Proof that Hannity and Beck are not reliable journalists

[_dartagnan]

FOX News reporters get hoodwinked by an ACORN employee who starts making up all sorts of nonsense after she realized they were working undercover with hidden camera. FOX News reports on everything she said as if it were true, without verifying ANY of it.

This is friggin HILARIOUS folks, a must see video clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wVZJdBC ... r_embedded

[_richardMdBorn]

Hey Kevin,

What do you use as your sources of information? Do you consider the NYT more reliable than Fox News?

The New York Post's Kyle Smith has a peach of a column on the New York Times's explanation that it missed the Van Jones story because "our Washington bureau was somewhat short-staffed during the height of the pre-Labor Day vacation period":

Here’s how long-staffed The New York Times actually is. Long after Glenn Beck reported — back in July — that Jones was history’s first communist czar, and even after Gateway Pundit reported, on Sept. 3, that Jones had signed a wackadoodle 9/11 “truther” petition, The Times sent two reporters to Boston (in a story published Friday, Sept. 4) to pre-report the non-story of Joseph P. Kennedy II’s run for Ted Kennedy’s seat. (He later said he wasn’t interested. Also, the picture of Joseph the Times ran was actually of his brother Max.)

...Jill Abramson, the managing editor, admitted only to being “a beat behind” the story but added that the paper had caught up — after the saga was over. The EMS equivalent of this statement would be, “Sorry I didn’t take your 911 call for four days. At least I was in time for the funeral.”

There are two possibilities:

(a) the Times is as dopey as Ms. Abramson seems eager to paint herself as;

or (b), they decided to ignore what was very obviously a real story and thus (vastly overrating their waning powers as gatekeepers to "all the news that's fit") bury it.

The media have taken a conscious decision to serve as Obama's palace guard. This doesn't seem a commercially sound proposition. (The Washington Post is currently losing $1.10 on every copy, which suggests, as I've said before, way more than a transitional-challenges-of-the-Internet problem.) But, beyond that, it would seem unlikely to do much for your sense of self-worth.

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/2442/99/

Even if Fox got this one wrong, I suspect that defending ACORN is a losing proposition.

[_Kevin Graham]

I have no desire to defend either the NYT or ACORN.

I just found it funny that after many years of listening to FOX News back slap CNN and other LIberal news outlets, for things like refusing to cover topics that wouldn't be favorable to Obama, that here they are being true hypocrites.

How many times has O'Reilly and Hannity claimed the Liberal media is an insult to journalism?

And yes, they do have a liberal slant. But as far as I can tell, they've done nothing to compare to this. FOX News didn't verify the source. They invented a story, and then ran with it, because their goals and motives were predetermined.

It's their religious slogan of being "Fair and balanced" that makes this so funny to me. Fair and balanced according to whom? Have they apologized to the public as they so frequently demanded of other news agencies? Have they come clean about their biases as they have demanded so frequently of other news agencies?

[_cinepro]

Who ever thought talk show hosts were "journalists"?

Bill O' Reilly has worked as a journalist in the past, but even he doesn't refer to anything he does as "journalism". These people are "political commentators" and ultimately entertainers.

If Acorn were smart, they would do some damage control by admitting they screwed up and then making very sweeping and public changes to their employee hiring and training.

The fact that they have an employee who thought she might be being filmed and then made up a story about murdering an ex-husband might be silly fun in their spat with Fox, but it won't do much to help them out with their public image, even if people believe it was a set-up to begin with.

[_Gazelam]

This is why I watch BBC News in the mornings instead of CNN or FOX. I prefer reporters to mindless talking heads discussing info-tainment. If I want opinion I'll talk to my friends. When I want News I turn on the news, and that's become an increasingly difficult thing to find.

[_bcspace]

The BBC is still funded by a tax (a license fee) and the members of the BBC Trust, it's governing body are appointed by the government. In other words it's still the mouthpiece of government. FOX is still hands down the most impartial of the large news organiations as it reports that same news everyone else does plus often the other side of the story as well. Yet, one must still be careful.

Who ever thought talk show hosts were "journalists"?

Indeed. However, the ones Kevin mentioned seem to be better journalists as talkshow hosts than the journalists beamed to us by the mainstream media.

[_The Nehor]

The BBC is still funded by a tax (a license fee) and the members of the BBC Trust, it's governing body are appointed by the government. In other words it's still the mouthpiece of government.

Not true. The BBC is independent of gov't oversight and is administered by a trust specifically designed to keep it free from gov't influence. The BBC has a long history of disagreeing with current gov't policies without any kind of reprisal.

[_bcspace]

The BBC is still funded by a tax (a license fee) and the members of the BBC Trust, it's governing body are appointed by the government. In other words it's still the mouthpiece of government.

Not true.

Quite true. For example, the members of the trust are appointed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

There is also this little doosie....

Yes, we are biased on religion and politics, admit BBC executives

BBC executives have been forced to admit what critics have known for years - that the corporation is institutionally biased.

The revelation came after details of an 'impartiality' summit called by its chairman, Michael Grade, were leaked.

Senior figures admitted that the BBC is guilty of promoting Left-wing views and an anti-Christian sentiment.

They also said that as an organisation it was disproportionately over-represented by gays and ethnic minorities.

It was also suggested that the Beeb is guilty of political correctness, the overt promotion of multiculturalism and of being anti-American and against the countryside.

...

Even one of the BBC's most senior journalists, political pundit Andrew Marr admitted that the corporation was unrepresentative of British society.

He said: "The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly-funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people.

"It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."

...

One senior BBC executive admitted that the summit had opened people's eyes to how biased the BBC had become.

He admitted: "There was a widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.

"Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it."

The BBC is believed to be taking a more critical look at itself because it fears if it does not, its regulation could be removed from its board of governors and handed over to the independent regulator Ofcom.

Obviously the license fee (tax) that the Brits pay to fund the BBC is not justified.

[_richardMdBorn]

I have no desire to defend either the NYT or ACORN.

I just found it funny that after many years of listening to FOX News back slap CNN and other LIberal news outlets, for things like refusing to cover topics that wouldn't be favorable to Obama, that here they are being true hypocrites.

How many times has O'Reilly and Hannity claimed the Liberal media is an insult to journalism?

And yes, they do have a liberal slant. But as far as I can tell, they've done nothing to compare to this. FOX News didn't verify the source. They invented a story, and then ran with it, because their goals and motives were predetermined.

It's their religious slogan of being "Fair and balanced" that makes this so funny to me. Fair and balanced according to whom? Have they apologized to the public as they so frequently demanded of other news agencies? Have they come clean about their biases as they have demanded so frequently of other news agencies?

As others have written, there is a distinction between opinion people and reporters. Hannity and Beck are opinion people.

You appear to have fallen into the FARMS trap that one mistake discredits everything else a person asserts. The totality of the ACORN stories has hurt that organization badly. Would you dispute this? Was all of Woodward's and Bernstein's reporting made illegitimate when they sourced Hugh Sloan's grand jury testimony for a story that Sloan had never told the Grand Jury?

[_richardMdBorn]

To clarify, most papers have articles, which are supposed to be objective, and editorial columns which are opinion pieces. Both Hannity and Beck are the latter. They make no pretense of being objective. The mainstream media's news shows are not objective but are leftist in orientation. Here's an example (I could cite many more):

These are tough times. More than 3 million people have lost their jobs just since February 2009 and consumer confidence fell unexpectedly in September. The unemployment rate has spiked from 8.1 percent to 9.7 percent in the first seven months of Barack Obama’s presidency and is expected to climb even higher.

Despite that grim news, the major news networks have spun their unemployment reports into “good news” and presented Obama positively. Journalists tried hard to present rising job losses in the best possible light.

ABC’s Charles Gibson called the loss of 539,000 jobs in April a “marked improvement” May 8, 2009, because fewer jobs were lost than in March. In June 2009, Gibson was talking again about “hopeful” signs in the job numbers as more Americans were out of work.

But flashback 27 years ago to 1982, the unemployment rate was in roughly the same range as it was in 2009. Yet, network reporters consistently presented the U.S. economy under President Ronald Reagan as the “worst of times” by showing people living out of their trucks under a bridge and collecting free food at a food bank.

CBS reporter Ray Brady told a “tale of two cities” on June 4, 1982. He found the “worst of times” in Waterloo, Iowa, where the unemployment rate was the highest in the nation: 25.4 percent. That was nearly 16 percentage points higher than the national unemployment rate of 9.5 percent. He contrasted Waterloo’s joblessness with 4.6 percent unemployment in Sioux Falls, S.D. where things were “close to” the best of times.

Brady’s report addressed two very different employment situations, but most 1982 reports focused heavily on places where “desperation has turned to hopelessness.” The unemployment rate under Obama and Reagan was nearly identical, yet they received almost exactly opposite treatment from ABC, CBS and NBC reports. Reagan was mentioned negatively in reports 13 times more often than Obama.

While in Obama’s case, reporters found bright spots – like 25 police recruits’ jobs being “saved” by the stimulus package – during Reagan’s term, journalists found tragedy everywhere. They interviewed a battered wife, a family that had run out of food and many unemployed people. One NBC anchor even warned that suicide and murder rates increase in such hard times.

Although there was a difference between the two presidents in how long they had been in office, the spin was still significant. Unemployment numbers rose similarly under both Reagan and Obama, but journalists continued a long-standing trend of spinning the numbers.
The Business & Media Institute analyzed network unemployment stories on the evenings that data was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics between March 2009 to September 2009 and March 1982 to September 1982. There were 66 stories in all – 35 stories in 2009 and 31 stories in 1982.

BMI found that network reports were 13 times more negative in their treatment of Reagan than Obama. In fact, 91 percent of stories (20 out of 22) mentioning Reagan’s administration portrayed it negatively – while only 7 percent (1 out of 15) of Obama administration mentions were negative. Obama was mentioned positively 87 percent of the time (13 out of 15). There was not a single positive mention of the Reagan White House.

http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2009/FlipFlop/flipflop-fullreport.asp