Disturbing story about Fox News and Rubio

Joe Fan

Joe Fan

10,000+ Posts
Just gonna drop the whole thing here since it's all worth a look and not that long
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/marco-rubio-just-lost-fox-news.html
Seems believable to me, and I have heard/read plenty of grumblings along these lines, but never any confirmation, until this.
On the other hand, it's NYMag - so maybe they are just making it up as they go?
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"In his role as the donor class's darling, Marco Rubio has enjoyed support from the Republicans' media arm, Fox News. Throughout the primary, Fox provided Rubio with friendly interviews and key bookings, including the first prime-time response to Barack Obama's Oval Office address on ISIS. Many of the network's top pundits, including Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer, have been enthusiastic boosters. Bill Sammon, Fox's Washington managing editor, is the father of Rubio's communications director, Brooke Sammon.

But this alliance now seems to be over. According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people he's lost confidence in Rubio's ability to win. "We're finished with Rubio," Ailes recently told a Fox host. "We can't do the Rubio thing anymore."

Ailes was already concerned about Rubio's lackluster performance in GOP primaries and caucuses, winning only one contest among the 15 that have been held. But the more proximate cause for the flip was an embarrassing New York Times article revealing that Rubio and Ailes had a secret dinner meeting in 2013 during which the Florida senator successfully lobbied the Fox News chief to throw his support behind the "Gang of 8" comprehensive immigration-reform bill. " Roger hates seeing his name in print," a longtime Ailes associate told me. "He was appalled the dinner was reported," the source said.

Already, there are on-air signs that Fox's attitude toward Rubio has cooled. This morning, anchor Martha MacCallum grilled Rubio about his poor Super Tuesday performance. "Is that a viable excuse at this point?" she asked, when he tried spinning his second-place finish in Virginia.

Fox's corporate support of Rubio has also been a growing source of tension with the network's more conservative talent. Sean Hannity was furious that the Times article reported how he went along with Rubio's immigration proposal. During an interview with Trump on Monday, Hannity barely defended Fox while Trump trashed Rubio backers like Hayes. "He shouldn't be on the air," Trump said. The best Hannity could muster was to change the subject. "Have you ever watched MSNBC?" he said. "They suck."

Ailes is now back to searching for a candidate the channel can rally behind. "He's thinking, What do we do about the whole damn thing?" one of the news executive's friends said.

Fox News spokesperson Irena Briganti did not return a call for comment. "
 
Why would a legitimate news source "throw its support" being anybody? Do they have no pretense of objectivity? Like I've said, Fox News and MSNBC are not political news outlets. They pitch propaganda for their preferred political parties. They play a similar role for the parties that the Reich Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment played for the Nazis.

No, I'm not saying they don't do any real news. They do, as I'm sure Goebbels's people did as well. However, when it comes to politics their goal is to drive an outcome, not to inform.
 
It have now become acceptable for media to pick a side, or maybe to simply publicly expose a bias that always existed. Though FoxNews and MSNBC are by far the worst at trying to sway an outcome, I've curiously watched the CNN panels. Now every leading candidate has a "representative" on the panel. It ends up with 3-4 people cheerleading for specific candidates and a few independent journalist spouting insight.

I miss the days where media tried to limit their bias while reporting news stories.
 
It has been obvious for a while. I generally flip between Fox, CNN and MSNBC. As mentioned earlier, CNN panels typically have one representative. This morning, they had Paul Begala giving analysis on the IT Guy's immunity deal for HRC. At least they noted he heads up her Super PAC.
 
If that's true, then it's not surprising but definitely not acceptable, either. As Deez said, it's not for a news network to change their attitude or approach based on whether someone can win or not. But sadly, that's how broadcast journalism and much of print journalism works.
 
Mr. Deez said:
Why would a legitimate news source "throw its support" being anybody?
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That's a good question. I have often wondered why it is normal practice for media outlets that purport to be objective to endorse political candidates.
 
I always thought "'Fair and Balanced, We Report, You Decide" was complete hogwash, so I am neither surprised or disappointed. In fact, this word leaking out just pretty much confirms for the right wingers that objectivity was never Fox's aim.
 
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Until maybe the last year I had always watched Fox news. Probably because, as has been stated on this board before, they mirrored most of my own feelings. But the last year I have been more of a surfer - CNN, HLN, some MSNBC even, and more often BBC. Fox has, in my opinion gone too overboard with many of their programs, i.e., Hannity really gets under my skin - never watch him anymore, and cannot take Bill Hemmer.
The other networks usually get to me after awhile too and I'll go back to Fox only to turn it off after 15-20 minutes. But I will admit that Greg Gutfield can make me laugh.
 
nashhorn said:
Hannity really gets under my skin
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He's always annoyed me. I'm not saying other hosts don't do this too, but with Hannity it's pretty clear that he's memorized about 6 talking points on any given subject and just spits them out over and over. He's just really bad at hiding it.
 
nashhorn said:
But the last year I have been more of a surfer - CNN, HLN, some MSNBC even, and more often BBC.
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I watch BBC News quite a bit too. In fact, since I don't have cable, I basically watch the English news channels that I can see using Google Chromecast - BBC News, France 24, Deutsche Welle, Euronews, and RT (aka the Musburger News Network).

Their rhetoric is a lot less inflammatory than what you'd see on MSNBC or Fox News. You'd never see someone as shrill as Rachel Maddow or a blowhard like Sean Hannity. However, their bias might be even more flagrant. With the exception of RT (which is Vladimir Putin's hand puppet), they treat the GOP race as a parade of freaks with Trump being a borderline fascist.

And of course, they treat anybody who is even sightly sceptical of Islamic migrants as though they want to reopen Auschwitz and start gassing Muslims.
 
Yeah, I would have to think that the BBC is heavily biased as England is a left center government, at least more so than the US.
 
Rachel Maddow is, in my opinion the absolute worst, with Hannity next but to a different scale of obnoxiousness.
 
Monahorns said:
Yeah, I would have to think that the BBC is heavily biased as England is a left center government, at least more so than the US.
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What's remarkable is that they're likely considered biased to the Right in the UK. They seem more Tory-friendly than Labour-friendly, and they make the Scottish Nationalists look a bit nutty, which of course they are. Furthermore, they're very England and specifically London-centric. Even though they're a national news channel, they rarely cover anything going on Scotland or Wales. And Northern Ireland may as well be Greenland.

The liberal bias is mainly on issues related to sovereignty and nationalism. They don't line the Eurosceptic UK Independence Party, especially its somewhat eccentric leader, Nigel Farage, whom I think is kinda cool. They are very hostile to the Brexit (the upcoming referendum on whether or not the UK should leave the European Union) and frequently run stories and how bad leaving the EU would be and give the pro-Brexit people almost no platform to make their case.

And of course, they're very pro-Muslim and treat opponents of more migrants like heartless knuckle dragging monsters. They're not as bad as Deutsche Welle which is completely over the top, but they're pretty bad.
 
theiioftx said:
It has been obvious for a while. I generally flip between Fox, CNN and MSNBC. As mentioned earlier, CNN panels typically have one representative. This morning, they had Paul Begala giving analysis on the IT Guy's immunity deal for HRC. At least they noted he heads up her Super PAC.
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Paul Begala worked in Slick Willie's administration. Paul Begala has been a worthless sack of **** ever since Hank the Hallucination kicked his *** in the race for student government president at UT and he whined like a 14 year old girl about it until he was given the spot just to shut him up.
 
there is no such thing as objective news and it is a testament to the brainwashing we get here that any of us ever thought there was. Objective from one point of view but only from that point and subjective to everybody else. Our newspapers were started either by people who wanted to push a point of view and make a buck or by people who wanted to make a buck and realized the best way to do so was to push a point of view. Hence, you had a Dem paper, a Rep paper, a German paper, a Catholic paper, a Yiddish paper, etc in big towns and they finally all went away because of the costs of paper and the costs of labor and changes in advertising markets. Some papers survived by convincing enough readers that they were objective. You know, the ones that ran Buckley and Tom Wicker columns on the op-ed pages next to each other?

I was a journalism major for a while and learned to read between the lines. Decades later I can still read a story in the NY Times and guess accurately how the same story is played in the WSJ or some Murdoch rag. Same for MSNBC or Fox. I can listen to Al Sharpton (next to Oprah and O'reilly the most laughable tripe on the news shows) and figure out what actually happened when the white college kids didn't burn down the black church or whatever.

Quit whining and quit watching this zhit for any reason other than pure amusement.
 
Fox is brilliant. They know their audience and cater to them perfectly. Think about it. They make much more money with Big Fox, the network with Reality Shows, Simpsons and Family Guy type shows. They are borderline irreverent at times. Anything but conservative and "on the right". They have Big Fox for their lefties, Fox News for the meanies and Fox Sports for UFC and such, both crowds joining in for this.

Brilliant.

Anybody that believes they believe what they spout out, well, that's on you.
 
huisache said:
there is no such thing as objective news and it is a testament to the brainwashing we get here that any of us ever thought there was. Objective from one point of view but only from that point and subjective to everybody else.
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Very true and well said. I get a kick out of people that bash Fox News for bias, but somehow have convinced themselves that the NYT is an objective news source. The only difference in that scenario is that the bias of the NYT aligns better with their own world view. Every source of information has inherent bias. The best you can do is to be aware of the bias to get a fuller picture of the information being presented.
 
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Another log on this fire (also from NY Mag)
Have no way of knowing if any of this is true

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...p-presidential-campaign.html?mid=nymag_press#
 
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