Fux News: Flare and Biased Foot Soldiers for Bush

I was curious as to how Fux News would cover Clark's announcement. I suspected they would find a way to give it a good 'ol GOP/Murdoch slant. They exceeded my expectations.

I can't improve on the account by Abe at The WesleyClark Weblog.

The Murdoch/Moon media empire war began before Clark even started. Here is a summary of how Fox News handled the event:

1) Before Clark announced, Carl Cameron and Lisa Vester discussed every right-wing talking point known about Clark as if it were fact:

-Flip-Flopped on Iraq position (that's a new
one- a sign of things to come)
-He was "fired from the military"
-He is abrasive, not well-liked
-He almost started a World War in Kosovo
-Lacks political experience
-Lacks knowledge of domestic policy
-Is really a Veep Candidate
-Hillary is the campaign chair
-Is too late to enter, stands no chance

Ok, so that is how Faux News set the speech up. The two "reporters" alternating back and forth between talking points (those parrots read Roger Ailes's teleprompter script quite well).

Clark had not even spoken a word of his speech, but they had the audience thinking he was an abrasive, phony, longshot.

Then the speech. As Clark uttered the words "We will hold this administration accountable," they cut away to commercial abruptly. Why? Never explained.

So on CNN, we were able to hear Clark point out Bush's economic record is worse than Herbert Hoover. How the Iraq invasion was mismanaged. But on FoxNews, all I saw was ads telling me to invest my money in gold futures.

Why cut away when Clark is critiquing Bush? Well, Fox comes back from commercial, and asks viewers if Clark was specific enough. Mind you, this is about two minutes into his announcement speech (yes, announcement speech, not policy brief). Of course, all the viewers said Clark's message was terrible.

He wasn't even done speaking! And FoxNews was already spinning it as a failure. They did not air the rest of the speech.

So from start to finish the agenda was clear, actually freightening. Watching the difference between FoxNews and CNN became clear. One resembled a news network, the other resembled a state-run Soviet commisar propaganda network.