Duped Again

When Andrew Breitbart posted the highly edited and deceptive videos of Acorn employees allegedly helping a pimp commit crimes Fox News jumped at the opportunity to air them. Those videos were not just a sensational story they also fit the Fox disinformation factory’s agenda. How dare anyone help the poor! How dare anyone help progressive candidates get out the vote! The evidence against Acorn, if you can call it evidence, appeared to be damning. I was skeptical. Something did not add up. What was missing was motive. Why would Acorn employees help a pimp commit crimes?

The problem was that the mainstream media picked up the story and congress actually withdrew the funding for Acorn. I am afraid that I, like everyone else, placed too much faith in the news media and congress. I thought some real news organization would have checked the integrity of the videos and would have done a little investigating. I thought that congress would have looked into the matter before reacting to the videos. By the time someone finally did investigate it was too late save Acorn’s funding. I do not know everyone who behaved responsibly enough to unravel the real story. What I do know is that California’s Attorney General, Jerry Brown, subpoenaed the full videos. The unedited videos and the other evidence he gathered revealed that the videos shown on Fox were a vicious hoax perpetrated by an unethical punk with a right wing agenda.

Congress and the mainstream media had rushed to judgment. They had assumed that a real news organization would have checked its sources and would have some journalistic integrity. Breitbart and Fox denied all knowledge of the videos being altered. They denied all knowledge of the fact the Acorn’s employees actually notified the police of the illegal activities of the self-described pimp. They offered no apologies for their sorry role in this matter. Instead they acted like innocent victims. Worse yet, Fox has now helped to perpetrate another hoax to further its right wing agenda.

Breitbart posted another altered video, and Fox eagerly aired it with their so called news people adding their own right wing invective as editorial comments. Once more the main stream media picked up on the story and aired it without first checking the sources or investigating, and once more the government over-reacted to the story. As a result, Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign from her position with the Agriculture Department. Now, of course, the full version of her speech to the NAACP has come to light, and it reveals that another vicious right wing hoax has been perpetrated. Fox News offers no apologies for its role in this, nor is it retracting the story. Instead, it is blaming the Obama Administration for rushing to judgment!

While I agree that the Obama administration over-reacted, this in no way exonerates Fox News for its irresponsible behavior. Andrew Breitbart is not a newsman; he is a political operative with absolutely no regard for the facts. Fox News knew or should have known that Breitbart is not a credible source of information. Furthermore, these two instances are not the only times that Fox has presented blatant falsehoods as news stories. I will not go into all of those instances because I think Rachel Maddow and others have already done it better than I can. What I am saying is that Fox indulges in selective ignorance, and selective ignorance is a deception rather than an excuse. A news organization is supposed to perform a public service. It is supposed to keep the public informed. It has a duty to check the voracity of its sources and confirm the accuracy of the stories it presents. It has a duty to be as factual as it can be. It is called journalistic integrity. What is all too evident is that journalistic integrity is a concept that is foreign to Fox News. Fox is not a news organization; it is a disinformation factory with a political agenda. It is high time to hold Fox News accountable!

Please do not misunderstand what I am saying. I am a champion of the first amendment. I would never think of depriving anyone of the right to express an opinion. Fox has every right to broadcast Glen Beck throwing up all over his black board. Anyone with an IQ above ninety knows he is stating opinions. There is a real difference between that and characterizing falsehoods as news. Even real news reporters will occasionally make a mistake. When they realize they have made an error they will retract the inaccurate story and apologize to their audience or readers. The will do this because they know there is a public trust involved in reporting the news. People and organizations that continually violate this trust have no right to characterize their verbal garbage as news. We must insist that anyone who is reporting news has enough journalistic integrity to make the stories they present as factual as possible, and we must insist that opinions are clearly characterized as editorial comments. Slander and libel laws are supposed to protect people and organizations from specious stories purported to be true. Those laws should be enforced.

Even when we insist on accurate news reporting we are not insuring balanced reporting. People who have a bias will still be able to select the stories they choose to report. They will still have the ability to emphasize the stories that further their agenda. I do not have a problem with that if what they omit is not deceptive. In the case of Fox what was omitted were not stories but facts that were vital to the accuracy of those stories. Fox must not be allowed to hide behind selective ignorance. Fox has done that far too often. Fox must be forced to retract the story, and it must face some stiff penalties if it continues perpetrate outright falsehoods on a public that is depending on Fox News for information. The only other option is for the main stream media and our government to acknowledge the fact that Fox News is a disinformation factory and to stop acting as if Fox ever presents anything resembling factual reporting!