Eric Boehlert2009-11-20T16:46:26-05:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=eric-boehlertCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Eric BoehlertGood old fashioned elbow grease.Why Is Rupert Murdoch So Clueless About Fox News?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3604122009-11-17T09:44:35-05:002009-11-17T17:10:53-05:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
At least that's the gospel according to Rupert Murdoch this month.
In truth, thanks to Murdoch's recent laundry list of public falsehoods, we now know that Fox News' misinformation culture starts at the very top, inside the corner office of Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp., Fox News' parent company. It turns out Murdoch functions as his own one-man misinformation machine. Who knew?
But with his collection recent falsehoods regarding Fox News, a rather obvious question has been raised: How come Murdoch remains systematically uninformed about his controversial cable channel? The sad truth is Murdoch either has no idea what kind of programming Fox News now produces, or he's too embarrassed to watch and acknowledge it. Neither scenario is particularly flattering for the aging CEO.
Murdoch wants to pretend (at least to himself) that ratings are up because of the sterling and insightful news reports and opinion programs Fox News is producing. He doesn't want to sully his reputation by acknowledging the hate speech and faux journalism he profits off of because Murdoch, no doubt, wants very much to maintain his charter membership in the very clubby social circles that he's traveled in for years between Washington, D.C., and New York City (i.e. Murdoch likes being invited back to Charlie Rose's round table). It's where the very serious gather to discuss the very serious topics of the day. But, of course, Fox News today is a purposefully un-serious operation. (i.e. Obama is nothing more than a lowly racist/communist/Nazi/fascist) And if Murdoch publicly acknowledged that, it would reflect poorly on him.
So, instead, he opts for the charade and he creates his own idea of what Fox News is today -- an idea that does not match reality.
Read the entire Media Matters column here. ]]>The Palin Press Orgy: Who Cares?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3567522009-11-13T10:37:09-05:002009-11-13T10:37:09-05:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/ From The Note [emphasis added]:
But this is Sarah Palin's world -- and that's really all we can see from our porches right now.
There may be no better example of the power and perils associated with the former governor of Alaska than what we'll see over the next week.
There is precisely one superstar in the Republican Party -- and she happens, by choice, not to hold elected office, or feel as if she owes much of anything to anyone in the party establishment. (And you thought tea parties might be dangerous?)
On this Friday the 13th, the Palin craze is starting a few days earlier than anticipated -- with Oprah and an early copy of the book coming before the Barbara Walters interviews next week.
And from ABC's George Stephanopoulos, who claims Palin's book release is the biggest to hit the Beltway in nearly 15 years:
Can she recapture the Palin magic that made her a political phenomenon? Make herself a force beyond her staunch cultural conservative base?
I suspect that Palin, like Powell, will ultimately decide that a race is not for her. But the opportunity is there. No one else in politics aside from Obama can attract more cameras, mics and blog posts
What seems to be missing from the avalanche of coverage is any indication that people outside the professional Beltway class, and her right-wing base, actually care. I'm sure Palin's book, thanks in part to a cut-rate, give-away price, will end up on the best-seller's list. But authors do that all the time.
In terms of larger context, I'm not aware of any polling data that indicates Palin has a prayer of being elected president. In fact, the latest CNN survey finds that a strong majority of Americans think she is singularly unqualified to run the country. (i.e. She's relegated to Dan Quayle territory.) And of course, she's coming off her stint as VP candidate on the GOP ticket that lost an electoral landslide last November.
So I guess my question is, besides the larger and authentic one (i.e. who, besides journalists and GOP partisans, cares about Sarah Palin?) is, has the press ever treated an election loser the way it now treats Sarah Palin? Has the Beltway press ever turned an election loser like Palin into a political rising star, even though there's no evidence to suggest her stature has changed since last November's embarrassing thumping? (i.e. What "magic" is Stephanopoulos talking about?)
Just more liberal media bias, I suppose.
Crossposted at County Fair, a Media Matters for America blog.
]]>The GOP's Looming (Media) Civil Wartag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3525732009-11-10T14:18:48-05:002009-11-10T14:18:48-05:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/news organizations -- essentially co-sponsor political campaigns. We've moved well beyond the time when Fox News, for instance, leaned right and gave conservative candidates more air-time and tossed them lots of softball questions. We're now watching unfold a political reality where Fox News literally selects candidates and then markets them through Election Day.
There's a reason Dougg Hoffman (NY-23) described Glenn Beck as his "mentor" and pledged his "sacred honor" to uphold the "9 Principles and 12 Values" of Beck's 9/12 Project. There's a reason Sean Hannity wanted to "declare" Hoffman the election winner, and why Fox News' on-screen graphic read "Conservative Revolution?" when Hoffman was being interviewed (i.e. prematurely crowned) by Hannity on the eve of Election Day.
Hoffman's outsider bid, originally opposed by the Republican Party, was a media production, plain and simple, which means his loss was a media loss, as well.
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich had it right when he told The Washington Times that Hoffman's rise as a third party candidate was the "result of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News." Gingrich, who originally opposed Hoffman's candidacy, added: "This was not an isolated amateur; this is an entire movement."
Indeed, it's a media movement that's doing it's best to obliterate the line between journalism and politics. The looming problem for the GOP, though, is that the right-wing media can't pick winners and stands poised to rip the Republican Party apart.
]]>The Myth of Fox News' Ratings Spiketag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3435632009-11-03T10:04:24-05:002009-11-04T17:19:10-05:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
It's just not true.
No matter how many times reporters and pundits made the claim, a detailed analysis of Nielsen ratings numbers clearly indicates that in the two weeks after the White House in mid-October sparked a media controversy by claiming Rupert Murdoch's channel was not a legitimate news organization, Fox News' ratings did not soar or go "through the roof." In fact, not only did Fox News' overall ratings not soar, they experienced no significant increase at all. Instead, in the two weeks following the initial verbal jousts with the White House, Fox News' total day ratings virtually flatlined.
Another example of the Beltway press not letting the facts get in the way of a good story? It sure looks that way. In this case, we saw nearly universal agreement among media elites that the White House decision to publicly call out Fox News was monumentally dumb, thin-skinned, short-sighted, and uncivil. (Paging the etiquette police!)
Everyone said so. Therefore pundits were certain that Fox News' ratings were way up and that Obama and his aides had made a huge tactical blunder. The ratings angle simply provided statistical ammunition for what the Beltway press corps already knew to be the truth: Fact-checking Fox News, in the immortal words of The Washington Post's CW-loving Sally Quinn, was "absolutely crazy."
Except it turns out none of that was true. There was no viewer stampede toward Fox News.
Read the full Media Matters column here.
]]>30 Reasons Why Fox News Is Not Legittag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3351222009-10-27T09:00:14-04:002009-10-27T12:43:03-04:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
That's been the sad case for years. (Playing dumb about Fox News' partisan pursuits now qualifies as a Beltway intramural sport.) Indeed, the loophole, or the caveat, to journalism's gentleman's agreement has always been that the guidelines were voluntary and self-policing. There was no governing body, either within journalism or without, that regulated the product. The only collective deterrent from producing bad journalism, aside from rather lax U.S. libel laws, is a collective sense of shame, a shared feeling that making a factual error -- or worse, purposefully pushing false information under the guise of journalism -- was both unprofessional and unacceptable.
But clearly, Fox News does not share that sense of shame, because it's not part of the larger journalism brotherhood. Fox News doesn't feel like rules such as fairness, accuracy, neutrality, and independence apply, which is obvious since Fox News breaks those rules with stunning regularity. In fact, its programming day seems designed to break the traditional rules ad nauseam. That's what it's built to do. And if nothing else, Fox News is ruthlessly efficient.
So, Fox News has altered the game by unchaining itself from the moral groundings of U.S. journalism. And guess what? There is no industry shame being rained down on the outlet. The rest of the press not only doesn't complain, it defends Fox News and even apologizes on its behalf, which is what we've seen unfold for the last two weeks.
Read the entire Media Matters column here. ]]>Why the NFL and Corporate America Reject Limbaugh and Becktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3264452009-10-19T17:36:46-04:002009-10-19T21:51:00-04:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
It's the same lesson Glenn Beck learned this year when he discovered that his niche, on-air rants (Obama is a communist-racist-fascist-Nazi) don't speak to the masses. Instead, they freaked out nearly 100 former Glenn Beck advertisers who have gone on record as refusing to be associated with his show. These are blue-chip, small-"c" conservative advertisers who've dropped Beck quicker than a wobbly JaMarcus Russell pass.
For both Limbaugh and Beck, the awkward realization in recent weeks and months is that viewed outside of the dark, paranoid confines of right-wing talk, both men are seen as toxic by the business elite they likely admire the most. It's like at a teen party in the basement when the lights suddenly get turned back on. Nobody in corporate America, and certainly nobody within the mighty NFL, wants to be seen holding hands with Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck.
In truth, Limbaugh's humiliating face plant was entirely predictable, because every few years Rush Limbaugh tries to leave the protected bubble of right-wing radio and venture out into everyday American culture ("tiptoeing into the mainstream," Limbaugh calls it), and every few years the reaction is swift and unambiguous -- get lost!
Read the entire Media Matters column here.
]]>Memo To The Media: Fox News Is Now the Opposition Partytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3183382009-10-13T08:35:52-04:002009-10-13T12:18:53-04:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
Rupert Murdoch's cable cabal is now, first and foremost, a political entity. Fox News has transformed itself into the opposition party to the Obama White House, which, of course, is unprecedented for a media company in modern day America. That partisan embrace means the news media have to expand beyond typing up Fox News-ratings-are-up and the White-House-is-angry stories, and it needs to start treating the cable channel for what it is: a partisan animal.
The press needs to drop its longstanding gentleman's agreement not to write about other news outlets as news players -- not to get bogged down in criticizing the competition -- because those newsroom rules no longer apply. Fox News has exited the journalism community this year. It's a purely political player, and journalists ought to start covering it that way. The press needs to treat Fox News the same way it treats the Republican National Committee, even though, frankly, the RNC probably can't match the in-your-face partisanship that Fox News flaunts 24/7.
I understand Fox News still wants to enjoy the benefits of being seen as a news operation. It still wants the trappings and the professional protections that go with it. But it no longer functions as a news outlet, so why does the rest of the press naively treat it that way?
Fox News is now at the forefront of a political movement.
Read the entire Media Matters column here. ]]>With The New York Times Now Monitoring, Right-Wing Media Goes Bonkerstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3102342009-10-05T16:55:37-04:002009-10-06T17:33:10-04:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
Just after The New York Times announced it would appoint somebody to monitor the partisan opinion media more closely, and right after editors were chastened for reacting too slowly to buzzworthy news scoops launched by the conservative media, the right-wing press went bonkers last week.
Like a proud peacock showing off its feathers, the right-wing media was in full bloom, showing the Times all the tricks that have made the movement's trade so renowned. There was outright lying, lying by omission, attempted guilt-by-association, U.S.-bashing, hateful smear campaigns (lots of those), fearmongering, incompetence, and just batshit crazy stuff. (Did I mention the heavy dose of crazy?) All the key notes were hit -- and in just one epic week.
I hope the Times is enjoying its new-found, front-row seat to the right-wing media's slow-motion crack-up, where I doubt even the denizens can keep track of the avalanche of falsehoods, smears, and lies that now tumble out on a daily (hourly?) basis. The whole enterprise has come unglued by Obama's presidency. And where serial mendacity was once the rule, a whole new level of crazy has been achieved in 2009. Even conservative blogger Rick Moran last week called out the "lunacy" that fuels so much of the Obama hate; a hate that's stoked around the clock by conservative media.
And now the Times can chronicle it every day because editors there think they might uncover news leads.
Good luck with that.
Read the entire Media Matters column here.
]]>WashTimes and Fox News Now Unleashing Mobs On Private Citizens (Including Kids)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.3026982009-09-29T09:45:10-04:002009-09-29T11:47:30-04:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
In theory, of course, online dirt-digging and sleuthing makes perfect sense and represents a new era of participatory journalism embraced by the Internet. But in the hands of right-wing radicals who exhibit very little common sense and even less common decency, the witch hunts of peripheral players, including now-regular attempts to target children, no longer represent journalism in any recognizable sense. Instead, they're just unsettling -- and dangerous -- attempts at mob rule. They're a way to send a signal that anybody who is even marginally involved in public discourse can suddenly become a target of the mob. And then, all bets are off.
This trend of targeting private citizens is not new. But it has become more pronounced in recent weeks and months, as collective Obama hatred has pushed the GOP Noise Machine to ignore the boundaries of fair play.
]]>How Fox's Chris Wallace Became Irrelevanttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2946322009-09-22T10:53:16-04:002009-09-22T18:10:32-04:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
The subsequent whining and childish name-calling from Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace became incessant and, of course, revealed more about the bitter and bruised host than it did the White House. No doubt the pity party that the thin-skinned journalist threw for himself in the wake of the embarrassing snub was genuine. But it went on for so many days and became so consuming that it seemed there was more to it than Wallace being forced to watch the Obama newsmaking parade from the sidelines.
I think the slow-motion temper tantrum perhaps reflected Wallace's larger realization that his days of being taken seriously as a journalist are fading and that he can no longer be associated with the collectively unhinged Fox News family and maintain any dignity in the process. (Wallace's Sunday program airs on Fox TV, the entertainment sister to Fox News.)
Wallace realizes his days of having it both ways -- of being able to cash Rupert Murdoch's annual seven-figure checks without being tarred by Fox News' unique brand of idiocy -- are over, that the jig is up. Not only does the White House not care about Wallace's perennially last-place Sunday show, which functions as an in-house RNC broadcast and is watched by about as many people, but there's little indication that Wallace is still viewed as an important player within the Beltway press crowd.
]]>Michelle Malkin And The Anatomy Of The 2 Million Protester Lietag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2865482009-09-14T20:01:19-04:002009-11-14T05:12:01-05:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
It turns out that's what kicked off the right-wing blogosphere's comically inept misinformation campaign last weekend to try to swell the size of Saturday's anti-Obama protest in the nation's capital, to jack the crowd size up to the wildly inflated -- and erroneous -- number of 2 million people.
For most sane observers, what transpired over the weekend resembled a comical bout of telephone tag -- the game schoolchildren play when they whisper something into a friend's ear and then get a big laugh when, six or seven friends later, they hear how distorted the original message has become via garbled repetition. (Two million protesters!) The sad part is that right-wing bloggers are serious. They think they're engaging in some bold new era of citizen journalism. Instead, they just, you know, make stuff up.
It's just the latest example in a string of unforgettable whoppers from online conservatives who rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story. And, yes, irony abounds in that right-wing bloggers hate the press and that they hate the practice of journalism. They lecture reporters about accountability and fairness all the time, yet whenever amateur conservatives try their hand at reporting, they just produce guffaws for the rest of us. (Did I mention they miscalculated the size of the crowd by 1,930,000 people?)
On Saturday, facts didn't matter because right-wing ringleader Malkin was helping to spread a sprawling (and illogical) lie, and her dutiful followers knew just what to do: spread it hard and fast. Perhaps Malkin's only regret was she didn't aim higher; she could have claimed there were news reports of 12 million people protesting in D.C., and I'm sure every one of her willingly gullible devotees would have linked to her.
They really are shameless. And they really do inhabit their own parallel political universe where everyone's allergic to facts.
Read the entire Media Matters column here.
]]>With One Simple Sentence, ABC News Confirms The Death of Beltway Journalismtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2806062009-09-09T12:10:09-04:002009-11-09T05:12:01-05:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/an online report about the Obama school "controversy," and it's written by Dan Harris. In his piece, Harris notes that conservatives preemptively blasted Obama's stay-in-school speech even though conservatives had no idea what was going to be in the speech. Harris notes that the speech itself "turned out to be little more than a pep talk on the importance of staying in school."
Later in the piece as he tries to put the "controversy" in context, Harris uncorks this era-defining gem [emphasis added]:
While the media loves a good fight -- even when the charges are unfounded -- there may be more to conservatives' complaints that play into larger concerns about the president on health care reform.
Behold the wonder. Pretty much sums up the state of affairs, right? "The media loves a good fight -- even when the charges are unfounded."
And do I even have to mention that the media's new-found love of unfounded fights is an Obama era special. Or can somebody point me towards the manufactured, unfounded "controversies" hatched during the Bush years that the press treated as big news. (As I've noted, when conservatives -- and overwhelming white -- activists get mad, it's news. When liberals do it, it's annoying.)
If that weren't bad enough, there were other depressing nuggets from Harris' woeful report. First, he quoted three partisan Obama critics in the story, yet somehow managed to avoid a single Democrat or Obama supporter for his report.
And second, then there was this:
While Obama may have run a successful presidential campaign, critics say the White House has been unprepared for the ferocity of the Republican opposition.
"You have to be aware of the opposition that is going to arise and have a plan to deal with it," [former Gov. Mitt Romney spokesman Kevin] Madden said.
Did you get that? According to a partisan Republican, the Obama White House was to blame for the school "controversy," because it should have seen the firestorm coming. It should have known that by having the President of the United States address school children and urge them to excel and stay in school, that Republicans and wingnuts would accuse him of trying to "indoctrinate" kids with a "socialist" agenda.
I mean really, how did the White House not see that one coming, right?
So to summarize: ABC News confirms that it will chase any right-wing "fight" even if it's baseless; even if it's "unfounded." In reporting those fights, ABC News will purposefully exclude Democrat voices from the story. And ABC News, while acknowledging a fight is "unfounded," will allow partisan Republicans to blame the White House for the "controversy."
]]>Why Glenn Beck & Fox News Can't Escape the "Racist" Traptag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2745952009-09-01T20:46:01-04:002009-10-17T05:12:01-04:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
If any television program had lost just three or four of those types of high-caliber advertisers, it would be seen as an extraordinary move in a media environment in which grassroots attempts to pressure advertisers have traditionally yielded modest returns. But at Fox News, Glenn Beck is rewriting television history right before our eyes: four dozen lost advertisers and counting. All of Beck's big-time advertisers have fled. All of them.
As momentum continues to gather behind the unprecedented boycott effort led by ColorofChange.org, Beck and Fox News executives seem to be flailing around as they frantically search for a way to stop the exodus.
But here's what I don't get: Why doesn't Beck go on TV every day and simply defend his "racist" claim? Why doesn't Beck stand up for the racist remark and stake his reputation on it? Because right now, the pathetic, squishy approach he's taking where he limply lashes back while pretending the ad boycott sprang from some mysterious place -- where Beck plays the victim and pretends he never made the "racist" smear -- is just too lame for words.
Read the full Media Matters column here.
]]>Media: Angry Right-Wingers Are Important; Angry Libs Are Annoyingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2681102009-08-25T10:04:33-04:002009-09-25T05:12:01-04:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/newsworthy. Reading and watching the mini-mob news coverage, the media message seems clear: Angry speaks to the masses.
Instead of being turned off by the displays of passion the way the press had been when liberal protesters took to the streets prior to the Iraq war, media elites have been touting the mini-mob trend as a "phenomenon" (USA Today) staffed by a "citizen army" (Bloomberg News).
And make no mistake, the health care mini-mobs have been showered with a massive amount of media coverage. During the week of August 10-16, the topic of health care, and specifically the politics and the protests of health care, accounted for a staggering 62 percent of all cable news coverage, according to the Pew Research Center's weekly survey. My guess is that you would be hard-pressed to find a single week during the run-up to the Iraq war when liberal anti-war protests accounted for just 6 percent of the cable news coverage.
Why the gaping disparity? How come liberal anti-war protesters were shunned by the press, but the mini-mobs are showered with incessant coverage? It's because apparently when angry -- and overwhelmingly white -- conservatives protest, they come attached with a direct line to the American psyche. Liberals, though, most certainly do not.
Bottom line: Liberal protesters don't tell us anything about the mood of America. But angry right-wingers do, according to the press.
Read the entire Media Matters column here.
]]>Health Care Mobs = Swift Boat Vets. And The Press Plays Dumb, Againtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2619812009-08-18T10:48:28-04:002009-09-18T05:12:02-04:00Eric Boehlerthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/
During August's summer daze, right-wing mini-mobs (egged on by corporate interests) have run wild at town hall meetings, propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an effort to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet the mini-mob members have been treated as deeply important newsmakers by the press during a slow summer news month.
Sound familiar? Recall August 2004, when the right-wing Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (egged on by corporate interests) stole a month's worth of campaign headlines by propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an attempt to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet they were treated as deeply important newsmakers by the press during a slow summer news month.
Fringe players on the right are making wild accusations that cannot be backed up by fact. The mainstream media response? We must cover the phenomenon daily, even hourly!
So, day after August day, these vacuous health care "debates" are aired on cable television, just as news consumers suffered through night after night of vacuous Swift Boat "debates" five summers ago. In both cases, the press for the most part handed in its referee's whistle and focused its attention on simply reporting the fact-free claims and then getting the Democratic response. (i.e. he said/she said.) It turns out journalists are petrified of calling out right-wing activists as liars, and the other side knows it.