Fox News Channel airs a weekly media criticism show called Fox News Watch. Disgraced New York Times reporter Judith Miller is one of the panelists because…well, it’s Fox.
TVNewser noticed that the show posts a web video of the chatter among the panelists during commercial breaks. On this weekend’s show, they started talking about how they weren’t gonna talk about Murdoch’s current scandal.
You can watch the video here. The conversation consisted mainly of right-wing panelist Cal Thomas saying, “Anyone want to bring up the subject we’re not talking about, for the streamers?”
That elicited some chuckles, and Thomas said: “I’m not going to touch it.”
{NOTE: Johnston’s column on NewsCorp.’s tax rebate has been retracted; read his explanation of his error here): Other things the show won’t likely discuss: David Cay Johnston notes in a Reuters column that Murdoch manages to make money on his U.S. taxes:
Over the past four years Murdoch’s U.S.-based News Corp. has made money on income taxes. Having earned $10.4 billion in profits, News Corp. would have been expected to pay $3.6 billion at the 35 percent corporate tax rate. Instead, it actually collected $4.8 billion in income tax refunds, all or nearly all from the U.S. government.
The vaunted New York Times refuses to print anything on their pages that says that the NYT was wrong.
Been doing this for decades.
Care to comment? Or is this just Fox bashing to bash Fox?
Touch of hypocrisy, I would say. Wouldn’t you?
To Curmudgeon; I don’t seem to understand your comment, so perhaps you can clarify your position to me. (My potential for misunderstanding is enormous.) If you read FAIR’s posts, many–maybe even most–of them are highly critical of the New York Times. So where is FAIR’s hypocrisy? Nor has Fox been the only news outlet that FAIR has cited for duplicity. Maybe it’s right that Fox should not comment on recent events in England, you know, a conflict of interest. I really don’t know. But this issue cuts right to the heart of an independent media or the lack thereof. If you are a libertarian (I don’t necessarily mean you, Curmdugeon) then you should be shouting to high heaven for an independent media, not one controlled by any government, or one held by a corporation with its hands in everything, where news is a commodity like any other commodity, bought and sold like pork bellies.
and it’s just not fauxnews…the moonie washington times has been steadfastly ignoring murdochgate, too.
See no evil
Hear no evil
And only speak evil of your enemies
Curmudgeon, are you a fucking MORON or what????? You are an obvious troll that never reads anything on this website unless your masters direct you here.
Well…Sir Edmund Hillary would know what to say — albeit paraphrased. How can News Corp. wiretap phones and hack e-mails? Because they can.
Murdoch, Inc.: a news matrix of pundits instead of genuine journalists. A corporate culture where demagogy subsidizes reactionary corporate cheerleading while simultaneously covering-up “crime in the suites.” And where being the only game in town results in “agitprop” for the New Corporate Millennium — which somehow gets working class and petit bourgeoisie stiffs to vote against their own economic interests. Time after time.
Corporate greed never had it so good.
All a bit depressing, really. As is the debate in the UK House of Commons and the US Congress. Everybody wants to jump on Murdoch “w/ both feet.” ‘Cept it’s a lot of crap posturing for the cameras and little else. And, in the end, both bodies will minimize what small potatoes exist in order to punish Murdoch — and/or pass new laws with no real teeth to prevent it in the future.
But nobody gets off lightly on this one. Not even FAIR. No matter how illegal or undermining the deeds that the forces of reaction commit — the Right are always considered “patriotic” first and illegal second. Ad nauseum. If a genuinely left-wing news network committed the same misdeeds — their pundits and their CEOs would be getting dragged down Broadway or around Parliament before getting sent to Gitmo.
But there’s an even bigger subject which everybody seems to avoid. It used to be — at least in the US — that foreign ownership of our MSM was limited to 20%. Rupert Murdoch hangs his hat up on a California ranch between trips into and out of the US for five years and becomes a US citizen. Legal — yes. In keeping with the spirit of the law requiring US ownership in mainstream journalism? Not a chance. A US president has to be native-born. Better yet — he has to be a US resident for the 14 years prior to his election. If we don’t want vagabond presidents — why do we tolerate the vagabond captains of the MSM?
This is what we get for kowtowing to the high and mighty.
Ah, “Fox News Watch”. That’s virtually the only ‘serious’ Fox program (as opposed to The Simpsons, Family Guy, Married With Children, etc) that I ever regularly watched, and that was back before the Internet when FNW had Jeff Cohen (FAIR cofounder) on as a regular panelist. Even then it was hard to take, what with Cal Thomas and usually 2 or 3 other Conservatives or tepid moderates on the panel, but Mr Cohen (and the occasional other liberals) would make it really refreshing/interesting media commentary. Nowadays with websites such as this one, I don’t need to sit through the blatherings of Cal Thomas (or the warmonger Judith Miller) in order to get to some good, incisive commentary on the media…