The Censorious Left Marches On; Far Left Hopes to Destroy Fox News

Reporting on yesterday’s “Take Back America” liberal conference, CNSNews.com’s Randy Hall shows how the organized Left is mounting a full-fledged campaign to delegitimize Fox News and other non-liberal media outlets. The Leftists are especially gleeful that they managed to persuade Democratic candidates to boycott any debates that would be aired on the Fox News Channel, with MoveOn.org’s Adam Green boasting about how the successful scuttling of Fox debates provides "a blueprint for things that we can continue to do now and in the future, which is finding key leverage points to achieve victories against our opponents."

Next up on the agenda, according to these Leftists, is an attempt to block the sale of the Wall Street Journal to NewsCorp’s Rupert Murdoch.

Hall took down the details of the censorious Left’s enthusiastic efforts to silence a news outlet, beginning with a lengthy description of how MoveOn.org, various left-wing bloggers, and Robert Greenwald, director of the propagandistic anti-Fox screed “Outfoxed,” worked together to pressure the Democratic candidates to reject a debate on Fox:

When the debate was canceled, Greenwald said his reaction was "joy, screaming out loud."

However, as Cybercast News Service reported earlier, Fox News Channel later announced plans to partner with the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute to present two 2008 presidential debates.

At that point, a grassroots group of black Americans calling itself ColorOfChange.org launched a letter-writing campaign, again using Greenwald's videos and urging the Congressional Black Caucus to drop Fox News from consideration.

[MoveOn.org’s Adam] Green announced during Tuesday's panel that although the Fox/CBC debates are still scheduled to go on, Edwards, Obama, Clinton, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson have said they will not take part in them.

He also called the anti-Fox efforts "a blueprint for things that we can continue to do now and in the future, which is finding key leverage points to achieve victories against our opponents."

"If we put in a thousand phone calls to [Fox host] Bill O'Reilly, he would absorb that and really not care," Green acknowledged. "He might even be enthusiastic about the fact that MoveOn is doing that to him."

In these campaigns, by contrast, "we were able to score a huge branding victory against Fox by having the New York Times, ABC News and the Washington Post all write about Fox's right-wing bias by having our friends concede that Fox is a right-wing spin machine."

Greenwald stated that his goal in the project had not initially been about the debate - "because I certainly didn't think we could win in the beginning" - but had instead been "to debrand Fox for the long haul."...

"The more Democrats legitimize Fox as a neutral or credible source of news, the easier it is for Fox to swiftboat Democratic candidates and progressive ideas in the future -- elevating smears and misinformation into the mass media during the 2008 election," it says.

Green from MoveOn.org told the audience Tuesday his next campaign would be to try convince the owners of the Wall Street Journal not to sell the newspaper to FNC founder Rupert Murdoch. He accused Murdoch of wanting to buy the WSJ "to legitimize Fox" and to get "a seat at the gentlemen's table."

Noting that the Bancroft family are majority shareholders, Green said, "Fortunately, they actually care about journalism, and their news pages aren't as bad as their editorial page. The big question in their minds is: Can Rupert Murdoch be trusted?”