The World According to Fox

Apparently the world can be divided into 'Friends', who get a smiley face, 'Frenemies' and 'Enemies'.

The Egyptian riots are connected in some way to the UK tuition fees protests.

The UK is riddled with Marxists and Islamic extremists and they're about to forge an alliance to build a Communist Islamic Caliphate which will only be defeated by China after it stretches from here to their borders.

What happens to the overwhelming radical population of the UK, of radical Islamicists. What happens? Do they just sit around on their hands or do they see an opportunity? When you take the Marxists and you combine them with the radical in Islam the whole world begins to implode.

The Muslim radicals in Europe and England rise up. You've got the communists and the Muslim radicals, they are not one and the same, they are not coordinating or anything else. But once they start to work together - whether it is coordinated or not, and I don't believe it would be - once they start to work together in concert Europe is done. It is done. Where is the police force that is going to be able to police the entire world like that. 

(Yes, I know Marx condemned religion as the opium of the people, and that China should technically support Marxists, but we're in dreamland here). At least the Welsh and Scottish Muslim radicals and communists won't work together. Splitters! Unless he means the UK whenever he says 'England', of course.

This is what Glenn Beck, the most influential TV commentator in the US, is telling his viewers. There's a lot more madness here, or watch this for a taste:

Move along, nothing to see here

A Fearless Fox News reporter puts the owner of his network on the rack with some detailed, relentless questioning. I refer you also to the Sun's coverage of the phone-hacking scandal. Rather limited, to say the least. Still, at least the News of the World journalists have been cleared - according to its sister paper, that is.

Geography for American Conservatives

What's wrong with this image?

That's right. 'Egypt' is actually Iraq. You may have heard of it. Egypt is actually in Africa.
(Thanks to Neal).

Here we go, for Fox' sake

Fresh from supporting Sarah Palin's claim that the Founding Fathers abolished slavery (they didn't: they owned slaves), Fox 'News' has just used the magic words to describe Egypt's uprising:

"You probably don't give a lot of time thinking about Egypt," a Fox News presenter suggested about an hour ago, before explaining that "groups linked to al-Qaida" were in danger of taking over the government in Cairo.

I guess Fox never met a dictator it didn't like. For the record, every other media outlet and the eyewitness statements I've had from friends all agree: it's not the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood fuelling the rebellion: they've reluctantly agreed to support it after a day sitting on the sidelines. It's a mass of unemployed, bright, secular young people. But for Fox, all Arabs are terrorists unless they're our Arabs. Fox probably thinks the Three Kings are still in charge.

Fair and Balanced

We think that the Daily Mail's quota of bile is damaging to the public sphere, but it's nothing compared to what goes on in the US.

Roger Ailes is the head of Fox News, that bastion of objectivity, and the fish clearly rots from the head. He gave a very interesting interview. Amongst the revelations is this: the staff at NPR are 'Nazis'. NPR? National Public Radio, a very, very underfunded station which spends most of its time begging listeners to donate so they can continue making interesting documentaries - it's like a nervous version of BBC Radio 4.

They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view. They don't even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda.

I wonder where the Tea Party gets its rather confused ideas about Obama being a Communist Nazi?

On Obama (no, I have no idea what he means by this either):

He had to be told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with.”

Ailes had defended Fox News firebrand Glenn Beck's attacks on George Soros by saying that there are "left-wing rabbis who basically don't think that anybody can ever use the word, Holocaust, on the air." Beck said that Soros, at age 14, accompanied a Hungarian to help him “deliver papers to the Jews, and confiscate their property, and then ship them off… Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps.” Beck added that Soros had no choice but that he didn’t understand why Soros had done no “soul searching” about his past.

Ailes also made a coded attack on Barack Obama, claiming: "He just has a different belief system than most Americans" – a rubric used on Fox News, leading bloggers at New York magazine to note: "Ailes spouted exactly the same rhetoric about President Obama that you hear on his channel." Similarly, Jeff Bercovici at Forbes points out: "It's a commonplace by now at Fox that the President is a socialist."

 What a healthy atmosphere over there.

For Fox sake…

Despite Americans voting overwhelmingly for the most liberal President since Roosevelt, they watch Fox News, a living, breathing Daily Mail with even fewer ethical worries. Despite dumping their own polling data in favour of one which looked worse for the Democrats, despite using library footage to make a rightwing march look better-supported, despite actually sponsoring neo-fascist rallies, calling Obama a racist and 'accidentally' repeatedly labelling Obama 'Osama' and despite hiring Sarah Palin, its motto is Fair and Balanced: and the US public believes it: a recent poll found that Fox is the US's most trusted network.

American readers: perhaps you can enlighten us. Is it the language? The certainty? How are they doing it? Even members of its owner's family hate Fox!

What does Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law think of Pop's TV Station?

Er… not a lot. It comes to something when a celebrated PR agent is our guide through the jungle of untruth, but he's right:

Freud told the New York Times he was "ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes's horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to" and prefaced his comment by saying he was "by no means alone within the family or the company" in holding such hostile views of Fox News.

How blogging works, part 328.

You may have seen Andrew Marr ask the Prime Minister about his health (eyesight, depression) on the BBC this weekend. It was very strange: the story is the first one I know of which was entirely generated by bloggers.

Most of the time, bloggers claim that they generate news. They're wrong. They might hype stories up, but their sources are usually the standard media, especially with big sources. How do I know this? Because I co-wrote an academic paper on the subject. Read it here.

This story's different. It's untrue, as far as we can tell. As this Guardian story explains it, a blogger heard from a civil servant that Brown isn't allowed to eat cheese, salami, various other foods and red wine. He decided that this was stuff he was banned from consuming when he was on anti-depressants in the 1980s. Cue 'Brown depressed story'. Then a bigger site picked it up, as did all the conservative sites out to get Brown. Once enough sites were howling about it, it leaked into the mainstream media.

This is obviously a failure of journalistic standards, but also a beautiful demonstration of the shortcomings of blogging: a weird opinion is amplified by partisan interests during a period in which an individual is already fair game. Instead of ascertaining facts, opinion and speculation are accepted and even encouraged because it's arresting - it's the Fox News approach.

My two cents: if Brown is banned from eating these things, it's because he's in his late 50s and prone to getting a bit porky. I shouldn't be eating these things either.

Yeah, 9/11 victims' families, shut up!

Glen Beck, racist, neofascist Fox 'News' demagogue on the World Trade Center victims' families, as quoted in this piece about the broadcasting charmer:

"It took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims' families . . . When I see a 9/11 victim family on television or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up!' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining."

Gotta love the Murdochs, their wacky idea of quality journalism and their hatred of the BBC!

World peace and that

The Unlucky Dip has posted a fascinating clip from the Miss USA competition - in which the contestants answer political questions, often more clearly than in the recent presidential campaign! Only Miss Arizona waffles her way around the healthcare question trying not to give her opinion.

Update: according to the Guardian, Miss California's opposition to gay marriage has caused a stir: Fox News is blaming this for her defeat. I hope they're right - it would mean that the audience doesn't take its moral lessons from Fox, which is the most popular news channel in the US at the moment (unfortunately).