dagblog - Comments for "Fox News analyst quits after finally realizing it's a 'propaganda machine'"

Why I left Fox News

artappraiser — Sat, 31 Mar 2018 04:08:26 +0000

In reply to Fox News analyst quits after finally realizing it's a 'propaganda machine'

Guest op-ed by Ralph Peters @ WashingtonPost.com, March 30

You could measure the decline of Fox News by the drop in the quality of guests waiting in the green room. A year and a half ago, you might have heard George Will discussing policy with a senator while a former Cabinet member listened in. Today, you would meet a Republican commissar with a steakhouse waistline and an eager young woman wearing too little fabric and too much makeup, immersed in memorizing her talking points.

This wasn’t a case of the rats leaving a sinking ship. The best sailors were driven overboard by the rodents.

As I wrote in an internal Fox memo, leaked and widely disseminated, I declined to renew my contract as Fox News’s strategic analyst because of the network’s propagandizing for the Trump administration. Today’s Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.

Four decades ago, as a U.S. Army second lieutenant, I took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution.” In moral and ethical terms, that oath never expires. As Fox’s assault on our constitutional order intensified, spearheaded by its after-dinner demagogues, I had no choice but to leave [....]

Shep got a long "but it was

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 14:09:46 +0000

In reply to Thanks. There's a war going

Shep got a long "but it was already planned, honest" vacation for his comments.

And yeah, Dershowitz has become a knee-jerk predictable attack dog in a number of ways - once he had a bit of credibility. Still cracking up at the idea of those Olson twins once being adults in the room though...

Just ran across this, strikes

artappraiser — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 14:05:18 +0000

In reply to Thanks. There's a war going

Just ran across this, strikes me as related:

Jeffrey Toobin to his former professor Alan Dershowitz: ‘What’s happened to you?’

By Derek Hawkins @ WashingtonPost.com, March 22

Back in June, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh spent many minutes on his radio show extolling Alan Dershowitz, the renowned defense lawyer and Harvard Law School professor, for taking “100 percent Trumpist” positions on the Trump administration’s legal tangles.

“I don’t know what has happened to Professor Dershowitz,” Limbaugh said of the famed civil libertarian. “But whatever it is, I like it.”

On Wednesday, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who was once a student of Dershowitz, offered a similar assessment — only he left out that last part.

Toobin and Dershowitz spent 10 minutes on “Anderson Cooper 360” Wednesday night sparring over the decision to tap a special counsel to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

At times, things got personal. When Dershowitz said it was a “mistake” to appoint Robert S. Mueller III to lead the probe, Toobin lashed out.

“Alan, I don’t know what’s going on with you,” he said of his longtime friend and mentor, arguing a special counsel was necessary [....]

Although there, Toobin might have been blind about how much of an advocacy trial lawyer Prof. Dershowitz was in his heart. Where when he was teaching he was just role playing cold legal analyst?

Thanks. There's a war going

artappraiser — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 12:01:17 +0000

In reply to Resignation hits Fox hard.

Thanks. There's a war going on over there and it interests me. (And I think it should interest anyone interested in journalism.) It's mentioned in the article, i.e.

....Peters' note, however, underscored the divide at Fox News between the network's opinion programming and hard news.....

In fact, it's started to boil over into public view. In October, "Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace told the Associated Press he was bothered by how some of his colleagues on the opinion side of the network used their platforms to attack the media. And Shepard Smith, the chief news anchor at Fox News, was critical of the Fox News opinion bloc in a story published last week.

Smith's comments last week prompted Sean Hannity, the face of the Fox News prime time lineup, to publicly skewer him in a tweet. Hannity said Smith was "clueless" about what Hannity does on his show each night. Laura Ingraham, the latest addition to the Fox News lineup, added fuel to the fire, tweeting that she thought Smith's comments were "inconsiderate & inaccurate."...

Resignation hits Fox hard.

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 11:53:41 +0000

In reply to Fox News analyst quits after finally realizing it's a 'propaganda machine'

Resignation hits Fox hard.