FOX

Last week Fox News host Geraldo Rivera expressed he would be "proud" to vote for Barack Obama but on Saturday's "Geraldo At Large," he showed he still has some affinity for Hillary Clinton as well. When former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele claimed Clinton's Bosnia gaffe was the reason for her drop in a recent poll, Rivera felt for the former First Lady as he sympathized: "I think that, that's awful. I, I feel so bad for her for that."

The following is the full exchange as it occurred on the April 5 edition of "Geraldo At Large":

GERALDO RIVERA: And Governor Steele, you have a situation where this Rasmussen poll, I was pretty shocked when I saw it, now showing Barack Obama, I think for only the second time over 50 percent. He's at 51, Hillary Clinton is at 41. That's a 10-point spread. It looks as if the momentum have, has that people are, are putting the, the Wright controversy behind Obama and now seem to be rallying to him in a way that I, up until now, have not seen. you until now have not seen.

Who knew that Bart Simpson still had it? Years after "The Simpsons" merged into the American cultural mainstream, the show is still raising hackles--in socialist Venezuela where a government regulatory agency decreed it was "inappropriate for children."

Replacing the "inappropriate" show will be reruns of, and this is not a joke, "Baywatch: Hawaii," the late 90s lifeguard show famous for its incessant portrayals of blondes in bikinis:

Station spokeswoman Elba Guillen said Monday that the decision to hand over the daily 11 a.m. time slot came after the National Telecommunications Commission received complaints from viewers.

Over at Media Bistro's fishbowlDC blog Patrick W. Gavin was on hand to live-blog an appearance by News Corp's Rupert Murdoch who visited Georgetown University's Gaston Hall to talk about the shape of today's media landscape. As reported by Gavin, Murdoch had some interesting things to say. Among his comments was that we shouldn't have any fear that the media is becoming less free and.... oh, yeah... he claimed that CNN has "always been extremely liberal." (Gosh, who knew?)

Murdoch also commented on the state of TV and how it can no longer assume it can reach such a "mass audience."

The next time another liberal complains about Fox News being conservatively biased they should be reminded that one of the network's hosts is on record as being "proud" to vote for Barack Obama. On Saturday night's "Geraldo At Large," Geraldo Rivera, during a discussion on Jeremiah Wright, made the following admission: "He is a wonderful candidate and I'd be proud to vote for him in every regard, just about."

The following is the full statement from Rivera as it occured on the March 29 edition of "Geraldo At Large."

GERALDO RIVERA: Here's what I think is, is the problem. I don't think that, that this is past Senator Barack Obama. Although he is a, you know, he's a very, he's everything that he is. He is a wonderful candidate and I'd be proud to vote for him in every regard, just about. I think he's, he's a terrific guy.

Business & Media Institute Managing Editor Amy Menefee appeared on "Fox & Friends" on April 2 to discuss the media's involvement in sparking recession fears.

Rescuing viewers from "solid recession talk," Menefee said that specifically network news reports already "have gone far beyond recession, they are already concerned about a depression."

"They're not tell-they're not allowing people on the networks to say ‘Hey, let's get this in perspective right now,' as you said we haven't had a quarter of negative growth yet."

Over the weekend, on Fox News' "Geraldo At Large," actor/comedian Richard Belzer declared his hope for Barack Obama to redefine America from the "warmongering," "far right," "intolerant," atmosphere-"raping", poor-"demonizing" nation that it's become under the Bush administration. Prompted by host Rivera to reveal his choice in the 2008 campaign the "Law and Order" star took off on the following anti-Bush/pro-Obama tirade:

We've been redefined for seven years now as a war-mongering, far right, intolerant nation who's raping our own atmosphere and demonizing the poor and letting the banks rob us blind. I think if, any incremental move away from that would be a Godsend. And I think Obama will, at the very least, put the brakes on this madness and in some ways heal it. Another thing, if I may Geraldo, being a man of color, I think the rest of the world, if they see that America elects a man of color I think they'll breathe a big sigh of relief and not think that we're this warmongering, rich white guy country.

The following is the full exchange as it occurred on the March 2, edition of Fox News’ Geraldo At Large:

Brit Hume has some blunt advice for conservatives: lay off McCain if you don't want a Dem president.

At the very end of today's Fox News Sunday panel segment, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol was first to make an argument along similar lines.

BILL KRISTOL: I'm more conservative than John McCain but I think it would be a mistake for him to just make himself into an orthodox conservative in this election. The reason he is a stronger candidate than a lot of other Republicans would be is that he is a little bit heterodox. He's got his own views, he shouldn't back off on that, I think, actually.

Hume then framed the issue in dramatic terms:

BRIT HUME: And if the conservatives don't want a President Obama or a President Clinton, they ought to get off McCain's back and let him campaign as whatever he wants to, and campaign from the center.

Sometimes a cough is just a cough, and sometimes a cough is a way to avoid answering messy questions about the role of your race-baiting, skirt-chasing ex-president husband with a penchant for perjury might have in your White House.

With just 20 seconds to go in a Super Tuesday interview on San Francisco's KTVU-TV, interviewer Ross McGowan asked, “How will you use your husband, Bill Clinton, in the administration?” As soon as McGowan mentioned Bill's name, Hillary's theatrical and oddly persistent coughing began--and coincidentally continued until time ran out.

Alas, the potentially uncomfortable answer to McGowan's question never came. Gossip site TMZ.com posted the video of Hillary Clinton's health crisis.

The writers' strike is giving conservative fans of "24" a temporary reprieve from a maddening, preachy plots planned in the new season. So argues Bryan Preston at Hot Air, noting that Hollywood praises liberal anti-military, anti-war on terror fare like "Redacted," while it can't abide a pro-American, pro-war on terror far like "24," despite the latter being vastly more successful as a commercial enterprise than the former.

Preston notes that Day 7 of "24" opens by featuring lead character Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) defending his actions before a congressional committee that will doubtless rail against his methods in obtaining intelligence from terrorists. He notes this merely gives fictional liberal senators air time to echo arguments "24" fans here time and again from real life liberal politicians and the mainstream media (emphasis mine):

No one ever said the maker of "Family Guy" was a classy guy. Seth MacFarlane recently profaned Carnegie Hall, as TV Squad reported: "On a night when Seth MacFarlane's mother is willing to come onstage and in exchange for her son paying off one of her credit cards, she'll say, 'Suck my dick, Carnegie Hall,' you know anything is possible."

I only bring this up because MacFarlane's offered the same profane invitation to our sister organization the Parents Television Council, as well as equating them with Hitler. In his culture column this week, Brent Bozell ponders that, and MacFarlane's hateful leftist politics, including suggesting on his little cartoon that Christian conservatives hate "brown people." Give it a look:

Now, I have never seen this show, so you'll have to excuse me if I am misunderstanding the whole American Idol "thing," OK? As I seem to recall, the deal is that you sing for a washed up 80s pop star, a fat guy no one ever heard of and some English dude and they rate you on your talent. Right? Or is it that they are supposed to rate you on your sex life and moral beliefs? Because, it seems that host Ryan Seacrest has given some unwanted "advice" to a recent contestant that offered that at 19 he'd never kissed a girl. In response, Seacrest told him to "go kiss some girls," and hoped that once he came back to audition again he'd "come back less a boy and more a man." This did not amuse contestant Bruce Dickson who says the reason he'd never kissed a girl was because of his Christian moral convictions.

So, is being a Christian with closely held moral convictions now a disqualifying thing to be a proper contestant on TV's American Idol? If Seacrest has anything to say about it, it would seem so.

As shown in this video, Chris Wallace and FOX News Sunday decided to misrepresent the words said by Fred Thompson by partially quoting them out of context.  Notice in the quote below of FOX, the use of the multiple dots.  This kind of covers people in misquoting folks in a legal manner. 

 "I like to say that I'm only consumed by very, very few things and politics is not one of them....I'm not sure in the world we live in today it's a terribly good thing that a President has too much fire in his belly."

However it is obvious how mis-leading it is when his actual quote is put into context.  USA Today started this mis-quote meme as Newsbuster's Tom Blumer points out very well.

A recent study, "Good News = Less News on Iraq War," by Rich Noyes, the Research Director of Media Research Center, NB's parent organization, revealed that coverage of Iraq by the big three evening newscasts has declined as the news from Iraq has improved. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace highlighted the MRC study during his interview of General David Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force - Iraq .

CHRIS WALLACE: It seemed to us that you hadn't been in the news much recently, which probably is a good thing from your point of view, since you came back from Washington in September. But we decided to check it out, and the Media Research Center says that the three network evening newscasts did 178 stories on Iraq in September, when you were here, that in October as the surge took hold there were 108 stories, and that in November that dropped to just 68. General, any thoughts about why success in Iraq isn't news here at home?

View video here.

The world of entertainment is in a world of hurt. With the massive diversification of entertainment offerings these days, older forms of media -- like movies, TV and newspapers -- are finding a dwindling number of customers as NBC is finding out this month. NBC has found itself in the lamentable position of giving their advertisers refunds because of poor performance in its ratings. The promised number of eyes that NBC promised that advertisers would reach didn't materialize, so NBC has to refund their advertisers for the over estimate of viewers that might see the ads placed on their airwaves. Of course, NBC is trying to keep a lid on this damaging story, but the Genie is out of that bottle. We can surely say that the network's News arms ain't helpin' sales a whole lot, in any case!

Adweek gives us the story:

As far as Geraldo Rivera is concerned the GOP presidential candidates are guilty until proven innocent on whether or not they "hate" Hispanics. On Sunday's "Geraldo At Large," the Fox News host teased a segment on the GOP Univision debate this way:

GERALDO RIVERA: In the current anti-immigration climate did these Republican debates convince Hispanics that they don't hate them?

Later, on the December 9 show, Rivera continued the slurs against the GOP candidates when he introduced the Carl Cameron report on the debate:

No it's not a new brand of cologne, but it sure sounds like it.

Today, November 30, Dan Gainor, BMI's Director appeared on Fox Business to discuss the media's hype of an oncoming recession. Host David Asman began the segment asking, "Has the media emphasized the good along with the bad?"

Gainor responded, "Of course not, we haven't seen a lot of good news...and in fact if you watch the networks they skipped what even the New York Times put on their front page, that the Fed said a recession isn't likely."

The Business and Media Institute has convered the media obsession with recession in the November 28 edition of the Balance Sheet.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, BMI Director Dan Gainor stopped by ‘Fox and Friends' to remind everyone that the economy is not as bad as people think, and that despite what the media said about your Thanksgiving dinner, it wasn't that bad.

"If you look at the inflation-adjusted number, it [Thanksgiving dinner] is actually 9 percent cheaper over the last 20 years," Gainor said.

BMI has focused recently on the media's doom and gloom predictions of the economy and released a study on the way debt is portrayed by the mainstream media.

I can't believe we all missed this one from November 6th, but The New York Times read the cable TV ratings tea leaves and decided that the left is "riding a ratings wave" to dominate the medium. Using the supposed "ratings wave" that the NYTimes imagines has propelled Keith Olbermann to some sort of success story, they have decided that it's all good on cable for the left. Yet, any look at the real ratings makes it hard to understand the Times' claims unless they have based all their hopes on mere wishful thinking instead of factual proof. Not only did the Times wildly exaggerate Keith Olbermann's success but they went as far as to say that Olbermann was "tantalizingly close" to rival Bill O'Reilly's ratings -- a claim that the Times is off the mark with by nearly 2 million viewers! As it turns out the "ratings wave" the Times is so excited about seems more like a trickle and could hardly be taken as evidence of some sort of major shift in viewer preferences. Obviously the "paper of record" is trying hard to create their own reality here! In "Cable Channel Nods to Ratings and Leans Left" the Times reported the obvious drift left that MSNBC has been taking, a direction the cable station was poised to drive further off the cliff with the addition of a new Rosie O'Donnell slime fest -- the one that didn't pan out due to Rosie's queering the deal. But, the analysis thoroughly missed the mark and amounted far more to an Olbermann wet dream than reality.

What could be more timely than a study about debt? With all the networks crying about oil prices and threats to the economy, consumers are feeling squeezed. Director of the Business & Media Institute, Dan Gainor appeared on the Fox Business Channel today to talk about the Culture & Media Institute and Business & Media Institute joint study, "DEBT Who'$ responsible?" That found the broadcast networks blame businesses, not borrowers for spendthrift ways.

"When you look at how the networks cover [debt] what you find is they ignore personal responsibility and flip it around and blame business for debt. Six times more they blame business than borrowers and almost two-thirds of the time they ignore the whole concept of personal responsibility," Gainor told viewers.

YouTube video after the break.

Update added 10/19 (see below)

James Walton has been through a lot recently. The 70 year old senior citizen shot and killed 2 suspected burglars within a three week span at his business and place of residence in Dallas. This prompted a Fox News reporter to track him down and berate him on camera until he broke down and cried.(h/t Malkin, Riehl World View)

The reporter, Rebecca Aguilar, tracked the man down in a parking lot where he was buying a new shot gun to replace the one that was confiscated by police as evidence in the latest incident. From there she followed the man to his car where she stood over him and berated him with questions such as "Are you a trigger happy person? Is that what you wanted to do; shoot to kill?" (video here).

Washington Post journalist Howard Kurtz analyzes media issues on his CNN show “Reliable Sources.” But he created a media issue of his own by propping up the false story pushed by the many in the media that Fox censored actress Sally Field during her Emmy acceptance speech for making an anti-war statement.

However, that's not what happened. Instead, as the orchestra signaled her time was up, Fox cut Field's sound after she uttered “G******.” Fox also censored two other speakers for obscenity.

Kurtz was a guest on the September 18 Glenn Beck show to discuss infotainment drowning out hard news in the media. Then Kurtz claimed the story became legitimate once Fox censored what he falsely labeled as Fox silencing Field's anti-war comment (my emphasis):

KURTZ: Well, it's a non-story that became a story because of FOX pulling the plug on her anti-war sentiment. But look, the...

Fox’s swear-word hunters were quick on the button at the Sunday night Emmys, including an "anti-war rant" from actress Sally Field. A cursing Flying Nun? AP reported that Field "screeched at the audience to stop applauding so she could finish talking — and then was bleeped by Fox censors as she stammered through an anti-war rant." AP added:

"And, let's face it, if the mothers ruled the war, there would be no (expletive) wars in the first place," Field said, but Fox cut away for much of her comment.

Backstage, Field told reporters that she wanted to recognize mothers who wait for their sons to come home from war. She added, however, that she "didn't have a political agenda."

Told that she had been bleeped, Field responded: "Oh well. I've been there before. Well, good. I don't care. I have no comment other than, oh well. I said what I wanted to say. I wanted to pay homage to the mothers of the world, and let their work be seen and valued."

The Hollywood Reporter has the news that actress-comedian and former Air America talk show host Janeane Garofalo will be joining the cast of Fox's "24" next season:

The political left and the political right are going to meet on Fox's "24" this coming season.

Actress-comedian Janeane Garofalo, an outspoken liberal, is set to co-star on the conservative-leaning real-time drama, whose co-creator/executive producer Joel Surnow jokingly describes himself as a "right-wing nut job."

On the Imagine TV/20th Century Fox TV series, Garofalo will play a government agent who is part of the team investigating the crisis befalling Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and company in the upcoming season.

Jim Treacher at DailyGut.com has an excellent slam of how loopy and left-wing Fox's "24" is becoming with its carbon-neutral push for Season 7.

Six Ways Jack Bauer Will Fight Global Warming:

1. Travel from one end of LA to another in 15 minutes on a bicycle.
2. Replace power-sucking PDA with pad of Post-Its and No. 2 pencil. ("Chloe, send it to my sticky note.")
3. Yelling releases excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Interrogations will be conducted via sign language and harsh glaring.
4. After torturing terrorist with plugged-in lamp cord, buy carbon offsets to make up for wasted electricity.
5. All explosions will be rendered South Park-style with red, yellow, and orange construction paper (recycled).
6. Cancel the show because it sucks now anyway.

(I'm doing my part by recycling this post!)

My working theory is that the show's creators have been cowed into making penance to the Left for hanging out with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. Thoughts?

Normally liberal media snobbery is irritating (and career-threatening if you're a young conservative journalist), but not when that snobbery is completely ineffectual to stop the thing which the whiney reporters hate. Schadenfreude is the word of the day after reading this Los Angeles Times piece about how "aghast" many reporters in the Wall Street Journal newsroom are at being employed by the son of Satan himself, Rupert Murdoch:

Reporters reacted bitterly to the prospect of Murdoch's gaining control of the Journal, which has long been regarded as a beacon of financial journalism.

They voiced concern that Murdoch would diminish the paper's quality, imbue it with some of the glitzy style of his crosstown New York Post and slant the Journal's news coverage to advance his business interests.

"People are aghast that this could have happened," said one reporter, who like others spoke on condition on anonymity. "It's a sickening realization to know that this really great iconic newspaper is [not only] no longer going to be independent, but is also going to be controlled by a man whose values are inimical to ours." [...]

With Saturday's revelation that the hit television series "24" has gone carbon neutral, it only seems logical that some episodes next year might involve characters advancing anti-global warming principles or taking green measures to protect the environment.

Some have suggested lead character Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, might drive a Toyota Prius, for example.

Well, taking the possibilities to a conceivably absurd level for their comedic potential, NB member AGW Heretic has penned a wonderful idea that I certainly hope the good, green folks at Fox will consider for the upcoming season:

Be honest: when you saw the news Sunday that a woman was going to be president in the next season of the hit series "24," you smelled something akin to when ABC made a similar announcement concerning "Commander in Chief," and CBS hired Katie Couric.

Well, according to Politico, the failure of both is actually not good news for Hillary Clinton (h/t Hot Air).

But, before we get there, what was also fascinating about this piece was how the producer of "Commander in Chief" admitted a political goal behind casting Geena Davis as the first female president (emphasis added throughout):

UPDATE: Woman to be President in Episode Seven (h/t NBer msh1973)

Remember all that media chatter in January about the hit TV series "24" being conservative?

Well, likely to the applause of Jack Bauer's green fans, the producers announced the following Saturday (emphasis added, h/t NBer amber):

"24," the Emmy Award-winning series from Imagine and Twentieth Century Fox Television, will strive to become the first television production ever to save enough energy and reduce enough carbon emissions over the course of a season to render its entire season finale "carbon neutral."

Star Kiefer Sutherland has already filmed a public service annoucement which begins: "Global warming is a crime for which we are all guilty!"

Think that will put to rest all the "24" is conservative nonsense? No, I don't either. Regardless, here's their plan: