Jan 22, 2021

Mainstream Media's War On The People: Media Silence On Fox News & The GOP's Continued Incendiary Rhetoric, Given The Insurrection, Indicates Complicity

Background/Context:

1. Media Uselessness Example: Ignoring Historical Context To Explain The Trump VS Lincoln Poll Of Republicans

2. The Rights War On The Left - A Walk Through Some Of The Intimidation/Bullying/Terror Tactics Fox News Uses

3.Why Do News Outlets Bring On Non-Scientists To Argue Against Science?

4. As Fox News Launches Fox Nation, I Would Like To Note That Mainstream Media Lets Fox Lie Unchallenged And Don't Fight Fox To Dominate The Ratings By Suppressing Their Lies... Thus Fox Has Been #1 For Decades. "Fact" Based Media Has Enabled Right Wing Hate & Are Thus A Threat To National Security!

5. Politics Update: The GOP & Fox News Take Domestic Terrorism To New Levels

People like to think that media covers the news and relevant facts. But when an organization is attacking everyone surrounded by a zone of silence even after a riot in the capital and media still treats them like a news channel and not a terrorist outlet that has to be challenged on everything until the terror tactics ends, then that is not the case. Silence is the same as permission. For a group that calls itself "the fourth estate" to not be constantly going after a top news channel for misleading the people is clear violation of their job expectations from people who think they are real journalists covering important stories could will decide the fate of millions, such as the domestic terror group that the GOP and Fox News have become and have been for quite a while, which they are clearly not covering. An occasional voice pointing out the daily activities by Fox is not a stand against terrorism by corporate media but proof that corporate media is anti democracy and pro Republican domestic terror.

Currently these themes are playing everyday on Fox, unchallenged by a comparable media channel;

The current theme is that Dems are after everyone (something Trump actually did while enabled by Fox & the GOP) with the clear suggestion that: 'Republicans may need to get violet to defend themselves'. I.e clear domestic terror incitement tactics as they have been doing on liberals (half of America) for a while now, unchallenged by mainstream media.

Media Matters: Fox News rejects President Biden’s call for unity 

President Joe Biden called for “uniting our nation” and ending “this uncivil war that pits red against blue” during Wednesday’s inauguration, while warning about the destructive potential of “lies told for power and for profit.” As if to demonstrate his point, Fox News’ propagandists responded with a wave of grievance-mongering designed to keep their audiences angry, afraid, and tuned in to the network for the next four years.

Notably, the network’s hosts have stressed to their audiences that when Biden and others call for defeating white supremacy and domestic terrorism in light of the deadly January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, they are talking about viewers like them.

Read more.

This example is of taking an outright lie to frame Democrats (and protesters against the outright crimes of the Trump administration), i.e. clear signs of them using terror incitement tactics as not only are protests against lies opposed but them these lies are used as incendiary rhetoric to further inflame the fearful into violent action;

Media Matters: Tech-ignorant “antifa.com” attacks jump from a “proud Islamophobe” to Newsmax and Fox News For the second time in several months, conservative voices dumbly and wrongly claim that “antifa.com” redirecting to Joe Biden proves that Democrats are terrorists

The misleading smear completed the jump to Fox News on the first morning of the Biden presidency. Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy alleged that one of his children told him that “up on the World Wide Web, type in antifa.com, and you know where it takes you this morning? Takes you to the White House.” Co-host Ainsley Earhardt replied with a fascinated “Really? Interesting.” 

Read full piece.


Note: Most of my theories on this subject center around the thought that media either fears Fox or is more controlled by people such as big business interests and Republican board members (that you can easily find on thier corporate websites) or republican news editors or simply people heavily influenced or even bought by Republicans. Yet there is another possibility. I call it the egotistical explanation (its probably a mix of all of the theories with ego playing a big role in blinding, an otherwise intelligence person, from realizing that they are NOT real news people). 

In the following video, from another occasional voice on the Fox lies in recent times, notice the ridiculous assertion that talking about the incendiary rhetoric that will lead to the next domestic terrorism incident, by a top - and very famous, globally - American news channel and its party, is 'giving them attention'. Its like "mainstream media" are acting like Fox and the GOP are some nobody that media exposure would lead to riches or fame. Fox has literally been leading news ratings for decades WHILE lying! If the following is the reason media wont confront the top terrorists of our nation then the problem is that they have egos so big that even reports on news channels that get more viewers than them is seen as below them in status which is baffling (Media's current high rating over Fox is only because Trump forced the media to talk about Fox and the GOP more than they would like... but they are working on that). At some point I think I'm going to be able to prove that we are a planet of psychotic apes

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough sends message to “Fox News’ sponsors” about the network’s continued insurrectionist rhetoric Scarborough: For Fox News sponsors, to let you know what's happening now,” that network now claims ”Joe Biden and Democrats want to, quote, ‘exterminate’ all Republicans.”



JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): You know, Willie, I talked briefly before, and I don't want to get into it — because I don't want to give people the attention that they probably want. 

MIKA BRZEZINSKI (CO-HOST): Very much, yes.

SCARBOROUGH: But I will say Fox News had someone I know, a former leader of the Republican Party, saying that Democrats wanted — and I'm using his words here — Democrats wanted to, quote, “exterminate,” exterminate all Republicans. Let me say that again, for Fox News’ sponsors, to let you know.

BRZEZINSKI: And he knows what he's doing.

SCARBOROUGH: For Fox News’ sponsors, to let you know what's happening now on Fox News. That they're getting people who are Fox News contributors, who are saying that Democrats — Joe Biden and Democrats want to, quote, “exterminate” all Republicans.

You also have Fox News hosts that are talking about how Democrats are using troops to make American people submissive. That they are not American troops — they are Democratic troops that are just there to show that they are in complete power.

This is sick, Willie. It's especially sick and damagin, here we are, what, a couple weeks after an insurrection against the United States of America. I understand that Fox News is having trouble because Newsmax is taking some of its viewers, and some of the people think that Fox News hasn't been harsh enough since the election.

But we had mobs surging up to the United States Capitol a couple of weeks ago. And you have a former Republican leader saying that all Democrats want to, quote, “exterminate” Republicans. That is patently — that is patently, patently un-American for him to say that. He is trying to gin up the base so he can make money on his mailing lists, so they can drive ratings up, and so he can inspire an insurrection against the United States as well.

Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich, a former Republican Speaker of the House, alleged Thursday night on Hannity that members of the Biden administration wanted to “exterminate the Republicans.” The day before the January 6 insurrection, Gingrich had also claimed on Sean Hannity's radio show that President Joe Biden's election was the worst assault on America, “maybe since the previous Civil War.”

Other hosts on Fox News, including Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, have suggested that the presence of the National Guard in Washington — in the wake of the attack upon the Capitol — is really a “message about power” and an “obscene move by Democrats to militarize Washington, D.C.”

I think its clear the domestic terrorism through incendiary rhetoric and outright lies of the Republican party and Fox News hasn't ended or even slowed down. 


Media's War On The People

Media



Fox News

Politics Update: The GOP & Fox News Take Domestic Terrorism To New Levels

 Background/Context:
1. The Right Wing Are Basically Terrorists Or "Terrorist Creators" (Alt Right Terrorists Is The Politically Correct Term) 
2. Fox News And The GOP Are Basically Terrorist Organizations (Based On Their Rhetoric & The Effects Of That Rhetoric)
3. The Charlottesville Terror Incident: Conclusive Proof That The GOP & Its Media Networks Are Really Just Nazis Re-Labeled As Something Else (Such As "Nationalists", "Conservatives" etc.)
4. GOP, Fox News & Right Wing Media Are Waging War On Rule Of Law

If Republicans are afraid of thier base its only because they helped create this baseits not an excuse to continue lying and betraying the country and the constitution. Always lying. Always demonizing. Always choosing President and the rich over country. The GOP have created this cult, actively, over decades. Especially since the Bush years. Just the links above of the past years are enough to convict them if we believe that leaders can influence thier followers. Now those followers have turned on them, kinda. Why is that a surprise? They are still after liberals as 'evil people that must be destroyed' and they use lies to do it. Even if those lies lead to death threats. Clearly they are a terror incitement group and nothing else. The following prove GOP complicity.

Media Matters: In 2 weeks after it called the election, Fox News cast doubt on the results nearly 800 times Fox News built the lie that fueled Trump’s insurrectionist mob

On January 6, a mob incited by President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol and attempted to stop the constitutional counting of electoral votes which would formally declare former Vice President Joe Biden the president-elect. The mob’s self-stated mission was to “stop the steal,”  a slogan premised on the idea that the 2020 presidential election was rigged or stolen. Fox News played a large part in fueling that lie.

In the two weeks after Fox News called the election for Biden, Fox News cast doubt on the results of the election at least 774 times. The network’s most prominent figures relentlessly attempted to subvert democracy by fueling conspiracy theories and spreading misinformation, rhetoric for which the network has refused to hold them accountable.


Fox News repeatedly aided Trump’s efforts to undermine election results, laying the groundwork to cry foul if Trump lost, echoing debunked theories of fraud, pushing the idea that Democrats are trying to “steal” this from him, and arguing that Trump is justified in pursuing his claims of a rigged election. This pattern of coverage continued in the lead-up to the day of the riots.

Fox News shouldn’t escape culpability for its role in the “stolen election” lie that inflamed the violent mob. 

Riot reckoning: See how GOP leaders were complicit in Trump’s scheme In a special report, MSNBC’s Ari Melber traces the GOP's hypocrisy regarding the Capitol Hill riot and what it reveals about our nation's leaders. Melber slams some Republican leaders for being “knowingly complicit” in Trump’s scheme. (This is an excerpt from a longer report.)


WaPo: Dozens on terror watch list came to D.C. on day of Capitol Hill insurrection - According to the Washington Post, “Dozens of people on a terrorist watch list were in Washington for pro-Trump events Jan. 6, a day that ended in a chaotic crime rampage when a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.”



Report: Some Democrats in Congress are worried their colleagues might kill them “Members right now are not talking about, ‘I’m worried my colleagues will get me killed in some indirect sense,’” says NBC News’ Benjy Sarlin. “They’re worried that members quite specifically either participated in the attack itself or future ones.”


The GOP was sowing seeds of fascism and violence long before Trump If you think that these violent elements of Trump’s base will leave with him, you haven’t been paying attention.

"Fascism" is a word we tend to throw around often, and often with little regard to its true definition. But in the case of President Donald Trump and for parts of the GOP, it applies not hyperbolically, but accurately.

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In an interview about her book "Fascism: A Warning," former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright explained that fascism is "not an ideology" like, say, socialism. Rather, "it's a process for taking and holding power." She emphasized that "fascism involves the endorsement and use of violence to achieve political goals and stay in power." At the time in 2019, Albright rejected the notion that Trump was a fascist, saying, "I don't call him a fascist, because he isn't violent."

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First, experts have documented that the Republican Party in recent years has increasingly rejected democratic norms and embraced autocratic tactics to wield power. An October study by V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden warned that the GOP had already been moving in that direction pre-Trump, but it said that under Trump, with "the disrespect of political opponents" and "the encouragement of violence," the GOP now more closely resembles authoritarian ruling parties like Hungary's Fidesz and Turkey's AKP.

Second, and this is ever more dangerous, is the sheer number of Republicans who supported the attack on the Capitol. A Reuters poll released Friday found that 22 percent of Republicans approved of what sickened the rest of us. A Marist poll found that 18 percent of Republicans "support the actions of the Trump supporters who broke into the U.S. Capitol."

In fact, a GOP member of Congress told Politico that days after the siege, the message he heard from his constituents was not shock about the attack but more along the lines of "Do you think that Congress got the message?" And some Republicans noted that constituents such as "preachers, school superintendents, churchgoing men and women," as Politico reported, were actually cheering on the attack rather than condemning it.

If these polls are accurate, that means 1 in 5 Republicans approve of embracing violence to keep political power. That is the textbook definition of fascism. If this extremist wing of the GOP goes unchecked, it is likely to spread as Republicans become angrier with election losses and resort to attempting to acquire power by using force.

The GOP is at a crossroads. Its leaders must very publicly root out the extremists in its base, or it will truly become a full-blown fascist movement.


FBI: The MAGA Maniacs Who Tried To Overthrow The Government Are Going To Pay

While the president tries to shift blame for last week's insurrection, the FBI and Justice Department are making it clear that the terrorists involved will face very serious federal charges. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington and around the country are bracing for a second wave of right-wing violence.


During his Late Show monologue Tuesday night, the host zeroed in on a new report that President Trump laid blame for the riot on “antifa people” in a call with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy this week

“What the hell are you talking about?!” Colbert exclaimed. “You invited those rioters to your rally in Washington. They were wearing your shirts, your hats, waving your flag! And they cheered when you told them to go march on the Capitol. From now on, neurologists are going to hold up pictures like this to stroke victims and say, ‘Can you tell me whose supporters these are?’ And if they don’t say, ‘They’re MAGA people’ you know it’s time to take away their car keys.”

The “antifa excuse” was “so ridiculous,” the host said, that “even the normally spine-free zone of Kevin McCarthy” pushed back against the president. “Finding out this late in the game that Kevin McCarthy has the ability to name reality in the face of the president’s lies is like finding out that Tom Hanks in Castaway had a boat the whole time!”

As for what comes next, Colbert did not hold out much hope that enough Republicans would be willing to vote for Trump’s removal from office in his final week. “Republican lawmakers desperately need the president’s supporters to like them,” he said. “I mean, their hands are tied—almost literally.”

And in response to the Republicans who are now calling for “unity” after supporting the effort to overturn the election results, he did not hold back. “OK, let’s unify in punishing all the insurrectionists and their political leaders who legitimized their homicidal fantasies,” he said. “There can be no healing until the sickness is identified and removed and you can do it now! The tumor lost his Twitter feed!”

Now that Democrats are taking action to “stop this from happening again by getting rid of the guy who caused it,” Colbert asked Republicans, “What are you willing to do to help? Because, so far, you have done nothing!”

“They were simply certifying a free and fair election—an election that you knew was free and fair—but you lied about it anyway,” he continued. “Because you wanted the campaign cash and the eyeballs and you were afraid to make your boss and his MAGA monster mad!”

“Your lies legitimized the fantasies of a violent, anti-democratic mob that nearly got you and your colleagues killed, and did get a policeman murdered!” Colbert declared. “Now you want to use your hollow calls for unity to sweep it all under the rug? Well, good luck with that, brother, because the rioters also pooped on your rugs.”


Mainstream Media's War On The People Part 1: Treating Majority Views Of Democrats As Extreme & Extremist Views Of Republicans As Normal

This is an old example of a common tactic employed in mainstream media that that skew truth in favor of lies for the GOP.  The latest example of this common and often used mainstream media con is posted on Media Matters site here.{See past posts on media below}

Media Matters: In the battle for the Supreme Court, media call Republican hypocrisy savvy while treating Democrats as extremists

Just four years after the Senate Republicans unprecedentedly blocked President Barack Obama’s final Supreme Court nomination on the grounds that voters should have a voice in selecting the next member of the court, they and President Donald Trump are ready to pretend none of that happened. But too much of the coverage hasn’t focused on the move as an attack on democracy or an effort to undermine the legitimacy of the court. Instead, the decision to move forward with another Trump nominee is being described as a “Machiavellian” “gambit” for the ultimate political “prize.” These are words used to describe protagonists. Meanwhile, threats of retaliation by Democrats have been called “total war.” The way this latest court vacancy has been talked about, you probably wouldn’t know that an overwhelming majority of Americans (including roughly half of Republicans) oppose the Republican plan to push through a nominee before the election.

MSNBC contributor Chuck Rosenberg scolded Democrats for the hypothetical expansion of the Supreme Court, saying that the move would “politicize” the courts as though that’s not what Senate Republicans have been doing all along. Also on MSNBC, host Andrea Mitchell asked whether it was wise for Democrats to threaten to change the “constitutional number” of Supreme Court justices (the number of justices is not actually mentioned anywhere in the constitution). The New York Times amplified Republican criticisms of court-packing being “radical and undemocratic.” CNN’s Chris Cillizza said that any action to try to neutralize the Trump push to load courts with Republican loyalists would transform the Senate into the House, which he called “a bad thing.”

In the media’s telling, Republican power grabs are a demonstration of their “political savvy,” but if Democrats fight back, they risk being seen as “extreme.” If Republicans promote unpopular policies, they’re “shrewd,” but if Democrats line up behind comparatively popular policies, they might be “radical.” The gulf between how the two parties get discussed in the media has left the public wildly misinformed about which party is actually out of step with mainstream American views.   

Policies supported by Democrats are often treated in the press as “extreme,” even if they’re supported by a majority of the country.

For instance, while it may not be apparent because of congressional inaction, but legislative measures to curb gun violence through things like bans on high-capacity magazinesextreme risk protection orders, and bans on the sale of semi-automatic weapons are actually pretty popular. A majority of Americans -- including more than half of Republicans -- support banning so-called “assault weapons,” with the specific number depending on how the particular question is framed.

Similarly, both Democrats and Republicans support legislation that would make it illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ people in employment. Still, the Equality Act, a bill that would codify those protections into law, languishes in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives almost entirely along party lines (the bill has 237 Democratic co-sponsors in the House, but only three Republicans signed onto it). And despite the belief of 79% of Republicans and 94% of Democrats that it should be illegal for doctors to refuse to treat transgender people, the Trump administration has continued to try to implement rules that would allow doctors and insurance companies to do exactly that. While those efforts have thus far been stymied by the court system, pushback from Republican legislators has been virtually nonexistent.

A January Reuters/Ipsos poll found that nearly two thirds of Americans strongly or somewhat agreed with the idea that “the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs.” This support for what’s become known as a “wealth tax,” was shared by 77% of Democrats and 53% of Republicans.

Trump’s pick to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court will play a key role in determining the fate of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. But according to July polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation, “a majority (57%) of the public said they disapproved of the Trump Administration asking the Supreme Court to overturn the ACA, and a similar share (53%) said they did not want to see the law overturned.” By contrast, in January the group found overwhelming support to expand the government’s role in health care through either a public option (68% support) or a national single-payer plan (56% support).

Conversely, many of the policies Trump and congressional Republicans have promoted remain relatively unpopular. Trump’s 2017 move to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement was supported by just 28% of Americans. In 2019, as Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military was enacted, a Gallup poll found that just 26% of American adults thought trans people shouldn’t be allowed to serve. And as Trump and Republicans tried to work their tax plan through Congress in 2017, a Reuters/Ipsos poll based on the administration’s “framework” document found that just 15% of registered voters thought tax reform should take priority over other issues, and just 28% of those who were familiar with the plan supported it. Even so, the unpopular bill was pushed through Congress largely along party lines, and nearly a year later, was supported by only 39% of Americans.

Throughout the Democratic primary, so-called “Never Trump” conservatives and their media allies warned Democrats to avoid nominating someone extreme.

In January, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens worried that Democratic primary voters would embrace the “radicalism” of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and that they should instead nominate someone who “can eschew polarization for persuasion and ideology for pragmatism.” Similarly, Washington Post columnist Max Boot called Sanders “a risk we can’t run at this moment of national peril.” Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal told Democrats to beware their “lurch left” in a December column, and the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson tweeted in June 2019 that nominating someone like Sanders would be setting themselves up for losing 44 states in the name of “being woke.”

The plans put forward by Sanders, Warren, and others in the Democratic presidential primary that were frequently treated as being extreme and out of line with the mainstream included things like a wealth tax, single-payer health care or a public option, and a ban on assault weapons. It’s odd that the media treat policy ideas with more than 50% public support as fringe while Republicans in office regularly push an agenda that’s not only out of step with the American people in general, but even among their own voters.

Democrats’ popular policies often get labeled as “far-left,” while the press is much less likely to refer to less popular Republican policies as “far-right.”

A July 2019 Media Matters study found that cable news channels use “far-left” framing six times as often as “far-right” framing. Of the 547 mentions of extremism on either the left or the right on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News during a four-week period, 86% of those mentions treated the political left as being “extreme.”

As study authors Lis Power and Rob Savillo wrote, “This trend is in stark contrast to data showing that the Republican Party is further away from the political center than the Democratic Party, and it leaves viewers misinformed about each party’s position by lending undue credibility to the right-wing talking point that Democrats are extreme.” 

Poole and Rosenthal’s Dynamic Weighted Nominal Three-step Estimation metric, which grades political parties on a scale from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most conservative), illustrates the political drift over time. Between 1981 and 2019, Republicans have drifted from 0.30 to 0.51, a change of 0.21. During that same period, Democrats drifted from -0.32 to -0.40, a much smaller change of -0.08. Additionally, according to the Manifesto Project, which analyzes party platforms around the world line by line, the Democratic Party is much closer to the worldwide median party than Republicans, who find themselves plotted out on the project’s graph to the right of the conservative parties in Britain, France, and Canada, but a bit to the left of the far-right fringe Alternative for Germany party.

Writing at The Washington Post, Philip Bump dispelled with the idea that the U.S. is a “center-right country” quoting CNN’s John King pointing to the county-level electoral map following the 2016 election and saying, “See all that red? America is a center-right country. It is a lot more conservative -- especially out in the heartland -- than Democrats think.” King, Bump pointed out, made the common mistake of “conflating ‘land area’ with ‘political belief.’” Wyoming, he wrote as an example, is “a big red blob on most electoral maps, despite the fact [it] has only a little over half the total population of very-blue San Jose, Calif.” It’s only due to some of the more undemocratic idiosyncrasies of the U.S. electoral system that the right’s ideas and politicians seem more popular than they are.

Whether looking at political polarization through the lens of policy support, ideological drift over time, or even how the electorate actually votes, it’s Democrats who represent a more mainstream view of society. It shouldn’t be asking too much to want the press to acknowledge this reality, to dispense with the false idea that the U.S. is fundamentally “center-right” (which isn’t to say it’s necessarily “center-left,” either), and to stop holding Democrats to completely different standards than Republicans. As Republicans pursue fringe, unpopular policies like overturning the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, financially starving the Postal Service, and preventing people from suing negligent employers during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s imperative upon the press to realize which side has the “extreme” views.

How Mainstream Media Helps The Republicans Lie To The People


More Media Analysis