John Cook at Gawker has a point-by-point teardown of Fox News’ “fair and balanced” editing of the underwhelming-on-the-air “faceoff” between Jon Stewart and Lord Falafel. “I’m Not Saying Your Mother’s A Whore: How Fox News Censored Jon Stewart vs. Bill O’Reilly” :
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Fox News has generously placed the full, unedited conversation between Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart online, so we can see precisely how unfairly and deviously Fox edited the interview in order to weaken Stewart’s case: A lot!
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Last night on his show—Part Two of a ludicrously overhyped “faceoff” between O’Reilly and Stewart in which Stewart attempted, among other things, to present a critique of Fox as a fear-mongering GOP messaging operation—O’Reilly boasted that his edit of their 42-minute interview for broadcast was “a fair cut” and invited viewers to have a look at the unedited version online to judge for themselves: “Some of these idiots in the press who hate us, ‘O’Reilly cut the interview to make Stewart look’—OK, all of that is bull. It’s a fair cut. And then when you watch the cut and watch the whole interview you’ll see it.”
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So we took him up on the offer, and guess what? If by “fair cut” O’Reilly means “cut in a manner that left some of Stewart’s best lines, most effective arguments, and most convincing evidence out of the interview and hidden from the broadcast audience,” then he’s absolutely right…
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And to watch the Fox News cut of this exchange, you’d think O’Reilly scored a minor point by mocking Stewart’s repeated use of the word “cyclonic”
__O’REILLY: Cavuto sane?
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STEWART: Being the thinnest kid at fat camp. So let’s just get that straight. Here is what Fox has done through their cyclonic, perpetual…
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O’REILLY: We’re back to the cyclonic.
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STEWART: Their cyclonic perpetual emotion machine that is a 24-hour a day, 7-day a week. They’ve taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao. Explain to me why that is the narrative of your network?__
Here’s what Stewart really said about Neil Cavuto’s practice of raising “Is Obama a Stalinist?”-style questions:
__I know what this is. I come from Jersey—it’s the same thing: “I’m not saying your mother’s a whore. I’m just saying she has sex for money. With people.” [F]ox News used to be all about, you don’t criticize a president during wartime. It’s unacceptable, it’s treasonous, it gives aid and comfort to the enemy. All of a sudden, for some reason you can run out there and say, “Barack Obama is destroying the fabric of this country.”
Ah yes — the Cavuto Mark in all its glory!
Read the whole thing. The Gawker staff deserves great credit for, as the saying goes, watching these idiots so we don’t have to, and for exploring Fox’s bad-faith chop job at length. Comments are well worth reading, too — including, I suppose, the Fox apologist who whines “The rife condescension in this thread is exactly why more people watch Fox than the Big Three. Obviously, the bulk of Fox’s viewers don’t really sweat the fact it’s a right-leaning outlet, just like the Big Three viewers don’t sweat the left-of-center bias. Fox’s viewers watch Fox because it’s the one place in the MSM they don’t get called stupid all day long.”
Equal Opportunity Cynic
I love the first paragraph of the second comment:
Nellcote
Stewart’s been O’Keefed! I wonder if he has more empathy for ACORN now.
NobodySpecial
Because, of course, all that self-esteem stuff that they push in soshulist edumacations is bunk, right?
But then again….as a friend of mine says, ‘If the room says you’re drunk, lie down.’
M. Bouffant
This “Politics of Resentment” thing is all over. Remember how the election of Senator Centerfold was about how “The People” were tired of the “arrogance” coming out of Washington?
And of course it’s self-perpetuating. Any attempt to explain that there are no death panels, no one’s coming to take away their precious guns, or anything else, is going to be met by cries of “Stop talking down to us” & so on.
Thoughtcrime
I would have repeatedly used the word colonic in describing Fox “News”.
MikeJ
That apologist who was mentioned above…does he really think more people watch Fox “news” than “the big three”? I assume he means ABC, CBS, NBC.
FNC got a huge ratings boost with Stewart on and pulled 1.5M viewers. 60 Minutes gets 12M weekly. NBC’s State of the Union post game got 8.5M. For nightly newscasts:
NBC 9,370,000
ABC 8,560,000
CBS 6,160,000
Univision comes close to O’Reilly at 1.2M.
More people listen to All Things considered on NPR than watch O’Reilly.
Source: http://tvbythenumbers.com/
drunken hausfrau
they watch Fox because it validates their stupidity… wow. And Fox sources admit that is their biz model… sigh.
SenyorDave
In an ideal world, Roger Ailes would be exposed for the hatemonger he is (I don’t care whether you do it for ideology or money, its all the same).
Hmm, a business model I have a business model that yields a huge profit if I sell used industrial acid as children’s toy. Nothing wrong with that, I guess.
Snarla
It is easy to believe that Fox news viewers get tired of being called stupid. It’s sad that there are so many stupid people, and even sadder that they revel in it.
TR
Those clips really are worth watching in full.
c u n d gulag
“… Fox’s viewers watch Fox because it’s the one place in the MSM they don’t get called stupid all day long.”
Thanks, STUPID!
Now, STFU!
Brick Oven Bill
Re: “Fox News Censored Jon Stewart”
One must consider with caution the opinions of a man who rejects the name of his ancestors, and replaces it with a WASP name.
I have never understood this. Is it marketing?
In any case, ‘censorship’ is not editing a TV show to make it fit its time slot, and then releasing the entire interview to the Internet. I am very willing to provide examples of censorship. Censorship does not come from the Right.
WereBear
Oh, yes. Once upon a time it was much harder to hide from the fact that you’re stupid, and you had to consider thinking differently.
But not any more.
rootless_e
radio rwanda, aussie style.
rootless_e
i like how the patriotic america-first crowd is happy to take its orders from an Australian billionaire and a Korean messiah.
Arguingwithsignposts - ipod touchs
Ap headline: snow piles up, paralyzing nation’s capital.
Heck, the GOP has been doing that all year.
Viva BrisVegas
@rootless_e:
Don’t blame us, he hasn’t been Australian for 25 years, ever since you took him off our hands. For which America deserves the gratitude of a nation.
Slightly ironically, in the 60s and 70s Murdoch was regarded as quite liberal, perhaps even a little bit socialist. Since then he pretty much swings in whichever direction guarantees profit.
Linda Featheringill
Fox News is right about one thing: You can make money by telling people what they want to hear. This has been true a long, long time. Telling the truth is usually not as rewarding.
El Cid
If only they could have had such an opportunity in grade school through high school, where they could have chosen an alternative classroom in which whatever bullshit they wanted to say about math or science or history or English was as easily ginned up as well.
El Cid
@Viva BrisVegas: It’s not too new — the best right wing propagandists are often God-that-failed former leftists.
Sly
I’m not saying Fox News is biased. All I’m saying is that Fox News presents false and/or distorted information in order to present a uniform narrative that adheres to and reinforces specific political assumptions about a variety of subjects.
rootless_e
@Viva BrisVegas: We should deport him.
rootless_e
a nation cannot survive a media like fox+hate-radio for too long. A continual call to violent attack on the institutions of the nation and demonization of a large part of the citizenry is not compatible with democracy. Calling fire in a crowded theatre doesn’t being to approach the level of danger posed by these people.
Chad N Freude
@rootless_e: Unfortunately, Citizen Murdoch is a US citizen. He bacame a citizen for the noblest of reasons:
jeffreyw
@Arguingwithsignposts – ipod touchs: Yeah, they’ve been having “no storms” all year.
JohnR
It’s been almost amusing, in a horrible, Steven King sort of way, watching the country go post-Weimar in a sort of inevitable slide, but it seems to me that the pace of the descent is increasing, and I can’t see the bottom of the slope. It’s like the beginning of the otherwise forgettable Indiana Jones II; careening down the Himalayas on a sled. God only knows where Sarah Palin is going to Lead us.
Amy
The thing is, the next time a Republican is elected president, Fox will turn on a dime and say that it’s unpatriotic to criticize the president.
They will do it without a blush and the msm will ignore what Obama had thrown at him.
Down the memory hole it will all go.
chrome agnomen
‘…don’t get called stupid all day long’
i call them stupid all day long. i talk down to them. i scorn them. i mock them. they are idiots. they deserve no more. when they behave like adults, i treat them like adults. i am not going to be bipartisan with morons.
kay
@rootless_e:
The radio presence is a little bigger than the for-profit entities like Limbaugh.
Every single Christian radio station where I live promotes GOP candidates and causes.
It’s interesting to listen, because they don’t have even the veneer of “news” that FOX has to present. They’ll present a “crisis” at the statehouse (some upcoming state law or debate) and present clips of exclusively hard-Right GOP representatives.
It’s like there is no other side. Non-fundamentalist religious simply don’t exist. If I listened to those stations and nothing else during my daily rounds, I would assume fundamentalist religious were an overwhelming majority in the statehouse, and they were somehow being subverted by a silent minority who were writing law.
RareSanity
@Brick Oven Bill:
That’s it?
That’s your comeback?
He uses a stage name?
I expect better from you, Bill. Now, go to your room and don’t come out until your trolling improves.
rootless_e
@kay: one sign of the uselessness of the US “left” is that no serious effort to purchase and operate radio stations has ever been launched.
EIGRP
@Brick Oven Bill: Why BoB? You aren’t using your real name here. Should your “warning” apply to you too?
-Eric
Svensker
@rootless_e:
Air America? Pretty big flop, too.
Michael
Nuclear strikes on Iran, Syria and North Korea, for starters. Venezuela and Cuba, shortly after. Secretary of State Bolton scolding our going-to-be-former allies of the UK and France. Likely some weird nuclear brinksmanship with Russia.
Tancredo will be in a high ranking post involving locking up the Mexican border with walls, machine guns and land mines. The violent deportation of millions, including some US citizens “by mistake”. A pliant Supreme Court, and maybe some court packing “just to be sure” that a white conservative majority is perpetual, and includes luminaries like Roy Moore.
Suspension of some civil liberties regarding assembly and criticism is likely, and will be supported by a bloated military, and I can imagine some voting tests and poll taxes.
Gutting entitlements save for wingnut welfare, the complete abolition of abortion and all birth control methods save for barriers (and that will come under attack, too).
Also, expect some repression of recalcitrant congressmen and Senators. Arrests and frequent investigation will become a feature, not a bug.
Expect a catastrophic widening of the wealth gap.
We’ll be living in Argentina pre-Peron in the best case scenario. We’ll experience a civil war in the worst case scenario, and frankly, I could see the UK, France and Russia going to cataclysmic war with us over our national psychosis.
kay
@rootless_e:
I can’t speak for everyone, but I found out I don’t really listen to liberal radio. I bought a newer used car recently and it had satellite radio installed, and I bought a package.
I love radio, and I drive a lot, for my job. I recently drove to NY, which is a 10 hour ride. That’s a long ride, even for me. I tried to listen to the Lefty station, but it was boring. It’s nothing I don’t know. For politics, I went to the “politics” station that has press conferences and such. Unfiltered. I’d rather get the actual article, instead of the Lefty station’s take on the press conference, I learned.
Maybe this is just a difference between the two groups, or maybe it’s me.
The package I bought has THREE conservative radio stations to ONE liberal, which is interesting all by itself. Surely we’re not that far Right a country. 3 to 1?
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@kay: 2006 and 2008 suggest otherwise.
A pretty astute guy once said ‘You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.’ Murdoch and his radio brethren are taking advantage of the profit to be made from ‘some of the people all of the time’ but the guy in the White House right now is proof that the Republic is far from dead yet.
Irony Abounds
When I watched the edited version I was a bit disappointed in Stewart’s appearance. I should have taken the time to watch the whole thing earlier. It makes Doug’s assertion of a week ago or so that Stewart is a douchebag as dumb as some of Fox News talking points.
Beej
And there, kay, you have the difference between the conservatives and the liberals. Liberals are looking for facts and truth and are willing to believe that it doesn’t always come from true believers and is sometimes very uncomfortable to hear. Conservatives refuse to consider that the truth comes from anywhere except God, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh, not necessarily in that order. They don’t want to hear anything that might contradict their version of how the world should work, and they won’t listen to anyone who suggests that maybe, just maybe, they’re wrong about some things. It’s called willful blindness and it’s very, very dangerous.
kay
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Oh, I agree. I started a local political group for liberal (women) because I was talking to all these “secret liberals” in the course of my work. Once you’re “out” they pull you aside to tell you they are liberals TOO! I live in a conservative county, and I just objected to the fact that there was this huge sort of underground “liberal base” walking among us, and they were never heard from.
It was fun to watch. When we doing calls for Kerry they were all nervous about being “exposed” as liberals, then they had a lot of success state-wide in 2006, and got way more ballsy, and by 2008 they were downright combative.
It’s part of the reason the whole national meme is so disconcerting to me, the idea that conservatives are “silenced”. Not true here! They never shut up. They own every county office, and have for decades. We’ve gotten some liberals on the school board, and one mayor, but that’s it, and it was hard as hell. There are whole swathes of this country where liberals are never heard from. National media commentators must not know this, because they all live and work in and around cities.
matoko_chan
It is called the Tyranny of the Stupid, aka populism.
And it dates from when Kylon of Croton raised a mob of farmers with scythes to chop up the aukousmatioi and mathematikoi and burn down Pythagoras’ School for Leaders.
Because the Pythagoraens were “elite”.
Palin is the spiritual heir of Kylon….a kind of demonic possession if you will.
The problem is that in a meritocratic republic, a representative democracy like America, Jefferson’s natural aristoi rise to lead…..the natural elite.
That is why conservatives want one man-one vote and to abolish the electoral college……the tyranny of the stupid, or mob-rule.
Mike in NC
Picture a cabinet filled with fat old white guys wearing ruffled shirts and funny hats. What could possibly go wrong with that?
matoko_chan
Like I said, the teabaggers mostly really hate Obama because he is one of Jefferson’s natural aristoi…..and his being black just adds insult to injury.
oldfatherwilliam
Tiresome to repeat and repeat, but Fox fans deserve to hear every day that “Nobody ever went broke underestimating—“. In a sane world, any Google search for anything O’Reilly says should turn that up first.
kay
@Mike in NC:
Her husband was way too involved with running Alaska, and his input and influence were kept completely secret, if the reports on the released emails are accurate.
The Palin’s were running Alaska like a family business.
If we actually have a working press, that deserves more attention. It’s a completely legit and vital inquiry.
Imagine if Michelle Obama had been receiving Senate-business emails, and passing them on.
The special prosecutor would be assigned.
If ken Starr was tasked in taking down Hillary Clinton, up to and including looking for her fingerprints on records, Mr. Palin is fair game.
matoko_chan
And the reason FoX newZ exists …..is that there isnt a culture war….there is an evolution of culture event, like the extinction event at the K-T boundary or glaciation. The institutions of culture are becoming entirely liberal at this point: media, academe, art, film, music, science, technology….
So FoXnewZ exploits the segregation of information to make a fake media outlet for the mob, that only tells them what they want to hear….a kind of zombie culture powered on populist rage and group inferiority complex syndrome…..ressentiment is what the french call it.
gwangung
@kay: It probably goes back to what someone made a comment about. Fox News lovers accept and cheer on people like Palin because they figure all politicians lie, but they can SEE where the lie is with Palin, whereas with Obama and other politicians of high intelligence, they can’t find it.
kay
@gwangung:
I guess. It’s crickets on the Palin property tax avoidance issue, too. They put up a fairly luxe vacation house on bare ground and then paid the lower tax rate on unimproved property.
They knew they weren’t paying property taxes on the houses they built on that bare ground, and Alaska law actually has the burden to reveal “errors and omissions” on the taxpayer.
Palin dodged property taxes. Just a fact. I’m more forgiving on tax issues than a lot of people, because mine are complicated and I hire a professional, and sign, but the fact is, she dodged taxes that were due and let an omission stand, and she was the governor.
I pay property taxes. I look at the assessment. If it described the parcel as “unimproved” and I had built a house, I’d call the county. I wouldn’t think I’d get away with it, and I’d not want to pay a penalty in addition to the higher tax.
If I were the goddamn governor I’d call, certainly.
Mike G
“… Fox’s viewers watch Fox because it’s the one place in the MSM they don’t get called stupid all day long.”
Go figure, stupid people keep getting called stupid in Reality World.
Whereas Fox tells them to be proud of their stupidity.
Martin
For the long history of Fox, nobody ever called the viewers stupid up until the propaganda became so over-the-top that you couldn’t draw any other conclusion.
But everyone was watching Fox by that point – so clearly they weren’t escaping persecution. They were always going to the place that told them what they wanted to hear and didn’t muddy their worldview with inconvenient truths. The persecution justification is only getting trotted out to mask another inconvenient truth that they don’t want to face up to.
Mr. Wonderful
“One must consider with caution the opinions of a man who rejects the name of his ancestors, and replaces it with a WASP name.”
Must one? Oh all RIGHT. Just don’t tell John Wayne.
Aaron
I would say it isn’t that the wingers are called stupid by the rest of the media, it is that their fears and prejudices are just not catered to. Why should lies like death panels and birtherism be perpetuated by any media outlet?
Stereotypical Fox viewers may not be stupid, but their views sure are.
Philo
There really needs to be a name in contrast to the “socialist” exaggerated tag. Their precious free market almost drug us into a depression again recently due in large part to derugulation. So what do we call someone who still doesn’t get it? “Fascist” may have been overplayed and abused, but “market anarchist” comes to mind. To the extent that they want unregulated capitalism, what is that if not anarchy?
Cassidy
Yeah…because we’re all just a bunch of fascists waiting for the codeword.
Do you realize how stupid you sound when you say things like this?
Cassidy
@Mr. Wonderful: BOB must absolutely hate Martin Sheen.
CommieBlaster
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eyelessgame
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