The Nature of Things

The headline said " National Geographic gives Fox control of media assets in $725 million deal." I stared at it unbelievingly. National Geographic , the iconic publication of my childhood, in partnership with Fox News ? Oh, the sacrilege! The first two paragraphs of the story underneath the headline told the sad story: Ever since it was launched from the temple-like headquarters of the National Geographic Society in Washington in 1888, National Geographic magazine has illuminated the world’s hidden places and revealed its natural wonders. On Wednesday, the iconic ­yellow-bordered magazine, beset by financial issues, entered its own uncharted territory. In an effort to stave off further decline, the magazine was effectively sold by its nonprofit parent organization to a for-profit venture whose principal shareholder is one of Rupert Murdoch’s global media companies. And there you have it. "Financial issues" in this age of declining journalism has caused the National...

So...I've been thinking about that freeloading rancher in Nevada who has inspired various gun nuts to show up and instigate a standoff with federal authorities. The deal is that the man had been grazing his cattle on federal lands - i.e., lands that belong to all of us - for about a quarter of a century and never paying any of the required, relatively minimal, fees. The Bureau of Land Management had finally decided to try to collect and confiscated his cattle on the lands. And that's when the rancher and his supporters decided to bring on the guns. (And why is it that the first impulse of people like him is always to wave their guns around?) The federal authorities, not wishing to start a bloodbath, stood down and will pursue remedies by other means. And now this old white guy with his cowboy hat and his gun is the newest hero of the right-wingnut faction of American politics and their hysterical media outlet, Fox News, which has been giving the incident the 24-hour "news...

Fox News does it again, spreading disinformation to its vast audience of gullible souls. It is part of their remit, of course, to be totally opposed to any source of energy which does not pollute the atmosphere, so we should not be surprised that they scoff at the whole idea of solar energy. You can't depend on the sun, they say. Some days it is cloudy. When it is pointed out to them that other countries are moving ahead quite successfully with solar energy projects, their "experts" will explain that it is because those countries are much sunnier than the United States. Sunny, sunny Germany , for example.   When asked why Germany is doing so much better than the United States in this field,    Fox Business reporter Shibani Joshi explained,  "They're a smaller country, and they've got lots of sun. Right? They've got a lot more sun than we do." He went on,  "The problem is it's a cloudy day and it's raining, you're not gonna have it....

The January ratings for the thirty top television news shows have been announced and, once again, unsurprisingly, Fox News dominates the ratings . The first thirteen shows listed are Fox entries. The inevitable conclusion is that most of the people in this country whose prime source for news is television get their news from Fox. Moreover, at least two scientific studies have revealed that Fox viewers are less well informed about current events than those who get their news from other sources. That explains a lot about our society and its dumbing down. Rupert Murdoch has a lot to answer for. I don't watch Fox and so perhaps I'm not the best judge, but from what I read about the various shows, I believe that perhaps the worst offender of all may be Fox and Friends , the show that rates number 13 in the top 30, just above the first MSNBC entry to appear on the list, The Rachel Maddow Show , which I do watch. My impression is that Fox and Friends routinely and shamelessly distor...

Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart took on the tragedy in Norway and the response to it by the right-wing echo chamber in this country as exempli- fied by Fox News. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c In the Name of the Fodder www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook Yes, who in his right mind would ever associate the Norwegian assassin's actions with Christianity?  Well, only anyone who had read his manifesto or read a description of it; anyone who had seen his description of himself as a crusader for Christianity. But, of course, with Fox News, it is all about the victimhood and we know who the victims are, don't we?  That's right - it's the right-wing nutosphere.  Never mind - Fox News is here to call out all those mean old liberals who beat up the poor little innocent fascists - er, conservatives. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c GOP - Special Victim...

Remember last winter?  It was cold.  At times, it was very cold, even breaking some records.  There was snow and ice, and on the Fox News Network, people like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, Stuart Varney, and Eric Bolling could not contain their glee.  After all, this proved what a charlatan Al Gore was!  Global warming was a hoax and there was no reason to amend our lifestyles.  Keep driving those gas guzzlers!  Hang on to those old incandescent light bulbs!  Drill, baby, drill! Fox spent hours covering winter storms, making fun of Al Gore and suggesting that the cold completely undermined the science supporting global warming.  They never mentioned that, for at least 40 years, climate scientists have warned that the warming of the planet will cause more extremes in weather, both heat and cold, drought and flood.  No, that was an inconvenient truth which did not fit the narrative they were selling on the instr...

I've long suspected it and now there is some independent proof: Watching Fox News rots your brain. The University of Maryland has conducted a study of consumers of news from various sources and they found that by a rather overwhelming percentage, the viewers of Fox News were the most ill-informed group that they surveyed. They polled their survey participants on a wide range of topics and found that Fox viewers were most likely to believe things that were demonstrably untrue . Overall, 90% of respondents, consumers from all sources of news, said they felt they had heard false information being given to them during the 2010 election campaign. However, while consumers of just about every news outlet believed some information that was false, the study found that Fox News viewers were "significantly more likely" to believe that: --Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely) --Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen...

Remember back a couple of months ago when the right wing was all up in arms over having an Islamic Community Center built in the middle of Manhattan? They were so concerned about the sensitive feelings of survivors and kin of the victims of the Twin Towers tragedy. It would hurt their feelings to have an Islamic place of worship a few blocks from the site of the towers. Never mind the fact that a significant number of the innocent victims of that attack were Muslims who worked in the Towers and never mind that there had been an Islamic prayer room in the Towers which was destroyed by the attack of the fanactics along with everything else that awful day. Those were just inconvenient facts and these people don't have a very close relationship with facts. But, of course, another of their big concerns about the project was the question of where the money to build the structure was coming from. Was it from foreign sources? Was it "dirty Muslim money"? They spent weeks...

By now, unless you've been asleep for the last few days, I'm sure you have heard of Shirley Sherrod, the former head of the Department of Agriculture's rural development office in Georgia. She is the "former head" because a right-wing hack put together a highly edited video of her speaking to a group in which she talked about something that happened back in the 1980s when she worked for a non-profit group in Georgia. She was asked to help a white farmer who was about to go bankrupt and lose his farm. She reflected on all the times that black farmers had been in similar circumstances and had not received help and she considered whether she, an African-American woman, should do her best for this white farmer. In the end, she did, and she helped him save his farm and his way of life. The right-wing operative edited the video to make it appear that Ms. Sherrod was saying that she did not help the farmer because he was white. Fox "News" (of course!) pi...

So, Brit Hume of Fox News can't see the Gulf oil spill from his window in Washington or New York or wherever it is that he is based and so it must be no big deal . On Fox News Sunday he said: There's a good question today if you are standing on the Gulf, and that is: Where is the oil? ...It's not on -- except for little of chunks of it, you're not even seeing it on the shore yet.... But you know where the greatest source of oil that seeps into the ocean is? It's from natural seepage from subterreanean deposits. That's where most of it comes from, not from drilling accidents....The ocean absorbs a lot, Juan, an awful lot. The ocean absorbs a lot. I guess Hume hasn't seen the satellite pictures taken from space of the the oil slicks spreading out over thousands of acres of the ocean. He probably also hasn't seen the pictures of the dead animals washing up on beaches along the Gulf now. But even if he has, why should he pay attention to them? He works fo...

When Sarah Palin quit her job as governor of Alaska last year, I wondered how long it would take for her to wind up as a commentator on Fox News. Well, I have my answer, as Fox today announced the name of its latest acquisition. I must say that it seems to me that most prospective employers would be at least a little leery of hiring an employee who has quit practically every job (if not indeed EVERY job) she has ever held. But, of course, the normal rules and normal caveats don't apply to Palin. She's special, you see. And she's certainly landed in the right spot because the normal rules and caveats of journalism, such as fact-checking and telling the truth don't apply to Fox News either. The liar Palin joins the lying network - a marriage made...well, not in heaven, I think. Probably in a much warmer realm. It will be interesting to see just how Fox will use Sarah, and, dare I say, vice versa. Will they give her a script and a teleprompter, or will they allow he...