Monday, October 26, 2009

Media Matters Daily Summary 10-26-09

Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.

Research and communications arm: Fox News is home to GOP in exile
A revolving door exists between the Republican Party and Fox News Channel, with a number of former Bush administration officials, former and potentially future GOP presidential candidates, and Republican strategists on Fox's payroll and airwaves. A Media Matters for America review of Fox coverage since September 1 reveals that these individuals, typically hosted alone or on unbalanced panels, often use their airtime to advance false and misleading claims about Democrats and progressives, as well as to fundraise, further demonstrating that Fox is effectively a conservative political organization and not a legitimate news outlet.
Read More

Malkin distorts study on high mortality rates of uninsured in failed attempt to debunk it
In her October 23 column, Michelle Malkin attacked progressives citing the number of annual deaths due to lack of health insurance, a figure she described as the "bogus death statistic." In doing so, Malkin misrepresented the methodology of the study from which this statistic is gleaned. Read More

Breitbart, Examiner editor use H1N1 vaccine projections to attack health care reform
Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com highlighted a piece by Washington Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott which blamed the H1N1 vaccine shortage on the government and suggested that the shortage is indicative of the government's ability to reform health care. However, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Thomas Friedan has stated that "[w]e are not near where the vaccine manufacturers predicted we would be" and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has called the projections the government received from the manufacturers "overly rosy." Read More

The Washington Times' anti-gay war on Kevin Jennings
The Washington Times is waging an anti-gay war on Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, including penning eight editorials since late September specifically aimed at smearing and discrediting him. These editorials have used anti-gay rhetoric, falsehoods, and distortions to attack Jennings, including accusing him of "promoting homosexuality in schools" and falsely suggesting he "encouraged" the "statutory rape" of a "15-year-old high school sophomore."
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News or editorial? Fox News uses Luntz-approved term "govt option"
Demonstrating once again that the line between Fox News' news and opinion programming is blurred, The Live Desk aired a caption referring to the "govt [government] option," a term right-wing pollster Frank Luntz suggested Sean Hannity use on his program because the term doesn't poll as well as "public option." Featuring captions that use language endorsed by a Republican strategist is only the latest evidence that Fox News is actually a conservative political organization. Read More

Bogus "Fox Fact": U.S. Chamber of Commerce, under attack from Obama, represents "3 million businesses"
In recent days, while discussing the Obama administration's "attacks on biz," Fox News has repeatedly touted the bogus "fact" that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce "represents 3 million businesses." However, as Mother Jones has reported, "most of the businesses aren't direct members of the US Chamber, nor do local chambers have any effective oversight of the national group"; further, the chamber's own spokesman admitted the group's "direct members" are closer to 360,000. Read More

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