SUMMARY: President Trump has long acknowledged top-rated Fox News as his favorite media outlet, and the network relishes its role as a conservative voice. But its increasingly close relationship with the administration is drawing criticism. William Brangham talks to the New Yorker's Jane Mayer about an unprecedented “feedback loop” and whether the President has made policy decisions to help Fox succeed.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including Democrats falling just short in a surprisingly competitive special election in Georgia, why some Republican lawmakers are starting to criticize the President, foreign policy inaccuracies in the Trump administration and Bill O'Reilly's downfall from Fox News.
SUMMARY: Bill O'Reilly is officially out at Fox News. After a review of sexual harassment allegations, the company announced Wednesday that the TV host would not be returning to the network. The New York Times' Michael S. Schmidt, and Noreen Farrell executive director of the Equal Rights Advocates, join Judy Woodruff to discuss O'Reilly's exit.
SUMMARY: Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson was the first woman to accuse network co-founder Roger Ailes of sexual harassment. She was not the last: a subsequent flood of allegations forced Ailes to resign. As the company investigates, Judy Woodruff interviews former network news executive Shelley Ross and Vanity Fair's Sarah Ellison about the case and the larger issue of workplace sexual misconduct.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): An update on the fallout at FOX News over allegations that its co-founder, Roger Ailes, sexually harassed women employees for years.
Ailes resigned in late July with a reported $40 million severance package, that after a lawsuit by former FOX anchor Gretchen Carlson alleged that her show was canceled because she'd rebuffed sexual advances from Ailes.
In the following weeks, a growing number of women, including prime-time anchor Megyn Kelly, reportedly came forward with similar stories of impropriety. Ailes has called Ms. Carlson's accusations false. And an internal investigation by FOX's parent company is still under way.
For a closer look, not only at this case, but at the wider matter of sexual harassment in the workplace, we turn to Sarah Ellison, a contributing editor at “Vanity Fair.” She recently reported on the Ailes allegations. And Shelley Ross, she's a former network television news executive, best known for her 17-year tenure at ABC News. She recently wrote about her own professional experiences with Roger Ailes, and the news business at large, in The Daily Beast.
And we welcome both of you to the program.
And we should note at the outset, Roger Ailes back in the news today because of a New York Times report that he's now advising Donald Trump's campaign. And we should say the campaign denies that.
But, Sarah Ellison, I want to turn to you first.
What is the state of what is known about Roger Ailes' alleged harassment of women at FOX News?
SARAH ELLISON, Vanity Fair: Well, we know — largely, what we know is what we have learned from our reporting, which is that the internal investigation that is ongoing that you referred to earlier, has identified at least women in the double digits who have come forward and spoken to the internal investigation.
And we know that it was something that implicated Ailes certainly. There are people who have come out and told their stories, but there are people who have not yet come forward, and I think that we're going to see more women, even more women come forward in the coming days.
SUMMARY: For 20 years, the man at the helm of Fox News was it's CEO and founder Roger Ailes. On Thursday, Ailes stepped down after former anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment suit against him. Jane Hall, associate professor at American University's School of Communication, and Ken Doctor, media analyst for Newsonomics and Columnist for Politico, sit down with Judy Woodruff to discuss.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): It all unfolded quickly, in a matter of weeks, after former FOX anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment suit against Roger Ailes, longtime head of FOX News.
Ailes denied the charges. But 21st Century Fox, the cable network's parent company, hired a law firm to conduct an investigation. According to Carlson's lawyers, 20 or more other women then came forward with claims about Ailes' conduct, including Megyn Kelly, one of the network's star anchors.
Publicly, many other prominent on-air personalities at FOX, including Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren, backed Ailes and said they were unaware of any inappropriate behavior.
Rupert Murdoch issued a statement late yesterday without referring to the harassment charges, saying that: “Roger Ailes has made a remarkable contribution to our company and our country. Roger shared my vision of a great and independent television organization and executed it brilliantly over 20 great years.”
Roger Ailes, now 76, has been an influential figure for decades in Republican politics, as an adviser and strategist to Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. He created FOX News 20 years ago and built it into the most-watched cable news channel.
BRIT HUME, FOX News: More news is on the way, fair, balanced and unafraid.
JEFFREY BROWN: Promoted as an alternative to traditional mainstream media. It has been a huge moneymaker for its parent company, and a target for critics of its conservative tone and team.
Ailes said this in a 2004 interview with C-SPAN'S Brian Lamb:
ROGER AILES, Former FOX News Executive: Well, we have changed the business a little bit. I think FOX News has come on the scene and identified itself as fair and balanced. We try to do that every day. I think others, instead of trying to get more fair and balanced, probably are offended by that or worried about it.
JEFFREY BROWN: Rupert Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan, will now decide on a successor to Roger Ailes and the future of the network he built.
And joining me now, Jane Hall, a journalism professor at American University who previously served as a media reporter for The Los Angeles Times and commentator at FOX News, and Ken Doctor, who writes on the media business for Politico and on his blog, Newsonomics.
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JANE HALL, American University: Well, he is a brilliant television producer. And he created the jazzy graphics on the screen. He hired Bill O’Reilly. He brought in a number of people. He brought Megyn Kelly on board.
He had a great eye for talent. What I think has happened is his fair and balanced slogan is really not accurate. They have pounded home lines like government takeover, Obama is soft on terrorism, Hillary is crooked. As I said in the piece, I don’t think we would have Donald Trump if we didn’t have Roger Ailes.
But the network is absolutely a reflection of his vision. The only other person I can think of is Roone Arledge, who created ABC News and ABC Sports, who has had the same kind of impact. He merged politics, though, and a kind of bifurcated take-no-prisoners style that I think has hurt our discourse.
Starting Friday, the Obama administration will significantly loosen restrictions on American trade and investment with Cuba allowing U.S. companies to export mobile phones, televisions and computers while easing travel restrictions opening the communist island to more American travelers.
The new rules will put a large dent in the U.S. embargo against Cuba and will even allow U.S. citizens to start bringing home small amounts of Cuban cigars after more than a half-century ban.
As of Friday, U.S. companies will also be able to export mobile memory devices, recording devices, and software to a country with notoriously poor Internet and telecommunications infrastructure. The goal is to "contribute to the ability of the Cuban people to communicate with people within Cuba, in the United States, and the rest of the world," according to a Treasury Department fact sheet. Internet-based communications will fall under a general license.
Americans permitted to travel to Cuba for family visits, official U.S. government business, journalism, research, education, religious activity and other reasons fall under a U.S. general license and don't need to apply for a separate license. A limit on remittance payments to family members in Cuba will be raised to $8,000 per year, from $2,000 per year. Americans visiting Cuba will be allowed to bring home $100 in alcohol and tobacco products, and $400 in total goods.
Other changes include:
—No more limits on how much money Americans spend in Cuba each day or what they spend it on.
—Remittances allowed to be sent to Cuban nationals has increased from $500 to $2,000 per quarter
—Permissible use of U.S. credit and debit cards.
—Travel agents and airlines can fly to Cuba without a special license.
—Insurance companies can provide coverage for health, life and travel insurance policies for individuals residing in or visiting Cuba.
—Financial institutions may open accounts at Cuban banks to facilitate authorized transactions.
—Investments can be made in some small businesses and agricultural operations.
—Companies may ship building materials and equipment to private Cuban companies to renovate private buildings.
—Certain micro-financing project and entrepreneurial and business training is now authorized.
Thursday's announcement of new Treasury and Commerce Department regulations are the next step in President Barack Obama's ambitious goal of re-establishing diplomatic relations with the government of Cuban President Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother. They come three days after U.S. officials confirmed the release of 53 political prisoners Cuba had promised to free.
Only Congress can end the five-decade embargo. But the measures give permission for Americans to use credit cards in Cuba and U.S. companies to export telephone, computer and Internet technologies. Investments in some small business are permitted. General tourist travel is still prohibited, but Americans authorized to visit Cuba need no longer apply for special licenses.
Obama vowed to soften the embargo last month and begin restoring diplomatic ties with Havana, saying "these 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked." The deal was the product of 18 months of secret talks that culminated in the exchange of imprisoned spies and release of Alan Gross, a U.S. government contractor who had been imprisoned in Cuba for five years.
The sudden rapprochement between Cold War foes has divided U.S. lawmakers across party lines and interests. Among Republicans and Democrats in Congress, Cuban-Americans such as Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Bob Menendez of New Jersey have been particularly vocal in opposition.
But some pro-business types have welcomed the opportunity to open up a new export market in a country so close to American shores. The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, said Wednesday it was better for the U.S. to sell computers, smartphones and cars to Cuba than to cede such business to countries like Russia and China. Still, the embargo as a whole appears unlikely to fall anytime soon.
The U.S. and Cuba are scheduled to hold migration talks in Havana next week, the next step in their normalization process. Leading the American delegation is Roberta Jacobson, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America. Her visit marks the highest-level trip to Cuba by a U.S. official since 1980.
Further down the road, Washington envisions reopening the U.S. Embassy in Havana and carrying out high-level exchanges and visits between the governments. Secretary of State John Kerry could travel to the island later this year.
Based on reporting by the Associated Press.
Existing medical techniques are laying the foundations for an ambitious research project to send astronauts into a deep sleep on a six-month journey to Mars, according to the engineer leading the study.
"There's technology being used in the medical community that could support this - there's a wealth of data out there to support it," John Bradford, president of Atlanta-based SpaceWorks, told FoxNews.com. "It's a big step, but it could be adopted for space flight."
The NASA-funded study began 12 months ago, and conjures up images of science fiction - putting astronauts into a deep sleep, or torpor, during the long six-month journey to Mars.
“I don’t think that we could go to Mars without something like this technology,” Bradford said. Putting the crew into a deep sleep, he explained, would significantly reduce the amount of supplies and infrastructure needed to support the long space journey, from food to onboard living space.
The study predicts that putting a spacecraft’s crew into torpor, or stasis state, would cut the mission requirements from 400 tons to 220 tons of equipment and supplies.
Bradford told FoxNews.com that the torpor could be achieved by a technique called therapeutic hypothermia, which is already used in hospitals, albeit for a much shorter time period.
Therapeutic, or protective, hypothermia lowers a patient’s body temperature to reduce the risk of tissue injury following, say, a cardiac arrest when blood flow is limited.
In the thermal management system envisaged by SpaceWorks, a tube inserted into an astronaut’s nasal cavity will emit a cooled gas, lowering their temperature by about 10 degrees. Low-dose drugs will also be administered to suppress their shiver reflex and ease their passage into a deep sleep.
"Other than the duration, the procedural aspects of this are pretty benign," said Bradford.
Technologies are already commercially available in this area, such as the RhinoChill IntraNasal cooling system, which is used to induce therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest.
However, SpaceWorks acknowledges that there's a lot more research needed before someone is placed in a six-month sleep. Up to now, the longest torpor induced by therapeutic hypothermia is 14 days, according to Bradford.
The engineer told FoxNews.com that, while the research aims to wake astronauts just once, at the end of their journey, other sleep durations may be used. The crew, he explained, could sleep in shifts, with each astronaut in torpor for about two weeks and then conscious for two days, ensuring that one crew member is always awake during the mission.
While in stasis state, astronauts would be fed intravenously with an aqueous solution of carbohydrates, amino acids, dextrose, and lipids, according to Bradford. "They would not have any solid waste - it would be strictly urine," he said, noting that a catheter would be used to dispose of the liquid.
The medical industry is also developing technologies such as infection-resistant IV lines that could prove useful during the flight to Mars, Bradford said.
The crew could be brought out of their torpor by turning off the cooling gas and shivering suppressant. "Nominally, it would take about two hours to wake somebody," said the SpaceWorks president. "It would probably take a couple of days [for the astronauts] to get [fully] acclimated - our testing will include cognitive tests to examine their mental faculties when they wake up."
Bradford estimates that a typical Mars mission will involve a six month journey, followed by a year and a half on the red planet, and a six month journey back to earth.
While NASA has successfully completed unmanned missions to Mars, such as the Curiosity rover, putting humans on the planet is a much more challenging endeavor. NASA, for example, has a 2035 target for landing humans on Mars, although SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has predicted that people could be on Mars within 10 to 12 years.
SpaceWorks’ Bradford expects to see human Mars missions in 20 years, noting that the deep sleep research project is still in its infancy.
“There’s a ways to go,” he told FoxNews.com. “We have concluded the phase one effort, which is developing the initial design, the engineering details, and medical plausibility - we’re now looking at the next steps, which will be continued studies of the engineering challenges.”
Over the next five years, NASA and seven partner institutions will be taking on new projects to help paint a more complete picture about how life comes to be in the universe. The projects include preparing to bring back samples of the Martian terrain to Earth, investigating the role of comets and asteroids in delivering water and organic compounds around the solar system and researching how our own planet has managed to sustain life for so much of its history.
This week, NASA announced the winners of its seventh Cooperative Agreement Notice grant competition (CAN7), who will receive $50 million between them to conduct their research.
There are no plans to build a Starship Enterprise to hop from galaxy to galaxy in search of aliens among the projects, rather they will all take place here on Earth.
A team at the SETI Institute will be looking into the best ways to ensure that a planned 2020 NASA mission to bring back samples from Mars selects the ideal scoops of Maritan soil or rock and takes the best care of that precious cargo. Another project based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. will use natural hydrothermal chimney systems on our own planet as models to investigate how conditions on icy worlds such as Europa, Ganymede, and Enceladus might be able to support life.
A team from the University of Colorado at Boulder will examine the potential of how rocks might power life on planets such as Mars when their chemical energy is released through interaction with water. Others will look at how Earth’s history might hold key secrets to the search for E.T., like a University of California at Riverside project to examine the history of oxygen in our own atmosphere and oceans.
“The intellectual scope of astrobiology is vast, from understanding how our planet went from lifeless to living, to understanding how life has adapted to Earth’s harshest environments, to exploring other worlds with the most advanced technologies to search for signs of life,” said Mary Voytek, director of NASA’s astrobiology program.
Each project team will receive about $8 million and join five continuing astrobiology project teams already participating in the program at the University of Washington in Seattle; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
The first flight test of NASA's new manned spacecraft may be six months away, but agency engineers are already looking forward to what they will learn from the trial.
NASA's Orion capsule, which is designed to take astronauts to Mars and other farflung destinations, will blast into space for the first time in December. During the unmanned mission, known as Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), Orion will travel 3,600 miles from Earth, then come rocketing back into the planet's atmosphere at 20,000 mph.
The December trial is a vital proving ground, since NASA plans just one more flight test (in 2017) before the capsule's first crewed mission lifts off in 2021.
For example, EFT-1 will test out Orion's launch-abort system (LAS), which is designed to steer crewmembers to safety in the event of a problem during liftoff. Even if the launch goes flawlessly, however, a motor has to fire to jettison the LAS, which would otherwise block Orion's parachutes, making a soft ocean splashdown impossible.
So engineers will watch for the successful separation of the LAS during EFT-1 — the first of 17 such jettisons that must happen in sequence for the mission to succeed, officials said.
EFT-1 will also put Orion's heat shield — at 16.5 feet wide, the largest such structure ever built — to the test.
"The reason that Orion is traveling so far and coming back in so fast is to give the heat shield a good workout — the idea is to get as close as possible to the temperatures Orion would experience during a return from Mars," NASA officials wrote in an update Thursday.
"At the speed it will be traveling, the temperature should reach almost 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit," they added. "At that same temperature, a nuclear reactor would melt down."
Parachute performance will also be key. While Earth's thick atmosphere will play the primary role in slowing the Orion capsule down, its parachutes — three main chutes and two drogues — need to finish the job. Orion must hit the water at just 20 mph to make a safe splashdown, NASA officials said.
EFT-1 will also test how Orion's advanced computer system handles extreme temperatures, the rigors of launch and re-entry and high radiation levels, officials said.
Radiation exposure is a big concern for manned missions to deep space, which will take astronauts far beyond the protective cocoon of Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. EFT-1 will spend a lot of time in the Van Allen radiation belts that surround our planet, allowing researchers to see how Orion's radiation shielding holds up.
"Sensors will record the peak radiation seen during the flight, as well as radiation levels throughout the flight, which can be mapped back to geographic hot spots," NASA officials wrote.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed California’s $156 billion budget for the 2014-15 fiscal year at a ceremony Friday in San Diego.
Brown — joined at the signing ceremony by Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, Sen. Ben Hueso, D-San Diego, and Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley — described the spending plan as “not perfect” but a sign of California’s fiscal progress over the past few years.
“What this budget shows is balance, paying down debts, putting almost $10 billion into public schools, creating a rainy day fund and starting to really tie up and shore up the teachers’ retirement fund,” Brown said.
He said it also was a sign that the state government was working, and that the majority could actually govern, with cooperation from the minority party.
The visit to San Diego was the third during the budget cycle for Brown, who was in town on the day his budget proposal was released in January, and last month when he issued revisions. He said he wanted to sign the budget in San Diego out of respect for Atkins, who took over leadership of the Legislature’s lower chamber last month.
The state spending plan for the fiscal year starting July 1 includes a $1.6 billion “Rainy Day Fund” and $142 million for drought-response measures, such as firefighting, water management, wildlife preservation and food assistance.
Last month, the governor reached an agreement with the Legislature on the reserve fund that would:
- Require the state to bank large increases in capital gains revenues, which are the most volatile form of tax income;
- require supplemental payments to accelerate the payoff of debts and liabilities;
- raise the dollar amount of the rainy day fund to 10 percent of the general fund revenue;
- allow withdrawals to be made from the fund when needed during recessions, within prescribed limits; and
- create a reserve account for education to avoid future funding cuts.
He said the fund would be “untouchable” while he was in office, until it was needed due to poor economic conditions.
Additional agreements with legislative leaders last week will add at least $180 million in overtime pay for health-care workers who provide care to the disabled and elderly in their homes, direct a quarter of cap-and-trade revenue toward construction of a high-speed rail line and expand preschool opportunities for economically disadvantaged children.
“No budget is perfect, and no one got everything that they wanted,” Atkins said. “But with this budget, that ensures stability and expands opportunity, we have a chance to put the great recession even further behind us.”
The general fund, for discretionary spending, will be almost $108 billion.
Brown’s Republican opponent in the November election, former Treasury Department official Neel Kashkari, said the budget is a “giveaway for special interests paid for by working families,” despite the “nation’s highest poverty rate” and a “failing” education system.
“Higher gas prices for his pet High Speed Rail project, a last minute tax break for a favored industry and micro-managing local school spending from Sacramento Brown’s budget priorities represent more of the same back-room dealing from Sacramento,” Kashkari said. “Unfortunately for the millions of workers struggling to find good jobs, kids stuck in failing schools and families trying to make ends meet, this budget does nothing to provide a better future through economic opportunity for all.”
After signing the budget, Brown traveled to Los Angeles for a function with Latino legislators.
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| Europa, Jupiter's ice-covered moon |
NASA is plotting a daring robotic mission to Jupiter's watery moon Europa, a place where astronomers speculate there might be some form of life.
The space agency set aside $15 million in its 2015 budget proposal to start planning some kind of mission to Europa. No details have been decided yet, but NASA chief financial officer Elizabeth Robinson said Tuesday that it would be launched in the mid-2020s.
Robinson said the high radiation environment around Jupiter and distance from Earth would be a challenge. When NASA sent Galileo to Jupiter in 1989, it took the spacecraft six years to get to the fifth planet from the sun.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute astronomer Laurie Leshin said it could be "a daring mission to an extremely compelling object in our solar system."
Past NASA probes have flown by Europa, especially Galileo, but none have concentrated on the moon, one of dozens orbiting Jupiter. Astronomers have long lobbied for a mission to Europa, but proposals would have cost billions of dollars.
Last year, scientists discovered liquid plumes of water shooting up through Europa's ice. Flying through those watery jets could make Europa cheaper to explore than just circling it or landing on the ice, said NASA Europa scientist Robert Pappalardo.
NASA will look at many competing ideas for a Europa mission, so the agency doesn't know how big or how much it will cost, Robinson said. She said a major mission goal would be searching for life in the strange liquid water under the ice-covered surface.
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb said going to Europa would be more exciting than exploring dry Mars: "There might be fish under the ice."
An amazing new photo of Saturn's north pole puts the planet's odd hexagon-shaped jet stream and dazzling rings on display.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft exploring Saturn and its moons snapped the photo — which NASA released Monday — as the probe flew 1.6 million miles above the ringed planet.
Cassini took its newest view of Saturn's polar vortex on Nov. 23, 2013, though the image itself was just released today. The hexagonal vortex is about 20,000 miles across and is a jet stream made up of 200 mph winds surrounding a huge storm, NASA officials have said. Scientists have not found another weather feature exactly like this anywhere in the solar system, space agency officials said. [See more amazing photos of Saturn's bizarre hexagon storm]
"The hexagon is just a current of air, and weather features out there that share similarities to this are notoriously turbulent and unstable," Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology, said in a statement in 2013. "A hurricane on Earth typically lasts a week, but this has been here for decades — and who knows — maybe centuries."
Saturn's hexagonal jet stream might be so long lasting because the planet is basically a giant ball of gas. Landmasses disrupt currents on Earth, but the storm remains stable on Saturn due to a lack of solid landforms, according to NASA.
Cassini has been able to image the strange feature since 2009 when Saturn's northern hemisphere became illuminated by the sun during the planet's northern spring, NASA officials said. Scientists used 128 of Cassini's images to create an incredible video of the hexagon-shaped jet stream last year.
Cassini isn't the first spacecraft to see Saturn's strange jet stream. NASA's Voyager mission first spotted the hexagon in the 1980s.
The $3.2 billion Cassini mission launched toward Saturn in 1997. It arrived at the ringed wonder in 2004 and has been sending back incredible photos of the planet and its moons since then. The probe is currently on an extended mission, and is expected to collect data until at least 2017, at which point it will burn up in Saturn's atmosphere.
"As we approach Saturn's summer solstice in 2017, lighting conditions over its north pole will improve, and we are excited to track the changes that occur both inside and outside the hexagon boundary," Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement in 2013.
In the untamed jungle that is cable news, there is a ferocious and predatory beast stalking the terrain. Anyone who has encountered Fox News in the wild can attest to the spine-chilling threat imposed by the pseudo-news network. And now Fox News has the scent of new game.
The Fox News pack is on the warpath against the media watchdog group, Media Matters. In the past two weeks it has featured over 30 stories with the express purpose of challenging the group’s right to exist. Fox has assigned network stalwarts like Bill O’Reilly, Bret Baier, Charles Krauthammer, James Rosen, Dick Morris, and Bernie Goldberg to the mission. This is an unprecedented, broadly distributed attack by a major media enterprise against a non-profit group it regards as an adversary.
This latest batch of complaints stem from comments made last March by Media Matters founder, David Brock. He was quoted in Politico as saying that the organization was shifting its focus toward Fox News to one of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage.” Giving Fox the benefit of doubt, one might conclude it’s only fair that Fox defend itself from such an overt declaration of war. The only thing that might refute that perspective is – reality.
If this is war, Fox is the aggressor. Fox News initiated its attacks long ago with aggressive and false assertions that cast Media Matters as hacks, anti-American, violent, and communist. Fox alleged that George Soros was pulling their strings long before Soros ever made any contributions to the group. Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck engaged in rhetoric so hostile that it inspired actual physical attacks against Media Matters and its progressive allies. A video (posted at the end of this story and courtesy of Media Matters) was posted two years ago and illustrates the hostility harbored across the Fox platform long before Brock’s recent comments.
The new and highly coordinated offensive by Fox asserts that Media Matters has violated the terms of its tax-exempt status by setting its sights on Fox. Fox quotes from the IRS rules governing non-profits that state that…
“…501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”
On the basis of that criteria, Fox News argues that Media Matters is in violation and should have its tax-exempt status revoked. However, in order for that to be valid, Fox would have to admit that it is a political operation so that attacks on Fox News would qualify as opposition to political campaigns and/or candidates. Without that stipulation there is no violation on the part of Media Matters. So Fox is, in effect, conceding its role as a Republican mouthpiece. Shocking, I know.
To understand how so many average Americans can be duped into embracing right-wing positions that go against their own interests, you must look at how Fox News (and right-wing media outlets) use faux populism and phony outrage as propaganda techniques, a topic explored by Danny Schechter in this guest essay.
Grrrrrrrr. You can almost hear the growling in the background as the masters of attack politics go into action, virtually every hour on the hour, on the Fox News Channel.
The issues they focus on are carefully selected by top executives and then broken down into highly politicized message points. Their dominant emotion is annoyance as expressed in sarcasm and scowling; contempt is the underlying attitude.
In the Fox view, the other side is usually not just wrong but plain stupid, almost unbelievable in its softheaded naiveté and distance from reality.
A “what do you expect” question invariably tops off the argument which always ends with the Fox host a winner and the Democrat or social critic a loser on every level.
Standing on a podium driven by self-righteous certainty, the finger pointers view the people they talk about, and talk down to, as below the intelligence threshold of people even worth arguing with.
In this universe, hyping the extreme and outrageous seems to attract audiences as Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck have proven. That leads to higher ratings and, the real goal, higher revenues.
Clearly they feel it is their duty to play Paul Revere who warned Colonial America that “The British Are Coming.” They warn their faithful against political deviations that might lead them astray.
What is hard to recognize or often realize is that the topics chosen are calculated as part of a strategy of using emotionally tested wedge issues to politicize by polarizing.
Political scientist Alan Abramowitz argues that polarization is good for America in his new book, The Disappearing Center:
“All the indicators we have show that polarization has actually contributed to increased engagement in politics, because people do perceive important differences and they think that there are big stakes in elections.”
He was asked if he thinks this is healthy for a democracy:
“Well, up to a point. I think that a certain degree of polarization is healthy in a democracy. It clarifies the choices people have in elections, and it helps voters to hold the parties accountable for their performance.”
At the same time, other political analysts say, “The more polarized political parties are, the less most of us care about the political process.”
Survey data shows that people often take polarized positions because they think they are expected to when they identify with a certain party. With the sincerity and beliefs of Democrats mocked and under constant vitriolic attack, who would want to be thought of that way?
If they have questions, they don’t raise them. It’s easier to parrot the party line.
Recall, it is politicians not “the people” who define those issues. The politicians rely on corporate-style market research and focus groups. They chose slogans and even language that often has a patriotic subtext.
When government programs are likened to socialism, it’s not surprising that people who consider themselves conservatives reject those programs even when they don’t really know what socialism is.
This is also true of what appears to be populist movements like the Tea Party whose agenda and talking points have been established by professional consultants, guided by political operatives and funded by conservative billionaires.
As one study put it. “In other words, since the parties are now more clearly divided — and on a broader set of issues — it is easier for people to split accordingly, without changing their own views.”
That’s the key point — “without changing their own views.” The dirty little secret is the discovery in many studies that the most systematic polarization appears only in mass partisanship: those who are politically active or identify themselves with a party or ideology tend to have more extreme positions than the rest of the population.
But, at the same time, their core political views have changed very little. For example, many on the Right depend on and support Medicare.
What’s also not always clear to folks on the Left is that Fox News positions itself as an upholder of what are, at bottom, liberal American values. Hence their motto about Fairness and Balance. (They actually have more opposing views on their programs than channels like MSNBC do.)
The Los Angeles Times understood this when writing, “Fox’s real ethos is not Republican but anti-elitist — a major reason it connects with so many Americans and annoys so many coastal elites. ‘There’s a whole country that elitists will never acknowledge,” Ailes once observed. ‘What people resent deeply out there are those in the “blue states” thinking they’re smarter.’
“This anti-elitism shows itself in Fox’s pro-U.S. stance in covering the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and its broadcasters’ use of terms such as ‘terrorist’ instead of ‘militants.’ Another aspect of Fox’s anti-elitism: Christians, far from being seen as lunatics or curiosities — as too often is the case in the mainstream media — actually get some respect.”
So Fox plays a double game, concealing the most reactionary and partisan of perspectives in the appearance of populism. It is then packaged in the format of news programming and above the fray television driven by hot graphics, pretty blondes, and relentless posturing.
The formula works in attracting audiences while the same time, feeding into a political strategy of promoting partisanship through heightening polarization and political conflict.
No issue is too small to exploit. A week after the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden, Fox had found a new enemy to bash as a target in the nightly culture war behind its political war.
Michelle Obama had invited a rapper named Common to a White House poetry reading. Some of his lyrics, in the parlance of ghetto talk, appeared to suggest he approved of a cop killing. That’s all that Fox needed to hear. Program after program went on the attack at this latest example of black racism.
Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart used video clips and his own free-style rapping to ridicule the distortions in their characterizations. He blasted Fox for “manufacturing outrage” and pumping a blend of propaganda he calls “foxygen” into the room.
Fox’s Bill O’Reilly blasted back inviting Stewart to debate him and insisting that their focus only reflected their outrage over a pro-cop-killing artist being invited to the White House.
(Hip Hop radio personality Davey D reminds his audience that Fox never gets outraged by police brutality in black communities. He posted a thoughtful commentary on his Facebook page.)
Any objective person might concede the poet rapper was not calling for a jihad against cops. It didn’t matter because Fox viewers tend to believe what their TV heroes tell them. It looked like he was; therefore he was.
Soon, the facts no loner mattered in a cross-cultural battle of metaphor and misinformation. Fox had its new weapon of mass distraction to focus on and use to smear President Obama while ignoring the other big story of the day: the conviction of a billionaire hedge fund schemer accused on insider-trading and conspiracy.
In Fox world, the “free market” is holy even when it’s not, and only “big government” (under Democrats, of course) is to blame for our economic woes.
In the end, what we have is a cruel and deceptive game that appears to be informative when its not, presided over by professional actors and reactors.
And like the old joke asks: “How do you know when they are lying?” The answer: “when their lips are moving.”
Almost every time I flipped on television last week, there was a deeply angry guy on a running tirade about the conspiracies afoot, the enemies around all corners, and how he alone seemed to understand what was under way.
While it’s true that Charlie Sheen sucked up a lot of airtime last week, I’d been watching Glenn Beck, the Fox News host who invoked Hezbollah, socialists, the price of gas, Shariah law, George Soros, Planned Parenthood, and, yes, Charlie Sheen, as he predicted a coming apocalypse.
Mr. Beck, a conservative Jeremiah and talk-radio phenomenon, burst into television prominence in 2009 by taking the forsaken 5 p.m. slot on Fox News and turning it into a juggernaut. A conjurer of conspiracies who spotted sedition everywhere he looked, Mr. Beck struck a big chord and ended up on the cover of Time magazine and The New York Times Magazine, and held rallies all over the country that were mobbed with acolytes. He achieved unheard-of ratings, swamped the competition and at times seemed to threaten the dominion of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity at Fox.
But a funny thing happened on the way from the revolution. Since last August, when he summoned more than 100,000 followers to the Washington mall for the “Restoring Honor” rally, Mr. Beck has lost over a third of his audience on Fox — a greater percentage drop than other hosts at Fox. True, he fell from the great heights of the health care debate in January 2010, but there has been worrisome erosion — more than one million viewers — especially in the younger demographic.
He still has numbers that just about any cable news host would envy and, with about two million viewers a night, outdraws all his competition combined. But the erosion is significant enough that Fox News officials are willing to say — anonymously, of course; they don’t want to be identified as criticizing the talent — that they are looking at the end of his contract in December and contemplating life without Mr. Beck.
Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”
Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.
“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”
And that’s the word from inside Fox News.
Note the story here isn’t that Fox News leans right. Everyone knows the channel pushes a conservative-friendly version of the news. Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s inception more than a decade ago. The real story, and the real danger posed by the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the right and instead became an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on fabrications and falsehoods.
(click for better view)
Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News, on Monday embraced the idea of a more civil public discourse in the wake of the shootings in Arizona.
In an interview with the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, which was posted on his Web site, Mr. Ailes said that his network would try to cool the heated rhetoric.
“I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually,” Mr. Ailes said. “You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that.”
Fox News is often accused by critics of crossing the line with hosts like Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.
But Mr. Ailes accused liberals of using the same overheated rhetoric, and he defended Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, for a map that depicted cross hairs over the district of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was one of the 20 people shot on Saturday.
“We looked at the Internet and the first thing we found in 2007, the Democrat Party had a targeted map with targets on it for the Palin district,” Mr. Ailes said. “These maps have been used for for years that I know of. I have two pictures of myself with a bull’s-eye on my head.”
He added, “Both sides are wrong, but they both do it.”
A new survey of American voters shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources.
Yet another study has been released proving that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey (PDF) of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.
So the more you watch, the less you know. Or to be precise, the more you think you know that is actually false. This study corroborates a previous PIPA study that focused on the Iraq war with similar results. And there was an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that demonstrated the break with reality on the part of Fox viewers with regard to health care. The body of evidence that Fox News is nothing but a propaganda machine dedicated to lies is growing by the day.
In eight of the nine questions below, Fox News placed first in the percentage of those who were misinformed (they placed second in the question on TARP). That’s a pretty high batting average for journalistic fraud. Here is a list of what Fox News viewers believe that just ain't so:
- 91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
- 72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit
- 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse
- 60 percent believe climate change is not occurring
- 49 percent believe income taxes have gone up
- 63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
- 56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout
- 38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
- 63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)
The conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming its viewers and it is doing so for a reason. Every issue above is one in which the Republican Party had a vested interest. The GOP benefited from the ignorance that Fox News helped to proliferate. The results were apparent in the election last month as voters based their decisions on demonstrably false information fed to them by Fox News.
By the way, the rest of the media was not blameless. CNN and the broadcast network news operations fared only slightly better in many cases. Even MSNBC, which had the best record of accurately informing viewers, has a ways to go before it can brag about it.
The conclusions in this study need to be disseminated as broadly as possible. Fox’s competitors need to report these results and produce ad campaigns featuring them. Newspapers and magazines need to publish the study across the country. This is big news and it is critical that the nation be advised that a major news enterprise is poisoning their minds.
This is not an isolated review of Fox’s performance. It has been corroborated time and time again. The fact that Fox News is so blatantly dishonest, and the effects of that dishonesty have become ingrained in an electorate that has been been purposefully deceived, needs to be made known to every American. Our democracy cannot function if voters are making choices based on lies. We have the evidence that Fox is tilting the scales and we must now make certain its corporate owners do not get away with it.
