Fox News Uses Edited Obama Clip to Attack the President for Media Bias

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Last updated on February 7th, 2013 at 02:56 pm

Fox News responded to Obama’s criticism of their punishing of Republicans with an edited propaganda clip that confirmed the president’s point about their bias.

Fox and Friends attempted to counter Obama’s point that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh punish Republicans for bipartisanship by playing clips of Obama criticizing Fox and having contributor Peter Johnson Jr. label the president’s criticisms silly and bizarre. However, Fox News confirmed the accuracy of the president’s criticism by selectively editing video of Obama to create a deceptive, misleading, and very partisan impression.

Here is the Fox and Friends video:

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

One of the clips that Fox used was of President Obama at a 2011 University of Maryland town hall saying, “If you are on the right, then you’re only reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page and watching FOX News.”

The edited clips gave the impression that the president was singling out Fox News.

What Fox and Friends didn’t play was the entire quote. What What Obama said in full was, “You’ve got a media that has become much more splintered. So those of you who are of a Democratic persuasion are only reading The New York Times and watching MSNBC — (laughter) — and if you are on the right, then you’re only reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page and watching FOX News. (Laughter.) And if that’s where you get your information, just from one side, if you never even have to hear another argument, then over time you start getting more dug in into your positions.”

Here is the full clip:

The president was discussing the danger that comes when Americans only get their information from partisan sources. The president was arguing against partisan media on both the left and the right. Since the entire Fox News business model is based on convincing their audience that all other media sources are liberally biased liars, they are going to view any objective call for less partisanship as a threat to their survival.

By editing an Obama clip to make their argument, Fox News confirmed the accuracy of the president’s recent comments about the right wing media’s desire to keep the political environment hyper partisan. Fox doesn’t seem to understand that editing clips of the president to fit their partisan objectives isn’t the best way to argue that that they are being unfairly attacked by a partisan president.

The Fox News response to Obama’s comments proved that are a big part of the problem, and the solution is to turn off Fox.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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