Fox News: Inflating Palin's crowds?
Fox gets caught showing the wrong video — again. Innocent mistake, or conservative bias?
Bridget Hemingway waits in line with a Sarah Palin cut out at a book signing for Sarah Palin's 'Going Rogue'.
(EPA/Corbis/Jeff Kowalsky)
Fox News this week aired old footage during a report on Sarah Palin's book tour. Anchor Greg Jarrett pointed to massive 2008 campaign crowds and told viewers the images showed people gathering to see Palin as she promoted her memoir, Going Rogue. Fox called it a production error, and said it would discipline the people responsible. (Watch the clip.) But the incident came just a week after Fox's Sean Hannity apologized for illustrating a health care reform protest with footage from a larger, unrelated rally. Were these innocent mistakes, or is Fox News fudging facts to boost conservative causes?
Fox is acting like a propaganda machine: "Fox News is not operating like a news organization," says John Amato in Crooks and Liars. First Sean Hannity's "hoax" was uncovered by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, and now this? "Inadvertent footage doesn't end up on a network show. That's a bogus explanation." This is a case of pro-conservative trickery.
"Fox News airs old footage from 2008 Palin rallies to pump up Palin's 2009 book tour. I filed an FCC complaint!"
Palin really is drawing huge crowds: Fifteen hundred people showed up — in freezing temperatures — to see Sarah Palin at a Michigan book store, says Ed Morrissey in Hot Air. "Sarah Palin is a phenomenon, and the release of her book proves it. "Even the media that loves to deride her" can't deny that her book tour is attracting tremendous crowds.
"1500 wait in freezing weather to meet Palin on book tour"
Innocent error or not, this looks bad: "To be fair, this could have been an honest mistake," says Rachel Sladja in Talking Points Memo. But it doesn't look good coming so soon after Sean Hannity's apology for using footage from a big 9/12 rally to show how many people showed up for the smaller Capitol Hill tea party this month. And Hannity runs an opinion show — Greg Jarrett is "one of their straight news guys," so this one will hurt.
"Fox again uses old footage to beef up crowd numbers -- this time for Palin"
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SEE THE WEEK'S LATEST COVERAGE OF SARAH PALIN:
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• Newsweek's 'sexist' Sarah Palin cover
• Grading Palin's Oprah interview
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• Sarah Palin's sink or swim interview on Oprah
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17 Comments
Posted by Mike, Thursday, November 19, 2009, 7:39 pm Is Hot Air Ed Morrisseys employer or his content? If she really is ..attracting tremendous crowds.. then why did Fox News go to all of the trouble of lying about it?
Posted by Iqbal, Thursday, November 19, 2009, 9:03 pm The lies about Sarah Palin's crowds make me wonder if FOX is really a news reporting agency or a propaganda machine.
Posted by sloov, Thursday, November 19, 2009, 10:19 pm why is there a question mark in the headline? anyone who's not delusional can see exactly what's going on. even questioning whether fox news is objective is idiocy.
Posted by PROOF!, Friday, November 20, 2009, 3:39 am Well that proves it! Fox IS fair and balanced. Any liberal with half a brain knows that Palin on the ticket is Obama's only chance in 2012. And I mean that in all seriousness. That means there are at least 3 libs who now understand that Fox is fair and balanced, if not outright liberal.
Posted by Brett, Friday, November 20, 2009, 7:34 pm Did anyone really ever think that Faux News is objective or even 'fair and balanced'? If so, then those people are still watching Faux News for the big story that breaks when they find those WMDs in Iraq, or the big story that highlights the 'proof' that we shouldn't have any regulations in our financial markets at all and should just let market forces do their infallible magic!
Posted by mjira, Friday, November 20, 2009, 11:27 pm then there was the time they claimed CNN did not cover the tea parties and used CNN's own footage of the rallies as evidence??? hello?If it is a mistake it shows a great deal of lack of professionalism, which makes their credibility doubtful.
Posted by Gary, Sunday, November 22, 2009, 11:52 pm Calling Fox's a news network is one big joke. First they show two different viedos one showing the crowd that was really there.Then when Fox didn't get the crowd they wanted they showed another viedo only now the tress went from color to green and a lot more people. This is a rightwing network period.
Posted by Venus, Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 4:58 am I don't really care about Fox News, but I will say this...I work in a bookstore and we can't keep Sarah Palin's book on the shelves. I have no intention of reading it, but I don't know who liberal media is trying to fool because her book is selling. It's not the flop everyone wants it to be. Perhaps in places like Boston, where there is a larger liberal base, this may not be the case, but in NC...these people can't get enough of Palin.
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