Faux News Just Can't Help Being Faux News

[goldenvalley]

Apr 21, 2023 14:09:21 GMT LFC said:

We may be seeing some frothing nutjob bloodletting at Faux. OAN will have the pick of the litter, and by "litter" I mean garbage. Fingers crossed.

At least one critic predicts Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro will be fired from Fox News as Rupert Murdoch moves to be less “vulnerable” following the network’s nearly $800 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, RadarOnline.com has learned.

Sure fire the women and a bunch of underlings that no one has ever heard of.  But will Tuckums, Hannity, and Ingraham be touched?  I kinda doubt it.  Probably the ratings of their individual shows will be the deciding factor.

[LFC]

Apr 21, 2023 15:06:45 GMT goldenvalley said:

Sure fire the women and a bunch of underlings that no one has ever heard of.  But will Tuckums, Hannity, and Ingraham be touched?  I kinda doubt it.  Probably the ratings of their individual shows will be the deciding factor.

I think Dobbs is the biggest one who was shuffled out the door. They'll never touch the big "talent", though. Their ability to effortlessly enrage, lie, and obfuscate the truth are critical to the Faux News business model. They also know how to take orders when they get to close to crossing a line. I think the snapperheads they let go are less controllable, less cynical, and more truly crazy.

[LFC]

Breaking: Faux News Caused Shooting of Innocent Victim

Hey, it's a lot more true than shit they say every single day.

A grandson of the man charged with shooting a Black teen in Kansas City’s Northland last week said he was “appalled” and “disgusted” at his grandfather’s actions and is thankful Ralph Yarl is recovering.

“I was horrified. I thought it was terrible,” Klint Ludwig said of his immediate reaction to hearing about the shooting of the 16-year-old. “It was inexcusable. It was wrong.

“I stand with Ralph, and really want his family to achieve justice for what happened to them. Their child or grandchild or nephew’s life was fundamentally changed forever, over a mistake and someone being scared and fearful.”

Ludwig said he and his grandfather, who goes by the first name Dan, used to be very close.

“But in the last five or six years or so, I feel like we’ve lost touch,” he said. “I’ve gotten older and gained my own political views, and he’s become staunchly right-wing, further down the right-wing rabbit hole as far as doing the election-denying conspiracy stuff and COVID conspiracies and disinformation, fully buying into the Fox News, OAN kind of line. I feel like it’s really further radicalized him in a lot of ways.”

Ludwig said his grandfather had been immersed in “a 24-hour news cycle of fear and paranoia.”

“And then the NRA pushing the ‘stand your ground’ stuff and that you have to defend your home,” he said. “When I heard what happened, I was appalled and shocked that it transpired, but I didn’t disbelieve that it was true. The second I heard it, I was like, ‘Yeah, I could see him doing that.’”

Does he consider his grandfather a racist?

“I believe that there have been some positions that he’s held that have been bigoted or sort of disparaging,” Ludwig said. “But it’s stock Fox News, conservative American stuff. It’s ‘anybody who gets an abortion is a murderer.’ And ‘fatherless Black families are the reason why crime exists in this country.’ It’s stuff everybody’s heard at the Thanksgiving table every year.”

Ludwig said his grandfather’s paranoia had accelerated in the past couple of years.

“I hesitate to say he got more extreme, because all this stuff has been extreme,” he said, “and it’s been the same story for decades and decades, and generation to generation of people believing the same things. It’s just nowadays people are acting on it a little bit more.”

[andydp]

More from the Captain Obvious side of the news.  As if we didn't know what Fox is really like

Bill Maher slams Tucker Carlson, compares Fox News to a brothel

Maher brought up the lawsuit multiple times during his show, including during the opening monologue when he mentioned the settlement and stated, “This way they avoided a trial and the harrowing prospect to have to tell the truth.”

Maher also took a moment to blast Tucker Carlson, referring to Carlson’s text messages that were revealed last week, where — as Maher explained — Carlson called Trump’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, “A fu**ing bit**, a psychopath, a liar and a cu**,” only to praise her on his Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight. Maher also noted that those texts were the last straw for Fox News having any chance at winning a trial.

He also added that Carlson and his fellow anchors were “toeing the Trump line. Yet, behind the scenes they knew it was bullsh**!”


www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/bill-maher-slams-tucker-carlson-compares-fox-news-to-a-brothel/ar-AA1acOVd?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=116aca653ba6484e8543f4f4e0342f1b&ei=31

[LFC]

Schaaaaaadenfreude!

[LFC]

The MSM reporting I've seen on the Durham report is staggeringly bad to anybody who has actually followed his near complete failure of his 4 year "investigation." He found virtually nothing new. Then there's Faux's interpretation:

[LFC]

Faux being Faux.

Despite New York City having the worst air quality on Earth on Tuesday night and with conditions expected to worsen into Thursday due to smoke from the Quebec wildfires, Fox News hosts on Wednesday criticized those who have suggested that masks be worn and wondered if those affected by the pollution are “snowflakes.”

The Five co-host Jeanine Pirro took issue with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who issued a call to “adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure, and healthcare” in response to the “climate crisis.”

In response, Pirro said: “Other Democrats are pumping up climate hysteria and bringing back, you guessed it, mask insanity.”

New York Mayor Eric Adams, noting that public schools in the city are closed Thursday, urged residents to wear an N95 mask–“especially our older New Yorkers and young children, and anyone with breathing or heart issues.” On Wednesday night, Adams warned air quality was expected to “deteriorate” and urged residents to “limit outdoor activities to the absolute necessities.”

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation meanwhile warned the air would reach “unhealthy” levels on Thursday for New York City and a number of other regions, suggesting residents should use mass transit instead of their own cars, and to conserve fuel and reduce exhaust emissions.

On Jesse Watters Primetime, the namesake host followed Pirro’s lead.

“Covid: stay home, wear a mask. Smoke bomb: stay home, wear a mask. Elections: stay home, wear a mask. Nuke strike: stay home, wear a mask,” he mocked. “The government is prepared for anything.”

Then, during the 9 p.m. slot on Fox, Sean Hannity couldn’t resist telling everyone that he works out regularly and doesn’t “feel a thing.”

After admitting that the conditions “definitely looked bad,” the host recounted to guest Charly Arnolt his experience.

[LFC]

Former tobacco lobbyist. Once a shitbag, always a shitbag.

A former tobacco lobbyist-turned-Fox News contributor bucked health experts by claiming on air that smoke billowing over the Northeast from Canadian wildfires will do people no harm.

Speaking on The Ingraham Angle Wednesday, Steve Milloy said that the warning about the smoked-filled air was "junk science."

"We have this kind of air in India and China all the time. No public health emergency," he said.

Canadian wildfires have sent clouds of smoke that have drifted over to New York City, blanketing the city in an orange haze and causing its air quality to be ranked in the world. Health officials in that city told residents to stay indoors.

"This (New York City's smoke-filled air) is like clean air in China. It's really that in the winter they never turn on their scrubbers for the air pollution because they don't care," he said.

"This doesn't kill anybody. This doesn't make anybody cough. This is not a health event. This has got nothing to do with climate...this is wildfire smoke. This is natural. This is not because of climate change, fossil fuel [or] internal combustion engines," he added.

"This is total junk science."

As Newsweek points out, Milloy was the executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition back in the 1990s -- a group that was launched by the tobacco giant Phillip Morris and was allegedly designed to disprove science that linked cigarette smoking to harmful health effects.

[LFC]

Just Faux being Faux.

Moments later, Fox News briefly aired footage of President Joe Biden speaking at the White House alongside Trump’s remarks. With Trump raging about both Biden and Hillary Clinton, the network shamelessly posted the following on-air chyron: “Wannabe Dictator Speaks At The White House After Having His Political Rival Arrested.”

Notably, the over-the-top message aired during the time slot formerly held by Carlson, who was infamous for headline-grabbing stunts of this nature.

Oh! It "was addressed." How nice.

Fox News said that a startling on-screen banner branding President Biden a “wannabe dictator” following Donald Trump’s Tuesday arraignment “was addressed”—though the network didn’t make clear what exactly that means. The on-screen message, known as a chyron, read “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested,” as footage of Biden and Trump both speaking after the arraignment played side by side. In a terse statement, Fox News said that message “was taken down immediately and was addressed,” Mediaite reported. The message appeared for 27 seconds during primetime, as Fox News Tonight drew to a close and Hannity started up. Its characterization of Biden as a dictator struck some critics as a startling move, even for the conventionally MAGA-friendly network.

[goldenvalley]

The Murdochs need to break open the piggy bank again.  They just settled with the producer who provided the goods against Tucker Carlson, sexual harassment and other things, for $12 million.  Just nuisance value, right?  The cost of litigation...and Fox is used to paying off on sexual harassment cases.

[LFC]

Three more right-wingers who are looking for redemption after years of cashing in.

Three former high-ranking Fox executives are blasting Rupert Murdoch for Fox News’ role spreading disinformation in the public discourse.

In a joint statement published Wednesday, the executives — Preston Padden, Ken Solomon, and Bill Reyner — expressed profound regret for their roles helping Murdoch build Fox in its early days. Padden was Fox’s chief Washington lobbyist; Solomon was the vice president of network distribution; and Reyner was the lead outside counsel.

While none of the executives worked on Fox News, the work they did on behalf of Murdoch decades ago established Fox as a national television force and helped pave the way for the birth of the right-wing channel.

“At the time of our work in the 1990’s, we all greatly admired Rupert Murdoch and his vision and bold efforts,” the trio said in their statement. “We genuinely believed that the creation of a fourth competitive force in broadcast television was in the public interest.”

“We never envisioned, and would not knowingly have enabled, the disinformation machine that, in our opinion, Fox has become,” they added.

Padden, who has recently expressed support for the Federal Communications Commission examining Murdoch’s broadcasting licenses, told me by phone on Wednesday that the group had been privately communicating to each other about Fox News, lamenting what they had indirectly helped create.

[pnwguy]

Jul 13, 2023 14:57:05 GMT LFC said:

Three more right-wingers who are looking for redemption after years of cashing in.

I think the start of the Fox network was a good thing in shaking up the established NBC/ABC/CBS oligarchy.  Those that helped pull it off, especially within the NAB constraints of local affiliates, not just cable outlets, were in fact savvy business people that navigated a difficult environment.  Shows like The Simpsons wouldn't have gotten a green light on the other 3 networks.  Fox provided a new place to experiment with programming, long before the streaming services became viable options.

That being said, Murdoch, as have billionaires the world over, have devolved into a mindset of being humanity's saviors, such that concentrating power in their hands should be their life's mission.  Wealth and power generally have toxic effects on human personality.  While I doubt Rupert ever had any socially good intentions in his life, his descent into being a fascist enabler surely ramped up when he gained a foothold in the US, after doing great harm to both Australia and the UK.

He unexpectedly stood up in front of me at a media event years ago, and I wished I had a suicide vest.  

[indy]

I think it is a little misleading to focus on Fox. What Fox became, and indeed what has happened to Journalism over all, was an inevitable and forgone conclusion thanks to the internet and social media. So many people people making marginal livings by conflating responsible information gathering and what is just entertainment (and an apparently insatiable thirst for conspiracies). It is not just politics, which I assume we are all familiar with, but just basically everything. Innocent lives are just ruined time and time again by irresponsible people trying to get eyeballs to look at them on facebook, twitter, tic tock, reddit, etc. by speculation and innuendo. It feeds a competitive landscape where the race to the bottom was inevitable.

[goldenvalley]

Jul 13, 2023 15:55:26 GMT indy said:

I think it is a little misleading to focus on Fox. What Fox became, and indeed what has happened to Journalism over all, was an inevitable and forgone conclusion thanks to the internet and social media. So many people people making marginal livings by conflating responsible information gathering and what is just entertainment (and an apparently insatiable thirst for conspiracies). It is not just politics, which I assume we are all familiar with, but just basically everything. Innocent lives are just ruined time and time again by irresponsible people trying to get eyeballs to look at them on facebook, twitter, tic tock, reddit, etc. by speculation and innuendo. It feeds a competitive landscape where the race to the bottom was inevitable.

But what Fox evolved into helped set the way social media worked.  It's not Fox alone, certainly, but it adopted the sort of yellow journalism that combined with Limbaugh style stuff (he also wasn't the only one) that seeded the angertainment that exists today.

[goldenvalley]

Rupert is stepping down from active headship.  Son Lachlan is stepping up.  I guess the real life Murdoch family won't work like the one in HBO's Succession.  I don't expect any improvement in what Fox does. 

[goldenvalley]

I don't know who the woman speaking here is, but she is pretty critical of the handling of the impeachment "inquiry."  I'm posting this because the contrast between what the woman is saying and the chyrons shown while she is talking.  Seems like they were written before they knew what she would say.  Do Fox viewers only read the chyrons?  If so, they are not seeing what this person was actually saying.

[goldenvalley]

I guess the former president is mad at Paul Ryan.  Strangely enough I saw this in Vanity Fair. 

Donald Trump demanded on Thursday that Rupert Murdoch boot former House Speaker Paul Ryan from the Fox Corp. board. The reason? Ryan committed the apparently fireable offense of telling people he will not be voting for Trump come November.

“Rupert Murdoch should fire pathetic RINO Paul Ryan from the Board of Fox,” Trump scream-wrote on Truth Social. “Ryan is a loser, always has been, and always will be. He was the WEAKEST & MOST INCOMPETENT Speaker of the House in its History. Fox will sink to the absolute bottom of the pack if Paul Ryan has anything to do with it!”

Will Fox do as he wishes?  Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of DJT, Celebrity President.