You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1279)

PLAYS: (6245)

Sometimes something you see on TV does come as a surprise no matter what the motivation behind it. The Factor highlights Goldberg with a Weekdays With Bernie segment so that FOX can bang the drum on librul bias. Bernie Goldberg has made a living out of trying to uncover and expose all the dirty hippie liberal bias in the media, but as BillO was playing the usual conservative victim card that FOX News lives on, Bernie stunned the loofah man. Oh Bernie, said BillO. Why oh why are we attacked so much? We're the only network that is fair and balanced and ... sniff...sniff ... we pay such a heavy price for it.

Bernie begins by sticking up for Roger Ailes and his right wing propaganda network, but then Bernie took a U-turn into reality. He praised FOX for breaking stories that the MSM won't and they are sooo jealous that they throw spitballs at the battles ship ... BUT ....

Goldberg:...this is what the so called mainstream media do. They get angry at FOX. This is wrong. This is the spitballs at the battleship argument, but sometimes Bill -- and whether you acknowledge it or not I'm going to state it -- sometimes FOX brings on the criticism itself. There are some programs on FOX that are not only NOT fair and balanced, they're commentary shows. They don't have to be, but they brag about how fair and balanced they are. They don't cover rallies and tea parties, they cheerlead rallies and tea parties, and as a journalist I am totally against that.

O'Reilly: All right ...

Goldberg: And to that extent the criticism is legitimate. By and large it's not...

O'Reilly: The problem there though is that all editorial pages cheerlead for their crew so if you read any newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, any newspaper in the country, they'll be cheerleading for the country global warming and they'll be saying, hey get out on Earth Day...

Goldberg: Right.

O'Reilly: Do this, do that, OK, fine and I don't have any problem with that. Wait Bernie. I don't have any problem with get out on Earth Day and be environmentally correct. No problem, they all do it. But if you then take a commentary, clearly label this and then they say, hey you tea party people, go on out there and show them that you don't like this big government intrusion. What's the difference?

Goldberg: the difference...I don't want to get too inside baseball with you.

O'Reilly: Come on, Bernie. What's the difference?

Goldberg: Here's a good answer. Don't pretend that you're being objective. Don't go on the air ... I don't mean you, I mean others on this network. Don't go on the air and say these tea parties are a cross section of America, they are not a cross section of America. Don't pretend to be a journalist if you're not a journalist. If you want to be a commentator and comment then be ...

BillO:...well let's get Glenn Beck do, Glenn beck comes on and he basically says I'm every man, I'm not a journalist, he says he's not a journalist, "I'm every man and I'm worried about the country and this is why I'm worried," and he has the blackboard and he has this and this is who I like, tea party guys and this is who I don't like, whoever Beck doesn't like...I don't see any subterfuge there, Sean Hannity comes on right after the Factor and Hannity says look, I'm a Reagan Republican, that's who I am, Sean Hannity. He's not trying to fool anybody, not trying to say anything like that. he says, "I'm a Reagan Republican so this is how I see the world. I mean, come on Bernie, these are legitimate stances, every man, Reagan Republican. What's the beef.

Goldberg: The commentary part of it is totally legitimate, but to give false information to because you're a commentator is unacceptable.

O'Reilly: If it's false information I agree, but I haven't seen a lot of that.

Goldberg: Wait a minute, are you telling me that you think those people at the tea parties were a cross section of America. There are as many liberal democrats as conservatives, there are as many people who support Obama

O'Reilly:I didn't hear any person say there were as many liberal democrats...

Goldberg: Oh, I did..I did, you want a few names?

O'Reilly: No!

Goldberg: You want a few names? Yea I know you don't...
Those people pretend that they're journalists at the same time I'm not a journalist. Well, if you're not a journalist don't pretend to be one ...

---

Goldberg: They go on the air and give their opinions, which is fine with me. They then state as facts things..

O'Reilly: Facts?

Goldberg:Facts, things that aren't facts at all.

Bernie called them liars. Wow, and he got hot and bothered with BillO in this segment -- and when he challenged Bill, The O Dog backed down. Why wasn't Beck worried about the country for eight years under Bush when this country was almost demolished by the conservative movement? Because a Republican was in office -- so his everyman act is a lie, but we know that. The folks here at C&L understand that. Hannity and Beck aren't the only two people making a mockery out of the FOX News brand. I wish Bernie would have gotten mad enough to drop a few names to BillO's audience. He may have gotten fired over it.

It's the whole network that cheers on the tea parties, that attacks almost every position President Obama was elected to legislate and that make up facts to conform to their opinions.

No doubt Goldberg is thinking of scenes like this one from Sean Hannity's show, featuring "reporter" Griff Jenkins positively cheerleading the Tea Party Express crowds.

BillO uses false equivalencies to justify FOX's behavior, which is wrong. FOX bills itself as the only fair and balanced network and even runs ads denouncing other cable news networks ... for their failures to cover the tea parties the way they did.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1066)

PLAYS: (5422)

Bill Moyers and Amy Goodman have already interviewed Wendell Potter and I was wondering who the first person in the "main stream media" would be to bring him on. I thought it might end up being Rachel Maddow, but it turned out to be Ed Schultz instead. Good for Ed.

SCHULTZ: Welcome back to THE ED SHOW. The Republican sound machine is in full force against health care.

We gave you the "Playbook," in fact back on May 6th on this program, we went through the right wing`s messaging machine playbook; it`s a 28-page strategy memo from Republican pollster Frank Luntz. He told the Republicans to hammer basically four things when it comes to reform, that reform would be a "government takeover" by Washington bureaucrats. It would "ration" your health care. And get "between you and your doctor."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R) MINORITY LEADER: The advocates of a government takeover of health care are talking about spending trillions more, trillions more.

SEN. MIKE ENZI (R), WYOMING: This bill will allow Washington bureaucrats to ration care. The bill lays the groundwork for a government takeover of healthcare, giving Washington bureaucrats the power to prevent patients from seeing the doctor they choose.

REP. KEVIN BRADY (R), TEXAS: The federal programs, agencies, commissions and mandates that will be in between the patient and their health care provider, their doctor. Why would any patient be forced to give control of their health care decisions over to this Faustian web of Washington bureaucracy?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHULTZ: Well, you`ve got to admit they do their homework when you ever give them anything to learn, you know.

Big insurance is lining is pockets of lawmakers. Big insurance only cares about their profits. They want lawmakers to protect their backyard, their profits. They`re voting against reforms that would really be good for consumers.

But I don`t want you to take my word for it. I want you to pay attention to this next interview. We have a former insurance insider.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1130)

PLAYS: (7831)

Media Matters' Karl Frisch takes us through just how the right wing noise machine works, and a photo that starts out being criticized on Free Republic ends up making its way into the main stream media.

A classic example of how the right-wing noise machine works was unfolding before the American people. A non-story starts on a right-wing website and works its way into the mainstream. It usually involves Drudge, the fedora-wearing boy who cries wolf (almost daily) on the Internet, and mainstream news outlets follow his lead, offering up under-researched and factually inaccurate story lines.

Had the mainstream media done their job -- you know, checking the video to get the context from which the photo was taken -- they would have clearly seen that Obama was attempting to navigate high steps, while reaching back to help someone behind him do so as well. As Fox News host Greta Van Susteren said after airing video of the event, "Yes, a still picture can lie. And this one does."

Of course, the next morning after Van Susteren's show, the Fox & Friends crew went right back to trashing the president with lascivious speculation that was contradicted by easily accessible fact.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1369)

PLAYS: (5017)

Bill O'Reilly had Amanda Carpenter on The O'Reilly Factor yesterday (she's now with the Washington Times) to do one his segments called "Policing the Net," which is supposed to highlight the wackiness on the left and right side of the blogosphere. It's an attempt to minimize us, as usual.

The segment dealt with blogger reactions over Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. O'Reilly singled out Michelle Malkin's Hot Air as a blog that had nutty posts on it regarding the Supreme Court nomination.

What O'Reilly did is typical of what some mainstream media types do to us -- and also is what Michelle Malkin, this proprietor of Hot Air, has a history of doing: He cherry-picked some crazy comments and assigned them to the bloggers as if they wrote it as one of their pieces.

Hot Air rightly has a legitimate gripe, because they didn't write the crazy comments that O'Reilly uses to attack them with, but it was from one of their pre-screened commenters instead:

O'Reilly: Alright, I'm going to read a couple of comments, these are from bloggers. Free Republic is probably the roughest right wing website....
This comes from Hot Air.com, "Unqualified, militant and socialist. NEXT please. The GOP has to block any of Hussein's (That's the president) extremist picks".
You know when you read something like that nobody's going to block the pick. Do you ever think who's writing this? Does that person live in the US, it's just not going to happen. The numbers are overwhelmingly democratic and they're going to vote for her.
And the guy who writes this, I guess isn't living here. Let's got to the liberal side.

Amanda Carpenter, once a loyal rightie, didn't even bother to offer up a defense for them (or for Kos). I guess getting a gig with the Moonies has affected her judgment.

I want to ask Allahpundit a question: How does it feel? Your boss has set this very standard up on her own blog by going into liberal blogger comment sections (she does that to C&L quite often) and then cherry-picking our comments to prove her own silly talking points of the moment. It doesn't feel good, does it?

Yeah, you defended Kos one time, but since Malkin set the standard a long time ago, your defense is hollow. Go read her book "Unhinged," and see where it goes.

In response, I know I've highlighted their commenters repeatedly to try and show the MSM what goes on there too. Of course, it's very difficult to post on most right-wing blogs. On the left, we've always kept it pretty open, but once wingers came here and left lynching pictures on my site back in 2005, so I had to change my policies.

The MSM, which was afraid of the right-wingers, used our comments sections to try and paint liberal bloggers as crazy, anti-American traitors who are mean-spirited and vile people. The media always wanted to never give a face to the liberal blogs, but depicted us as this formless, nasty comment entity blob that oozes around the Internet so that it would scare away readers from our work. That didn't work out very well, because readers understood it was a bogus claim. You see, they read what we write and how we present it to our readers. And now the liberal blogosphere is an industry standard that the traditional media are imitating in their quest to catch up with us.

I do agree with Hot Air that O'Reilly smeared them, but I have no sympathy for them, because Michelle Malkin is the queen of using this tactic. Malkin then went on Fox and complained, and righties are asking for a retraction from BillO. Good luck with that, and too bad. You set this up, and now you get to taste what you cooked.

Everyone knows that comments on blogs do not equal what I or any other blogger means when they post. I never even curse in my posts (who would have guessed, since I'm a dirty f*&king hippie). And if Malkin wants an apology she should start by apologizing to all of us first.