News Corp., Fox News‘ parent company, has recently made an extremely unfair and unbalanced $1,010,450 contribution to the Republican Governors Association (RGA). The next largest contribution was made by the Republican National Committee (RNC).

Typically, when a media company donates to a political group, it donates to both sides, as News Corp. has done in the past. For example, General Electric, which owns NBC, and Time Warner, which owns CNN, have donated comparatively near-equal amounts to both  Republican and Democratic campaigns. News Corp. reportedly has not made any contribution to the Democratic Governors Association.

Nathan Daschle, executive director of the DGA, called it “stunning” that a media company would make such a large, partisan investment in politics. “The people owning Fox News have made a decision that they want to see Democratic governors go down to defeat,” said Daschle. “It’s a jaw-dropping violation of the boundary between the media and corporate realm.”

“‘Fair and Balanced’ has been rendered utterly meaningless,” Hari Sevugan, the DNC’s national press secretary, said in a statement. “Any pretense that may have existed about the ties between Fox News and the Republican Party has been ripped violently away.

“No Republican who appears on Fox can be seen as answering to an independent press and all should appear with a disclaimer for who they truly are – the favored candidate of the corporate-friendly network. No Fox News political coverage can be seen as impartial and all of it should have a disclaimer for what it truly is – partisan propaganda.”

There’s no way Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. could have seen this as being anything but politically biased. Obviously they don’t care.

Source

White House communications director Anita Dunn called Fox News “a wing of the Republican Party.” Apparently, in reponse to this, Bill O’Reilly and Brit Hume desperately tried to convince their audience of something else…

O’REILLY: Now you and I came up in the old school, where we were taught as a reporter you should be skeptical of everybody. I mean, that’s your job as a reporter.

HUME: Right.

O’REILLY: To be skeptical, skeptical of the Democrats, skeptical of the Republicans. It doesn’t really matter. And I have to say that when President Bush was in trouble in Iraq, this network and this program and your program, as well, routinely, routinely hammered President Bush on Iraq.

HUME: Well, we certainly — we were very faithful about covering all the bad news that came out of Iraq.

O’REILLY: Absolutely.

If by “hammered” O’Reilly means promoted the falsehoods that convinced 80% of those who relied on Fox News of why we went to war with Iraq, then sure. When other networks reported on violence, O’Reilly said it was “because they want to embarrass the Bush administration” and that reporting on daily bombings had “little news value.”

Original Story

White House communications director Anita Dunn defended her recent comment to Time magazine that Fox News is “opinion journalism masquerading as news.”

DUNN: The reality of it is that Fox News often operates as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party. And it’s not ideological. I mean, obviously there are many commentators who are conservative, liberal, centrist, and everybody understands that. What I think is fair to say about Fox is — and certainly the way we view it — is that it really is more of a wing of the Republican Party. [...]

They’re widely viewed as, you know, a part of the Republican Party — take their talking points, put them on the air, take their opposition research, put them on the air, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network they way CNN is.

Fox News host and former Republican Presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, has been urging viewers to “go to balancecutsave.com” in order to sign a petition. The petition, obviously, is intended to tell Congress to balance the budget and cut spending. However, what Huckabee didn’t mention is that he is actually sending his viewers to HuckPAC.com, the web site for his political action committee (PAC), which finances Republican candidates. It also, apparently, employs his daughter.

HUCKABEE: I believe that members of Congress ought to be reminded that they work for us. We don’t work for them. Rather than continue to spend money that they don’t have and push deficits through the sky, and make it tough for families to get jobs and pay their bills, they need to balance the budget, cut their spending, and save American families from the disaster of debt and deficits. Now, I’m collecting electronic signatures to deliver a message to Congress, and I want you to be a part of what I hope’s going to be 100,000 people signing our balance, cut, and save petition. You can go to balancecutsave.com — that’s balancecutsave.com. Lend your name and your voice along with mine to remind Congress who they work for.

So, any Fox News supporters out there able to tell us what PACs CNN and msnbc have promoted on the air? I’d venture a guess that you wouldn’t be able to name one. Can you also explain how this is “fair and balanced?”

Original story

There is ample evidence to prove otherwise, but Fox News’ Megyn Kelly told Haute Living that the reason people think Fox News is right wing is because of Sean Hannity.

When asked about her employer’s reputation for being conservative, she attributed those perceptions to the network’s primetime host lineup, not its news coverage. “There is no question that Hannity is a conservative,” she says. “But I can tell you from personal experience after having worked with O’Reilly for years now, you never know where he is going to come out on an issue. He definitely leans right when it comes to certain social, traditional value issues, but he’s all over the board on certain other issues. And Greta-nobody knows exactly what her stripes are. I think [the conservative reputation is] really because of Hannity.”

Except for Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren, Mike Huckabee, Neal Cavuto, Fox & Friends, Red Eye and practically everybody else at Fox News, besides maybe Shepard Smith, it’s all Sean Hannity… Riiight…

Original Story

Former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Kasich, has been spending time on the Fox News Channel as a host, guest host for The O’Reilly Factor and guest of Sean Hannity. Kasich has filed the necessary paperwork with the Ohio Secretary of State to run as a Republican Gubernatorial candidate in the 2010 election.

While in Congress, Kasich was the Chairman of the Budget Committee. He oversaw the only U.S. budget surplus since  1969, when the defecit was -$163 billion in 1995. When he concluded his time as Chairman, the defecit had grown to $236 billion. Kasich has also been a managing director of Lehman Brothers, which he joined in 2001.

Original Story