Fox Criticizes Networks For Not Jumping On Its Manufactured Obama Controversy

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published

Fox News host Neil Cavuto and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell castigated the mainstream news networks Thursday for not covering President Obama's speech last week, claiming “it took the networks four days” to “even mention” Obama's “controversial comment.” During that speech, Obama made the unremarkable observation that business owners do not achieve success in a vacuum, but that public infrastructure -- such as roads, schools, and fire departments -- create a community that supports businesses.

There was nothing “controversial” about those comments until Fox News grossly ripped one sentence of the speech out of context then devoted hours of airtime to promoting the distortion.

In the days following Obama's remarks, Fox & Friends aired a deceptively edited version of the president's remarks to give the appearance that Obama had told business owners they didn't build their own business. The network eventually dedicated a total of more than two hours of airtime pushing its deceptively edited version of Obama's comments over 42 segments in just two days this week.

Cavuto and Bozell blasted mainstream media outlets for not covering the president's remarks for four days, ignoring the fact that Obama's comments were ripped out of their proper context.

But as Dave Weigel noted today, even the Romney campaign didn't pick up on the supposed controversy until after Fox News started pushing the distorted remarks on Monday. As has been noted before, this is part of the Fox Cycle: Fox News airs a distorted story, then soon begins criticizing other media outlets for ignoring the distorted story.

Cavuto also played a short clip of a CBS Evening News broadcast that he complained didn't include the proper context of Mitt Romney's “I like being able to fire people” comment. But Cavuto deceptively cropped that CBS report to leave out the reporter's follow-up, which noted that Romney “was talking about insurance companies.” Watch:

This isn't the first time Fox has resorted to such deceptive practices to demonstrate liberal media bias.