Mark Howard of News Corpse (9/3/09) has a look at a September 2 Fox News "sermon" in which Glenn Beck "has used his divine vision to reveal the evidence of Satan's secret seeds" in the form of "paintings and sculptures and other works by history’s subversives--the artists!"

As Beck "associates the evil artists with their patron, Rockefeller," Howard notes that, "unfortunately, he doesn't specify which one. In fact, he jumps around to several of them without making any distinction":

Beck begins his unveiling with a denouncement of a relief at the entrance to Rockefeller Center. The work shows two men on either side of the doors. Beck tells us that one is holding a hammer, and the other a sickle. Ergo communism! It's right there in plain sight. Except that the first man is actually holding a shovel, according to the historians curating the Center's artwork. The figures were meant to represent the strength of America's industry and agriculture, which I'm sure Beck views as treasonous.

Then Beck focuses on a bas relief carving by Italian-American sculptor Attilio Piccirilli called Youth Leading Industry. Beck's interpretation of this work centers on his theory that the artist, and thus the work, were avowedly fascist. Beck asserts that a strong male figure in the piece is Mussolini. Whether or not that's true, and there is some debate, it is illustrative of Beck's dementia that he can jump from warnings about progressives being communists to progressives being fascists without taking a breath.

"In the real world," meanwhile, Howard explains the historical fact that "Mussolini was a bitter foe of Stalin and vice versa." See the recent issue of FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Glenn Beck Is No Howard Beale: He's Mad Like a Fox, and Wants to Take Us In" (6/09) by Steve Rendall.

News Corpse blogger Mark Howard (8/10/09) calls the fact that "industry sources are reporting that Don Imus is in talks with the Fox Business Network to simulcast his Imus in the Morning radio program" a "de facto admission by FBN that they have failed to attract an audience capable of sustaining the network."

Howard sees further evidence of the network's struggles in that "they are approaching their second anniversary and still do not permit Nielsen to publish their ratings." And their rumored acquisition bodes ill for whatever credibility may remain:

Acquiring Imus would be a desperation play for eyeballs. While Imus suffered a devastating blow as a result of his "nappy-headed hos" remarks, losing his top-rated radio program and the MSNBC simulcast, he still has a smaller but significant fan base. However, for a business network to hand over the prime morning hours as the stock market opens to a shock jock with no business credibility tells you that they no longer consider business news their mission. They are grasping for any viewers they can round up.

"Remember," Howard urges, "this is the network that interviewed New York's Naked Cowboy on their first day of broadcasting. They haven’t come very far since then, have they?"

News Corpse blogger Mark Howard (7/8/09) has linked to a London Guardian "story that simply must be read":

Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures and to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.

Cautioning that "the rest of the story just gets more lurid," Howard then updates with what he deems a "shocking look into the way that Murdoch and his accomplices operate" on this side of the Atlantic--namely, through absolutely shameless toadyism:

Rupert Murdoch appeared on his own Fox Business Network today where Stuart Varney, who is notorious for aggressively challenging (i.e., interrupting) liberals, attempted to ask him a question:

Varney: The story that is really buzzing all around the country, and certainly right here in New York, is that the News of the World, a News Corporation newspaper in Britain…
Murdoch: No, I'm not talking about that issue at all today.
Varney: OK. No worries, Mr. Chairman. That's fine with me.

Doling out "a little positive reinforcement" when Fox News "actually gets something right," Mark Howard of News Corpse (6/18/09) agrees with Sean Hannity's declaration of "the death of journalism"--though disagreeing with the context of Fox's pronouncement, being their assertion that a scheduled ABC News broadcast "that would delve into the pros and cons of the president's policy" on healthcare amounts to "an infomercial for Obama's plan. They assert that nothing like this has ever happened before":

Once again, Fox News is either pathetically ignorant or desperately dishonest. (Yeah, I know. It's both.) Last year Fox News broadcast a special from the Bush White House they called Fighting to the Finish. And there was also their highly promoted exclusive, Dick Cheney: No Retreat. These are just two blatant examples of hypocrisy by Fox. There are many more incidents of Fox serving as the PR agency for the Republican Party. But somehow, ABC having a town hall, where they assert that multiple views will be discussed, is an abomination that (finally) heralds the end of journalism.

In the end, Howard bemoans how "I guess that I should just be satisfied that they are acknowledging something close to reality at all. Even though they don't grasp their own role in journalism's demise."

Noticing how "in the past week, Republican politicians and pundits have been striving mightily to invoke fear in the hearts of the American people," News Corpse blogger Mark Howard has collected (5/25/09) some choice quotes from GOP members "blanketing the airwaves with assertions that President Obama's policies on national security (Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, torture, etc.) will result in another 9/11":

Cheney: "It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe."...

John Boehner: "I think this is a pre-9/11 mentality, and I think it’ll make our nation less safe."

Karl Rove: "They’re doing the wrong thing for our country, they're doing the wrong thing for our men and women in uniform, and they're making us less safe."

But another selection of quotations, from corporate journalists themselves, support Howard's observation that not only are Dick Cheney & Co. "accelerating the rhetoric," they also are "bringing along reinforcements to alert the terrorists that America is 'less safe' and therefore vulnerable":

Joe Scarborough (MSNBC): "I knew by the second day that America was less safe."

Laura Ingraham (Fox News): "I think you can make a pretty compelling case that we're less safe today."...

David Gregory (Meet the Press): "But do you agree with the vice president when he says that the country is less safe under President Obama?"
Newt Gingrich: "Absolutely."

Media critic blogger Mark Howard (News Corpse, 5/16/09) has a problem with the voluble media controversy over "the fact that Obama’s pro-choice position is in conflict with [Notre Dame] University's Catholic principles"--namely, "neither the Catholic protesters nor the media ever threw similar tantrums when George W. Bush delivered the commencement speech in 2001, after receiving his honorary degree":

Every good Catholic knows that the church is strictly opposed to capital punishment. Since Bush set records for carrying out death sentences when he was governor of Texas, you would think that the same guardians of virtue that are protesting Obama, who has never personally signed an abortion certificate, would have been out in force for a man who presided over 152 executions. But there was nary a peep. There were no bishops signing petitions opposing Bush's appearance. There were no protests on campus. There were no students refusing to participate in graduation ceremonies. And there were no cameras from national news networks circling like buzzards.

If these Catholic Crusaders are truly interested in demonstrating their piety without prejudice, they should immediately call for Notre Dame to revoke Bush's honorary degree. If the press is honestly endeavoring to be objective, they should pose this question to the protesters.

Making clear that he doesn't "fault the pro-life movement's efforts to advance their beliefs through protest and civil disobedience," Howard maintains his own right to "fault the media for the inflated sense of importance they bestow on such a tiny assemblage of adversaries. Polls show overwhelming support for the president's visit to Notre Dame."

News Corpse blogger Mark Howard goes deep into the belly of the beast (3/21/09) with a look at some revealing comments from Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume upon receiving the William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence: "Thanks to Brent [Bozell] and the team at the Media Research Center...for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years." Hume's subsequent admission that "it was a daily buffet of material to work from, and we certainly made tremendous use of it" makes Howard think

it sounds like the MRC was Fox News' wire service. They saved Fox the trouble of having to go out and make up the news by themselves.... But this isn't the first time a Foxian has revealed that they are in the employ of rightist ideologues:

• Fox anchor Jon Scott was caught reading directly from a Republican press release as though it were news.
• Rupert Murdoch admitted that he tried to shape public opinion on the war in Iraq.
• Murdoch also boasted that his Fox Business Network would be a more “business-friendly” network....
• In a revealing bit of staff development, George Bush hired Fox anchor Tony Snow to be his press secretary.

And, as a bonus bit "just added" by The Most Biased Name in News, Howard tells us that on March 23, "in an interview with NPR, Fox News VP Bill Shine blurted out that Fox is the 'voice of opposition.'"

News Corpse blogger Mark Howard chronicles (11/12/08) how "pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc." are not just "on the wrong side of public opinion in the recently concluded election," but "are also losing listeners and viewers who are rapidly awakening to the dishonesty and hostility wafting through the conservative media's airwaves":

In a feat of denial, though, the conservative punditry is barreling headlong into a campaign of fear-mongering and frightful tales of censorship. They believe, and hope to persuade others, that Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress are surreptitiously plotting to reinstate the dreaded Fairness Doctrine that their hero, Ronald Reagan, vanquished 20 years ago. Should that happen, they say, their little ideological monopoly of the air will come crashing down. The main problem with their scare tactic is that there is neither substance nor truth in it.

Howard patiently explains that, "what's more, Obama has explicitly stated his opposition to the Doctrine on multiple occasions."

Which is too bad, actually. Read FAIR's magazine Extra!: "The Fairness Doctrine: How We Lost It, and Why We Need It Back" (1-2/05) by Steve Rendall