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      Hoax review: Fox News, Donald Trump and truth v owning the libs

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      On Saturday night, the Washington Post reported that Mary Trump Barry had been caught on tape accusing her brother, the president, of being an all-purpose piece of work who even cheated his way into college. As framed by Trump’s older sister, a federal judge who retired under an ethics cloud of her own, the president has “no principles. None.”As for his relationship to truth: “The lying. Holy shit.”Barry did not, however, have the media to herself. As the Post’s scoop was breaking, Jeanine Pirro was extolling Trump’s virtues in a primetime flight into fantasy.According to Pirro, “Trump made his own money and he hasn’t asked the government for it and he doesn’t cut deals while he’s in the government for his son and his family.”According to Barry, Trump was incredulous to be told she read books and didn’t watch Fox News.Welcome to the parallel universe, where reality can take a backseat to ratings and resentments. Into the morass dives Brian Stelter with his latest book, Hoax. Under the subtitle Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of the Truth, the CNN media critic chronicles the symbiotic relationship between the 45th president and Rupert Murdoch’s most famous product.Fox News has access and influence, Trump a megaphone, both enjoy a devoted followingIt has been win-win. Fox News has access and influence, Trump a megaphone, both enjoy a devoted following.To illustrate: in the fall of 2019, Attorney General William Barr reportedly traveled to New York to ask Murdoch to “muzzle” Andrew Napolitano, an in-house critic of Trump. But according to Stelter, Barr was also there to discuss “media consolidation”, at a time when the industry was rife with merger mania.In other words, the attorney general went to the mogul privately rather than having him come to the justice department, where people could see him and notetakers could be present.Yes, Fox News has given voice to those voters Barack Obama derided for clinging to their guns and religion and Hillary Clinton branded as irredeemably deplorable. But Fox News has also promoted baseless conspiracy theories and unhesitatingly stoked racial and cultural animus – as Stelter makes clear.Although Fox News did not embrace Obama and “birtherism”, it did not discourage it, offering Trump a platform to trash a sitting president. Stelter captures Steve Doocy, a host of morning show Fox & Friends, egging the one-time reality host on, describing him as someone “who we all know was born in this country”.More recently, host Jesse Watters has credited the QAnon conspiracy movement with uncovering “great stuff”. Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, singled out Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP for its vulgarity but a few years ago voiced his approval of an email sent by his brother, Buckley Carlson, to a woman he labeled “LabiaFace” while referring to “dick fright”, “spooge neck” and “pearl necklacing”.In Carlson’s words, “I just talked to my brother about his response, and he assures me he meant it in the nicest way.” Then again, Blake Neff, a Carlson writer, was recently dismissed for posting racist and misogynist messages online.As narrated by Stelter, Fox News has deliberately and repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by Covid-19As narrated by Stelter, Fox News has deliberately and repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by Covid-19 for the sake of making Trump look good, even as the pandemic took hold in Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas, ie: Trump’s base. Hoax describes in granular detail internal measures taken in early March, as Covid’s blight was descending, and contrasts them with the wisdom fed to viewers.Hand sanitizer stations were “added to every door at Fox”, in-person meetings were scaled back, travel was curbed. Yet Sean Hannity and other hosts were talking out of “both sides of their mouth” – this being the same Hannity who in moments of candor reported by Stelter would label Trump “batshit crazy” or ask: “What the fuck is wrong with him?”In Stelter’s telling, “one minute Hannity was saying the virus was ‘serious’” and in the next breath he was “accusing other media outlets of ‘sowing fear’”. Hannity also attacked Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, and Bill de Blasio, New York City’s mayor, for “politicizing this national emergency”, admonishing them to “stop”.Pete Hegseth, another host, announced that the more he learned about Covid, the “less” there was to “worry about”.Now, the US death toll is approaching 180,000. Contrary to the president’s assurances, the virus shows no signs of disappearing.Viewers have argued to the Federal Communications Commission that “the network had blood on its hands”. In its successful defense of a Covid-induced lawsuit, Fox rightly argued that first amendment free speech protections can also shield misinformation. More

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      William Barr told Murdoch to 'muzzle' Fox News Trump critic, new book says

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      The attorney general, William Barr, told Rupert Murdoch to “muzzle” Andrew Napolitano, a prominent Fox News personality who became a critic of Donald Trump, according to a new book about the rightwing TV network.Barr’s meeting with Murdoch, at the media mogul’s New York home in October 2019, was widely reported at the time, with speculation surrounding its subject. According to Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, subjects covered included media consolidation and criminal justice reform.“But it was also about Judge Andrew Napolitano.”Stelter’s in-depth look at Fox News, its fortunes under Trump and its links to his White House will be published on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.In early 2019 it was reported that Napolitano, a New Jersey superior court judge who joined Fox News in 1998, told friends he had been on Trump’s shortlist for the supreme court. But he broke ranks later in the year, labeling Trump’s approaches to Ukraine, seeking political dirt on rivals, “both criminal and impeachable behavior”.“The criminal behavior to which Trump has admitted,” Napolitano wrote, in a column dated 3 October, “is much more grave than anything alleged or unearthed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and much of what Mueller revealed was impeachable.”Citing an unnamed source, Stelter writes that Trump “was so incensed by the judge’s TV broadcasts that he had implored Barr to send Rupert a message in person … about ‘muzzling the judge’. [Trump] wanted the nation’s top law enforcement official to convey just how atrocious Napolitano’s legal analysis had been.”Barr has been widely accused of riding roughshod over the rule of law, in service of Trump and his own authoritarian view of the presidency.Though Barr’s words to Murdoch “carried a lot of weight”, Stelter writes, “no one was explicitly told to take Napolitano off the air”. Instead, Stelter reports, Napolitano found digital resources allocated elsewhere, saw a slot on a daytime show disappear, and was not included in coverage of the impeachment process.In Stelter’s telling, Napolitano thought he was being kept off air by “25-year-old producers” who didn’t think viewers could handle his analysis. Stelter, however, says an unnamed “twentysomething staffer” confirmed that one host, Maria Bartiromo, would only book Napolitano to discuss non-Trump topics, because he would upset Bartiromo too much if he criticised the president.Fox News’ audience remains loyal to Trump as his campaign for re-election continues. Some Fox employees, Stelter writes, “justified the benching of the judge by claiming that viewers hated him: ‘Why are we going to book someone who kills our ratings?’”Napolitano has continued to appear on Fox News and to publish opinion columns. He has remained critical of Trump, for example slamming the actions of federal officers sent to confront protesters in Portland, Oregon; opposing attempts to provide coronavirus relief without congressional involvement; and saying Senate Republicans should have called new witnesses in the president’s impeachment trial.He has also had harsh words for Barr, for example calling his conduct in the case of Trump ally Roger Stone “Stalinistic”; blasting his handling of the Mueller report to Trump’s advantage; and hitting him for “insulting” Congress.Napolitano did, however, back Barr’s attempt to drop charges against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian officials. More

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      Trouble for Trump as Fox News praises 'enormously effective' Biden speech

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      Joe Biden

      Republican pundits accept success of Biden’s convention address as Trump’s bid to portray Democratic rival as radical leftist falls flat
      Iowa: Trump clings to narrow lead as Biden closes in

      Play Video

      5:22

      ‘Light is more powerful than dark’: Joe Biden accepts presidential nomination – video

      Under pressure on the last day of the Democratic convention, Joe Biden “hit a home run” with an “enormously effective” speech that blew “a big hole” in Donald Trump’s efforts to paint him as a mentally faltering captive of his party’s left wing.
      And that was to hear Fox News hosts Dana Perino and Chris Wallace tell it.
      “It was a very good speech,” added Karl Rove, a Republican strategist respected and reviled on either side of the aisle.
      Democratic hopes were riding high that when Biden rose to accept the presidential nomination on Thursday night, he might deliver the kind of speech to get voters nodding their heads instead of nodding off, and cable pundits talking about “momentum”.
      Broadcast to tens of millions, Biden’s speech marked the first truly national moment of the 2020 campaign, with the formal conclusion of the Democratic primary on one hand, and the first clear picture of the presidential showdown – Biden v Trump, Uncle Joe v Maga Don – on the other.
      At a minimum, Democrats hoped, Biden would avoid the kind of verbal slips the Trump campaign has been using eagerly, if ironically given their own candidate’s cha-chas with incoherence, to attack him.
      But when Biden was done speaking on Thursday in Wilmington, Delaware, with one arm around Dr Jill Biden, fireworks in the background and his smile as wide as the country, Democrats were not alone in realizing that their nominee had not only connected – he had nailed it.
      “I went in there with expectations of adequate, and he knocked it out of the park,” said longtime Republican strategist Mike Murphy, a harsh Trump critic, on an overnight podcast Hacks on Tap. “It was so authentic to who Biden is, and … it caught the mood of the country, which is unity, steady, competence, ‘We can rise above this’.
      “I thought Biden had the moment of his life, and he ought to feel really good about that.”
      Trump sought to steal Biden’s big moment with campaign stops outside Biden’s home town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, that afternoon. After a speech at an airstrip the president visited a pizza parlor, where he was filmed hoisting a pie, without a face mask, as staff members, all wearing masks, snapped photos and waved excitedly.
      “They supposedly have the best pizza,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll let you know in about a half-hour.” More

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      Newsweek apologizes for op-ed that questioned Kamala Harris’ citizenship

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      Magazine’s opinion editor and editor-in-chief ended note by saying op-ed would remain on the site Newsweek has apologized for an op-ed that questioned the California senator Kamala Harris’ American citizenship and her eligibility to be Joe Biden’s running mate, a false and racist conspiracy theory which Donald Trump has not dismissed.“This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. We apologize,” read Newsweek’s editor’s note on Friday, which replaced the magazine’s earlier detailed defense of the op-ed. Continue reading… More

    • 150 Shares139 Views

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      'Do you regret all your lying?' White House reporter's question startles Trump

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      Donald Trump

      SV Dáte takes the president to task for repeated untruths but is quickly cut off

      Play Video

      0:31

      Reporter asks Trump: ‘Do you regret all your lying?’ – video

      SV Dáte had waited five long years to ask Donald Trump one question: “Mr President, after three and a half years [of Trump’s presidency], do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?”
      Confronted with Dáte’s question at Thursday’s White House briefing, Trump responded with a question of his own. “All the what?” he said.
      Dáte: “All the lying, all the dishonesties.”
      Trump: “That who has done?”
      “You have done,” said Dáte, who is the Huffington Post’s White House correspondent. “Tens of thousan–”, he began to say, before Trump cut him off and called on another journalist, who asked a question about payroll tax.
      In July, the Washington Post reported that Trump had told more than 20,000 “false or misleading claims” over the course of his presidency.

      Aaron Rupar
      (@atrupar)
      Wow. A reporter (I’m not sure who he is) asks Trump, “after three and a half years, do you regret all the lying you’ve done to the American people?” Trump quickly moves on to the next question. pic.twitter.com/DHn3UvXHnN

      August 13, 2020

      Speaking to the Guardian, Dáte said that he asked the question because it was the first time that he had had the chance.
      “I don’t know why he called on me, because I’ve tried to ask him before [in March] and he’s cut me off mid-question. Maybe he didn’t recognise me this time,” he said. “You know, he has this group of folks that he normally asks questions of.”
      It was Dáte’s turn on White House in press pool, and so he had a prominent seat. “I had always thought that if he ever did call on me, this is the one thing that is really central to his presidency,” he said.

      S.V. Dáte
      (@svdate)
      For five years I’ve been wanting to ask him that.

      August 13, 2020

      Trump’s lying was the “singular piece of his presidency that will be remembered in 10 years”.
      Dáte wasn’t surprised by Trump’s response to the question – ignoring it was always going to be the most likely reaction, he thought.
      Asked whether he thought he would be allowed in next time, Dáte said, “Yes, absolutely.”
      With the burning question posed, what would he ask if he had another chance?
      Given that Trump had failed to respond, it would be: “‘Mr President, you didn’t answer last time. Could you address why you’ve told …’ whatever the number will be by then,” said Dáte.

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      Donald Trump

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    • 150 Shares169 Views

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      Facebook adds labels to US posts about voting ahead of presidential election

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      Beginning Thursday, US Facebook users who post about voting may start seeing an addendum to their messages – labels directing readers to authoritative information about the upcoming presidential election.It’s the social network’s latest step to combat election-related misinformation on its platform as the presidential election nears, one in which many voters may be submitting ballots by mail for the first time. Facebook began adding similar links to posts about in-person and mail-in balloting by federal politicians, including Donald Trump, in July.These labels will link to a new voter information hub similar to one about Covid-19 that Facebook says has been seen by billions of users around the world. The labels will read, “Visit the Voting Information Center for election resources and official updates.”Despite such efforts, Facebook continues to face widespread criticism about how it handles misinformation around elections and other matters. The company has generally refused to factcheck ads by politicians, for instance, and a two-year audit of its civil rights practices faulted the company for leaving US elections “exposed to interference by the president and others who seek to use misinformation to sow confusion and suppress voting”.The effectiveness of such labels will depend on how well Facebook’s artificial intelligence system identifies the posts that really need them, said Ethan Zuckerman, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Civic Media. If every post containing the word “vote” or “voting” gets an informational link, he said, “people will start ignoring those links”.Facebook expects the voter hub to reach at least 160 million people in the US, said Emily Dalton Smith, who serves as head of social impact at the company. The primary focus is registering people to vote, she said, but the information people see will evolve throughout the election season.“This is a unique election and a unique election season,“ she said. “Certainly we have never gone through an election during a global pandemic.“Other tech companies, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube, have undertaken similar efforts around the November election. Twitter said it is working on expanding its policies to address “new and unique challenges” related to this year’s elections, including misinformation around mail-in voting.Looking ahead to November, Facebook said it was “actively speaking with election officials about the potential of misinformation around election results as an emerging threat”.The company did not give details on the potential threats, but said that a prolonged ballot process where results are not immediately clear “has the potential to be exploited in order to sow distrust in the election outcome”.“One way we plan to fight this is by using the Voting Information Center and the US Elections digest in Facebook News to make sure people have easy access to the latest, authoritative information and news on and after Election Night,“ Naomi Gleit, the vice-president of product management and social impact, wrote in a blogpost. More