has two but they are very small,Himmler is somewhat sim'lar,But poor old Go-balls has no balls at all.
Well, some guy at some protest somewhere apparently wanted to make that link...
True enough Val, but I was talking about someone at CNN. I should have been more specific. Sorry.
Sorry -- I knew what you meant, I was just kind of using your post as a reference to make my own point.
At least, aside from the protestors holding up the signs ^_^
Oh, I don't know. There are alot of pro alternative lifestyle folks working behind the scenes in the video and tech departments everywhere. It would not surprise me at all that some videographer had a good laugh up their sleeve sneaking that one on air. Falwell certainly had no problem demonizing certain minorities just like Hitler did, creating scapegoats to further accumulation of political power.
How do they sleep at night with their distortions?
Well if you look at Dick Cheney, who distorts all the time, he had multiple heart attacks, and he's still not dead. There's gotta be something they do to sleep at night. Or maybe Cheney doesn't sleep and his heart can't keep up. Interesting question you propose. I guess Falwell distorted WAYY too much. Hey, he goes all the way back to the Reagan era.
Pinkerton - what do you say about a guy who claims that any corruption in Texas politics is largely due to it's close proximity to Mexico?
We should all remember the outrage of the right and see what they say should/when Rev. Sharpton or Rev. Jackson pass on. I am sure that Ms. Coulter and Mr. Limbaugh will be attacking as soon as the doctor declares them dead.(Jokingly of course)
Kinda like the way they did to Paul Wellstone, only worse...
And if they do, none of you on here will be willing to pass it off as a joke, either. Funny how one sided the MMFA sycophants can be.
I find it as disgusting to have Rev. Falwell connected with Hitler as I would if they did the same thing with any other Media-notworthy-clergy- be it Billy Graham, MLK, and yes, even Al Sharpton, as much as I think he's the biggest "pulpit bigot" there can be. Liberals hand out the Hitler card like they were shuffling a deck full of eights and aces...
Unlike Savage, who plays that card like a bi@tch in heat, right?
Hey you know Snoopy, I don't know if you saw this at the last Republican debate. But one Republican, who was asked about why there is so much corruption in his party, gave the excuse of "Children being born out of wedlock." So, to all of those children who were born from single mothers or put in adoption, YOU'RE TO BLAME!
Who was that Republican candidate anyway?
I was responding to your comment about whoever said that corruption in Texas politics has to do with being in proximity to Mexico.
I don't know, but I bet he at least gets a promotion!
Yeah missd you think it reprehensible, thats fine, I am not saying you are wrong. However that doesnt change the FACT that CNN did not put the two together. It was some guy at a protest. Feel free to take him to task. However thats not what you did. You came in and called us sychophants. Is that because you cant help but in some sort of brainwashed compulsion make whatever weak appology you can for EVERY SINGLE rightwing screechmonkey who lies to further a rightwing agenda? Or do you have trouble reading and so miss the FACT that A) Pinkerton LIED and B) CNN is not responsible for what some guy at a protest does to smear Fallwell? I am not so sure WE are the ones with a double standard here. It seem to me that YOU are the hypocrite
How long until Fox picks up on Bert and Ernie's ties to Al Quaeda?
You know, the funny thing is, Falwell wasn't the first one to call Tinky Winky a homosexual. A lot of gays, especially in the UK where Teletubbies originated, used the character as a gay icon before his comments.
I guess the late Reverend was more culturally aware than we give him credit!
Bibberly cheese, can you prove that?
It's true. Tinky Winky was outed long before Falwell brought it up.
http://www.leanleft.com/archives/2007/05/16/6117/
Read the quotes from the Village Voice and Salon.
By the way, if you don't think Tinky Winky was gay, you need your gaydar fixed.
You know LeatherHelmet, this article really doesn't support your argument.
"First, the official Falwell defense is that the Gaytubby Crisis story actually appeared in one of his newsletters, not from Falwell himself, and he had nothing to do with it. Goldberg helpfully steps up and hangs the adorable, tiny purple albatross right back around his neck. But worse than this, Goldberg can’t seem to keep a single thought in his head for two successive paragraphs. He confuses “is liked by gays” with “is gay” immediately after citing the definitive counterexample.
The wingnut knock on Tinky Winky is that the non-existent, sexless, fictional cartoon character was, in fact, gay. (Goldberg, ironically, even gets the pop-cult phrase right: a “friend of Dorothy” is a homosexual. He must have found it in the Washington Post.) It’s obvious: Tinky Winky is purple and has a stalk with a three-sided loop on his head as an antenna. Because pink triangles were used by Nazis to demarcate gays in death camps (the symbol has been reclaimed by the modern gay-rights movement), and Tinky Winky is purple, er, has a linearish triangular, well, holds a bag that’s like a purse carried by women but is gender-inappropriate for Tinky Winky who has no visible gender . . . well, that thing is just gay, or would be if it existed which it doesn’t and had sex which it can’t or expressed a sexual preference which it didn’t, OK? But even in his attempt to defend this incomprehensible nonsense, Goldberg can’t keep his story . . . um, straight (sorry). His “evidence” is not that gays recognize Tinky Winky as gay, but that Tinky Winky was an “icon” in gay nightclubs.
By direct inspection, saying something is an “icon” for gays isn’t the same as saying that thing is itself gay. Leaving aside the basic-English-skills thing, though, even Jonah Goldberg should be able to puzzle this out because he had explicitly cited the quintessential non-gay gay icon just three sentences previously. “Friend of Dorothy” is a reference to Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, played to a Fal-thee-well by Judy Garland. Garland was a goddess to generations of gay men and still is, but was not herself gay (just ask her five husbands). Similar such icons include Liza Minelli (for obvious reasons), Edith Piaf, Maria Callas, Steve Reeves (for the Rocky Horror crowd) . . . oh, hell, here’s a list of them (some gay, some not)."
There you go. More proof that Falwell hated homosexuals and homosexuality. He hated it so much, anything LIKED by gays was evil.
Very good refutation Tman. Top notch
Lol. You know? Hardly any of that refutation were my words. All I did was read the article and used the words against them. It's the liberals' greatest, and most abundant weapon. They cited an article saying it was in support of their view, but if you read it, it actually wasn't.
http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2007/cyb20070516.asp#1
Yes, it's from that "other" media watch site. Deal.
What's your point with this link? Are you just trying to get people to go to that site? I read the whole article and it doesn't dispute anything that's been said here.
Tinky's purse was really pretty. I always assumed she was a female. Maybe the wingnuts didn't like it that a girl was bigger than everyone else. ;-)
Like I always say, the definition of a feminazi is "anyone who can kick a wingnut's a**."
By the way if you think fictional childrens program characters are gay you need to increase your medication.
This is a prime example of FAUX trying to make Falwell into some sort of hero. This was not a good man. I do not like saying bad things about the dead but lets be honest.
The comments are concerning what he did with the years on earth that God gave him. He said some horrible things that affected many lives and should be remembered for those as well as the good things he did.
Not to accuse the Rev. of the same type things, but serial killers are only remembered for the bad things they did.
Prince, your post reminds me of a couple of quotes:
"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do"
Anne Lamott - author
And:
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always conincides with their own desires".
Susan B. Anthony
I heard Hannity on the radio this morning, outraged and asking a guest " Who else could die and have these sort of mean things said about them without being condemned?"
Good point,not many public figures deserve the sort of comments Falwell has gotten, and the guest couldn't come up with an answer.
The first person I thought of (again, not to compare what they did) was Saddam Hussein, whose execution had Hannity in tears of joy.I believe he was even a little angry at those media outlets who didn't want to show the video.
Paul Wellstone, though not personally savaged, had his eulogy thoroughly trashed by the right as well as by Jesse Ventura who all made outrageous claims about the left politicizing the event (even though Wellstone's family requested said eulogy!). they weren't too worried about what the surviving family members felt then.
It was on television and it was a political event, not a eulogy.
Whether or not Wellstone's family requested a political event, I don't know, but that is what it was.
Please, leather, read the facts. That is what the family wanted. Period. They didn't want the likes of Cheney there. Period. What you promote is like trying to hold a funeral for your fallen son while a group of right wing religious whackjobs stands across the street shouting obscenities.
His ideologies were obscene in my opinion DORIS. But, let's be really honest here, I assume that you never met the man. You didn't know his family, children, wife, friends, etc. Certaintly they would disagree with your assertion that he was not a good man. Shouldn't we Attack the message, not the messenger, right? Isn't that why we show such disdain for Rush, Savage and others?
Why do conservatives lie so much?...
Being a dirty, filthy, scumbag is no way to go through life.
Being a contortionist is "hard work".
How do they get their head up there? Inquiring minds want to know!
It's done by being "flexible" with the facts.
juliajayne, Holy fecking crap! That was one of the most wittiest things I've ever heard. How do you do it?
And if CNN showed pictures comparing Fallswell and Hitler together, the problems would be...?
Falwell never had a successful campaign.
Let's see. CNN editors out of the millions of pics of Falwell pick a photo of Falwell and Hitler together. Yet MMFA claims they can read CNN's editors' minds on what they were thinking when they picked out a one in a zillion photo of Falwell/Hitler.
Wow, MMFA, nice ESP. Pretty amazing.
Leather, there were just so many to choose from is all. Falwell had a 99% nazi approval rating...
LeatherHelmet, it was obviously from a protest. They showed glorifying footage of Falwell with his church and campaigns for presidents, and they showed angry reactions from those who hated him. CNN did not put the picture of Falwell and Hitler together. It was stock footage from a protest. And this Fox hack claimed that CNN "put," implying that CNN intetionally put these pictures side by side on their own in an attempt to compare Falwell to Hitler. Those who would watch Fox News and not see the CNN footage would have assumed just that. CNN did nothing with those photos.
FALWELL WAS A LIGHTENING ROD AS SHARPTON AND JACKSON BUT COMPARING THEM OR SHOWING A PICTURE OF HITLER TO DESCRIBE OR REFERANCE THEM IS A LITTLE MUCH AS WE HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE STROKING FIRES RIGHT NOW .THE LEFT AND RIGHT IS GETTING OUT OF CONTROL AND MEDIA IS WORRYING MORE ABOUT RATINGS AND OUTDOING ONE ANOTHER IS HELPING NO ONE ,REPORT THE NEWS STOP MAKING IT.
citylife9, you might consider a caffeine-free beverage.
I was thinking thorazine
And its funny, as a well read gay man, I didn't hear anything about Tinky Winky being gay until Falls(into sin)well mentioned it. Not even in England.
A handful of gay men may have made the joke regarding Tinky Winky, but that is far from being "seen as a gay icon."
As for "friend of Dorthy" that was less about icon status, as it was code/imagery. i.e Dorthy goes from black and white Kansas to the colorful and magical world of Oz......etc. Although some gay men did raise Judy to icon status, that was not 100% across the community (maybe less than 50%).
(BTW, I'm a Jewish gay male, and I don't like Streisand. What does that say about me?)
And an interesting side note: Did you know that in the early 1900's wearing a red neck tie was a secret symbol that you were gay. Now watch republicans......especially in the last 2-3 years, red ties everywhere! Just an interesting observation.
I can believe that Jerry and Aldolf could be caught t ogether in a photo. After all they very simular beliefs; they both hated the Jews; blacks; Hispanics; and most other ethnic groups. They also hated homesexuals; which for some reason always makes me think there is a hidden secret somewhere in their lives regarding their own homosexuality. Yes indeed, given a choice Jerry Fatwell would have definitely joined the Nazi Party. Jerry had a lot of the qualities the Nazi would have been looking for in a friend and follower. Jerry the Nazi Queen! I think it speaks of truth. Oh well I hope this help.
Tommy