How Fox Distorts The News To Promote The Republican Party Line

A common tactic used by the right wing media is to crop audio or video clips to make it appear Democrats are saying something totally different from what they have said and then play it for the gullible wingnuts who have no concept of fact checking. Often they even claim that people like Glenn Beck are hitting people with their own words. As this example came up in the comments to this post, I thought it would be worthwhile to show where this falsehood being circulated by the right wing came from.

A clip from Glenn Beck is above. Media Matters explained what was really said:

Continuing Fox News’ witch hunt against members of the Obama administration, both Glenn Beck and Special Report misleadingly cropped White House communications director Anita Dunn’s remarks at a high school graduation ceremony to falsely claim that she was, in Beck’s words, “proclaiming Mao [Zedong] as … the man that she turns to most.” In fact, Dunn actually said that Mao and Mother Theresa were “the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you’re going to make choices” [emphasis added].

Media Matters also notes how Fox has been repeating this falsehood, including on their news shows. When accused of being an arm of the Republican Party as opposed to a legitimate news organization, defenders of Fox claimed that there was a difference between their opinion shows and their news shows. In reality, their “news”s shows are just opinion shows produced in the format of news shows, but they also serve to promote the Republican Party line.

This is hardly an isolated example of how Fox distorts the news to promote the Republican Party line using such dishonest tactics. Rachel Weiner has compiled  The Ten Most Egregious Fox News Distortions.

There are far more than ten. The distortion of Dunn’s statement isn’t one of the ten presented. Media Matters has also listed  a sampling from October alone:

…here’s a recent example of where the Fox News family broke from the standards of professional journalism and clearly pushed a falsehood.

Here’s another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another.

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