The Glade 4.0

He can say he's a journalist all he wants. He interviews people for Fox, has a show (apparently) and does other things for them. I don't care for the guy, but then again, I've only seen short reels of his material so I can't fairly comment one way or the other.

Of course he's going to claim he's a journalist. Their viewbase doesn't care enough to discern the difference between journalism and borderline propaganda. All networks are guilty of the same thing.

He doesn't "get to have it both ways". He could be willfully lying or ignorantly blinded by his zeal for his "cause" to think he is producing quality journalism. It isn't up to whether or not he says he's a journalist, but rather, what we as the general population let him get away with in terms of standards for journalism and let him "keep" his label.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Well, fair enough. But that seems to indicate that you at least agree with my initial point, the one that DFK disagreed with.

Also, I think you and I have vastly different views on what constitutes "borderline".

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Nope. If I'm in charge of FoxNews I want the guy who'll bring in the most money.

FoxNews is a subsidiary of NewsCorp which is a subsidiary of MediaCorp. All are profit-driven entities. Just like CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I have seen no evidence that the Republican Party pays any attention to him at all in formulating their platforms.

If you mean he's influential among Republican people, show your work. Simple viewership won't cut it either; watching someone doesn't mean agreeing with them.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So, in your opinion, Sean Hannity has little or no influence in the Republican Party? If not, why was he tapped to do major fund raising events during the last Presidential election?

I don't think you could reasonably argue that Sean Hannity is not influential among republican voters. I think we can all agree that he has a large audience, and that his audience is not likely to draw a majority of democrats or liberals, right?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Now with moderation, I'm giving this another try and removed Monty from Foes list.

That said, Monty, I think you might want to seriously reconsider your argument that because someone was responsible for fund raising or other activities they must have influence.

I don't think it would go well for your other positions if people started bringing up the fund raising events for your favored politicians.

Why would you say that? I mean, frankly, we are speaking about weather or not Sean Hannity considers himself to be a journalist, or if he has influence in Republican politics.

I think it's pretty clear on it's face that he does. And I haven't made an argument that someone responsible for fundraising must have influence. I am simply using his presence as a headliner for major republican fund raising events as evidence to backup my claim that he's influential.

You may be right. Someone might pull this argument out of context in the future for some bizarre reason, but that would be intellectually dishonest of them.

I think the questions are simple, and easily answered.

Does Sean Hannity consider himself a journalist?

Does Fox News treat him like a journalist?

Is Sean Hannity an influential figure in Republican politics?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Because he's a well-known name. The ability to draw a crowd isn't the same thing as having a significant say in actual policy.



Having a large audience is not the same as being influential. Influential is too vague to tell us anything. Ok, so he's influential. HOW influential? How many people agree with him, on what issues, and to what degree? Do they agree with him becuase of what he says, or do they listen to him because he says what they already think anyhow?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There are many ways he can influence policy. Like Limbaugh, he can go on his show, talk about the horrors of this plan or that, and his audience will pretty much believe what he has to say. This has a direct impact on the policy decisions of the party (although less of an impact that Limbaugh, admittedly).



Well, we can look at recent media polls to see how many Fox viewers believe in the lies he tells about health care reform. From there we can look at his market share and make some reasonable conclusions about his effect on common republican opinion.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

So I suppose David Letterman is a journalist? The hostesses of The View?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

How do you know his audience will believe what he has to say, and even if they do, so what? People already have their views set when they attend fundraisers; they don't go to them to decide on the issues. That doesn't show he has influence. He's just preaching to the choir.



No we can't. Just because viewers agree with him doesn't mean he caused them to think that in the first place.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Do they refer to themselves as journalists? I don't think so. But Sean Hannity has, and his network has treated him like one, as well.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

That's a ridiculous standard. What if I call myself a journalist and write a piece for The Onion? Does that make me a journalism? Does it make me one moreso than someone who practicies investigative journalism privately and doesn't receive the "affirmation" of journalism from some "official" source nor touts himself/herself as one?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I would argue that working for Fox News pretty much means you're not a journalist, but they don't seem to think so, and neither does the republican party.

Remember, in the beginning, I said that Sean Hannity considers himself to be a journalist. I think it's pretty clear that he does. I also said he had a lot of influence among Republicans. Others have disagreed with that, but their arguments have thusfar not been terribly compelling in light of how much misinformation his viewers generally take as gospel truth.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

So what? Its the same on both sides. For every Fox News, there's an ABC/MSNBC/CNN etc. You can point to Hannity, I can point to Olbermann. You point to Limbaugh, I point to Mathews.

They're all the same. Lying liars, trying to bend the facts to fit their version of spin, and keep their ratings.

Hannity and Limbaugh, and recently Beck have influence among Repubs, just like Mathews, Olbermann, and Garafalo have influence among Dems.

Its a giant echo chamber, and the other side sticks its fingers in its ears and goes LALALALALA as loud as they can. There's no more news, there's no more honesty. They're ALL the same. You can't trust a damn one of them.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Forgive me, but I don't think anyone can rationally compare the kind of bias on Fox to ABC/CNN, or even MSNBC. MSNBC might be the only station with actual liberal commentators filling prime time spots, but they also have Morning Joe, which is a heavily biased conservative morning show.

Fox news is flat out a propaganda arm for the Republican party and the conservative movement. That's not intended to be an inflammatory statement, but it is the truth. They are not a legitimate news organization.



And none of those comparisons will hold up to a qualitative comparison, especially when it comes to factual accuracy. And I think Mathews is terrible. The truth is that conservative opinion makers and commentators have a very sketchy relationship with the truth.

We can watch Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann side by side, for example, and if it were a blind taste test, Beck would easily have the insane flavor. Not because he's a conservative - that has nothing to do with it. But because he's a paranoid, delusional, howling conservative that for some inexplicable reason, despite losing 50% of his ad revenue over his antics, still maintains a job at Fox.

And I will throw Racheal Maddow down against *any* conservative commentator or pundit when it comes to rational, fair discourse. She is, quite frankly, excellent. She doesn't yell or scream, she makes great arguments and asks probing questions, and isn't afraid to bring people from the opposite wing of politics on her show and have a perfectly reasonable conversation with them instead of a shouting match.

Ed Schultz is turning out to be not much better than Hannity. He was a lot more even headed on his radio show, but I think he's trying to do the crazy-for-ratings thing.



They really aren't all the same. There is a qualitative difference between the majority of liberal pundits, and the majority of conservative pundits. Conservative pundits have truly gone over the deep end, and the liberals have for the most part not followed suit.



That much is true. Fortunately, the influence that most of the prominent liberal pundits have over democrats is a great deal more reality based than their opposition.

You might be pleasantly surprised by Racheal Maddow's show, or by watching PBS.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Of course one can. If you look at it from a Repub. PoV, the Dem propaganda arm of the lib movement (MSNBC/CNN/ABC/etc) is skewed terribly left



Because he brings ratings. They're in the entertainment business, not the news business.




I may be, if I cared about the news. I don't watch any of it anymore really.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Yes, but that point of view is frequently skewed by Fox News. Obi Wan actually lied to Luke. It wasn't the truth from a certain point of view, it was an outright lie.




And yet, he is bleeding ad revenue at an alarming rate. Half of his advertisers have pulled their money from his show. It went from over 1 million dollars in revenue per show to half that amount. He's cost them 500,000 a *day*, and NewsCorp keeps him on the air. Why?






Which could explain why you believe there is a complete equivalence where very little exists.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

By that argument, the perception that Fox is skewed right is, in fact, skewed by MSNBC. The argument that FOX is aprticularly guilty of lying holds no water; every news organization lies. All news orghanizations regularly omit critical information that essentially turns what they are saying into a lie.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What is truth? Its perception, which is reality. With pols, and newsies, its all in the spin. What the actual truthy truth is noone will really know, because noone will actually report on the *real* truth.




He's not costing them $500k a day. They're still making $500k a day. He still reaches 2.4 million viewers a day, and you can't dismiss those kinds of numbers.



There is a complete equivalence. They're all worthless for getting news. Commentators all spin their crap the same way to benefit their viewing audience. Entertainment is more important than truth. Ratings > *.

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Holy shitsnacks!

No network is more successful and getting it's viewers to believe factually inaccurate statements than Fox News. Fox *is* guilt of lying, and that's verifiable regardless of other news organizations. Just because others do it doesn't magically make fox news *not* guilty of it.

The qualitative difference, however, is easy to see.

There is almost a 30 point difference in the number of people that believe the misinformation about health care reform between Fox viewers and other networks.



None of these things are factually true about the health care proposals, nor the president's proposal. MSNBC and CNN viewers are significantly better informed, although it's a testament to the conservative misinformation campaign that significant percentages on those networks believe those claims, even if it is about 30% less than Fox viewers).

Similar numbers exist for questions about the war in Iraq. Fox viewers were significantly more likely to believe that Saddam had direct connections to Al Qaeda, that the WMD had been found, and that Saddam was directly connected to the 9-11 attacks.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

So what? People are stupid, ignorant sheep and will believe whatever they're told.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Actually no, Fox is not guilty of getting more people to beleive anything than anyone else is. As for "that doesn't make Fox not guilty", the fact that they all do it means that there is no reason to single FOX out for special castigation. There is no basis for claiming they do it to any special degree.



Sorry, but none of that A) indicates that people beleive it because they are Fox news viewers, nor is it necessarily "misinformation". For example, 79% believe it will lead to a government takeover. Not that it's aprt of the plan, that the plan will lead to it. Even though the question doesn't include the qualifier "lead to" on the other things asked, it's still quite likely that people are answering that way because they think those things are on the way, even if they aren't in the plan right now.



It's not a testament to any misinformation campaign, it's the fact that people don't always precisely answer what they are asked, especially for those that can see that just because a plan doesn't have something in it right now doesn't mean that isn't going to be legislated in later if the plan is passed and national attention has moved elsewhere.



It's easy to create the impression of misinformation when they very carefully narrow what is being asked about to areas where it's easy to misunderstand what exactly has happened.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Which has nothing to do with the argument at hand.

It is clear that Fox News is very successful at misinforming it's viewers. We can extrapolate two things from this -

- Fox News lies more often and more effectively than any other network.

- The people that watch Fox News are more susceptible to those lies, and willing to believe them, than viewers of other networds that hear similar arguments.


The likely explaination is that Fox News repeats them as truth and fact more than any other network, and rarely investigates the facts to give their viewers accurate information.

The general noise made by Fox News infects the overall debate we have, inserting falsehoods and corrupting the chances for fact-based journalism.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Who's right?

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."