This speech on media consolidation by journalism icon Bill Moyers should be required listening/viewing. It was posted on YouTube by videofreepress:
As a bonus for watching, here's something posted by the same folks, with Keith Olbermann narrating Moyers' smackdown of a Bill O'Reilly/Fox News toady:
Sweet dreams. -- MJ
It's Saturday afternoon, cold and snowy, and I completed my Christmas shopping just this morning. Before my wife and I become distracted learning how to paint Christmas ornaments using a technique my bookkeeper taught us yesterday, I thought I would post tonight's funny. Tonight we are continuing with the holiday theme by reflecting on the war on X-Mas being fought by that great lover of freedom of speech--Bill O'Reilly. Headzup.
Did I say freedom of speech? That might be stretching it a little, but BillO does love the sound of his own voice.
Until the writers go back to work or VersusPlus allows more of its videos to be embedded (that is what happens when one of the producers is a lawyer) HEADZUP is our go to funny. Tonight Carl Rove ventures into BillO's no spin zone. HEADZUP is really just puppets telling lies, but that is what makes it so hard to call tonight's funny political satire. Puppets telling lies pretty much sums up BillO, Karl Rove and the No Spin Zone.
We have been focused on Rush Limbaugh for the last few days. It occurred to me that we have been ignoring the Fox News blowhard-in-chief--Bill O'Reilly. So that BillO doesn't feel neglected, I submit tonight's funny. It is clearly from a recent episode of Keith Olbermann's Countdown. The guy who posted the video to YouTube, apefist, claims he swiped it from Crooks and Liars. Since Crooks and Liars couldn't possibly be copyright owner, I think we can fairly use this clip. Right.
Tonight's funny
I thought about putting something up from comedy central or maybe a professional comic, but I thought this was the funniest video I have seen this week. This was put together by TPM. Good job guys.
Gee BillO, John Edwards doesn't want to appear on Fox. I wonder why?
The laughing at Fox News lamp is lit. Guffaw if you got em.
UPDATE: Blue Girl tells me that even with the funnies I have to do something "value added." OK, concerning BillO's opening comments, according to Multichannel News while Fox remains the dominate cable news network
Fox News averaged a 1.2 primetime rating in July, down 14% from the same month last year. CNN averaged a 0.6, down 25% from 0.8, and MSNBC posted a 0.5 rating, up 67% from July 2006.Fox down 14%, MSNBC up 67%. Fox is not exactly "growing while the others are disintegrating."
I have just read a comment in one of Kevin Drum's threads that sounds like a lot of people I know. To put the comment in context, earlier today Kevin posted on the nature of the netroots. According to Kevin what is happening now is "powered by a lot of bog ordinary moderate liberals who have been radicalized by George Bush and the Newt Gingrichized Republican Party."
Some comments are just too good to be lost in a comment's thread.
I think a lot of journalists (though I don't mean to include Hertzberg here) don't quite get this because they haven't quite internalized just how far off the rails the modern Republican Party has gone. Kevin Drum at 12:38 PMSnarkySnark, friend you are not alone.
Man, you aint kidding. In saner times, I would have been called a moderate Republican. Now, because I oppose the bat-shit crazies in charge, I have been accused of being a mao-ist loving liberal.
If being liberal means thinking objectively and supporting the spirit of the constitution then I am a liberal.
Proudly so.
The problem for the 27% is they have so demonized every one that doesn't agree with their barking mad worship of authoritarian rule, that we are all liberals now.
Except for the press corpse, who lives in some alternate reality.
Call it the cocktail weenie dimension.
Posted by: SnarkyShark on August 3, 2007 at 12:52 PM
Here is the Chris Dodd / Bill O'Reilly video.
I used to hang out at the Daily Kos. These days I don't spend much time there, not because it contains a lot of hateful objectionable material (it doesn't), but because the site is so darn busy. It is hard not to get lost in the crowd.
No doubt you can find objectionable material on the Daily Kos, but to find it among the thousands of diaries you have to look pretty hard. If your mother says she has heard that the Daily Kos is objectionable, give her the link and ask her to check it out herself.
Bill O'Reilly ended the segment of his radio show featuring his shouting match with Chris Dodd over Dodd's decision to attend the YearlyKos with "What are you going to do with a guy like Dodd?"
Well Bill, having listened to the audio of your Chris Dodd segment, I am tempted to go to Dodd's website and give him a contribution.
Regardless who you support, I think everybody in the netroots should send Dodd $50 and give him a cheer the next time you see him.
I am amazed that O'Reilly aired the segment on his radio show. Even with the luxury of editing, O'Reilly was unable to hide the fact that Dodd administered an old fashioned ass kicking. Go listen to it, the audio is simply amazing. Dodd left O'Reilly sputtering.
Unless O'Reilly decides not to show it, the video, which was preempted last night by the Minneapolis bridge collapse, should be on Faux Noise tonight.
[click to enlarge]A video compilation of Faux News reports on the environment provided by Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films from Fox Attacks!
DJK serves up a comprehensive, in-depth page of wingnut quotes and sources. Plus, sign the petition telling Home Depot to stop advertising on Fox.
TERROR ALERT! TERROR ALERT!
Just when I didn't think the scare-ertainment and propaganda network couldn't sink any lower, Bill O'Reilly ran a FAUX report on ...drum roll, please... America's new terror -- lesbian gangs. I kid you not! David Neiwert totally deconstructed O'Reilly's and paid-wingnut commentator Wheeler's imaginary ruminations with facts from the Southern Poverty Law Center last week.
Of course, Billo had to respond to the outcry over his erroneous and homophobic sexploitation broadcast. Chris Schecter offers the follow-up all-spin video and wonders about Billo, "...was this just one of your fantasies that somehow escaped that air-tight censor of yours while you were walking past the local falafel shop?"
Although this post is not directly related to watching Congress and government, I think it relates, if for no other reason than the fact that this study details progaganda techniques.
Indiana University today released a study showing that Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly out-propogandizes one of the top hate mongers of the 20th Century.
The study published in the spring issue of Journalism Studies notes, and the emphasis in bold is mine:
Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Conway, Grabe and Grieves found that O'Reilly employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials. His editorials also are presented on his Web site and in his newspaper columns.The seven propaganda devices include:
- Name calling -- giving something a bad label to make the audience reject it without examining the evidence;
- Glittering generalities -- the oppositie of name calling;
- Card stacking -- the selective use of facts and half-truths;
- Bandwagon -- appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd;
- Plain folks -- an attempt to convince an audience that they, and their ideas, are "of the people";
- Transfer -- carries over the authority, sanction and prestige of something we respect or dispute to something the speaker would want us to accept; and
- Testimonials -- involving a respected (or disrespected) person endorsing or rejecting an idea or person.
The same techniques were used during the late 1930s to study another prominent voice in a war-era, Father Charles Coughlin. His sermons evolved into a darker message of anti-Semitism and fascism, and he became a defender of Hitler and Mussolini. In this study, O'Reilly is a heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than Coughlin.
