A pattern of deception at Fox News

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with Fox News as an idea. The conservative cable television station has a place, there is nothing at all wrong with news from a particular viewpoint. In Europe news sources have traditionally reported from a point of view with great success and their readers were no worse off because of it.



I am uncomfortable with Fox News calling themselves 'Fair and Balanced' when they are clearly conservative, pro-Republican and right-wing. The slogan "We report, you decide" smacks of arrogance that the relatively young news source has not yet earned.

If they keep up their recent history of convenient 'errors' that all for some reason end up favoring right-wing candidates and Republicans, they'll cease to be a source of journalism altogether.

In recent years, Fox News has inflated the numbers of people attending political rallies and book signings for conservative politicos.



There are multiple examples of Fox News broadcasting misleading and erroneous graphs that are not reflective of reality. For some reason these errors always seem to favor Republican points of view - whether disparaging President Obama's policies or inflating public response to GOP proposals.

It might not be fair to say all Fox News mistakes are because of their bias and desire to see liberal policies fail. Some are just plain ignorant.

When the network decides to reverse the results of polls to make it seem like Americans favor Republican governors' attempts to curtail collective bargaining rights for public workers, or post polling results that are utterly irrational, one begins to question their motives.



The problem with Fox is that they are now responsible for a generation of misinformed people who are willing to accept falsehoods as truth, all in the name of their political ideology. That should be a crime against the intellect. How can a democracy function if the media is telling people bald-faced lies and spinning important issues in an unethical manner to prevent honest debate? Fox is the most watched news network in the country, and its viewers are the most misinformed people in the country.

In the worst cases, Fox's editorial mistakes appear to be both racially and politically motivated.

Our neighbors to the north have prevented organizations like NewsCorp from dominating their airwaves by making it illegal to lie in a news broadcast. Perhaps we should do the same here, in the name of preserving the craft and profession of journalism and keeping it separate from entertainment.

Every time Fox writes or broadcasts an error, they damage our democracy as well as their credibility. We have a whole legion of politically motivated but terribly misinformed Fox News viewers out there who insist that they must be right because the 'mainstream media' has a liberal bias, and Fox does not. If Fox is purposefully lying to these folks, then there are dangerously ignorant people out there with the power to vote.

Wisconsin crank call went too far.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was punked by a crank call from Ian Murphy, a blogger and 'new journalist' from the Buffalo Beast - details of that call can be found in a previous post.



Though many are disturbed that Governor Walker admitted to considering using violence and intimidation to end the protests, and that Walker would take phone calls from the billionaire tycoon and Tea Party founder Koch brothers but not his own state senators, I think the real issue here is the so-called journalist who used lies and deception to access governor Walker.

Ian Murphy is not a journalist. Any blogger who wishes to be called a journalist should still abide by the standards of ethics that all good journalists abide by.

The Society of Professional Journalists, in its Code of Ethics, argues that journalists should be 'honest, fair, and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting news.'

Mr. Murphy fails the honesty test. The information derived from his fake conversation with Governor Walker was drawn from deceit that makes my entire profession look bad. Publicatons like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal would fire a reporter for stooping to such methods.

When seeking out interviews, journalists should never misrepresent their name or affiliation. If politicians or private citizens decline to speak with us, that is indeed their right, as it is our freedom to report their 'non-statements' and to continue to try to contact them.

I believe the Buffalo Beast website owes Governor Walker - and the entire profession of journalism - an apology for their dishonesty.

On the other hand, it is surprisingly easy to prank Wisconsin's governor.

On Mubarak and Objectivity

Anyone who has read my blog over the past 9 days may have noticed my words becoming increasingly critical of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, while at the same time becoming more and more supportive of the protesters in Cairo and elsewhere.



As you may know, I have aspirations to become a journalist and journalists must be objective. This means that typically we are not to take a particular side in a story, but report empirical facts and represent multiple interpretations of what those facts mean.

I can tell you that it is 28.5 degrees farenheit outside in Lexington, Kentucky right now. I can't tell you whether that is hot or cold to you, because your opinions on what temperature is cold and what temperature is hot differ from mine. I feel like 28.5 degrees is pretty comfortable - not a good temperature for a swim, but much better than the teens or the single digits.

In Egypt, on the other hand, the empirical data that is easier to parse, if more difficult to understand. Protesters are being intimidated. Journalists, Egyptian, Arab, European and American are being jailed, their cameras and recording equipment confiscated. Molitov cocktails are being thrown into crowds. Supporters of President Mubarak and hired thugs are attacking crouds with whips, machetes and clubs. The regime is cracking down and committing atrocities against innocent people.

And President Mubarak has the audacity to claim that chaos and violence would erupt after he steps down - when he is causing the chaos and violence erupting before our very eyes.

For the second day in a row clashes between mostly peaceful anti-regime protesters and the supporters of Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship rage across Egypt.



As a journalist, I do not have to give equal time to someone who commits atrocity. I would not give time to Hitler were he perpetrating the holocaust today. I would not give equal time for Fred Phelps to preach his homophobic bigotry across my blog. And I will no longer give time to a regime that systematically silences its people at best through shutting off the internet and stealing cameras, and at worst through kidnapping, imprisonment, abuse, torture and murder.

That also means that I should be more critical of my own government's lukewarm stance towards the demonstrations in Egypt, even as the Mubarak government cracks down.

Free Egypt.

WikiLeaks is your friend.

Thank goodness for WikiLeaks. Though their front-man is facing sexual assault charges and they have become a thorn in the side of the wold diplomatic community, WikiLeaks is hands-down the best thing to happen to our democracy since women's suffrage.



The site, an international non-profit organization that disseminates classified information from anonymous sources, is just one more part of the new wave of journalism surging forward in social media and digital communication. There are millions of documents on WikiLeaks that otherwise would not be available to the public eye.

In essence, WikiLeaks throws open some of the doors that our governments operate behind.

Though governments complain that they require a level of confidentiality for diplomatic reasons, we have to understand that in the new digital world, they have no choice but to be more transparent both to each other and to their constituents. There is little legal recourse against WikiLeaks and their activities, and that is only right. Speech and press should be free world-wide.

While some big media sources (the MSNBCs and FOXs of the world) are afraid of what Wikileaks could mean for the future of journalism, as a journalist myself I think it is a tool to be embraced. Yes, anyone with access to the internet could go to WikiLeaks and acquire the information for themselves, but they will still turn to big media to analyze and parse the information into a format that is easier to acquire. The average media consumer will not want to spend their time sifting through the millions of documents on WikiLeaks.

An active and independent press is necessary for Democracy to function. WikiLeaks contributes to the activity and independence of the media, itself being an independent non-profit website and organization. Therefore, the site itself aids democracy. We journalists should be rallying around WikiLeaks and the freedoms its existence represents.

We may be seeing the first WikiLeaks revolution in Tunisia as I write this entry.

WikiLeaks as it stands is a treasure-trove of news stories. If it continues to get sources it will be an invaluable boon to journalists.

Perhaps even more interesting than the government intrigues uncovered by the site will be the forthcoming corporate communiques and secrets that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has referred to.