FOX's Angle ignored alleged beatings in Iraqi
prisons
In a report on recently released FBI memos detailing apparent abuses by U.S.
military personnel of prisoners in Iraq and Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, FOX News
senior White House correspondent Jim Angle assured viewers that "FBI agents say
they never witnessed any physical assaults at Guant�namo Bay." But Angle
conspicuously failed to mention that agents did witness physical assaults in
Iraq, even though the documents describing these assaults were part of the same
batch of memos that revealed what agents saw -- and didn't see -- in
Guant�namo.
Led by O'Reilly, conservative
pundits claimed Washington school "banned" A Christmas Carol
FOX News host Bill O'Reilly and his guest, href="http://www.becketfund.org/index.php/person/4.html">Anthony R. Picarello
Jr., said a public school "banned" a stage production of A Christmas
Carol because the school feared it would violate the constitutional
separation of church and state. In fact, Lake Washington High School in
Kirkland, Washington cancelled one performance of the play because the href="http://www.theattictheatre.org/upcomingshows.html">private theater
company putting on the play planned to charge admission, a violation of
school policy, and because the principal had not approved the event. In a href="http://wwwlwhs.lkwash.wednet.edu/truth.htm">statement, the principal
wrote: "The cancellation of this daytime production had nothing to do with
religion."
Barnes claimed CBO said "no
savings" from drug importation, but CBO estimated savings at $4 billion a
year
Weekly Standard executive editor and FOX News contributor Fred Barnes
falsely claimed that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) "concluded that there
would be no savings" in prescription drug costs from a law allowing the
importation of drugs from Canada and other industrialized nations. In fact, a
CBO issue
brief estimated the savings from a House-passed importation proposal at "$40
billion over 10 years, or by about 1 percent" of total U.S. spending on
prescription drugs.
TOP TEN MOST OUTRAGEOUS STATEMENTS
OF 2004
Here are the Top Ten most outrageous statements we have heard this year from
members of the media. From anti-Semitic comments and attacks on women, gays, and
lesbians to reprehensible acceptance of the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture, these
statements are acutely representative of the conservative hate speech we found
in the news media:
MISINFORMER OF THE YEAR
Since our launch in May 2004, Media Matters for America has monitored,
analyzed, and corrected conservative misinformation in the news media 24 hours a
day, seven days a week. Our staff recently reviewed the misinformation we've
identified and corrected during those eight months in order to choose our first
annual "Misinformer of the Year."
FOX's Gallagher: giving blankets
to illegal immigrants is "kind of like offering a burglar" tools for a
break-in
Nationally syndicated radio host and frequent FOX News contributor Mikehref="http://mediamatters.org/archives/search.html?string=Mike+Gallagher">
Gallagher compared giving blankets to illegal immigrants to "offering a
burglar the right tools to break into somebody's house." Gallagher made the
assertion while substitute hosting the December 22 edition of FOX News'
Hannity & Colmes.
Cable and network news overlooked
Bush's environment rule changes
On December 22, the Bush administration href="http://www.fs.fed.us/news/2004/releases/12/planning-rule.shtml">issued
controversial new regulations governing national forests. While newspapers
across the country covered the change extensively, the new rules, which are
expected to take effect next week, were not mentioned on network evening news
(ABC, CBS, and NBC) or on cable primetime news (CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News). This
pre-Christmas announcement continues a Bush administration pattern of issuing
controversial changes to environmental regulations just before holidays and
weekends, in a largely successful effort to keep them under the public's radar
screen.
A "Year in Review" of "The Point"
reveals a year of bias and distortion
Since December 18, Sinclair Broadcast Group's one-sided conservative
commentary segment "The Point," presented by Sinclair vice president Mark Hyman,
has offered a "Year in Review" series featuring "some of the most popular
commentaries" from 2004 -- and demonstrating the consistent one-sidedness of
"The Point."
Angle used report on GDP growth to
cheerlead for extending Bush tax cuts
FOX News senior White House correspondent Jim Angle used a report on the
Commerce Department's 0.1 percent href="http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041223/BIZ/412230331/1001">upward
revision in third quarter economic growth to advocate extending President
Bush's tax cuts. After reporting that "economists say the latest report makes
clear the economy is picking up speed," Angle added that "many want to see an
extension of the tax cuts" -- but quoted only a single conservative economist
who supports extending the cuts. The report featured two sources who praised
Bush's economic policy and one who praised the economy's general health; it did
not present an opposing view.
On FOX, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson
and Mike Gallagher attacked Kwanzaa
On Hannity & Colmes, Reverend href="http://mediamatters.org/items/itembody/200411300008">Jesse Lee
Peterson and nationally syndicated radio host Mike Gallagher smeared the
African American holiday Kwanzaa and attacked its founder. On the December 22
edition of the FOX News program, Peterson declared: "Kwanzaa is a racist, pagan,
Marxist holiday" and then claimed that the "so-called seven principles of
Kwanzaa are socialist, Marxist, separatist ideas." Peterson attacked Kwanzaa
founder Maulana (Ron)
Karenga, calling him a "racist" who "want[s] to get rid of God" and saying
he committed a felony in the early 1970s and led a movement "fighting against
blacks and whites uniting together." Peterson told co-host Alan Colmes that the
United States has no need for Kwanzaa because "we are a Christian nation, Alan,
and we already believe in Christ." He declared that if "a white man started a
white holiday, seven-day white holiday, black folks would be burning down
America." Gallagher, who was filling in for co-host Sean Hannity, asserted that
Kwanzaa is a "fake holiday" that was meant to "tweak white America back in 1966"
and now serves to "secularize the Christmas season." On December 21, the
right-wing website WorldNetDaily.com also detailed href="http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42019">Peterson's
assault on Kwanzaa in an article titled "Black minister: Say 'no' to
Kwanzaa."
Robertson: If people don't like
Christmas "let them go to Saudi Arabia ... Pakistan ... Sudan and find a
wonderful Muslim holiday"
Reverend Pat Robertson, host and Christian Coalition of America founder,
during the December 23 news segment of Christian Broadcasting Network's The
700 Club:
Coulter resurrected phony Clinton
scandal to discredit Rumsfeld criticism
Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter attempted to downplay the recent criticism of
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for using an autopen rather than personally
signing letters to families of American troops killed in Iraq, by restating a
false allegation that former President Bill Clinton "sold" burial plots in
Arlington National Cemetery to top-level Democratic Party donors. In her
December 22 nationally syndicated href="http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2004/122204p.htm">column, Coulter
wrote: "As president, Clinton sold burial plots in Arlington Cemetery and
liberals shrugged it off. What really gets their goat is the autopen." In
reality, Clinton granted a burial plot to only one top-level Democratic donor
who had received it not because of his donations, but because of his military
record, which was only later discovered to be a fabrication.
FOX chairman Ailes defended his
network as "fair and balanced;" Media Matters disagrees
In a December 19 interview on C-SPAN's href="http://www.q-and-a.org/">Q&A, FOX News Channel chairman and
CEO Roger Ailes staunchly defended his network's "very fine journalists" who
have "done an excellent job" and "come in every day to try to be fair." Ailes
rebuffed questions of FOX News' objectivity, insisting that the "hard news we do
is not in question." Ailes also emphasized the "journalistic standards" of the
members of FOX News host Brit Hume's Special Report panel. Media
Matters for America has documented numerous instances of inaccurate,
incomplete, and distorted reporting from FOX's "hard news" reporters, as well as
many examples of what Ailes apparently considers to be the "journalistic
standards" of Special Report panelists.
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