Friday Fox Follies - The Unfairness Doctrine

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The Unfairness Doctrine will be Emperor Trump’s greatest legacy because it’s totes unfair to blame him for anything he repeats from the Fox “News” Channel. As he told TIME Magazine in his most deranged interview yet:

A: Why do you say that I have to apologize? I’m just quoting the newspaper, just like I quoted the judge the other day, Judge Napolitano, I quoted Judge Napolitano, just like I quoted Bret Baier, I mean Bret Baier mentioned the word wiretap. Now he can now deny it, or whatever he is doing, you know. But I watched Bret Baier, and he used that term. I have a lot of respect for Judge Napolitano, and he said that three sources have told him things that would make me right. I don’t know where he has gone with it since then. But I’m quoting highly respected people from highly respected television networks.

Q: But traditionally people in your position in the Oval Office have not said things unless they can verify they are true.

A: Well, I’m not, well, I think, I’m not saying, I’m quoting, Michael, I’m quoting highly respected people and sources from major television networks.

Got that? The buck stops elsewhere. At Fox. Just like I’ve been saying since 2009.

JUDGE NOT: Speaking of Judge Nappy. Last week’s exciting episode of Friday Fox Follies ended with egg on White House Spinster Sean Spicer’s face for having repeated Judge Andy Napolitano’s tin foil hat conspiracy. While Fox News Sunday Downplays Fox’s Role In Trump’s British Wiretap Claim, Fox News pulls Judge Napolitano over his Trump wiretap claims.

In other words: Emperor Trump has more faith in this whacked out conspiracy from Fox, than does Fox.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE: Trump saw Judge Nappy with those Foxy Friends, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that ‘Fox & Friends’ [is] the morning show of choice for Donald Trump. Smart people are fully aware of The Bigotry And Idiocy Of Donald Trump’s Favorite News Show, a place where Kellyanne Conjob is still welcome. Meanwhile, One Jaw-Dropping Fox & Friends Tweet Perfectly Sums Up What a Joke the Network Is after Fox News tells viewers to ignore Comey’s bombshell testimony, which is why CNN’s Jake Tapper Blasts Fox News For False Statement About Comey Testimony.

And, if that weren’t enough for one week:

Steve Doocy Gushes Over Obscure Right
Wing Blogger Who Crashed ACLU Meeting

They’ve been hitting the Rockville rape case hard because it’s the latest episode of F&F’s relentless ongoing series of Undocumented Immigrants Behaving Badly.

Fox & Friends Suggest Sanctuary
Cities ‘Offer Up’ 14 Year-Old School
Girls To Immigrant Rapists

In fact, the entire station has been working the Rockville beat [see below].

VANITY FAIR & BALANCED: Here are just 2 pull-quotes from “It’s a Disaster. It’s a Nightmare.” Is a Civil War Brewing Inside Fox News?, a much longer article by Sarah Ellison, which opens:

“No one is missing her anymore,” one Fox News insider told me recently. This person was referring, of course, to Megyn Kelly, the network’s former star who left for NBC earlier this year. Kelly’s move may have signaled a rightward lurch for NBC, which appears to be coming to terms with its place in our new Trumpian reality. (MSNBC also recently hired Kelly’s former colleague Greta Van Susteren.) But the move may be more significant for her former stomping ground, Fox News, which appears to be in the midst of its own regressive (if highly rated) culture change. During Kelly’s reign, “it was always all about Megyn,” one former Fox colleague told me. Now, it’s all about the Old White Men.

Ellison also writes:

Soon after Kelly left to pursue a more mainstream future at NBC, Fox News returned to its natural state. Rupert Murdoch, who stepped in to run the network himself, hand-selected the former conservative wunderkind Tucker Carlson to take over for Kelly. Now, Fox News’s prime-time hours from 8 to 11 P.M. are entirely peopled by white, male commentators: O’Reilly, Carlson, and Hannity. As Andy Lack recently noted at an industry event, the network feels more like “state broadcasting” than it ever did under Ailes. And the formula is working. Carlson, with his perpetually furrowed brow, is drawing higher ratings than Kelly did during her tenure.

Click through, because Ellison describes the reasons for Fox’s hard turn to the right following the Ailes Scandal.

FRYER TUCKER: This week the man/boy came out against multiculturalism…

Tucker Carlson: “Western Cities Got
Dangerous When They Imported
Radical Religious Ideologies”

…signed onto Fox’s Rockville Rape Hysteria™, with interesting results…

Watch: City Councilman Zeke Cohen
debates Tucker Carlson about immigration

Tucker Carlson cited one of our
stories on air, and now we need a shower

…and managed to piss off Kal Penn [who] hits Tucker Carlson for saying the NEA is for ‘elites’.

IN THE SPIN CYCLE ZONE: Loofah Lad is always at his funniest and spiniest when the subject is his vanilla milkshaking buddy, Emperor Trump:

Bill O’Reilly: Trump’s Obama wiretapping
claims have ‘harmed the president himself’

O’Reilly: Trump Would Be Wise to
‘Embrace Only Facts’ in the Future

But, if Emperor Trump has Fake Facts, the Falafel King will provide him cover:

O’Reilly: Trump’s False Wiretap
Claims “Might Not Have Been Far Off”

Bill O’Reilly Uses Rep. Nunes’ Stunt
To Help Trump Deflect From Russia Ties

It must be good to have a friend in the White House.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT’S DUE: I knew the day would come when I’d have to write about former-colleague John Roberts, who almost inherited Dan Rather’s chair at CBS, before the feces hit the fan on the George W. Bush AWOL scandal. Luckily, Roberts doesn’t always pushing the Fox/Trumpian line:

Fox’s John Roberts: ‘Connect Some
Of The Dots Here’ Between Devin
Nunes And The White House

However, I’ve watched Roberts’ report 5 times now. It’s filled with a lot of ifs, maybes and possibilities. There are no facts at the chewy center.

So, enjoy these CanCon reports from very early in his tee vee career instead:

MORE ON THE UNFAIRNESS DOCTRINE: While Fox made Emperor Trump’s Unfairness Doctrine possible, who made Fox’s Unfairness & Unbalanced Doctrine possible? Step right up conservative hero Ronald Reagan, whose FCC abolished the original Fairness Doctrine. When Congress passed a new one, Reagan vetoed it. Subsequent attempts to reinstate it have floundered. It was within this climate that Fox “News” was born.

It doesn’t hurt that the FCC only licenses “broadcast networks” — whatever that means in these days that almost every home is wired — because the public airwaves (radio and tee vee) are considered a public trust. Since the FCC doesn’t license cable-only stations, there is no license to yank — no pressure that can be applied — to ensure stations is not playing fast and loose with the truth.

That’s how we got 20 years of fake Fox news, quoted by what could very well be a fake POTUS, who who has instituted his own Unfairness Doctrine.

FOX BYTES: Fox’s James Rosen Joins Devin Nunes On Trump’s Russia Deflection Team • Oops! Fox’s Efforts To Intimidate A Trumpcare-Opposing Republican Backfires Big Time! • Fox Host: The Important Thing To Remember From The London Terror Attack Is Never To Blame Guns • Newt Gingrich: We Must Defeat “Left-Wing Mythology That You Can Be Multicultural And Still Be A Single Country”

Headly Westerfield is just the latest writer to make a tenuous analogy between Adolph Hitler and Emperor Trump.