On Saturday, May 2, 2009, I appeared on DC 50’s Weekend News with Chris Core opposite Jason Mattera of the Young America’s Foundation to discuss coverage of Bush administration torture policies. Here’s the video:
My latest column is now online…
Fox News: 100 days of “opposition” to Obama
By Karl Frisch
Fox News has reason to rejoice as President Obama marks the media-manufactured milestone of his first 100 days in office. The conservative cable network’s ratings are sky high under the new Democratic president. Yes, it looks like it couldn’t be happier serving as “the voice of [Obama's] opposition,” to paraphrase Fox News senior vice president Bill Shine.
Not surprisingly, Fox’s success as the president’s “opposition” stands in stark contrast to the way Americans now view Obama. According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, Obama enjoys the “best job approval rating at this point in 20 years,” with 69 percent of Americans approving of the job he’s doing. Further, the poll found that “half of Americans now [say] the country’s headed in the right direction,” as opposed to the scant 19 percent holding that view just before Obama’s inauguration.
So, what gives? Apparently, Fox’s definition of “fair and balanced” has nothing to do with the practice of good journalism — where fairness means truth and balance means exploring all sides of an issue. No, it is only offering up the “yin” to America’s “yang.”
Since President Obama’s election, several conservative media figures have warned their audiences that Obama is planning to, in the words of Glenn Beck, “slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun” or have suggested that a government effort to ban guns is likely.
My latest column is now online…
Warning: This tea may cause severe damage to journalistic integrity
By Karl Frisch
Talk to any political organizer and they’ll tell you the hardest part about pulling off a successful protest rally is building a big enough crowd for the press to show up and cover the festivities. As tax day approaches, conservatives planning anti-Obama “tea party” demonstrations across the country have found a way around this once-daunting organizer’s dilemma: Fox News.
That’s right. Despite repeatedly claiming its coverage is “fair and balanced,” despite its attacks on anyone who dares claim or imply the cable outlet tilts to the right, despite encouraging viewers to “say ‘no’ to biased media,” Fox News has frequently aired segments imploring its audience to get involved with tea-party protests across the country — protests the “news” network has described as mainly a response to President Obama’s economic policies.
Organizers of these tea-party protests have no bigger cheerleader (or crowd-builder, for that matter) than Fox News, which has provided attendance and organizing information for the events on air and online dozens of times. You name it, they’ve likely done it. Fox has offered viewers and readers such vital organizing information as protest dates and locations and addresses of websites where people can learn more. It has even posted information and publicity material for the events on its own website. Tea-party planners are now using the planned attendance of Fox News hosts to promote their protests and listing Fox News contributors as “Tea Party Sponsor[s]” on their website.
On Friday, April 17, I will be participating in the Netroots Nation Bay Area New Media Summit and Celebration in San Francisco, California as a panelist in the opening plenary session discussion on “The Evolution of Journalism.”
My fellow panelists include, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.com; Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone; Clara Jeffry of Mother Jones; and Robin Sloan of CurrentTV. The panel will be moderated by new media research consultant Lynn Gutsadt. The discussion is described by the Bay Area New Media Summit as follows:
News outlets across the country are struggling to stay afloat, while blogs are gaining readership—and clout—with breaking coverage and an interactive platform. At the same time, organizations like Current TV are enlisting citizen journalists to grow their audiences. In an era where blogs and social media applications like YouTube and Twitter are shifting power to those formerly known as the audience, how is technology evolving the concept of journalism? How can both old and new media outlets innovate and survive as others are dying?
Technology has forever changed the media and political landscape. Come hear some of the Bay Area’s leading technology and civic leaders discuss how new media is changing not only politics and democracy—but society and business, too. Learn how to use new media to promote your cause or organization, then stick around to celebrate the accomplishments of Netroots activists and Bay Area innovators who pioneered these groundbreaking online organizing techniques.
I hope you will be able to make it!
Stephen Colbert: “Hey, Media Matters, you want to end offensive speech? Then stop recording it for people who would be offended.” From one of my favorite Colbert Report clips of all time. Enjoy this flashback to October 2007:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
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Following Politico’s lead, media fixate on Obama’s “awkward laughter” in 60 Minutes interview: Echoing a March 22 Politico article that was hyped by the Drudge Report, the March 23 editions of Today, Morning Joe, MSNBC Live, and Fox & Friends all featured segments on President Obama’s laughter during a 60 Minutes interview. The segments are reminiscent of the media’s echoing Drudge by seizing on Hillary Clinton’s laugh as a new subject of attention following Clinton’s talk show appearances in September 2007.
My latest column is now online…
The Right’s Toxic Assets
By Karl Frisch
Want to know what’s really going on out there in the “heartland” of America? You know, where conservatives say the “real Americans” live?
Forget the Sunday shows and the politicians on C-SPAN. Forget the fancy op-ed writers and the buttoned-down think-tankers. If you really want to gauge the national political climate, you need only turn on the radio, where the notion that we are living in the midst of a grand post-partisan era drowns in a sea of right-wing venom so deep it calls to mind an earlier day.
From the archaeological ruins of the Arkansas Project — a well-heeled 1990s network of conservative think tanks, media outlets, and political pundits whose sole purpose was achieving an early end to the Clinton administration — has risen a new network that, like the Arkansas Project before it, has one underlying, unifying goal: to destroy the Obama administration.
I guess you could call it the right’s new Manhattan Project.
My latest column is now online…
An AIG of conservative enlightenment? Hardly.
By Karl Frisch
Angry at AIG for handing out executive bonuses to the very people who helped sink the company in the first place? Well, if conservative leader Rush Limbaugh is to be believed, you’re now part of an angry “lynch mob” ginned up by the Obama administration.
The conservative talker’s bizarre defense of AIG’s dumbfounding excess in the midst of such economic calamity is undoubtedly alarming, but he’s hardly alone. Little Limbaughs throughout the media are taking El Rushbo’s cue, lining up, pitchforks in hand, rallying to the defense of the little guys at the bazillion-dollar insurance behemoth.
Discussing the possibility that members of Congress may impose a 90-percent tax on the shady bonuses, Fox News golden boy Sean Hannity chirped, “Whether you like the AIG bonuses or not, think about this: They’re going to make a law, and they’re going to tax every single penny of it, virtually all of it.”
Not to be outdone, Fox’s Glenn Beck, doing his best Limbaugh impersonation, struck a similar chord, saying, “[W]hat I really, really don’t like here is the idea that we are willing to give in to mob rule, and that’s what this is.” That’s two reallys — boy, he must be serious.
This weekend I was on DC 50’s Weekend News with Chris Core in Washington, D.C. They paired me up against Jason Mattera from Young America’s Foundation for a discussion about Rush Limbaugh’s influence within the conservative movement. Watch the segment below and feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.