Contributors

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Did FOX News Engineer the Whole Juan Williams Flap?

During this election cycle, haven't Republicans been saying that the deficit is the most important thing? And when asked exactly what programs they'll cut, what's just about the only thing they'll say they'll cut? Isn't it NPR and NEA?

So isn't it curious that last week Bill O'Reilly asked Juan Williams a leading question about Muslims? One that Williams answered two parts: the first part making himself sound bigoted, and then going on to make himself sound reasonable? And then isn't it odd that some shadowy "liberal group" circulated a carefully edited video of his comments?

Doesn't this have all the shades of the Shirley Sherrod charade? And we all know who arranged that video, don't we?

And isn't it interesting that two days after Williams was fired from NPR he received what some people consider a two million dollar payoff from FOX News?

Have people who listen to NPR during Williams' tenure on the network noticed a change in his perspective? Hasn't he been parroting right-wing talking points on his appearances on NPR ever since he began working for FOX? Why didn't Williams heed the several warnings NPR management gave him to avoid making such comments? Did FOX hire Williams to get a spy into the NPR news room? Is FOX News fanning the flames of terrorism and inciting the bomb threat against NPR?

And hasn't NPR bent over backwards in all areas to avoid seeming partisan? Haven't they banned their employees from attending the Jon Stewart/Steven Colbert rally unless they're covering it? And aren't NPR and PBS just shills for corporate interests anyway? Don't they get like 60% of their money from corporate sponsorships and grants, 40% from local stations, and only 1.5% from the CPB? So, wouldn't cutting funding for CPB have no effect on NPR, and only hurt rural public radio stations that depend on CPB funding?

Is it even proper for NPR to employ someone like Williams, who works for a rabidly partisan political organization like FOX, which makes no secret of the millions of dollars it pumps into Republican political campaigns? An organization run by Roger Ailes, a notorious Republican political hack? An organization that pumped up the Tea Party and falsified video in order to make Tea Party rallies seem larger than they really were?

You couldn't blame anyone who thought that FOX cooked up the whole Juan Williams affair in order to discredit the last news organization that actually produces hard, no-nonsense news, could you?

Hey, can you blame me if people think these things? Can't I just ask a few questions?

6 comments:

Fundamentalist Wackos said...

You are seriously overdue for your medication.

Jack Jodell said...

If FOX "News" actually DID engineer this thing, it wouldn't be surprising. They helped engineer the astroturf Tea Party "movement" and are a defacto PAC for the Republican Party and so-called conservative causes across the board.

Mark Ward said...

Whether it was intentional or not, it worked out quite well for FOX. The sole news network that was pretty straight up has now been unofficially labeled the Al Sharpton Network. Thus, the four basic stages of avoidance regarding discrimination and prejudice can remain intact with hoots and howls of approval from all the "non" prejudiced people out there.

Talk to your die hard conservatives and they have hated NPR for years. Diverse programming? Fuck that noise. They don't want their public dollars being used for anything they don't like so it's all "liberal."

We can now add NPR to the list of media that are "agin 'em!"

Anonymous said...

Diverse programming? Staight up news? LOL.

If NPR were truly diverse, why would they need to warn anyone about what statements they are making?

Government has no business being in the media business.

Let the election fruad begin!!

Sarah Palin Fantasy Perverts said...

...with hoots and howls of approval from all the "non" prejudiced people out there.

Like Bill Maher?

Anonymous said...

"I think he ought to be worried about the -- about what's going on in the good Lord's mind, because if there's retributive justice, [Sen. Jesse Helms will] get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it." --NPR's Nina Totenberg, July 1995

"[Glenn] Beck is worse than a clown. He's more like a terrorist who believes he has discovered the One True Faith, and condemns everyone else as a heretic. And that makes him something else as well -- a traitor to the American values he professes loudly to defend." --Cokie Roberts, March 2010

"It made me feel pretty good. I thought it was a great speech.... You know, a friend of mine said, 'Oh my God, we have a President again!' Now, in some ways, that's not fair to Bush, but that's the way you felt. You felt this was a guy who was totally in charge." --Nina Totenberg discussing President Obama's address to Congress, Feb. 27, 2009