Would a real news organization help GOP PACs raise money?
Fox News contributor Dick Morris -- who previously asked Fox News viewers to contribute to an ad campaign by the League of American Voters (LAV), which asserts it is "Leading the Fight to Stop Obama Care" -- stated on Hannity that his website has "raised now $2.5 million" to run the LAV ads against Democratic health care reform proposals. Although Fox News rejects criticism that it is viewed as a political organization, Morris and Fox host Mike Huckabee have previously used Fox News shows to raise money for Republican political action committees, and Fox News' promotion of the Tea Party Express also helped a Republican PAC with fundraising.
Morris brags about raising $2.5 million for LAV ads against health care reform
From the October 19 edition of Fox News' Hannity:
MORRIS: [A]s you know, at DickMorris.com we've raised now $2.5 million to run ads, and we're now going to turn them around and aim them at young people to acquaint them with what this program is going to mean to their budgets.
And we need you to write letters. We need you to talk to young people. I used to urge young people -- old people -- young people talk to old people about their health care. Now let young -- old people talk to young people about their pocketbook.
Morris previously used Fox News to solicit donations for LAV. Morris stated on the September 21 edition of Hannity, "[O]n my website, DickMorris.com, I'll tell you how to contribute to 10-second ads we are now running." His website featured the LAV ad and solicited donations for "[t]he New Ad Against Obamacare." While Morris stated on the September 28 edition of Hannity that he has no "financial stake in these ads," he is LAV's "chief strategist," and according to LAV executive director Bob Adams, Morris "actually crafted our ads and national campaign."
Fox News professes to be news organization
Scott ignores history to claim, "On a typical day, Fox News carries straight news coverage." During the October 17 edition of Fox News Watch, host Jon Scott reacted to White House communications director Anita Dunn's criticism that Fox News is "widely viewed as ... a part of the Republican Party" by claiming, "On a typical day, Fox News carries straight news coverage. In the evening we usually carry a mix of news programs, like Special Report and The Fox Report, bookended by a series of opinion shows." He also read a statement from Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente: "It's astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming." Scott ignored his own history of uncritically advancing Republican talking points on Fox News.
Fox News figures have previously helped Republican PACs raise money
Huckabee sends viewers to his PAC under the guise of signing a petition. On two Fox News shows, Huckabee directed viewers to "go to balancecutsave.com," urging them to sign a petition telling Congress to "balance the budget," "cut their spending," and "save American families." However, balancecutsave.com redirects visitors to a web page soliciting donations for Huckabee's political action committee, which financially supports Republican candidates and also pays Huckabee's daughter's salary.
Morris asked Fox viewers to "give funds to GOPTrust.com" without noting his apparent financial ties to the organization. Between October 27, 2008, and November 17, 2008, Morris mentioned GOPTrust.com during at least 13 Fox News appearances and asked viewers to "give funds to GOPTrust.com," the website of the National Republican Trust PAC, without disclosing that the organization has paid $24,000 to a company apparently connected to Morris. Through publicly available records with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Media Matters for America found that GOPTrust.com paid Triangulation Strategies at least $24,000 from the beginning of October 2008 to November 24, 2008, mostly for "Email Communication." The "Mailing Address" for Triangulation Strategies is listed in one of the National Republican Trust PAC's FEC filings as "dickmorris.com."
Fox News "hops" aboard Tea Party Express to help PAC with fundraising. On August 28, Fox News devoted live coverage and publicity to the kickoff of the Tea Party Express, a bus tour organized by the Republican PAC Our Country Deserves Better (OCDB), whose mission is to oppose President Obama and the Democrats. Fox News' kickoff coverage followed numerous promotions of the tour on Fox News, Fox Business, the Fox Nation, and FoxNews.com. The OCDB PAC used Fox News' coverage of its Tea Party Express to fundraise in a July 29 email.
Indoctrination of the youth anybody? This lack of disclosure and begging for money reminds me of Benny Hinn, encouraging people to press their hands to the television screen with the promise of healing powers... and then comes the donation screen...
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The Midnight Review
Mum Is The Word
It would sure be nice if you could give us a comparable example of MSNBC soliciting for political action committees. Until then, there is no evidence to support your suggestion.
The short answer is through understanding logic and evidence. What is your evidence that the supposedly pro-Presidential stations you named are soliciting for PAC's to help the President or any other Democrat get elected the way Fox has done for PAC's that oppose the President? I am genuinely interested. Please don't disappoint me.
Secondly, the Presidential Administration has not "admitted to controlling these stations". You are apparently just reflexively regurgitating the right-wing spin. The only thing the President's campaign did was to control their own message and they have as much a right to do that as anybody else does.
Just like real news organizations don't fail to vet videotapes before they release them piecemeal to smear a whole organization with thousands of employees as a "remarkable criminal enterprise"* for the minor sins of a couple of those employees.
*direct quote from Karl Rove on a FoxNews show.
The real problem here, IMO, isn't what Fox News is doing, but the following two things:
A. President Obama, the White House, and media organizations such as Media Matters and MSNBC fighting so hard against FoxNews that you are giving THEM credibility that they ought to have to earn themselves. Whether or not they earn that should be up to them... but you're handing it to them.
B. People who are too stupid to understand the difference between editorial pieces and true "news," shouldn't be allowed to comment on news. If you can't read the newspaper and tell the difference between the "letter to the editor," and the headline article on page 1... you should go back to elementary school, and preferably not a public one these days...
I think Beck is over the top... but I also don't think his facts are wrong that often. The big problem is... nobody would be giving him any attention at all if he weren't being so attacked by Anita Dunn, President Obama, and guys like you...
The way to handle him is the way to handle any schoolyard bully... ignore, ignore, ignore.... and if he truly does something that breaks any FCC rules or anything, report him to authorities.
It would appear that you're too biased to understand that.
And thanks, but no thanks. We don't need no stinkin' concern trolls telling MMFA that they're giving FoxNews unnecessary publicity to the detriment of MMFA. That's MMFA's choice, not yours. To paraphrase Mao, you figure out what battles you want to fight and how to fight them, and they'll figure out the wars they want to wage and their battleplan themselves.
Your strawman argument, that we don't know the difference between the opinion parts of FoxNews and the news parts, and the implication that we shouldn't be challenging the opinion parts, is totally bogus and without merit.
Really? Says who?
Should we stop watching MSNBC, or NBC because of Jeffrey Immelt's relationship with the Obama administration? Oh that's right nobody watches them anyway.
I hate to say it but this sounds like a lot of sour grapes on the left side. Do you really need every media outlet in the tank for Obama and the Liberal Democrats?
Media Matters should be called "Only Conservative Media Matters" because apparently as long as you are attacking Conservatives or Republicans you can say or report anything regardless of it's veracity (Olberman, Maddow, Matthews, Schultz). Remember when hatred of a President lead to the fabrication of documents and release of a fictitious story about his National Guard service?
Let the name calling begin!
Technically Campaign Finance law. Unless Fox was reimbursed for the valuable air-time, it is arguably an illegal contribution in kind.
Isn't that an apples and oranges comparison? Is Imelt soliciting for political action committees on the show?
Where do I start? How do you know the reason for the supposed fabrication? Are you a mindreader? Assuming the motive was hatred, can you ever "hate" someone for a good reason? Assuming we set aside whether the document itself was genuine, what makes you say the story was "fictitious"? The secretary at the time who discounts the authenticity of the document, confirmed that the actual content was accurate. Again, apples and oranges.
The White House should not be trading punches with Fox, it is beneath them and the office of the President's dignity is tarnished with this escalating war they have chosen to wage against Fox. They have better things to do and enough to worry about, or at least they should have, than trying to delegitimize some cable news network. It's ridiculous.
And hence why MMFA exists.
A key goal of MMFA is to provide journalists and those who seek facts a quick resource to the locate the facts. To be sure, MMFA also injects their slant, but I can come here and locate the source as the pieces are generally well-footnoted.
That FauxNoise panders and promotes cannot be changed, it's core to their business model. Their founders, owners, investors and sponsors benefit even when their viewers are deceived to vote against their own interests. That other media outlets look to FauxNoise for stories which to follow is something than can be slowed. It's no different than Karl Rove saying, "You don't want to get ahead of the story, do you?" A good journalist should always be skeptical.
A key goal of MMFA is to provide journalists and those who seek facts a quick resource to the locate the facts. To be sure, MMFA also injects their slant, but I can come here and locate the source as the pieces are generally well-footnoted.
That FauxNoise panders and promotes cannot be changed, it's core to their business model. Their founders, owners, investors and sponsors benefit even when their viewers are deceived to vote against their own interests. That other media outlets look to FauxNoise for stories which to follow is something than can be slowed. It's no different than Karl Rove saying, "You don't want to get ahead of the story, do you?" A good journalist should always be skeptical.
Meaning what exactly? For the WH to scold such media outlets and tell them not to? Seems to me the WH should be doing the people's business they were elected to do. If Obama thinks he was elected to play cable news referee, he wasn't. His plate is full without sinking to this nonsense.
And he surely remembers what happened to Kerry.
Hannity can't make up his mind whether he's a journalist or not.
I agree that the more attention you pay to any particular person whether it be Glen Beck or Michael Moore or Al Gore, will only advance their views because people pay attention to them.
I do find it amazing that the main stream media calls Fox biased. In this day and age all media is biased toward one viewpoint or another. It's a fact of life. Don't act so surprised. MediaMatters is just as biased toward the left as Fox is toward the right.
I don't see that. I'll admit that there is no small amount of ad hominem attacks, but it's still in the minority. Take, for example, jmildot's post above. As of right now, I see six responses, four from liberals, and not one of them qualifies as an attack response. There are certainly varying degrees of detail and specificity, but no attacks.
Mostly, the attacks from liberals are reserved for those who make no real argument or point and are simply attack posts in themselves. I really don't think you can support what you state in your first sentence.
MMFA states their bias up front, even as a point of pride. However, they seek to be accurate and reliable in the information that they put out. Faux Snooze makes a pretense of being "fair and balanced." They won't admit to their extreme conservative bias outside of the occasional slip of the tongue. I also have a skeptical attitude toward what Faux presents as fact that has been developed based on past experience with them, especially with regard to their "opinion" shows.
First of all, just because it is impossible to be absent a point of view does not mean you should give up on being fair and objective. That is what Fox has done. Their reporting is blatantly dishonest and designed to blur the line between opinion and hard news.
MMFA does not pretend they do not have a bias. What I like about them is that they provide the remarks they comment on in context and often with transcript and supporting links to where they got their information. That is completely fair. How often have we seen Fox paraphrase some liberal absurdly or misleadingly or refer to patently false or unsourced information? Hundreds of times? A thousand times?
Where I think Fox "News" lost is in the idea that if you are biased (even though they outwardly disingenuously swear they aren't), you don't have to be fair. I'm glad MMFA does not share that attitude.
Since when does "live coverage" of an event - be it Democratic or Republican, constitute "help" with fund-raising? That the PAC cited the publicity is not surprising - political organizations do that sort of thing all the time. It is not Fox News doing it.
The PAC used a promo from Fox Nation, which is opinion, not news.
Chris Wallace said the other day that the White House has not had a guest on their Sunday shows for 32(?) weeks. That's because they can't "control" Fox. And they shouldn't be able to control any news organization. It's just that ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR are all in the tank already. That Obama is trying to 'chill' any news organization is chilling enough. His efforts to silence Rush were worse, but like that try, this attempt against Fox will also fail miserably.
When you do read about reporters or the entire organization at most other venues, they work very hard to address the issues brought forth with a correction or further explanation and sometimes people are fired when they cannot defend their actions or make a correction. We know Fox "News" personalities rarely if ever admit even the most blatant and politically self-serving "mistakes" and I don't remember anybody losing their job for just making things up like Campaign Carl Cameron has been caught doing.
Then, if the rest of the news outlets don't pick it up quickly enough you can continue to push the story by reporting on why the MSM isn't covering the issue.
Eventually, MSM will pick up the story and - in order to be fair - report both the original allegation & the denial in 'he said/she said' form as if both had equal validity.
Once the allegation falls under the weight of truth - move on the a new allegation.
If you want an example look at the life-cycle of the death panels story. According to the original allegation they were going to be MANDATORY advice sessions with a government appointed doctor who would recommend hospice care.
For the last (hopefully) freaking time!
Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.
The Republicans go on the Pro-Obama talk shows and hold there own. It's not hard to know which side I have more respect for.
U.S. to Take Over AIG in $85 Billion Bailout; Central Banks Inject Cash as Credit Dries Up* SEPTEMBER 16, 2008
Really? The decision to bail out AIG was made by Bush Administration officials in September of 2008. Obama did not take office until late January, 2009. Do you believe in the linearity of time?