SoHum Parlance

Again I would point people to:

www.newshounds.us

www.sweetjesusihatebilloreilly.com
 

Crappy Photoshop job.
 

That's a stretch.
 

I've always wondered if "lefty" journalists went out of their way to publish "file photos" of Bush and Cheney, smirking, and sneering, respectively... but it turns out the former is almost always smirking, and the latter almost always sneering...

This "altered photo" stunt by FOX is a new low. FOX will probably start super-imposing a halo over McCain's head, and devil horns over Obama's.
 

I disagree that it's Faux's "new low," It's only their latest low, and fairly innovative in that it's a striking visual.

Remember "terrorist fist jab," "Obama's Baby Mama" etc. etc.?

Bookmark Newshounds. It's a daily laff riot.
 

'not a native' is a proven liar and plagiarist who makes stuff up and also takes anecdotes from the newspaper to present as if it happened to him/her. see...

see…

http://humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/eureka-makes-cover-of-outside-magazine/#comment-41661

… and the following exchange to see her whole hilarious meltdown, including her repeated claim that on BLOGs, her lies/plagiarism are only to be expected and anyone who believes her is a dupe/fool.

and now she’s going judge others?
 

I disagree that it's Faux's "new low," It's only their latest low,...

"new" or "latest" pretty much the same don't you think?
 

It was Kevin who sent me the link by the way. Thanks again Kevin!
 

8:25 give it up. It really rings hollow and desperate after a while.
 

In a way I think it's good that Faux reveals their complete lack of professionalism this early in the campaign. Such fairness. Such balance.

Surely they wish to do more shabby manipulation when things really heat up later this summer and fall. But now, why would anyone take them seriously?

This astoundingly blatant lack of principle fully neutralizes Faux's cred. At this point they're only servicing a shrinking constituency of diehard, dunderheaded neocon fossilheads.

Even Rush Limbaugh (gag, puke) called Bill O'Reilly "Ted Baxter." Pot kettle black?

These guys were so high and mighty four years ago. Look at 'em now.
 

Does FOX know their audience or what?
Remember how they had a (D) in the toolbar for Mark Foley when that scandal broke - not once but twice?

Their audience doesn't care if they are being deliberately manipulated.
That's why Rushbo's getting $400,000,000.

It's the P.T.Barnum syndrome en mass.
 

"Their audience doesn't care if they are being deliberately manipulated."

I agree. We generally only want to hear what we already agree with. This is becoming a problem with MSNBC as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/opinion/27aamodt.html?em&ex=1215230400&en=d5c7ce75d60c8ab7&ei=5070
 

both these guys are hacks. if you believe their crap so are you.
 

Kevin!
Hi, I totally agree, Fox makes Pravda look like The Nation.
On another matter, I am a fan of your paper. I like the style and content. Lately I have been following the Craigslist 'rants and Raves' stuff. and man, do you have an enemy or what? This person pretty much blames you for the crucifiction (?) and every thing since. What's the deal? Restraining order? is the Boycott thing real? having any effect?
Words of encouragement: "keep up the good work" on the grow houses, I don't know what the deal is, but I know greed is one hardass temptation.
Moviedad (moviedads.blogspot.com)
 

Kevin!
Hi, I totally agree, Fox makes Pravda look like The Nation.
On another matter, I am a fan of your paper. I like the style and content. Lately I have been following the Craigslist 'rants and Raves' stuff. and man, do you have an enemy or what? This person pretty much blames you for the crucifiction (?) and every thing since. What's the deal? Restraining order? is the Boycott thing real? having any effect?
Words of encouragement: "keep up the good work" on the grow houses, I don't know what the deal is, but I know greed is one hardass temptation.
Moviedad (moviedads.blogspot.com)
 

Kevin!
Hi, I totally agree, Fox makes Pravda look like The Nation.
On another matter, I am a fan of your paper. I like the style and content. Lately I have been following the Craigslist 'rants and Raves' stuff. and man, do you have an enemy or what? This person pretty much blames you for the crucifiction (?) and every thing since. What's the deal? Restraining order? is the Boycott thing real? having any effect?
Words of encouragement: "keep up the good work" on the grow houses, I don't know what the deal is, but I know greed is one hardass temptation.
Moviedad (moviedads.blogspot.com)
 

OOps
 

These are questions so nice, you asked them thrice!

Oh, I don't want to turn Eric's FauxNews thread into whingeing protestations of rectitude on my behalf... my only advice is to consider what's actually in our newspaper and on our website rather than what anonymice make up on blogs. Or call me.
 

anon said
both these guys are hacks. if you believe their crap so are you.

Wed Jul 02, 10:29:00 PM

See what I mean? Never address the manipulation, just run with the herd.

Hilarious!
 

dunderheaded neocon fossilheads.

Sounds like you're in high school. Learn to write.
 

"Sounds like you're in high school. Learn to write."

It's true.

If there was ever a case of arrested development, it's me. As for learning to write, it's probably too late at this point.
 

This is funny.
 

Anyone with at least half a brain can see how badly these photos were 'shopped.

Unfortunately, that leaves out Fox viewers.
 

Sorry about the multiple posts, I can't delete them.

You're right KH, not the place. When I was writing Moviedad for the paper in Hoopa, I never recieved any death threats or even slash-his-tires threats. I assmume it was because most of the readers agreed about the use of propaganda in film and TV.
One clear cut example is the movie
"Proof of Life" with Russell Crowe as a corporate mercenary with a heart. in that movie the engineer of a dam project. which actually exists in the columbian mountains, gives a speech about bringing power and an end to all the sicknesses brought to the natives because they are living as "savages" (?) in reality, the dam was being built by Ecopetrol for use in their mining operations, which is also polluting the river they dammed, and the tribes that used to live there have all been wiped out by the columbian military. the film was released six months after one of the tribal activists got attention in the press. (European press) The film takes each of the facts concerning the destruction of tribal life, and turns it into complete nonsense. not all the corporate movies are so blatant. but when it comes to FOX, there is no sublety
I find it interesting that "some" people look to the corporate media for help in overthrowing the corporate media. including the music industry, those who are promoted by the corporate music industry have already made the decision to sell out to them.
You won't find our wonderful festival performers, like Michael Franti, for one. Signing any million dollar deals with Capitol Records.
And before the "Jews for Hitler" descend upon me to defend the "Corps" let me say that I stand by what I say. I am not afraid to use my name. (see my blog if you need to know it) those of you who hide behind anonymity to talk tough, have no credibility.
 

You can't take credibility out of good reasoning. You can take it out of name calling and spin but if something is reasoned well the argument will stand on its own merit.
 

As my good friend who got slammed in all of this would say CORPORATIONS ARE US. They are the expression of the need to obtain wealth and the psychological need to forget who we trample in the process by putting in the middleman called corporate governance.
 

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July 7, 2008
The Media Equation
When Fox News Is the Story
By DAVID CARR

Like most working journalists, whenever I type seven letters — Fox News — a series of alarms begins to whoop in my head: Danger. Warning. Much mayhem ahead.

Once the public relations apparatus at Fox News is engaged, there will be the calls to my editors, keening (and sometimes threatening) e-mail messages, and my requests for interviews will quickly turn into depositions about my intent or who else I am talking to.

And if all that stuff doesn’t slow me down and I actually end up writing something, there might be a large hangover: Phone calls full of rebuke for a dependent clause in the third to the last paragraph, a ritual spanking in the blogs with anonymous quotes that sound very familiar, and — if I really hit the jackpot — the specter of my ungainly headshot appearing on one of Fox News’s shows along with some stern copy about what an idiot I am.

Part of me — the Irish, tribal part — admires Fox News’s ferocious defense of its guys. I work at a place where editors can make easy sport of teasing apart your flawed copy until it collapses in a steaming pile, but Lord help those outsiders who make an unwarranted or unfounded attack on me or my work. Our tactics may be different, but we, too, are strong for our posse.

Media reporting about other media’s approach to producing media is pretty confusing business to begin with. Feelings, which are always raw for people who make their mistakes in public, will be bruised. But that does not fully explain the scorched earth between Fox News and those who cover it.

Fox News found a huge runway and enormous success by setting aside the conventions of bloodless objectivity, but along the way, it altered the rules of engagement between reporters and the media organizations they cover. Under its chief executive, Roger Ailes, Fox News and its public relations apparatus have waged a permanent campaign on behalf of the channel that borrows its methodology from his days as a senior political adviser to Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

At Fox News, media relations is a kind of rolling opposition research operation intended to keep reporters in line by feeding and sometimes maiming them. Shooting the occasional messenger is baked right into the process.

As crude as that sounds, it works. By blacklisting reporters it does not like, planting stories with friendlies at every turn, Fox News has been living a life beyond consequence for years. Honesty compels me to admit that I have choked a few times at the keyboard when Fox News has come up in a story and it was not absolutely critical to the matter at hand.

But it cuts both ways: Fox News’s amazing coup d’état in the cable news war has very likely been undercovered because the organization is such a handful to deal with. Fox is so busy playing defense — mentioning it in the same story as CNN can be a high crime — that its business and journalism accomplishments don’t get traction and the cable station never seems to attain the legitimacy it so clearly craves.

There have been few stories about Bill O’Reilly’s softer side (I’m sure he has one), and while Shepard Smith’s amazing reporting in New Orleans got some play, he was not cast as one of the journalistic heroes of the disaster. The fact that Roger Ailes has won both Obie awards and Emmys does not come up a lot, nor does the fact that he donated a significant chunk of money to upgrade the student newsroom at Ohio University, his alma mater.

Instead, Mr. Ailes and Brian Lewis, his longtime head of public relations, act as if every organization that covers them is a potential threat and, in the process, have probably made it far more likely. And as the cable news race has tightened, because CNN has gained ground during a big election year, Fox News has become more prone to lashing out. Fun is fun, but it is getting uglier by the day out there.

•

A little more than a week ago, Jacques Steinberg, a reporter at The New York Times who covers television, wrote a straight-up-the-middle ratings story about cable news. His article acknowledged that while CNN was using a dynamic election to push Fox News from behind, Fox was still No. 1. Despite repeated calls, the public relations people at Fox News did not return his requests for comment. (In a neat trick, while they were ignoring his calls, they e-mailed his boss asking why they had not heard from him.)

After the article ran, Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy of “Fox and Friends,” the reliable water carriers on the morning show on the cable network, did a segment suggesting that Mr. Steinberg’s editor was a disgruntled former employee — Steven V. Reddicliffe once edited TV Guide, which, like Fox News, is owned by the News Corporation — and that Mr. Steinberg was his trained attack dog. (The audience was undoubtedly wondering what the heck they were talking about.)

The accompanying photographs were heavily altered, although the audience was probably none the wiser. Mr. Reddicliffe looked like the wicked witch after a hard night of drinking, but it was the photo of Mr. Steinberg that stopped traffic when it appeared on the Web at Media Matters side by side with his actual photo. In a technique familiar to students of vintage German propaganda, his ears were pulled out, his teeth splayed apart, his forehead lowered and his nose was widened and enlarged in a way that made him look more like Fagin than the guy I work with. (Mr. Steinberg told me that as a working reporter who covers Fox News, he was not in a position to comment. A spokeswoman said the executive in charge of “Fox and Friends” is on vacation and not available for comment but added that altering photos for humorous effect is a common practice on cable news stations.

It’s a particularly vivid example of how the Fox response team works, but hardly the only one. Julia Angwin of The Wall Street Journal wrote a profile of Roger Ailes in 2005. Again, her coverage was right up the middle, but that is not the way that Fox News saw it, and she was held out for ridicule over and over in items on various blogs penned by Fox News staff when she jumped the gun on the start date for the Fox business channel. (Ms. Angwin is on book leave and did not answer a message left on her cellphone.)

Earlier this year, a colleague of mine said, he was writing a story about CNN’s gains in the ratings and was told on deadline by a Fox News public relations executive that if he persisted, “they” would go after him. Within a day, “they” did, smearing him around the blogs, he said. (I did not ask him for a comment because the information was of a private nature.)

Some of the avenues of attack are easier to anticipate than others. Right now, there are advance copies circulating of a reported memoir I wrote about my times as a drug addict and drunk. I’ve already been called a “crack addict” on Bill O’Reilly’s show, which at least has the virtue of being true, if a little vintage. Expect a return engagement with some added detail. I have a bit of an advantage in that my laundry is already hanging on the line, not to mention that with a face made out of potatoes, the Photoshopped picture of me will have to go a long way to make me any uglier than I actually am. Having pointed a crooked columnist finger at Fox, at least I have it coming. Not so for many of the beat reporters who go to work every day confronted by a public relations machine that will go feral if it doesn’t get what it wants.

When I started calling around about Fox News, Mr. Lewis, the public relations head, made himself available on very short notice on the Fourth of July. He patiently explained that while yes, the game had changed, it was hardly in the way I was describing. There are no dark ops, he said, and no blacklist — “a myth” — only good relationships and bad ones.

Mr. Lewis said that members of his staff were not in the business of altering photos, that they had no control over stories that appeared on “Fox and Friends” or other shows, and he pointed out that it makes their job harder when they go after reporters. He called my suggestion that there was something anti-Semitic about the depiction of Mr. Steinberg “vile and untrue.” Mr. Lewis denied that his staff had threatened one of my colleagues or planted private information about him on blogs.

That comes as a surprise to reporters I talked to who say they have received e-mail messages from Fox News public relations staff that contained doctored photos, anonymous quotes and nasty items about competitors. And two former Fox employees said that they had participated in precisely those kinds of activities but had signed confidentiality agreements and could not say so on the record.

“Yes, we are an aggressive department in a passive industry, and believe me, the executives and talent appreciate it,” Mr. Lewis said, adding that with the 24-hour news cycle and the proliferation of blogs, a new kind of engagement and activism was required.

“We are the biggest target in the industry and we accept that,” he said. “We embrace controversy,” but he said that he and his colleagues respect that reporters have a job to do.

Many of the television-beat reporters I called had horror stories, but few were willing to be quoted. In the last several years, reporters from The Associated Press, several large newspapers and various trade publications have said they were shut out from getting their calls returned because of stories they had written. Editors do not want to hear why your calls are not being returned, they just want you to fix the problem, or perhaps they will fix it by finding someone else to do your job.

David Folkenflik, now the media reporter for National Public Radio, ended up on the outs with Fox News in 2001 when he was at The Baltimore Sun. After he wrote that Fox’s Geraldo Rivera had not been at the site of an incident of friendly fire in Afghanistan as he had told viewers, Mr. Folkenflik said, his calls to Fox News were not returned for more than 15 months.

“My sense was that it was designed to make it appear that I was having trouble doing my job, but also to intimate that the people who cross them will be shut out,” he said.

Mr. Folkenflik said he did not take it personally because it was not aimed just at him. “I think it is a notably aggressive effort to manage the Fox News brand and image,” he said. “I think it is suffused with a political sensibility, and I don’t think it is any secret that it comes from the top with Roger Ailes. They behave less like a competitive news outlet and more like a political campaign when it comes to managing coverage.”

But he holds no grudge.

“I currently have a perfectly good relationship with Fox News,” Mr. Folkenflik said. “I touch base with them all the time, and I write the good and bad news as it occurs.”

Bill Carter has covered television for The New York Times for many years and has always had a good working relationship with Fox News, but he was appalled to see what he viewed as an anti-Semitic caricature of Mr. Steinberg, a colleague and a friend.

“I have not had a big problem with them, in part because their success has been such a great story, but this seemed over the line and really hateful,” Mr. Carter said. “It doesn’t seem like you can deal with them professionally. You do this kind of thing to a guy who’s writing a story for a newspaper?”

Fox News has long held that it is its politics and not its tactics that set it apart and require such vigilance. But working reporters have been shaking their heads for years about the nightmare of dealing with Fox News and as a result, the antagonism they believe they are fighting against seems to be on the march.

Mr. Lewis made it clear that Fox News has no problem working with reporters when they don’t have an agenda, and of course, I called with a very clear one. For the record, everyone I dealt with at Fox News in connection with this column was polite, highly responsive, and got right to the point, while still not giving ground on a single material fact. A guy could get used to that.