Fox News

Update: Go read Ari Melber's take over at The Nation.
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Yesterday I mentioned that Nas, Color of Change, and MoveOn were holding a rally outside Fox News to protest the network's racism. Fox ignored them, but Colbert made them the feature of his program last night. Here's the whole thing. Watch it.

Last night Fox News had an hour-long special on the youth vote called "The Y Factor." I have to admit that when the introduction mentioned that Millennials could be the decisive factor in the presidential election and that there was a youth vote revolution I was impressed.

The feature started out by talking about some of the characteristics of the Millennial generation: that it is the most marketed-to generation in history, that authenticity and genuineness are valued, and that the generation has been shaped by seeing organizations and corporations essentially screw over their parents.

It also talked about what the first impression of US politics was for many Millennials. The first major political news story that many were aware of was the Lewinsky scandal and the first Presidential campaign that Millennials remember was Clinton vs. Dole in 1996.

As was expected, the feature spent a lot of time talking about our generation's use of the internet and affinity for user-generated content. Specifically, to many young voters, if it doesn't exist on the internet it might as well not exist. Because of all this, word-of-mouth influence is key.

An interesting point that was made is that the reason many older people remain skeptical about the political involvement of young people is that a lot of their involvement occurs over online mediums, and those mediums are not being monitored by older people.

Winograd and Hais, authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, were interviewed in the piece and talked about some of the things they covered in the book, including that this will be a defining election in which this generation's attitudes will turn America's politics.

Another thing that was interesting was the comments made by young Republicans that were interviewed. They seemed disappointed with the Republican Party's youth outreach and admitted that their party tends to ignore young voters.

The segment ended with the following advice: Take a chance on the future of America. Respect the youth vote's intelligence. Old-school political consultants try to tell candidates not to pay attention to it, but whoever takes the chance on young voters may walk away very happy.

I've heard that there was also a segment on CNN about the youth vote but I missed it. If anyone saw it and has any thoughts please share them in the comments.

• How Green is your candidate? Grist will let you know with a new election '08 series and widget to deliver news directly to your blog of SocNet profile.
• Think Progress reports that Fox's Daily Show knock-off, The Half-Hour News Hour, is getting canned:
  

  The reviews for the program were consistently dismal. Its very first review, from the Orlando Sentinel, decried the “[l]aughter, of an awfully canned variety, greets all the gags. Nothing happening on screen justifies these outbursts. … If we’re lucky, we’ll never hear of this dreadful show again.” “Sometimes the humor is so heavy-handed that it seems almost like self-parody,” said the New York Times. “The 1/2 Hour News Hour is slow torture all by itself,” said the Philadelpha Inquirer.

  What the right-wing failed to grasp is Jon Stewart is funny not because he spins falsehoods but because he tells the truth.

• Student loan shenanigans continue. Nelnet is being forced to pay a $1million fine (peanuts, really) for deceptive marketing practices. This after Nebraska Attorney General Jim Bruning, who had originally "forgiven" Nelnet's fine, was revealed to have received campaign contributions from NelNet employees. The Higher Ed Watch article is ugly. Bruning goes to bat big-time for the corporate lenders, going so far as to call NY AG Cuomo's investigations into the industry (which have revealed major corruption) as an "embarassment." Bruning is the real embarassment. For any Nebraska FM readers: what can y'all do to get this joker out of office?
• The Washington Blade profiles David Hardt and Chris Anderson, the new heads of the Young Democrats, who had this to say about the future of YDA:
  

  “Right now I want to grow the organization,” he said. “We need to have better organization and communication between the national organization and local chapters. Young people make up the largest voter block and we need to raise money to reach young voters.”

  Amen.

• A blogger at Campus Progress notes that Senator Pat Leahy just wrapped up a bit piece in the new Batman movie. The blogger "doesn't know what to do with" the information, but I do - applaud it. Leahy is on the front lines right now in fighting Republican corruption in government. Yay on him for realizing that popular culture is a tool to embrace in that fight, not a pariah to attack (as some other Democrats seem to think *cough*Hillary and Lieberman*cough*).
• "Fair and Balanced" Fox News got caught editing Democratic candidate Al Franken's Wikipedia entry.
• Finally, what if the last five years were a giant Batman episode, and Dennis Kucinich a Superhero? Keep your eye out for Teen-Wolf Blitzer:
  

Update: You can see video of the actual Hillary/CDA incident here. To watch the Hannity and Colmes segment, you'll have to go here and dig around a bit. The piece was called "Hillary Heckled!"
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Alexandra Acker, Executive Director of the Young Democrats writes in to note that Fox News once again failed to live up to its motto - Fair and Balanced - last night when she appeared on the Hannity and Colmes program.

I don't have video of the segment, or of the real college dem footage they mention, but here's what Alexandra writes on the YDA blog:

I was on Hannity & Colmes tonight on Fox News (I know, I know -- I'm sure many of you think I got what was coming to me by going on Fox). I knew I'd be talking about Hillary Clinton getting heckled at the College Democrats of America convention and the media frenzy around the minor foreign policy disagreements between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama.

I was happy to go on and defend our Democratic nominees for debating important issues while Republicans run to the right and pander to the base.

What I didn't know (because I didn't have a monitor in front of me while I was on live) was that the caption on the screen for the entire segment read HILLARY GETS RUDE WELCOME FROM YOUNG DEMOCRATS FOR AMERICA.

Let's start with the obvious errors. First, we're the Young Democrats OF America, not For (although we're for America, as well). Second, Hillary was speaking at the COLLEGE Democrats of America convention, not the Young Democrats.

But, most importantly, the clip they showed was misleading and that caption was misleading, too. I know what happened. I was there. Hillary was cheered by the College Democrats. The boos you hear are the College Dems booing the lone, middle-aged heckler with a handmade sign. The College Democrats did not boo Hillary Clinton!

I'm interested in this for two reasons. First, because, as I've noted before, the youth narrative is currently tied to Barack Obama's campaign. If he does well, then we get a positive narrative about the youth vote in the media. If he does poorly, then we get a negative narrative. That may just be the place we are in, but the polls don't back it up, and if we can wrangle a positive narrative out of either a Clinton or Obama victory that's a good thing. As Hillary looks more and more inevitable as the nominee, this type of story just moves us further away from that goal. Youth don't hate Hillary, in fact, many seem to support her.

Second, because I wonder if it would be a better strategy for the Young Democrats to not appear on Fox News altogether. Between the de facto cancellation of the debate cosponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, the Nevada Democratic Party, and Fox News due to the withdrawal of the top tier candidates, to Obama's black-balling of Fox reporters, delegitimizing Fox News as a credible, balanced journalistic organization is gaining traction as a progressive media strategy. It might be good for the Young Democrats to embrace that strategy. We're clearly not going to gain any new supporters over at Fox, and our appearance on their programs is just window dressing for the propaganda that each show is rigged to spread.

If no Democrats or Progressives went on their programs, they would lose the veneer of respectability that now hides their pretty blatant partisan agenda.

It's been a busy week for Fox, as they've also taken to smearing the Daily Kos and Yearly Kos, the convention that I'm speaking at later this week. Apparently I'm a member of a hate group.

Check out more films about Fox News bias at Brave New Films.

You know, sometimes I really have to wonder if the right-wing Republican propagandists over at Fox news take themselves seriously, because I have to believe that every time the cameras turn off the "reporters" let loose a devious "Bwaa-Haa-Haa". Check out Fox News' reaction to Sicko, and the way that they use the latest (and completely inept) terror attacks in London as a means to scare Americans away from supporting Universal Health Care

Here's the Paul Krugman article mentioned in the video: Health Care Terror.

These days terrorism is the first refuge of scoundrels. So when British authorities announced that a ring of Muslim doctors working for the National Health Service was behind the recent failed bomb plot, we should have known what was coming.

"National healthcare: Breeding ground for terror?" read the on-screen headline, as the Fox News host Neil Cavuto and the commentator Jerry Bowyer solemnly discussed how universal health care promotes terrorism.

While this was crass even by the standards of Bush-era political discourse, Fox was following in a long tradition. For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens.

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What outrages people who see "Sicko" is the sheer cruelty and injustice of the American health care system - sick people who can't pay their hospital bills literally dumped on the sidewalk, a child who dies because an emergency room that isn't a participant in her mother's health plan won't treat her, hard-working Americans driven into humiliating poverty by medical bills.

"Sicko" is a powerful call to action - but don't count the defenders of the status quo out. History shows that they're very good at fending off reform by finding new ways to scare us.

These scare tactics have often included over-the-top claims about the dangers of government insurance. "Sicko" plays part of a recording Ronald Reagan once made for the American Medical Association, warning that a proposed program of health insurance for the elderly - the program now known as Medicare - would lead to totalitarianism.