Basest Form of "Journalism" This Year?

You tell me.

And Yankee fans and Fox partisans wonder why decent people hate both.

The Day Parody Died

If you were ever skeptical that Fox "News" misrepresents little details like "facts" and "information," your skepticism just suffered a major blow:

On August 18, 2000, journalist Jane Akre won $425,000 in a court ruling where she charged she was pressured by Fox News management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information.

The real information: she found out cows in Florida were being injected with RBGH, a drug designed to make cows produce milk – and, according to FDA-redacted studies, unintentionally designed to make human beings produce cancer.

Fox lawyers, under pressure by the Monsanto Corporation (who produced RBGH), rewrote her report over 80 times to make it compatible with the company’s requests. She and her husband, journalist Steve Wilson, refused to air the edited segment.

In February 2003, Fox appealed the decision and an appellate court and had it overturned. Fox lawyers argued it was their first amendment right to report false information. In a six-page written decision, the Court of Appeals decided the FCC’s position against news distortion is only a “policy,” not a “law, rule, or regulation.”

That's right - a court ruled that Fox "News" could continue "reporting" false information. Not "alternately interpreted" information. Not information up for debate. Pure, straight-up false information. As "news."

I'd comment more, but there's little more to be said. There is no depth deep enough, no bottom low enough, that Fox "News" won't sink to.

Quick Thoughts on 'Balance' and Wingnuttery

So this morning I heard NPR quote without argument the idea that the tea bag protests were "populist outrage" at government spending. And of course, I dispute that idea--if there was so much populist outrage at government spending, where were these people back in 2004 when Howard Dean ran on a platform of among other things, returning to a balanced budget, while Bush was racking up record deficits?

The populist anger welled up because people who are struggling to pay the rent were watching their governments pay billions of dollars to the same companies that caused the recession that was making it hard for people to pay the rent.

The press has a long history of simply ignoring protests or, when they do cover them, making them sound like they're a few nut jobs who hate America. So when Fox News decided to cover the tea bag protests and legitimize them, the other news stations responded--even the hosts, like Olbermann and Maddow, who live to discount the junk spewing from Fox wound up oddly legitimizing the protests by talking about them. People who were pissed about bailouts suddenly heard their anger reflected--but deflected from the plutocrats who richly deserved it onto Obama's budget, which would, among other things, give those people struggling to pay the rent a tax CUT.

Where does balance come in? Well, as Jay Rosen pointed out, "he said/she said" has long been a substitute for actually finding out which side is telling the truth. And Digby noted that the press also uses the lack of official voices making an argument as an excuse not to cover the argument--hence the usual coverage of political protests not legitimated by an Establishment political figure.

So when Republican Congresscritters jumped onto the tea parties as a way to seem in touch with the people, the protests gained even more legitimacy, and news stations were "forced" to cover them. Now they're news! Politicians are there! Look, Rick Perry wants to secede!

And so suddenly protests that were populated mostly by John Birchers and Ron Paulies and people generally opposed to the very existence of government are being covered as if they're seriously representative of the opinions of half the American people. "Balance," right? We have to cover all the people's opinions!

Except the relative loudness (and in many cases, well-fundedness) of certain voices doesn't mean they actually represent large portions of American people.

But if you have enough money and elected officials, you can get any view into the sphere of legitimate debate (to cite Rosen again). Meanwhile, the actual left-wing equivalent of the tea party protesters are more like the few anarchists in any crowd of protesters, and protest movements full of average people (and far larger than the tea parties) are ignored or only covered when violence breaks out.

Basically, this is a perfect storm of the problems with the press: pack coverage leads mainstream journalists to follow the lead of Fox News, of all ridiculous outlets. Ideals of "balance" lead journalists to cover these protests far more than they actually deserve relative to how many people actually attended them. "Official" voices serve to legitimate wild, outlandish ideas. (Secession! Could you imagine if Deval Patrick suggested that Massachusetts secede?) And of course, money talks. Left-wing anti-government types tend to also be opposed to corporatism, while right-wing anti-government types seem to have no problem with mass corporate rule.

And so we have a situation in which a very narrowly held view suddenly is being discussed constantly, while very widely held views (like the idea that we should actually investigate the torture regime of the Bush administration) get ignored.

North Koreans are how much shorter than South Koreans?

So now we've had our first debate. We watched it on Fox (Fox 11 Los Angeles, not Fox News on cable), which was interesting for the post-debate spin. Of course, McCain won according to them. The point that one guy brought up was that McCain referred to Obama as "Senator Obama" and Obama called McCain "John". The "analysis" was something about how that would hurt Obama amongst people from the South.

The spin is pretty gross; I think it would be more responsible for presenting networks to have no "analysis" directly after the debate. Just show the debate and cut back to regular programming. The "analysis" will be there on the cable news networks and the internet if people want to hear it.

What matters more, though, is the public perception of who won (not that the debates made a difference in 2004; John Kerry, according to public polling, "won" the debates). The polls that have come out indicate an Obama win-- 51% vs. 38% in the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll. The CBS poll had it at 39% (Obama won), 24% (McCain won) and 37% (tie). The best news for Obama could be the following: 60% of respondents said that Obama was ready to be President, which is a 16% improvement over pre-debate polls on the same question.

I can't wait to see how Fox will frame the Palin "win" next week.

(In case you missed it, here's a link to a transcript. Also, Jim Lehrer is fantastic; most of these network media honks could learn a lot from his professionalism and integrity. Luckily, we get Gwen Ifill, another real professional, for the VP debate. Hard to imagine people like Lehrer and Ifill are in the same profession as hack asshats like Gibson, Kristol, Stephanopoulos, etc).