Bill O’Reilly‘s recent “joke” about decapitating Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was only the latest example of a demented Fox News culture that permits on-air personalities to fantasize about assassination and other forms of violence against those deemed enemies of the station, its personalities or their worldview.
During the cable channel’s 2008 election coverage, in what she later called an attempt at humor, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta linked Osama bin Laden to Barack Obama as people who both should be assassinated:
And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, uh Obama. Well, both, if we could.
A week before Trotta’s “joke,” Republican primary candidate Mike Huckabee was apologizing for his own Obama assassination quip. Addressing a gathering of the National Rifle Association, Huckabee joked that a loud thud heard backstage during his address was Barack Obama diving to the floor to avoid gun shots. Months later, Huckabee was given his own Fox News show.
With its biggest new star, Glenn Beck, Fox News hired a host well-known for on-air death fantasies–for instance, chattering about killing filmmaker Michael Moore with his bare hands and hoping out loud that Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio) would burn to death. In a Fox News skit in September 2009, Beck portrayed himself poisoning Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
It’s a culture that apparently filters down to Fox News viewers and supporters. Over the years Fox Nation, the Fox News “owned and operated” fan website, has regularly featured comments expressing the desire to see Barack Obama’s assassinated.
Yesterday News Hounds (11/8/10) published a collection of such quotes, some of which can still be read at on the Fox site. Fox Nation purports to be self-policing, to depend on readers to report inappropriate and irresponsible remarks for removal. Apparently presidential assassination fantasies fall short of Fox Nation‘s standards for inappropriate or irresponsible commentary.
Recent examples of these assassination fantasies on Fox Nation include comments calling for President Obama to “get what Kennedy got,” for the CIA to “take this pres down” and a warning to the president that the Koran “ain’t thick enough to stop a .308 round.”
There is some evidence that Fox‘s murder fantasy culture has already helped to spark violent action. Reporting for Media Matters, journalist John Hamilton tells the story of Byron Williams, a Beck devotee who engaged in a shootout that injured two California Highway Patrol officers in July. After his apprehension, Williams told police he’d intended to travel Oakland California to kill people at the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU.
In a jailhouse interview in which he described the right-wing media sources that informed his views,Williams returned again and again to Glenn Beck:
I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn’t for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind.
Among the things Beck did, according to Hamilton, wasattack the Tides Foundation in 29 separate Fox News shows in the 18 months leading up to Williams’ foiled mission to Oakland.
Moreover, as the ADL reports, Pittsburgh’s Richard Poplawski was so inspired by Beck’s anti-government conspiracy theories, he reposted to a neo-Nazi website tape of Beck suggesting the government was building concentration camps for dissidents–before he was arrested after a shootout with police that left three officers dead.
If this all wasn’t so deadly serious it would be seriously funny, because O’Reilly has spent years accusing liberal and progressive websites of fomenting hate speech. O’Reilly’s crusade largely targets the comment and open forum sections of such websites, highlighting comments that generally pale in comparison to those broadcast on Fox and posted on Fox Nation. To add to the irony, when O’Reilly is called out for failing to make distinctions between the editorial content and comment sections of these websites, he argues that the groups are responsible for everything on their websites:
Open forum is bull…. You can regulate what’s on your website.
When it comes to hypocrisy and Fox News, you really can’t make this stuff up.
The hostility behind O’Reilly’s creepy Milbank beheading joke was on display when the host appeared to make a veiled threat toward Milbank’s boss in an appearance on another Fox show. Apparently angered that Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt permitted Milbank to publish columns critical of Fox News, O’Reilly had Fox host Megyn Kelly put a picture of Hiatt up on the screen, and told her audience:
This is the editor, Milbank’s editor, Fred Hiatt. And Fred won’t do anything about Milbank lying in his column. I just want everybody in America to know what the Washington Post has come to. All right, you can take Fred’s picture off. Fred, have a nice weekend, buddy.
(Later in the same appearance, O’Reilly suggested that the host join him in physically assaulting Milbank: “I think you and I should go and beat him up.”)
O’Reilly’s veiled threat toward Hiatt recalls one made in a recent interview with an Australian paper by Fox boss Rupert Murdoch (Australian Financial Review, 11/5/10):
People love Fox News…. We said to the cable operators when we put the price up, we said, do you want a monument to yourself…. Cancel us, you might get your house burnt down.
Perhaps the fish does rot from the head.
What a dickless gutless cretin oreilly really is.
dana points out that billo misquoted him during the looftah-man’s trirade…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110905611.html
From my viewpoint, death threats against public officials, via the public airways warrants license suspension during a careful and detailed investigation by the FCC!
jerry s: I agree.
The fish does rot from the head and Murdock is your boy. Any of the poisoness loathsomeness that oozes up from that gutter is Murdock head to feet; a corrupt sleaze whose money foments the fall of a once great experiment.
The funny thing about these assholes is that they all have remarkably thin skin. I’ve always wondered why liberals and other good people don’t just start laying into them, with strong, unequivocal language that is filled with withering insults, profanity, and keen truthfulness. How long would it be before O’Reilly, for example, completely wigged out if every day trouble-makers let him have it about the loufa incident? The thing is, despite their tough-guy stances, they’re all wimps, and losers, and deserve nothing but contempt and scorn, every god-damned day. Here’s hoping that, say, George Soros has it in him to call Beck a fuckin’ little lying jerk-off. Publicly. Loudly. For a month straight. I guarantee you Beck would back down, forever. James Cameron called Beck a “fucking asshole,” and you know what? Beck started blubbering and jabbering and backing down. Immediately. Hmm. See?
How about “News Bites” instead of “Teasers” or commercials promoting Fox news? If FOX ever broadcasts another baseball game, better sound quality and actually viewing more of the game would be nice. It would be nice to see that batter walk to the batter’s box. Let’s see the game, not the commentators.
For all the Bill O’Reillys, Glenn Becks, and Megyn Kellys, there is a producer, director, board of directors and a CEO interested in selling air time. It would appear that that quality of journalism takes last place at FOX. Perhaps “the fish does rot from the head.”
Ibid my post to the preceeding topic, only change to the F word.
Weak- weak attempt to tie conservatives to some sort of a “culture of threat”, to our left leaning friends across the isle. Sorry guys but nobody is buying it.Except your cadre of leftist idiots willing to accept any bit of snog in their swill.Beck and The rest of the Paul Reveres- will continue their ride. Your attempt to tie them to something nefarious is not even a bump in the road.
If private citizens said such things, especially about the President, the FBI and Secret Service would be after them in a minute. Perhaps the law should apply to “journalists” as well.
Not one of you have tried ,or will try to see if this story is completely out of context.As far as Orielly and Beck goes…It was quips you morons.I could quote a ton of such asides from the left.Beck is a die hard as far as this or any presidents safety goes.And i have never heard anyone on Fox say anything seditious toward the safety of this president or anyone in government..I do remember a movie(how to assassinate a president)- about Bush.This story is fear mongering plain and simple.Simple being the operative word.It is nonsense cut from whole cloth.
michael e: so Byron Williams was lying when he said he wouldn’t have gone after the Tides Foundation if Beck hadn’t warned him about their (imaginary) nefarious plans for America?
Austin
So Beck should hold his tongue as to the truth he believes, about what he considers the Tides foundation to be?And in that way not alarm people like Byron Williams?Is this one of those” silence the whistle blowers” campaigns you are running?
o’reilly is the reincarnation of one of those ‘little brown shirts’….pure facist hater. go outside and play with ur faloofa. ‘lil billy! lol
Exactly which quotes in this article are not true? Please provide proof. Exactly which quotes were taken out of context? Please provide proof. If you are going to say something is a lie you should be able to have the information available to back your statement. I can’t judge for myself if I don’t have all the information I need. So you are saying that because some people on the left have made threats it is OK for everyone to do so. I feel that who ever makes a death threat or threatens violence is WRONG, no matter who says it. Just because I don’t agree with some people”s politics doesn’t give me the right to threaten them. Like Mom always said “just because someone else does it, doesn’t make it right.”
If there are enough of these clips of the Fox News anchors and on-air personalities calling for acts of violence, then there is a precedent for calling for a revocation of their license with the FCC in the public interest. No news organization may exist to foment violent acts, calls to murder and public acts of treason. Fox News is owned by a Australian Billionaire, not an American at all, and his behavior in acting this way is treasonous in calling for murdering elected officials. There are legal penalties for treason and conspiracy for committing treason or conspiring to influence others to commit treason.
A Class Action suit to get them to cease and desist that abhorrent behavior can be brought. Simple enough and they can whine all they want, but calls for violence are not protected by the First Amendment against elected officials. That is a prosecutable offense under the law.
Aw c’m’on guys and gals, why so uptight. We are the party of cautious language and uptight political correctness, aren’t we. The right isn’t serious about it when they say someone should kill X, or take out Y, or start using “2nd Ammendment remedies”, or pruning the “tree of liberty”. I’m sure no-one thinks they mean it literally, er, a, hardly anyone. Well, not too many, anyway. They’re just using a little “journalistic license” and having some fun with us uptight communists who should all be “remedied” for being concerned about everyone, including themselves. What we need to do when we don’t get the results we want immediately is to stay away form the poles and let the happy-go-lucky Brown shirts lead for a while again. Oh. I guess we ust don’ dat. You’re right, TimN. someone should have the guts to speak truth to idiocy and call them all out for the lies and hate they inflict on their flock. Oh, hey, where’s what’s his name these days? Uh, …..oh Alan Greyson. yea. How quickly we forget.
Brown shirts?Are you guys still still trying that old ruse?Now thats funny
Sounds like a Mafia Media Network to me. . .
“o’reilly is the reincarnation of one of those ‘little brown shirts'”
Actually, when O’reilly is calling for Milbank’s beheading, he’s not acting like a brownshirt….he’s acting like the Taliban…..
Democrats have too much class to behave like other than ladies and gentlemen. There is no argument that FOX foments division; that is the context. They know no shame for what they say or do, while everyone else is accountable, FOX news alone is responsible for so much in the way of discourse being impolite and in some cases dangerous and they do not care how they come off. That is the way they stay in control, by stirring the emotion pot. Their audience gives them good ratings because their audience, being low information types, who won’t fact check them or independently verify what they say, who will instead be moved by the rhetoric to take action. It is very dangerous because the lowest common denominator of their audience will be incited into action. And we have at the site here one of those members of the FOX noise machine catering and demanding proof and wanting to see the context while it is biting him on his ass but apparently he is numb from the waist down……make that from his knees up to his hair. On FAIR there is this person whom we all know, that when being shown the sky to be blue he sees anything but blue while at the same time demanding that we are victimizing him and singling himout just because of our political slant.
O’Reilly is just a thin skinned liar. How about when he went on and on about Tiller the baby killer. But of course he bears no responsibility for Tiller’s death, to hear him tell it. People who are in the public eye, and who have a following should bear some responsibility for what they say. They are also by way of the nature of their position capable of controlling the dialogue. Ever notice how O’Reilly bullies his guests, shouts them down, is rude and insulting especially when they disagree with him or show how unreasonable he is or his position is, why he just will not hear of it, in his eyes, he can do no wrong. Beck is not much different, equally abusive and blind to his being unreasonable. Hannity, Morris, Cavuto, Shepard, Doocy, Carlson are all in the same boat when it comes to being less than careful about what they say on the air.
Beck, I hear, spent almost a week before the elections talking about the up and coming violence from the left. All week long spouting this nonsense. And what ends up in the news, but a Rand Paul follower stomping on the head of a woman who was nowhere near Paul as he exited his car. The woman in question was just trying to get a shot of herself and Paul with a sign she had, but she never got close. Instead she was manhandled by right wing men, not the left wing. And I hear the one who did the stomping pleaded not guilty in court, but there is the proof on the video.
Then there was a man in the South who was at a rally for a Republican, at a rally open to all, who was in a restaurant and it seems they found out he was a Democrat and the store manager told him and his group to leave, which he did do. Outside on the sidewalk after he left, the cops began forcing his arms into an unnatural position, trying to hand cuff him, slammed him up against the car and then a bubba like cop began to force him to the ground, but it did not look like he was resisting at all. But he was wrestled to the ground anyway. He was later charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and I don’t know what else. I don’t know what the political persuasion of the cops was, but they acted at the behest of the Republican owner of the restaurant.
Then a reporter was questioning Joe Miller; he was later handcuffed and made to wait for about 25 minutes by a private group of guards without the wherewithal to arrest anybody, they were not policemen. Although I don’t know if the guards were Republicans or not, but they were doing the bidding of Joe Miller.
The right wing says that in each of these cases they got what they deserved for being so “rowdy” but I did not see the thing they were accused of. Each instance was on tape.
Contrary to what Michael e. says I’m sure everybody sees it correctly and not the way he sees it because according to him, up is down and right is wrong and he’ll never change.
Sometimes the Democrats sound like Secretary of State Henry Stimson who closed the OSS in 1929 because “gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail”. Would have been quite handy to know what was happening in Europe during the 1930’s! Gentlemen can employ a fair share of tactics from the other side without getting grubby.
Simple slogans. This is Marketing 101. There must be substance behind them, but the slogan will be remembered so make it meaningful.
Remember, facts can’t be beaten if you stick to them. If you start to sound unsure, your opponents will declare that you are wrong.
Counter stupid ideas and fatuous speech.
Listen to the court jesters Stewart, Colbert and Maher. They are not just funny guys.
Take the risk of being called unpatriotic by pointing out the areas in which USA is falling behind the rest of the world AND SHOULD NOT BE: health care; life expectancy; deaths in childbirth. Like the bloke on the cover of the Fatboy Slim CD, if you think that you are the number 1 you’ll think that any effort to improve is just ‘big government’.
In 1985 Rupert Murdoch renounced his Australian citizenship so that he could [obtain USA citizenship and thereby] purchase US television stations. (At the time, an Australian would lose their Australia citizenship if they acquired the citizenship of another country.)
One only has to look at the contrast of FOX (Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy) and FOX News (the opposite of Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy) to see that Rupert Murdoch’s philosophy is based firmly in profits, with ideology just a convenient by-product. Controversial
BTW, the _Australian Financial Review_ that he spoke to is a conservative newspaper that actually has very good political reporting of Australia. The writing as business-centric, but it is just as likely to support Labor Party policies and criticise Liberal Party (ironically, the conservative party in Australia) as vice versa.
Unlike _The Australian_, a News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch) paper that was known in Canberra as “The Government Gazette” during the Government of the conservative John Howard by supporting everything that he did and denouncing dissent as coming from “left-wing bias in the media”.
Speaking of Australia, liberals and Democrats would do well to learn at the feet of former Prime Minister Paul Keating. Some of his rejoinders in Parliament were devastating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90eUwR1EHSI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaLLP4sc_6Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdAoQvqh7eY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_CHXDBq9Ps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0_BSI6GrZw
Also referred to John Howard as a “dessicated little coconut” and Peter Costello as “all tip and no iceberg.”
I like Chuck T’s comment above.
Why can’t FOX be shut down for FCC violations or sued in a class action?
Michael e:
“I could quote a ton of such asides from the left”
Actually NO you couldn’t. Not at all. In no way could you find as many such casual murder fantasies on other news networks (considered “left” by idiots like you) like MSNBC or CNN, or from any mainstream liberal pundits.
On Fox it’s CONSTANT. I challenge you to find as many such examples of murder fantasies on a MAINSTREAM NEWS NETWORK – not some liberal blog read by a few hundred people.
More reasonable opinions … http://www.peopleokwithmurderingassange.com/
Certainly looks like Michelle Malkin has compiled a much bigger list of violent acts and hate speech than fair.org did. This website is a sham. Pure and simple. How does one get .org status simply by trying to shut others up?
hope fully ………. we can now begin the journey back to the common sense “center”
So why not report all these death threats to the police?
It IS illegal in Amerika to make death threats against politicians is it not?
Or against others?
Would love to see Glenn Beck on the stand in a court of law.
I guss there right you have to have your Brains taken out to watch glen beck. Stop wasting peoples time with the 33 Million a year man. Why don,t you ask John Boehner and his other pals that been around for Bush first four years in office .Where The HELL Did They Spend the Six Trillion Dollars Boehner and other congress men that been there over seventeen years or more Even Sen.Mitch M. his been there the longes Think About It SIX TRILLION DOLLARS. Over Two Years OR MORE Has Gone And Naver Did A Thing About It Now They Came Up With Only Sixty One Billion Now were Going See Two Years Of No Progress Again Way To Go Republican GOV. There are More Ways To Cut Spending With Out Touching MED.CARE And Social Security. WE NEED PROGRESS
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