‘Fox You Ignorant Slut,’ Claims About Objective Reporting Are Laughable
I haven’t laughed this much since the 1979 Saturday Night Live skit when Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin are doing a “Point/Counterpoint” spoof and Aykroyd refers to Curtin as “Jane, you ignorant slut.”
Fast forward to yesterday’s Fox News report, a discussion titled, “Slanted abortion media coverage through the years has sown distrust on the right” led by something called the “Internet Accountability Project” and “NewsBusters.” Fox, you ignorant slut, accusing the so-called “liberal” media of bias is like trump accusing Hillery of violating laws about top secret matters or like Bill claiming “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
When it comes to media bias, Fox is the king of them all. The perversity is that trump almost single-handedly popularized the phrase “fake news” any time a media source reported something he didn’t like. Fox, in turn, most willingly repeated the lies upon lies upon lies. The upshot is that most Republicans believe that Fox is the one network that can be trusted and most continue to trust in trump.
Take some recent examples, sensational and yet typical, of the bias that is Fox.
Days after the FBI seized thousands of documents from trump’s castle Mar-a-Lago, the Fox story began, “Attorney General Merrick Garland behaves like an imperious ruler. How dare Americans question his motives or actions. The little people have no right to ask questions or doubt his orders.”
The “news” story went on, “Garland sees himself perched on an acropolis high above the proletariat. He commands his domain — the Justice Department and the FBI — like a bully dictator who has no time or tolerance for dissent.”
Then there was the Fox non-coverage of the start of the House hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol uprising by trump supporters, a matter that is unmatched in importance to the nation. The major networks covered the hearing in entirety, as millions were mesmerized about how trump acted or didn’t act as the riot unfolded. Fox saw it differently.
Fox News Channel did not air the hearing but rather stuck with its own lineup of commentators. Sean Hannity denounced the “show trial” and aired a soundless snippet of committee members entering the hearing room as part of a lengthy monologue condemning the proceedings.
And a final example, one of many, concerned Fox’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and trump’s failure to act.
Fox was the place to go for anyone who wanted to escape from the grim news as the pandemic gripped the country. On March 12, 2020, Sean Hannity comforted Americans with the advice, “If you are over the mass hysteria, if you’re over politicizing and weaponizing of the coronavirus, you are not alone.”
And of course, there are those maddeningly insipid commercials hyping the conspiracy backing, pillow hawking, Mike Lindell, whose cell phone was seized by authorities as part of the probe into trumpian corruption. Lindell joined a pantheon of Fox favorites whose cell phones also have been taken, including Rudy Giuliani, Victoria Toensing, Michael McDonald, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Boris Epshteyn and Mike Roman.
The website, mediabiasfactcheck.com, rated Fox News as “right biased” based on its editorial positions and “questionable” due to the promotion of propaganda, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, the use of poor sources, and numerous false claims and failed fact checks.
In its review, the website also cited Fox News for publishing stories with “emotionally loaded headlines such as a recent report on Biden’s comments about the leadership of the far right.”
The story incorrectly headline accused Biden of claiming that “MAGA Republicans threaten democracy as he and Dems crank up anti-Trump rhetoric ahead of midterms and White House defends slamming half of America as ‘semi-fascist,’ ‘terrorists’ despite Biden’s unity pledge.”
Mediabiasfactcheck.com went on to note that after the 2020 election, Fox News TV personalities “advanced false and unproven conspiracy theories regarding election fraud, that questions linger over the Left’s plot against Donald Trump.” The website said that numerous audits and studies revealed that election fraud during the 2020 election was average and had no impact on the election’s outcome.
Further, Fox personalities also advanced false claims and conspiracies on issues like: There were no guns at the capitol riot (false), trump authorized the National Guard for the Capitol riot (no evidence), FBI orchestrated insurrection (false), the U.S. funds biolabs in Ukraine (false) and many instances of COVID-19 vaccine disinformation.
“Further, according to Politifact, (Fox News) has also been deemed the least accurate cable news source,” the website said.
Returning to the recent topic of Fox’s story on the alleged bias of the liberal media. The story reports how “Media experts weigh in on liberal networks’ framing of abortion, claim they make pro-lifers look extreme.” The “media experts” cited are the Internet Accountability Project founder and president Mike Davis and NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck.
Davis, showed his bias when he told Fox, “Everyone knows that the so-called mainstream media is dominated by Democrat reporters, so it should come as no surprise that when these Democrat reporters cover controversial issues like abortion, they’re going to frame it in a way that fits their viewpoint.”
Davis is the founder and president of the Internet Accountability Project (IAP), Article III Project (A3P), and the “Unsilenced Majority.”
According to its website, the Internet Accountability Project’s mission is “to lend a conservative voice to the calls for federal and state governments to rein in Big Tech before it’s too late.”
The Article III Project says that it “defends constitutionalist judges, punches back on radical assaults on judicial independence (like court-packing), and opposes judicial and other nominees who are outside of the mainstream.”
A3P publicly supports legislators who vote to confirm and defend constitutionalist judges, and who “push back on judicial and other nominees who are outside of the mainstream.” The group provides surrogates, op-eds, letters to the editor, endorsements, television and other media and also hosts an online video and podcast show that interviews legislators and other prominent figures in the judicial process.
The “Unsilenced Majority” is an organization “dedicated to opposing Cancel Culture and fighting back against the woke mob and their enablers,” according to the website.
“‘Unsilenced Majority’ speaks for an emboldened majority of Americans who recognize the imminent threat that cancel culture poses to our nation,” the website said. “The rising intolerance of cancel culture is breeding fear and paranoia in our politics, across the corporate world, at our children’s schools and even in our neighborhoods. It must be stopped.”
Davis is a conservative whose strong opinions undermine any “objective” comments he may have made in the Fox story on alleged media bias by the liberal media.
For instance, in a column on the “Unsilenced Majority” website, Davis wrote about the controversy around President Biden’s son, Hunter, regarding the his possible financial ties abroad and the discovery of a laptop that allegedly pointed to possible improprieties by Hunter Biden.
“The mainstream media and dominant internet platforms avoided covering the laptop story, citing their hacked-materials policies and unfounded suspicions that the Russians were behind it,” Davis wrote. The opposite is true; the mainstream media has reported numerous times when new revelations arise.
Davis also was critical of major Internet platforms for deplatforming trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, foiled insurrection at the Capitol by trump supporters.
“This decision from a private, unaccountable, globalist board with unapologetically left-leaning political views concluded that a U.S. President had incited violence and therefore should be deplatformed,” Davis wrote. “This whole charade would be laughable if it was not so consequential for the future of free speech and free elections in our country. But it is.”
Davis is wrong. Private companies have the right to set rules and limits on those who post and in trump’s case, he violated the rules by promoting violence at the Capitol.
The senior counsel for the “Unsilenced Majority” is Will Chamberlain, who also is editor-in-chief of the conservative news magazine Human Events.
In 2005, Human Events put on display its bias and its right wing wokeness when it published a list of the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.” They included the “Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler; “Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong” by Mao Zedong; “Kinsey Reports” by Alfred Kinsey; “Democracy and Education” by John Dewey; “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx; “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan; “The Course in Positive Philosophy” by Auguste Comte; :Beyond Good and Evil” by Friedrich Nietzsche; and “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” by John Maynard Keynes. Gaining an “honorable mention” were “The Origin of Species,” Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking thesis on evolution; “Unsafe at Any Speed,” a book in which Ralph Nader exposed the danger of certain vehicles; and “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson, known for having started the environmental movement.
Andy Surabian, senior adviser to “Unsilenced Majority,” is a former special assistant to trump and deputy strategist inside the White House, who also worked on trump’s 2016 campaign. Surabian is the senior adviser to J.D. Vance’s Senate campaign and recently referred to the “new blood” and an “all star team” of candidates, all supported by trump, that include conservatives Vance, Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C., Adam Laxalt, a candidate for Senate in Nevada; Herschel Walker, a candidate for Senate in Georgia; and Blake Masters, a candidate for Senate in Arizona.
“We want to reshape the Republican Party to more accurately reflect the voters in the Republican Party, the voters who elected President Trump and not folks in the Beltway who have been so disconnected for so many years from the actual voters in the party,” Surabian said in an interview with Steve Bannon, who was recently indicted in connection with a fraudulent campaign to raise money to build a wall on the southern border.
NewsBusters.org was formed in 2005 by the Media Research Center (MRC) “to document and counter liberal bias from television network news shows and major print publications.”
NewsBusters publisher Ed Molchany is also the MRC’s Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer.
The MRC, founded in 1987 by L. Brent Bozell III, is a conservative content analysis and media watchdog group based in Reston, Va. The organization is funded by various conservative foundations and rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, and criticizes media coverage that reflects the scientific consensus.
Bozell was an outspoken critic of trump during the 2016 Republican primaries, describing him as “the greatest charlatan of them all”, “a “huckster” and “shameless self-promoter.”
“God help this country if this man were president,” Bozell said.
After Trump won the Republican nomination, Bozell attacked the media for their “hatred” of Trump. On Dec. 22, 2011, Bozell appeared on Fox News and suggested President Barack Obama looks like a “skinny ghetto crackhead.”