Fox News: Fluffer for Michele Bachmann
Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart confessed to being embarrassed some time ago when two young amateur journalists scooped them on the activities of ACORN in several cities. He’s made up for it a good bit this week when he caught Fox News Channel spicing up their coverage of Michele Bachmann’s health care rally / tea party protest in Washington, D.C. this week. Without any mention of doing it, their editors spliced in obvious footage of a much larger rally from a couple of weeks ago to make it look as if attendance was much larger than it actually was. Check it out, not only for the humor but the red handed catch of the Fair and Balanced Network in action:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck’s Protest Footage | ||||
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The really strange part about this is why Fox would bother with this type of deception. The event was quite well attended, with even the Washington Post saying there were at least ten thousand people there. Why use old footage to fluff up the numbers by another order of magnitude?
Some of my conservative contacts like to refer to Fox as a “much needed counterbalance” to the more liberal media outlets. But there is a difference between putting a spin or slant on a story and simply hacking in fraudulent footage without notifying the viewer. Obviously, when covering a story like this you don’t use all of the footage you shoot, and mistakes can happen when you chop it up for broadcast, but totally separate footage from previous shows doesn’t simply drop unbidden into your editor and splice itself into the final package. This was on a totally different level than simple, partisan spin.
All the defenders of the “needed counterbalance” should be feeling a bit silly today, but I’m not holding my breath to see if they will take Fox to task for it.
UPDATE: As usual, my predictive powers are kaput and Ed at Hot Air gave full coverage to this story with no apologies offered for Fox’s performance on this one.
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59 Responses to “Fox News: Fluffer for Michele Bachmann”
[...] Comedy Central’s JonStewart confessed to being embarrassed some time ago when two young amateur journalists scooped them on the activities of ACORN in several cities. He’s made up for it a good bit this week when he caught Fox News Channel spicing up …Read Original Story: Fox News: Fluffer for Michele Bachmann – The Moderate Voice [...]
I disagree about MSNBC. I have seen Maddow and even Olbermann admit errors promptly and without dissembling when they err. Am I wrong? Show me a factual error even close to the deception on Fox that went uncorrected. I readily admit that Olbermann goes way overboard with snark and sarcasm, Maddow much less so, though she can be mocking. But I think she's the smartest interviewer on TV and is unafraid to interview “hostile” subjects. Other “lefty” outlets with high integrity, Thom Hartmann and Ed Schultz. None of these have supported “lefty” conspiracy theories (e.g. 9/11 'truthers') as Fox does, and regularly, on air, disagree with those who do.
You want an example of Olbermann's dishonesty? That's an easy one. Try this:
http://www.olbermannwatch.com/archives/2009/11/…
He prunes quotations so as to make his enemies say the opposite of what they actually said. You can't get much more dishonest than that.
That's pretty weak tea, Daniel. No mis-stating facts or substitution of pictures. It was one of his snarky “worst persons” bits and you disagree that Carson deserved the “deward”. I'll look at more of their examples to see if there are anything similar to the Fox distortion that was the subject of this post.
[...] Comedy Central’s JonStewart confessed to being embarrassed some time ago when two young amateur journalists scooped them on the activities of ACORN in several cities. He’s made up for it a good bit this week when he caught Fox News Channel spicing up …Read Original Story: Fox News: Fluffer for Michele Bachmann – The Moderate Voice [...]
I don't even know Carson or his work, so I don't know one way or another whether he deserves Olbermann's contempt. But smearing someone as a racist by pruning a quote so as to make him sound like he is saying the exact opposite of what he is actually saying? I'm sorry, but what Olbermann did is FAR worse than what Fox did, which is to try to inflate crowd size.
[...] Comedy Central’s JonStewart confessed to being embarrassed some time ago when two young amateur journalists scooped them on the activities of ACORN in several cities. He’s made up for it a good bit this week when he caught Fox News Channel spicing up …Read Original Story: Fox News: Fluffer for Michele Bachmann – The Moderate Voice [...]
[...] Comedy Central’s JonStewart confessed to being embarrassed some time ago when two young amateur journalists scooped them on the activities of ACORN in several cities. He’s made up for it a good bit this week when he caught Fox News Channel spicing up …Read Original Story: Fox News: Fluffer for Michele Bachmann – The Moderate Voice [...]
[...] Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart confessed to being embarrassed some time ago when two young amateur journalists scooped them on the activities of ACORN in several cities. He’s made up for it a good bit this week when he caught Fox News Channel spicing up …Read Original Story: Fox News: Fluffer for Michele Bachmann – The Moderate Voice [...]