When members of the media say something often enough no matter how outlandish, unprovable, or false it is, a large majority of listeners/viewers take it as truth — particularly when it confirms a cherished belief.
Tag Archives: lies
Great Internet Truth #9
For every fact on the Internet there are 5 lies and 25 mistaken opinions.
“Liar, liar, pants on fire!”
From Techbuket:
The Fox in the journalism henhouse
The U.S. House will vote today on a bill that would strip all federal funding from National Public Radio. NPR has been a favorite target of the Lying Right for years; Representative Michael Grimm (Republican–naturally–from New York) summarizes the conservative party-line:
“It is clear we cannot tolerate, or afford, the continued spending of tax dollars on this type of prejudice, intolerance and negative stereotyping,”
Hmmm. Let’s take a look at, oh, say, Fox News:
- It has employed Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum–all probable 2012 Republican presidential candidates–as paid “analysts”. (That’s a lot of free air time.)
- The Fox News parent company has donated, or coordinated donation of, millions of dollars to conservative political action committees and GOP fronts.
- Fox News regularly distorts and twists facts into lies to make reich-wing points
Here’s an interesting pair of videos about Fox News. They’re long but worth listening to:
My favorite quote? Fox News manager Dave: “We just spent three billion dollars on these television stations…the news is what we say it is”.
Toward a Moral Life 