FOX

The MRC Business & Media Institute's latest study is getting notice in the media.

The Washington Post's Frank Ahrens did a write-up below-the-fold in the business section today.

"Bad Company," the first of a three-part study series on media coverage of the American businessman is available here.

Here's a bit of what Ahrens wrote:

On the heels of last month's conviction of top Enron Corp. executives comes this nugget from the Media Research Center, a conservative television watchdog group that examines programming to determine how certain groups are portrayed. In this study, the group claims that Hollywood unfairly and overwhelmingly casts businessmen and women as "criminal CEOs and murdering MBAs."

Mark Twain once said, "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress."

Today's Hollywood TV executives would beg to differ. To them there's no distinctly native criminal class except American businessmen.

The Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute is out with our latest study, the first of a three-part series looking at the media's bias against businessmen.

Almost 10 years ago, the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute published “Businessmen Behaving Badly,” which found that businessmen on TV committed more crimes than any other demographic. In this new study, BMI looked at 129 episodes from 12 top-rated dramas on the four networks: ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. These broadcasts were picked from two “sweeps” months in 2005 – May and November – when networks try to attract the largest audiences to maximize ad dollars.

In this look at primetime, BMI found:

• TV Overwhelmingly Negative toward Business: Negative plots about business and businessmen outnumbered positive ones by almost 4-to-1. Of the 39 episodes that included business-related plots or characters, 30 (77 percent) cast businessmen and commerce in a negative light.
  

Fox News Channel's Geraldo Rivera came out in favor of same-sex marriage on the June 5 edition of his syndicated Geraldo At Large. Throughout the show, Rivera teased his final commentary proclaiming: "25 years after the discovery of AIDS is this the time to ban gay marriage?....The gay community takes another hit, 25 years to the very day that AIDS first ravaged their community." At the end of the show, Rivera chastised the President and advocated same-sex marriage as a way to prevent the spread of AIDS:

Rivera: "Exactly 25 years ago today federal officials first warned gay men that five homosexuals in Los Angeles had contracted a rare form of pneumonia. The disease that became AIDS was largely spread initially by the promiscuous, sometimes drug-fueled sex exemplified by the gay bathhouses where an uninformed generation contracted the disease that ultimately killed tens of thousands of them and many millions of others here and around the world. Beginning soon after the outbreak responsible voices began an aggressive campaign to educate young men raised in the era of those anonymous sexual contacts of the grave dangers involved. Public service announcements and information campaigns were launched. Red ribbons were also worn in sympathy as one after another public figure like actors Rock Hudson and Brad Davis, Queen’s Freddie Mercury and tennis great Arthur Ashe were diagnosed, some succumbing to the disease. While they are not all gay and may have contracted the disease in other ways like bad blood transfusions the majority got AIDS through sex. The recognition of that scary fact led to profound changes in social conduct. Most bathhouses were closed or closely regulated. Safe sex became a mantra. And something even more profound happened, marriage, where at least solid, stable relationships began replacing promiscuous sex as the norm in the gay community. Which is why on the 25th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic the current efforts to breathe life back into the amendment to ban gay marriage seems so counterproductive and blatantly anti-social."

Geraldo Rivera slammed the President's immigration policy on the Fox News syndicated Geraldo At Large. Rivera said the National Guard wouldn't be effective in stopping illlegal immigration but warned if they were successful: "Who will mow our lawns, pick our apples, patch our roofs, sew our garments? You can bet it won’t be those screamers demanding the National Guard. What we need is a sensible and humane approach to immigration. What we need is what the President has advocated up until now. The deployment of the National Guard is political baloney. Get ready everybody for $10 artichokes."

Without a doubt the most absurd claim made during all the recent NSA stories has to come from Fox News' Geraldo Rivera when he warned: "If Congress doesn’t stop this guy, General Hayden, next he’ll be peeking in our bedrooms. " The following came from Rivera's final commentary segment on last night's syndicated Geraldo At Large:

Geraldo Rivera: "Now it’s your problem too. Remember when President Bush acknowledged that the super secret National Security Agency was indeed spying on Americans without search warrants by listening in to and taping international phone calls? Remember how the President justified it?"

[George W. Bush: "If they’re making phone calls into the United States we need to know why to protect you."]

In a stunning example of politics making strange bedfellows, conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns Fox News and the New York Post, is rumored to be about to host a fundraising event for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). As reported by the Financial Times: “The decision underlines an incongruous thawing of relations between Mr Murdoch and Mrs Clinton, who in 1998 coined the phrase ‘vast rightwing conspiracy’ to denounce critics of her husband, such as Fox News, the conservative cable channel owned by Mr Murdoch’s News Corporation.”

The article made it clear that this is about Hillary's senatorial ambitions and not those for the White House:

On the April 24th edition of Fox’s syndicated Geraldo At Large, Geraldo Rivera said the bright side of high gas prices is "it may cut down on global warming" and then went on to call oil company CEO’s "pirates," and backed a windfall tax on the companies as "a no-brainer."

The following is Rivera’s entire final commentary from the show:

Geraldo Rivera: "About the only good news is that it may cut down on global warming but exploding gas prices are hurting lots of people along the way."

[Man at gas station: "Gas prices just make you definitely want to take the train all the time."]

When it comes to combining campy, staged video with liberalism nobody tops Geraldo Rivera. On last night's Geraldo At Large, in a story about proposed legislation to lower the hunting age in Wisconsin Rivera, seen holding a rifle outside the Fox studios in New York, crouched down to get a child's opinion on the law: "So get this, there’s a new bill pending in the state of Wisconsin that would lower that state’s legal hunting age, putting loaded guns into the hands of children between the ages of eight and eleven. Kids like William here, making them bonafide gun-toting hunters. So what do you think of that idea William?"

William: "I hate it."

Rivera: "You hate it? Ooh!"

And later in the show Rivera, supposedly on vacation, called for Puerto Rican statehood from the deck of his sailboat:

Longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Mike Wallace has finally announced his retirement. His son, Chris Wallace, is host of "Fox News Sunday." On Wednesday both men appeared on "Larry King Live" to discuss the father's retirement and the son's ongoing career.

Chris Wallace chided his father for "complaining and whining" about never getting to meet the president. He said that he has "actually met the president--and several times--and been to a State of the Union briefing where he had lunch with us and discussed things."

The son jokingly added, "I'm happy to pass my father's best wishes onto the president the next time I see him."

Mike Wallace said his son only gets close to the president because he "works for Fox."

Last Wednesday, sports columnist Harvey Araton wrote about the Olympian feud between U.S. speedskaters Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis, with Hedrick starring as Bush and Davis as John Kerry:

“…at the root of the conflict is Davis's belief that Hedrick has been attempting to swift boat him here at the Olympics, use him as a prop as he wraps himself, Texas-style, in the flag, for the purpose of increasing his commercial appeal, while claiming that the feud has elevated their skating and is good for the sport.”

Araton, of course, took Davis’s side.

Araton, who posts his email address with his column, relies on an unexpected surge in reader feedback to fill his Saturday follow-up on the Hedrick-Davis imbroglio.

Anyone who thinks Fox News goes too easy on Republicans would have to think twice after watching Chris Wallace's rugged cross-examination of GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on this morning's 'Fox News Sunday.' Wallace cornered and confronted Romney until he was eventually forced to admit that his position on abortion had "evolved" in a manner that suggests political opportunism.

Wallace began by noting that Romney has been accused of "flip-flopping on the issue of abortion." He put Romney's own words up on the screen from the time he was running for governor of largely pro-choice Massachusetts: "I believe women should have the right to make their own choice."

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz today offers up an analysis of why Vice President Cheney chose Brit Hume -- and only Brit Hume -- to go public with the details of his hunting accident. This, of course, will be the next phase of the media's assault on the Vice President's character, which is about to become an assault on the character of Fox News as well; why would the Vice President forgo a press conference for an in-depth interview with just one person.

Former Clinton spokesman, Mike McCurry said this of Hume:

Hume was "impartial and balanced and fair" as an ABC correspondent covering Clinton, but that "he's in advocacy journalism now."

Michael Hayden, Deputy Director of National Intelligence, appeared on both Fox News Sunday and This Week with George Stephanopoulos, but though at a Senate hearing just three days earlier Hayden and other intelligence officials had cited the potential damage caused by the New York Times story disclosing the program to eavesdrop on al-Qaeda communication inside the U.S., only Fox's Chris Wallace raised the subject. Stephanopoulos was more interested in himself as a potential victim of big brother: “Let me try to give you a hypothetical, see if you can answer it. I went to Pakistan after 9/11. I interviewed a Taliban representative. If after that interview, that person calls me, am I captured?” Wallace asked: "You and other top officials say that disclosure of this program has harmed national security. Do you mean that just in theory, or in fact? Has publication of the New York Times story, to the best of your reckoning, actually changed the way terrorists do business? Do you feel that they're acting differently since this story broke out?" Hayden would only say that the success of American intelligence “is not immune from the disclosure of its techniques and procedures to our enemy." (Brief transcripts follow.)

Before President Bush’s Tuesday State of the Union address, at least three network reporters seemingly read from the same talking points as they described the public mood with the exact same word: “sour.” As noted in an earlier NewsBusters item, on World News Tonight, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos insisted that “the country is just in a sour mood.” About 90 minutes before Bush’s address, CNN’s Jeff Greenfield wondered “whether the President can connect with a populace that is in a sour, pessimistic mood?” He pointed out how “only Nixon, in the year of his resignation, had a lower job approval rating,” before echoing his earlier question: “I think the President would like the country to believe he feels their pain or at least their anxiety about health care, about jobs, about the whole sense that something's gone a little sour." Then on Fox, minutes before Bush began, Chris Wallace attributed the “sour” assessment to Bush as he predicted Bush would deliver a “presidential pep talk where he believes that the country has, the mood has turned sour -- sour on the war, sour on the economy, sour on the government's response to Katrina.” Afterward, Wallace described the speech as “tough in terms of the war in Iraq and people souring on that.” (Transcripts follow.)

[This article was reprinted at length and with favor in "Inside Politics" in the Washington Times today (Thursday).]

A poll by Rasmussen Reports today (Wednesday) illustrates the pervasive dishonesty of the American press in dealing with the NY Times story about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) intercepts of international communications. There are both minor dishonesties and major ones in this story as first reported by the Times and later a gaggle of reports throughout the media.

The major dishonesties are demonstrated by the two questions asked in the Rasmussen poll just reported. Here’s the first, and the responses:

Should the National Security Agency be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States? Yes 64% No 23%

The key fact is that these conversations cross international boundaries. Many parts of the MSM persist in calling this “domestic” spying. This is a lie. These calls are international, not domestic.

Here’s the second question and the responses:

Is President Bush the first President to authorize a program for intercepting telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States? Yes 26% No 48%

In an interview with Greg Jarrett on Fox News Live today, Bob Beckel said “I don't know any democrat that called George Bush a liar.” Obviously Beckel needs a refresher:

June 2, 2005 interview with Rolling Stone – Harry Reid – Q: “You’ve called Bush a loser.” Reid: “And a liar.” Q: “You’ve apologized for the loser comment.” Reid: “But never for the liar, have I.”

November 18, 2005: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy: Bush and Cheney “have begun a new campaign of distortion and manipulation.” The two men could not find weapons of mass destruction and “they can’t find the truth either.”

Charles Krauthammer has called the Miers nomination a "joke."

George Will called her "the wrong pick."

Bill Kristol labelled the nomination a "mistake."

David Frum suggests she is "not good enough."

Senators Brownback, Thune and Lott have expressed reservations.

So what are these folks up to? Well, to listen to Ellen Ratner, of Fox & Friends Weekend "Long & Short of It" feature, they are consciously . . . lying.

Yes, in her appearance this morning, Ratner claimed that the Republicans are "protesting too much" about Miers' lack of conservative credentials in a "concerted effort" [read "conspiracy'] to dupe Democrats into accepting her.

Said Ratner: "I think she is a stealth, very conservative candidate. I think they are raising this as a way of causing a lot of storm so liberals can say 'well, maybe she is not that bad' and I think this is a concerted effort to get her through."

MSNBC's Hardball correspondent David Shuster revealed he is a lot more comfortable at MSNBC than he was at Fox News. In an interview for the Herald Times the Bloomington, Indiana bred Shuster told his hometown paper he feels more at home with the liberal MSNBC. The following is from the October 2nd interview with the Times' Mike Leonard. I've bolded the more illuminating portions:

"The NBC and MSNBC reporter did appreciate being pulled off the Hurricane Rita story to hustle over to Sugarland, Texas, to cover the grand jury indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. 'That's what I feel most comfortable with," he explained, 'the political corruption sort of story.'

Covering the Whitewater investigation of President Clinton for Fox News gave the Bloomington South graduate his first big exposure as a national television correspondent. He currently works on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews program and said he thoroughly enjoys spending most of his time in the nation's capital and reporting for what he considers "the show of record when it comes to coverage of Washington."