As long as Fox continues its misinformation campaign and to sponsor and organize the right-wing organization’s “Tea Parties”, Fox must then stop trying to market themselves as a real “News Network”. I have been totally enjoying that the Obama Administration has finally developed the “Cojones” for calling out “FOX NEWS” as not being a “real” or unbiased news network.

Now, I do not agree that it was correct when the White House tried to have the Fox reporter excluded from a specific “pool” of news reporters last week. The other White House pool members properly put their foot down and basically said, “you either take the whole pool or no pool at all”. The White House can always either ignore the Fox reporter or they can talk with the pool members individually, but the reporters were correct, “a reporter pool is a pool”. On the other hand, in the past, the Bush Administration had no problem with just hand-picking which reporters or “right-wing talkers” they would invite to the White House. They also made it very obvious as to who was a favorite of the White House Press Room staff as the more liberal or progressive reporters were seldom, if ever, called on. Or, as they did with the long-time Hearst reporter Helen Thomas, who has covered every US president since JFK, her normal “front seat” was just moved to the back of the room.

In fact, over Bush’s total two-term presidency, “W” refused to have a single interview with any reporter from the New York Times. Bush II is the only president that can honestly make that claim. What is interesting from the Fox side is that they are now complaining and whining about being left out of the group, and they are claiming that the White House is giving special privileges to MSNBC, the New York Times and NBC. However, they fail to mention that for eight years, many times they and other right-wing talkers regularly visited the Bush White House, when no progressive reporters or talkers were even given an invitation. You can Google for the media and conservative talkers that visited the Bush White House and you will see pictures of whole groups of talkers from Sean Hannity to Michael Medvid, Laura Ingraham and Michelle Malkin, but you will see no Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz or Rachael Maddow in the group, even though they had always requested to attend.

It has also now been shown that the Bush Administration actually “paid” some of these conservative reporters and talkers for positive articles that supported the Bush approach to issues such as using torture on insurgents and for supporting the US invasion of Iraq. What Fox and all of their talking-heads and so-called News Anchors don’t seem to understand is that the White House is not against Fox because they support the GOP and the right-wing conservatives. That situation between liberals and conservatives has been around well before Abraham Lincoln with the parties of the then Whigs, the New Republicans and the Democrats. What the Obama White House is complaining about is the mass of lies and misinformation that is being broadcast from the so called Fox “News” Network. As the White House stated, “What they are presenting is not honest ‘news’, it’s just their opinions.” And even "opinions" should be based on actual facts. Otherwise, with Fox they are just lies, and by presenting this misinformation, Fox is not performing the function of a real news operation.

In addition to their broadcasting misinformation, the Fox staff and their talkers are sponsoring organizations such as the conservative lobbying group, Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks organization’s “Tea Parties”. Fox’s Glenn Beck and other Fox staff have organized these “Parties” all over the US and they have also continued to lie about how many have attended the parties. (The “Tea Party” in Washington DC, where they said 1.4 million had attended in the Washington Mall, the DC Fire Department said was closer to 70,000 attendees, and the Fire Departments are usually considered the experts at crowd estimations.) It’s one thing to do news reporting on these protest organizations, but to also support and organize them…? What kind of impartial news operation is that? As an example of their blatant lies, this last week, Fox’s Sean Hannity said: “Let me see if I can sum this up. Is it that they want to distract from the debates that they're losing, the American public overwhelmingly, according to every credible poll, is against ‘Obamacare’ [Public Option].” Well, how about this real fact: According to every recent credible poll, including the most recent Washington Post/ABC news poll just released: “The public in fact strongly supports a public option with its health-care reform package. Support has risen from 52% to 57% in recent months.” And the most recent CBS poll pegs the support at 62%. Other reputable polls state approximately the same numbers. It is astounding that today, there are “fact-check” and Internet sites such as the progressive’s Media Matters that have to spend every day listening to Fox and then they have to publish the real truth on their sites, to counter what Fox is saying.

There are many times I turn on Fox, and in less than ten minutes of listening or viewing, I find one or two statements from their commentators that is totally untrue. And these false comments are not just minor slips of the tongue, they are flat-out lies and Fox knows it. Even on the new Ed Schultz Show on MSNBC, he has admitted that the most popular part of his one hour political show is the program section he calls “Psycho Talk”. In this section, he highlights where a Republican politician or right-wing talker has said something that is either totally untrue or just totally ridiculous. Most of the time the comments are from some earlier show on Fox or from a Republican politician that has been interviewed by Fox. I believe the Minnesota House Representative, Michelle Bachmann is the current record holder for the most number of times for being featured on the “ED SHOW’s Psycho Talk”. However, I believe the right wing talker, Rush Limbaugh is currently running in a close second place. As I am writing this article, it came across the Internet from POLITICO that friends and associates were encouraging the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, 69, to jump into the political arena by running for president in 2012. "Ailes knows how to frame an issue better than anybody, and that's what we need now," said one Ailes close friend. The friend was encouraging Ailes, the Fox founder, chairman and CEO, to seek the Republican nomination for running against President Barack Obama. Word on the street already has it that there is so much negative stuff that can be dug-up about Mr.

Ailes that the Democrats were seriously hoping that this was not just a rumor. Frank Luntz, the well-known Republican pollster, said Ailes could have been a force if he made the run. "I have known Roger Ailes for 29 years," says Luntz. “No one knows how to win better than Roger." Talk of an Ailes run, which misinformed sources had incorrectly said was based on more than mere speculation, could have escalated the White House war with Fox even higher. Mr. Ailes had recently had a private meeting with top White House adviser David Axelrod in an effort to ease the current tensions. Apparently, the meeting was a big bust. Shortly after the meeting, the White House stepped up its attack on Fox, and Fox has proudly fired back. The evening after the idea of running for the nomination was leaked, Mr. Ailes announced that he was not interested in making a presidential run and also that he, “Couldn’t afford the pay cut.” Fox executives are relishing the current public spat with the White House and virtually every on-air Fox personality talks about it. Sean Hannity has even made it a central part of his show’s opening promo. The biggest reason being of course, that ratings at Fox are understandably going through the roof.

What make the Roger Ailes possible candidacy so interesting is that most of the individuals that have ever managed, or that currently run an American media outlet or news network, usually pride themselves on being non-partisan. They are most times very strong about presenting a truly “Fair & Balanced” program showing both sides of an issue. Being that Fox has virtually become the right-wing propaganda tool of the GOP, it appears that for Mr. Ailes to have agreed to run for the Republican nomination would have been the ultimate statement that Fox would not be in any position for consideration as a real and politically unbiased “news network”. If Fox’s CEO, Roger Ailes had actually decided to pursue the GOP nomination, it would have been the final piece of proof that The Fox News Network is nothing but a sham, The current Fox network would then need to officially re-brand themselves as; FOX: The Official Network of the GOP.

Copyright G.Ater 2009

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