Kimberly Guilfoyle, former first lady of San Francisco, arguing that everyone in Berkeley is fabulously wealthy and has too much free time.
Roger Domal, the vice president for eastern ad sales at Fox "News", quoted in the New York Times:
"People know what the news is ... You're not coming to cable news for news anymore. You're coming for either validation of your opinion or you're looking to find out what the other side is saying."
This is the guy in charge of selling Fox's real product -- viewer eyeballs -- to its customers, corporations. He's under no illusion that it's news.
Why is anyone else?
Here's a question for the FCC and the FTC: If the guy in charge of selling the product says that the product is not what it purports to be -- "News" -- then why is this business not being prosecuted for making demonstrably, admittedly false claims about its product?
This ain't a toaster. This is the most important product in a democracy -- valid information about the world. Fox exec admits that's not his company provides.
Even Fox's tag line, "We report, you decide," is false.
No news there.
What is news is that the company's VP admits that the deciding has already been done. The company's VP admits that it is not doing the "report" part -- because that's what "news" is. You could look it up.
Obama had it right in his earlier stance on Fox. He backpedaled under pressure from confused journalists, who seemed to be under the illusion that what Fox does is journalism.
Why are actual journalists so afraid to call Fox what it is -- corporate propaganda that provides "validation of your opinion" billed as "News"?
Why won't they call a fox a fox?
The Times piece is about a show called "The Five" -- which is basically five obnovious people sitting around a table, spouting lines designed to reinforce the opinion that the people who own and program Fox "News" want its viewers to have (or thinks its viewers already have.) See if you can guess what that opinion is.
In this video, "The Five" discuss a Berkeley study that finds that poor people are more compassionate than rich people.
What study? you might ask. Who were the authors? What were the methods for determining the results?
Well, don't look to this nearly nine-minute long discussion for the answers to such questions.
In fact, all the viewer learns is that a Berkeley study finds that poor people are more compassionate than rich people -- it's essentially a factoid from the news crawl, not even a sentence.
But the five panelists use it to anchor a fairly shameless and dishonest assault on:
- Berkeley
- college Professors
- poor people
- liberals
Among the talking points thrown around is that "people in Berkeley" are "excruciatingly wealthy". This is parroted around the table -- including by Kimberly Guilfoyle, the ex-underpants model ex-wife of San Francisco's former mayor, Gavin Newsom -- who knows damn well that, well, that's an overstatement.
"Can I just tell you? Where you went wrong with this?" says Guilfoyle. "Berkeley! I mean, why are you giving this any credibility whatsoever? I agree with you in your intro, that this is, it's just ridiculous. I mean, this is what they come up with in Berkeley," and here she glances down at her script, "because they have so much money and so much time."
Who in Berkeley, exactly, is the "they" who has "so much money and so much time"? The researchers who did the study? The graduate students?
You see, she is arguing that the host is wasting his time even talking about this study, because it comes from Berkeley. We're never told that it comes from the University of California -- it just comes from "Berkeley", a bunch of hippies on the street, just making this stuff up. Just blowing it out their bongs. And so, like, I mean, why are you giving this any credibility whatsoever?
"I did this story because it practically writes itself," says the host, looking down at his script.
Also among the opinions reinforced by this great new show -- a fitting replacement for Glenn Beck, really, in the stoking fear and loathing time slot -- is that poor people could not be more compassionate than the wealthy, because there is crime in slums. You see, poor people are criminals, and commit crimes against other poor people. Therefore, they could not possibly be more compassionate than wealthy people.
Really.
Hello, FCC. Hello, SEC. Hello, White House. Hello, Senator Franken -- have you got your ears on? This is not news -- it is destructive propaganda, designed to tear this country apart. And in case you hadn't noticed, it's doing a pretty good job of it.
After all, this appears to be how Republicans in government -- and hoping to be in government -- get their information.
Is it any wonder that the Speaker of the House, second in line to the Presidency, thinks that the problem with carbon dioxide is that it causes cancer? Or is a by-product of bovine digestion?
STEPHANOPOULOS: So what is the responsible way? That's my question. What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?
BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide. And so I think it's clear...
Yet another study has found that viewers of Fox News are not only less informed than the consumers of news from most other sources, they are less informed than consumers of no news at all.
Let me say that again. Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't follow the news at all.
Fairleigh Dickinson University recently questioned 612 adults in New Jersey about how they get their news, offering as options traditional outlets like newspapers and local and national television news, or blogs, websites and even Comedy Central's "The Daily Show."
They then asked a series of factual questions about the major events of the last year, from the "Arab Spring" to the Republican race for president.
For example, respondents were first asked whether, to the best of their knowledge, opposition groups in Egypt had been successful in bringing down the Mubarak regime.
Among NPR listeners, 68% correctly said they had been; only 49% of Fox News viewers answered correctly. In fact, the survey found, Fox viewers were 18 percentage points less likely to answer correctly than those who watched no news at all.
"The results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don't watch any news at all," said Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson.
Of course, this all makes sense when you consider that Domal, the FOX VP, sees his network as having neither the responsibility nor the need to present news.
Again:
"People know what the news is ... You're not coming to cable news for news anymore. You're coming for either validation of your opinion or you're looking to find out what the other side is saying."
In other words, FOX doesn't need to inform its viewers. They're already informed. They're not coming here for the news. They already know what the news is.
Unless, of course, they're FOX viewers.
The most worrisome part is that you can count more than half the Congress among those ranks.
I'm not a big fan of most restrictions on first amendment rights.
But if this isn't what the famous test held to be the standard for possibly limiting speech -- falsely shouting "fire!" in a crowded movie theatre -- nothing is. From the famous decision in Schenck v. United States (about the legality of speaking out against war during WWI), written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic ... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Of course, this presumes that the Congress is able to discern reality from sophisticated propaganda waged by a multinational media conglomerate whose business is selling its viewers' eyeballs -- members of Congress or not -- to other corporations.
And that they would recognize a clear and present danger to the nation's security when they saw one on TV.
(Revised 12/31, from an earlier version)
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