There’s no doubt that President Obama didn’t expect soft ball questions yesterday when he went on Fox News Channel’s’ Special Report to be interviewed about health care reform by Bret Baier, but the lack of respect displayed by the Fox News personality was astounding!

As Obama pointed out, Baier repeated interrupted him while trying to answer the host’s questions. Not once, not five, ten, or a dozen times. 16 Times! Incredibly, Baier said that Obama was dodging his questions, to which Obama responded, “Well, I’m trying to answer your questions and you keep on interrupting.”

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Without providing specifics, Fox News President Roger Ailes may have made an admission of guilt about the bias found on Fox News… at least as far as the claims that came from the White House.

ROBINSON: Do you subscribe to the statement of your news host Chris Wallace that the Obama administration is “the biggest bunch,” he said, “the biggest bunch of crybabies” that he’s dealt with in his 30 years in Washington?

AILES: That was his…

ROBINSON: They’re whining over nothing!

AILES: Well, I don’t think they’re whining over nothing and I think they have — look, there’s legitimate complaints that they could have. And I’ve had this dialogue with David Axelrod, who I like very much and, there are legitimate areas. I mean, Chris said that, that’s his words, that’s what he believes, and he had reason to believe that. But I don’t think its helpful to say that.

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Hint: Google  Sydney, Australia, click Maps and zoom out….

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Bill Hemmer, the anchor of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, stated that Fox News’ “opinion” programs don’t bleed into his “news” program…

TVNEWSER: The evening opinion hosts get a lot of press and a lot of attention … I’m kind of wondering, do you think that there’s any sort of effect on the news reporters and anchors?

HEMMER: I hope not.  You wonder if some of that bleeds over into other areas.  In our case, it does not. On our broadcast, with Martha MacCallum and me, we shoot it down the middle at 9am and for the next several hours after that.

Here are numerous examples to prove Hemmer wrong:

• Hemmer latest to advance made-up charge that Jennings knew of “statutory rape” case and “never reported it”
• On America’s Newsroom, Henneberg repeats right-wing myth that hate crimes bill could gag ministers
• America’s Newsroom pushes discredited GOP calculation of Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal
• Hemmer revives ACORN-funding bogeyman to attack Obama budget
• Drudge, Fox News again suggest a few days of cold weather trump climate change science
  
• America’s Newsroom promotes McCaughey falsehood that stimulus would “hav[e] the government essentially dictate treatments”
• Hemmer: “Can’t get to a tea party? Fox Nation hosts a virtual tea party”
• What Grinch? Fox’s Hemmer and Camerota mislead on “War on Christmas” story
• Hemmer asks of possible use of reconciliation: “Does anyone remember” Scott Brown’s election?
• America’s Newsroom promotes tea party organizing info on-air and online

Don’t have time to read? Here is some disturbing imagery – disturbing to Hemmer’s credibility that is…

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FoxNews.com currently has a poll asking, “What Do You Think Tea Party Movement Is About?” At this moment, the leading response is “Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories.” Classic!

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Many of us would love to tell Roger Ailes that his network is in the business of “deliberate misinformation” to his face. Paul Krugman got that chance, on national TV no less… enjoy.

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It’s not uncommon for Fox News to make typos and air mistakes, intentional or not, and their religious bias is hardly a secret. But this one is more than a simple mistake. In a piece about an atheist group, the following graphic was included, which incorrectly names the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Her real name is Annie Laurie Gaylor, not what is shown below!

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Arianna Huffington asked Fox News president Roger Ailes why Fox News was the only cable news network to cut away from President Obama’s questions and answers session with House Republicans.

HUFFINGTON: Roger, you clearly are in ratings, but if you are in ratings, can you explain to me why FOX went away from the meeting the president was having in — why did you go away, 20 minutes before the end?

AILES: Because we’re the most trusted name in news.

Ailes’ response may be somewhat honest, but only if you consider who is placing their trust in Fox News and what, exactly, they are trusting… It certainly isn’t the truth. But, any rational person knows that you cannot be a trusted name in news if you don’t actually provide news.

Here’s what Paul Krugman had to say about the subject, after the interview:

HUFFINGTON: Their framing of the President is that he’s radical, that he’s taking us down a dark, fascist or Bolshevik future — depending on the day. And there he was, rational, charming, and in full command of his facts. So the narrative fell apart and so the cameras stopped showing what was happening.

KRUGMAN: Yeah, I mean it’s — I thought it was actually quite funny except it has real consequences. There you have Roger Ailes, with this powerful, popular news network, whining about how the media are unfair to Republicans. I mean, he is a powerful person in the media — and of course, you know, “Fair and Balanced” is truly Orwellian and we know that. So it’s clear that Fox — I felt like yelling to him, “you can’t handle the truth,” because that was what was actually happening on the Fox coverage.

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President Obama held a Q & A session with the Republican members of Congress at the GOP House Issues Conference, during which he addressed many falsehoods related to health care, the budget, taxes, etc. All cable news networks covered the session, but Fox News was the only channel to cut it off with 20 minutes left. Apparently The Live Desk co-host Trace Gallagher thought Obama was “at times being a little bit combative” and that “there was a little bit of lecturing there.”

House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) held a “Republican Response” press conference after the question and answer session with Obama. Not surprising, Fox News Channel covered the entire thing, including Karl Rove’s commentary prior to the press conference.

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Honda, while stating that they wish to remain politically neutral, originally provided this neutral response:

Thanks for taking the time to share your concerns with us. We are now at the end of our advertising schedule with that channel and have noted your comments.

Honda is politically neutral and strives to exceed ethical standards. We apply these policies to our communication strategy with our best endeavor but as you say we cannot determine the program or editorial content around which we advertise.

When asked for clarification, Honda confirmed that they will no longer be sponsors of Glenn Beck and Fox News.

We have no plans to renew

Paul Ormond
General Manager, Corporate Press and PR

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At least one local Fox affiliate is trying to distance themselves from the Fox News Channel. Here’s what Las Vegas’ Fox-5 news director Adam P. Bradshaw had to say:

BRADSHAW: We’re as fair and balanced as they’re not. We don’t have an agenda. Some viewers draw that connection. Most have never been able to tell a network from a local (station). I’ll get on a plane in my Fox-5 jacket and somebody goes, ‘I love (Fox News Channel’s) Shepard Smith!’ Or hate him. But it doesn’t have any impact on our coverage.

Bradshaw also addressed the difference between independent Fox affiliates, like Fox-5 in Las Vegas, and those that are owned and operated (O&O) by Fox. “Their (O&Os) coverage is more in line with the Fox attitude,” Bradshaw says. “We’re not following their political agenda in any way, shape or form.”

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Copy/paste mistakes can be embarrassing… Last night, around the time of President Obama’s State of the Union speech, Fox News’ White House correspondent Major Garrett, apparently, made one of those mistakes. He intended to direct followers to excerpts of the speech, but sent people a NSFW site instead.

For those who don’t know, people on Twitter commonly use URL shorteners (i.e. bit.ly) when posting links due to the 140 character limit. Using the URL shortener, Garrett posted a link, but failed to see that the destination of the link was an erotic service in Las Vegas.

The tweet was quickly deleted and Garrett made these statements:

I apologize. Bit.ly turned my original link to SOTU excerpts to a soft-porn link. NOT my intention. whitehouse.blogs…. Wed 27 Jan 19:21

The link just posted works. Any frequent visitor here knows that is not my style. Sorry. Shld have caught it sooner. Wed 27 Jan 19:23

For those suckling snide syrup. I publicly acknowledged an innocent mistake and corrected it. If that’s not good enuf, take a hike. Wed 27 Jan 20:18

Garrett previously tweeted that Obama will be in Vegas in the near future. It will be interesting to see if he’ll be tagging along – perhaps he’s planning his trip and was checking out the local entertainment… What actually may have occurred is that a character or two was not pasted along with the rest of the bit.ly URL, so the URL posted was one that may have been created some time ago. It is funny that his tweet after the mistake had been realized was blaming bit.ly when it was clearly an error on his part.

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While many other channels, including MSNBC and CNN, covered the Haiti Now global benefit, which aired live on Jan. 22, Fox News decided not to. Okay, so they do this from time to time when it aligns with their agenda (i.e. being absent from the gay rights protest). Nothing new… So, why is Bill O’Reilly complaining that he’s being ignored?

O’REILLY: Factor Follow-up segment tonight, getting charity to Haiti. As you may know, a TV telethon last Friday raised nearly $60 million to help the folks at Factor, but now comes the hard part: getting the money to the people who are suffering. Now, we tried to get someone attached to the telethon to speak with us tonight. We were not successful, and that is not a good sign. [...]

I want to be very careful in this discussion. I want Americans to be charitable to the Haitian people. I think they need it. I, myself, have given money to that island nation for a long time. We called up the telethon, which was based out of MTV, and said, Look, we just need somebody to just run through the process where the money goes, how it’s distributed, what the time frame is, all of that. We’ve got DVD albums in play. We’ve got all kinds of stuff coming in.

They could not or would not supply us a spokesperson tonight. And that just worries me.

It’s obvious that Fox News consciously chose not to support this cause, so why on earth should anyone believe they’re surprised when they are not supported in return? They seem to have this backwards – a news channel is supposed to report the news and not ignore certain events and then turn around and demand that they not be ignored. A better question is why don’t Fox News viewers realize this is not how it’s supposed to work?

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Act.ly, the web site for “tweet change,” has a petition created by the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAction) that you can sign to demand that Fox News take responsibility and apologize for supporting James O’Keefe, who was recently arrested by the FBI.

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Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, the largest shareholder of News Corp outside the Murdoch family, offered his opinion on Rupert Murdoch’s replacement.

ALWALEED: I met with Mr. Rupert Murdoch and Mr. James Murdoch. We are always in touch. I’m second biggest shareholder there. And no doubt that News Corp is moving on all the fronts. You’ve seen how FOX rating is skyrocketing. … James is now managing Europe and Asia. … I’ll be the first one to nominate him to be the successor of Mr. Rupert Murdoch, god forbid if something happens to him. … I have full confidence in [James], full trust in him, and he’s capable. He’s really Rupert Murdoch in the making, and he’s almost there now.

With the recent Supreme Court ruling, is there is a question of who will be aided by Alwaleed’s financial support?  Alwaleed, King Abdullah’s nephew, has been a friend of the Bush family for 30 years, the richest person in Saudi Arabia, the 22nd richest person in the world and he holds large stakes in many American companies, including Citi, who received billions of dollars in bailout money.

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