Foxnation Selling Fear and Doubt of Obama
Fox Running Scared from Carter’s Fear Mongering Accusations
Former President Carter recently called out Fox News as being a source and propagator of paranoia against Obama, including birtherism and Christianism. Even though the Right loves to make fun of President Carter, Fox was scared enough by his accusations to attempt to debunk the former President via their old Breitbart fallback of misleadingly editing footage to cover their sins. Media Matters called them out on it.
Here’s what President Carter originally said on Larry King Live, which got the Fox chickens running scared:
CARTER: And I think the negative aspect to it is because of the total distortion of the news that Fox broadcasting has perpetrated on the American people, when they hammer away day after day after day that his health program will kill old people and things of that kind. A lot of gullible folks in the United States actually believe what Fox puts forward as facts when most of it is just complete distortions.
And they’ve also attempted to twist around what his (Obama’s) religious faith is and whether or not he’s an American and so forth. So I think that’s a new version of cable news that was not there, thank goodness, when I was there.
But I would attribute most of the negative attitude not to the facts, but to the distorted facts that comes out of the Fox….
I don’t think the Tea Party people are racist, except maybe a tiny portion of them. But there has been a deliberate effort — again, referring to Fox Broadcasting — to inject the race issue into it. They have actually called Obama a racist on television. And when they say, like some of the leaders of the Republican Party have said, that he’s epitomizing the tribal influence of his father from Kenya, you know, that obviously has political connotations. So I think — I mean, racist connotations.
Sad that it took a former President to call Fox out on their propagandizing and fear-mongering, but nonetheless, Carter is correct. Fox is an arm of the Republican Party and as such, is stooping to the old standby tricks of the Republican Party of smearing their opponent via vague but relentless anti-immigrant, racist, fear of the other, anti-Muslim, anti-American fears. They are a cable station of paranoia and fear based on lies and smears. Fox News is basically Nixon and McCarthyism redoux. Fox News is guilty of inciting doubt regarding the 44th President’s legitimacy and as such, is a radical weapon of extremists being used to undermine the United States Government.
O’Reilly didn’t like his network being called out by a President, even one he routinely mocks. So he immediately accused the former President of “not telling the truth”. A pause while the sane among us choke on the projection and hubris born of desperation. I feel a falafel moment approaching.
Video Courtesy of Media Matters:
OREILLY: And while we’re on the subject of presidents, Jimmy Carter is a Fox News hater. Did you know that? Speaking on CNN he said this about President Obama and FNC. I think Larry fell asleep during that interview, I’m not sure. So let’s examine Mr. Carter’s statements. We can find no Fox News employee who has said President Obama is a Muslim. We can find no Fox News employee who has said the president was not born in America. Now, years ago there was some misreporting on a madrassa story, but corrections were quickly issued. So it seems Mr. Carter is not telling the truth, and it is beneath a former president to accuse FNC of injecting race into the political process as Carter does. Carter can simply not back up what he says, in fact he’s afraid to appear here on the Factor. Because he’d look foolish. His ridiculous statements are irresponsible and reflect poorly on him.
Bill then presented Breitbarted footage to make his case; you know, the way a lying coward does. Here’s what Bill O’Reilly ran:
CARTER: …. So I think that’s a new version of cable news. [edit] I would attribute most of the negative attitude not to the facts, but to the distorted facts that comes out of Fox. [edit] There has been a deliberate effort — again, referring to Fox Broadcasting — to inject the race issue into it.
Those little edit spots? That’s where O’Reilly deliberately and with malice of foresight crops Carter’s quote to cover up the fact that he said that Fox has “actually called Obama a racist on television.” Now why would O’Reilly want to do that? After all, if it’s not true, why does he need to Breitbart the footage? It’s not for brevity’s sake, otherwise he would have mentioned only the racist accusation.
Nope. O’Reilly edited the footage because the footage shows President Carter calling Fox out for something they actually did. In other words, O’Reilly knowingly and willfully distorted a former President’s words in order to save face in front of his viewers. Previously assembled footage doesn’t come in separate parts where it’s easy to lose a section here and there. It comes as one clip and is then deliberately edited to the second by the producers to capture the meaningful parts, or in Fox’s case, edited out to sell a lie.
As for Bill’s other claims, let’s take a trip down reality lane for a quick refresher.
Here we have Fox selling Birtherism and Doubts regarding Obama’s faith (facts via Media Matters):
Glenn Beck said that Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture” and “is, I believe, a racist,” a statement he subsequently claimed to stand by, in spite of growing criticism.
In Fox & Friends, Kilmeade, along with Doocy and Carlson, spent several segments advancing a false report that then-Sen. Barack Obama was raised a Muslim and attended a madrassa, or Islamic school, as a child in Indonesia.
On The O’Reilly Factor, conservative columnist Ann Coulter said, “Andrew Sullivan pointed out, you know, what are these radical Islamists going to do when they look and see the president of the great Satan. And you know, he has brown skin. And he attended madrassas…”
On Fox & Friends First, Doocy said he had to “clarify” the show’s reporting on the fabricated madrassa story, stating that “Mr. Obama’s people called and they said that that is absolutely false. They said the idea that Barack Obama went to a radical Muslim school is completely ridiculous.”
Apparently Fox doesn’t have anyone in the research or producing department who can actually use Google, a phone, or read a book; the notion that Obama’s people had to call them to give them information they never even bothered to fact-check before airing should have been humiliating, but note how even the correction is given dubiously as if Fox is only repeating what the Obama camp says but has no way of verifying this information. This lack of any standard or vetting of information, in and of itself, should disqualify Fox from calling itself News.
Media Matters points out:
Fox Nation promoted birther stories using one of their favorite tricks of visual cues to lie to their viewers by repeatedly showing pictures of Obama in Somali clothes. In addition to this cowardly visual trick:
Hannity said, “This huge birther thing is another huge distraction. To try and portray conservatives as a bunch of right-wing nutjob kooks when people all they wanted to do was say, ‘where’s the birth certificate?’ That’s all they were asking. ‘Show us the birth certificate.’ ”
Thomas McInerney, a retired lieutenant general who now serves as a Fox News military analyst, says that he believes there are “widespread and legitimate concerns that the President is constitutionally ineligible to hold office.”
As those of us with access to the outside world know, said birth certificate is and has been available for verification for quite some time now. But enough of that. The real question here is, “Why are you asking about his birth certificate? What do you hope to achieve by repeating this question ad nauseam, when you already know the answer?”
What they hope to achieve is what they have achieved: smearing the President as a shady figure who can’t be trusted, all the while maintaining their plausible deniability by framing it as a question and when all else fails, they simply edit reality for their brain-washed viewers.
The Fox Chickens are obsessed with race so much that they can’t stop talking about it (and here’s a clue, if you can’t stop talking about race because you see it first and foremost before you see policy or facts, you are probably a racist):
Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich asked “What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior…”
Fox News hosts and personalities — including O’Reilly himself — relentlessly promoted the unsubstantiated allegations against the Department Of Justice’s handling of prosecutions against the New Black Panther Party.
Beck: “Anti-colonialism” allows you to “see Barack Obama and where he’s going.”
Beck says Obama’s agenda is driven by “reparations” and the desire to “settle old racial scores.”
Beck: Obama satisfying his “desire for racial justice” though “intimidation, vilification, bullying.”
Beck frequently claims Obama policies are “slavery” or will lead to slavery.
Guest-hosting O’Reilly, Ingraham claims Obama “channeled his best Jeremiah Wright accent” in NAACP speech.
There’s plenty more where that came from, but don’t expect your average Fox viewer to ever see it or hear it again. It’s been edited out of memory by trusted “news” anchors like Bill O’Reilly and his “news” producers.
When they aren’t outright lying, they are using every propagandist’s best tricks of insinuation and innuendo, a feat much more easily achieved on TV where they can show a picture of Obama in scary foreign clothes while “reporting” on his “strange associations”. Cue the scared, old white people in rural America for whom change is not an easy notion.
Fox News is clearly the home of cowards who are willing to knowingly lie in order to spread misinformation about the hate they propagate. They’re not editing footage to sell an ideology; they’re doing it to undermine the legitimacy of a duly elected President. They’re not having a “debate”; they’re deliberately stoking fires of paranoia and fear in order to incite a lack of trust in the 44th President. They are using cheap tricks of racism, birtherism and Christianism in order to achieve their goal.
President Carter was right about Fox and their gullible viewers and he had the courage to speak the truth, but then Carter has always been a person whose faith was evident in his actions. The little Fox chickens are running scared, hiding in their bunkers of edited footage, where all propagandists reside.
Do wave hello to Osama Bin Laden, Bill-O. I can almost picture the two of you sharing an edit suite in your bunker of fear right now. Do tell us, Bill, what is the difference between Osama Bin Laden’s edited footage and your own? I’m just askin’. Both want to destroy the US government. Both spread lies and fear. Both are being used as political terrorism. Please, do explain to us what the difference is and be sure to wrap your answer in the flag and the troops who y’all keep claiming are fighting for your right to lie to innocent, scared Americans.
Nothing wrong with “asking questions”, right? And if this were TV, Bill, I’d run your edited footage with a crawler about far right extremists killing Americans and the Department of Homeland Security’s warning about said far Right extremists being the real danger to Americans and maybe a picture of you in a Klan robe with the question, “Is Bill O’Reilly a far Right extremist? Americans need to know,” just to get the idea across…..
This is no debate of ideas, Bill. This is pure propaganda being sold by cowards like yourself who don’t have the guts to debate your ideas based on their own merit. Only a bully and a coward has to resort to smears and lies in order to make their point.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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