FOX News criticism of Media Matters

I’m sorry to subject you to this, but this was a stunning quote from someone whose only claim to fame is that he hosts a show on FOX News in the wee hours of the morning when about three people are watching. Why are only three people watching? Because the various retirees, the businessmen, the stock brokers are in their jammies tucked away and dreaming with sugar plumb fairies dancing and thinking about how they might screw the system the next morning.

If you didn’t know, “Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld” – the host is seen in this video – airs at 3 a.m. ET. 3-freaking-a.m. If you thought FOX News was purporting fringe right theories at noon weekdays, you should stay up late (or go to bed really early) and check out the good stuff!

Here is Gutfeld’s takeaway line:

I will actually buy pills to keep a leftist from reproducing.

Really? This is even more reprehensible because the context was on birth control. So he admits that he’s sleazier than the people he is criticizing. Well played … I guess.

Take a look:

Conservative talk makes NPR look like C-SPAN

I don’t buy recent pronouncements from certain conservatives who say that NPR has a leftist bent. Most recently, the right-wing talking heads pointed to comments made by the network’s fund-raising executive Ronald Schiller, who said in what he believed to be a private lunch, that the Tea Party had “hijacked” the GOP and that Tea Party proponents were “seriously, racist, racist people.”

He’s definitely right on the first count, and partially right on the second. But, of course, those were his personal feelings rather than his feelings as the top fund-raiser at NPR. Had he been at work, I think it’s ludicrous to suggest that he would have made such statements.

Regardless, this is another blight on the station for the few of us who still care about the continued existence of journalism that is both critical of our leaders and fair. Of course, it’s natural for some to feel that, perhaps, NPR leans left since it spends so much time on stories about culture, life and art. Wade through the wasteland that is conservative talk radio for one day, and while you will hear Paul McCartney’s “Freedom” played almost continuously, what you won’t find are stories about foreign films or folk music or drama. What you will hear, after “Freedom” fades to silence, is a relentless barrage of personal attacks against the president and other Democrats in power. The attacks coming from folks like Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others.

Here’s a compilation of comments put together by Media Matters from conservative thinkers and media critics about NPR, and here is an analysis, albeit, slightly dated (2004), from fair.org.

A snippet:

That NPR harbors a liberal bias is an article of faith among many conservatives. Spanning from the early ’70s, when President Richard Nixon demanded that “all funds for public broadcasting be cut” (9/23/71), through House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s similar threats in the mid-’90s, the notion that NPR leans left still endures.

News of the April launch of Air America, a new liberal talk radio network, revived the old complaint, with several conservative pundits declaring that such a thing already existed. “I have three letters for you, NPR . . . . I mean, there is liberal radio,” remarked conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan on NBC’s Chris Matthews Show(4/4/04). A few days earlier (4/1/04), conservative columnist Cal Thomas told Nightline, “The liberals have many outlets,” naming NPR prominently among them.

Nor is this belief confined to the right: CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer (3/31/04) seemed to repeat it as a given while questioning a liberal guest: “What about this notion that the conservatives make a fair point that there already is a liberal radio network out there, namely National Public Radio?”

Despite the commonness of such claims, little evidence has ever been presented for a left bias at NPR, and FAIR’s latest study gives it no support. Looking at partisan sources—including government officials, party officials, campaign workers and consultants—Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38 percent).

A friend of mine from another paper once implied that it was intellectually dishonest to deny that NPR did not bend to the left. But I retort that NPR’s alleged bias is far from self-evident, so much so that I can’t find it. And I listen as often as I can. The station may appear artsy and stuffy or, dare I say, elitist at times. I will admit that. But politically biased? I simply can’t find the proof. If anyone can find concrete examples, I will gladly post them on this site.

What isn’t wrong with this chart?

Using the following silly straight line to show continued job losses by quarter from Dec. 2007-June 2010, FOX News on June 28 “reported” that the nation has been shedding jobs like wildfire:

Credit: FOX News

“By quarter” means the number of jobs lost in each quarter, not cumulatively.

But, never the news organization to let mere facts get in the way of some tried and true frenzy-raising, FOX never seems to consult the official word on unemployment, the U.S. Department of Labor, which reported that job losses stopped near the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 and have risen since. From the Department of Labor, here is that graph:

Credit: U.S. Dept. of Labor

We, indeed, had about 15 million unemployed in Jun 2010, but the data by no means increases on the scale that FOX says it does. According to Media Matters:

Lest you doubt that Fox News deliberately manipulated its chart to distort the facts, we created our own chart demonstrating that Fox also screwed with the scale of their chart in order to generate that straight red line.

Notice on Fox’s chart that the first interval on the horizontal axis, from December ’07 to September ’08 represents 9 months. The second interval, between September ’08 and March ’09, represents 6 months. And the third interval, from March ’09 to June ’10, represents 15 months, almost all of Obama’s term so far. So the third interval should be two-and-a-half times as long as the second. But in Fox’s chart, it’s shorter!

The effect of this is to flatten out the steep rise in the number of unemployed between September ’08 and March ’09 (before Obama’s policies started taking effect) and to suggest that the increases in unemployment later during Obama’s term were more dramatic than they actually were. To get the line straight, Fox also manipulated the scale of the vertical axis.

Even if you accept Fox’s four random data points –which entirely obscure what has happened since the end of 2009 — if your scale is accurate, you’d actually get something like this:

Credit: Media Matters

Pre-2012, health care falsehoods afoot

Examples surface everyday to prove that folks not only can’t believe what they hear or read, but that the folks delivering the “message” don’t always, and rarely, know what they are talking about. Indeed, volumes of misinformation are swirling regarding the proposed health care reform bill.

From Karl Rove to Sean Hannity (and no doubt others), falsehoods are flying about what the health bill would and wouldn’t do. For instance, in his Wall Street Journal column today, Rove

claimed that the Senate health care bill has “abortion-funding language,” adds to the deficit and contains no immediate benefits.

according to Media Matters. Yet

the Senate bill prohibits federal funding of abortion, contains numerous immediate benefits, and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, reduces the deficit.

For his part, Hannity on March 3 claimed that the health care bill would not be implemented before we began having to pay for it. Which, again, isn’t true. Here’s a 12-part list by The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein detailing parts of the bill that are, indeed, implemented upon enaction:

To put it another way, in 2010 and 2012, when Republicans are saying that reform has done nothing despite the fact that it hasn’t yet gone into effect, what will Democrats be able to brag about? Here’s the list:

1) Eliminating lifetime limits, and cap annual limits, on health-care benefits. In other words, if you get an aggressive cancer and your treatment costs an extraordinary amount, your insurer can’t suddenly remind you that subparagraph 15 limited your yearly expenses to $30,000, and they’re not responsible for anything above that.

2) No more rescissions.

3) Some interim help for people who have preexisting conditions, though the bill does not instantly ban discrimination on preexisting conditions.

4) Requiring insurers to cover preventive care and immunizations.

5) Allowing young adults to stay on their parent’s insurance plan until age 26.

6) Developing uniform coverage documents so people can compare different insurance policies in an apples-to-apples fashion.

7) Forcing insurers to spend 80 percent of all premium dollars on medical care (75 percent in the individual market), thus capping the money that can go toward administration, profits, etc.

8. Creating an appeals process and consumer advocate for insurance customers.

9) Developing a temporary re-insurance program to help early retirees (folks over 55) afford coverage.

10) Creating an internet portal to help people shop for and compare coverage.

11) Miscellaneous administrative simplification stuff.

12) Banning discrimination based on salary (i.e., where a company that’s not self-insured makes only some full-time workers eligible for coverage.

And as Klein wittily concludes:

Given that we’re all going to die when the earth consumes itself in 2012, the effectiveness of these policies takes on a new level of importance.

Indeed, but I don’t think the rumor is that Earth is going to consume itself in 2012. I thought the rumor was that solar flares were going to consume Earth. Regardless, at least some folks will benefit from the health care plan before we are all singed by a wash of solar radiation. Maybe we won’t even have to worry about funding the health care bill after all!

Still waiting for the ‘trickle down’

In true-to-form fashion, FOX News in the below clip summons a Republican talking head, of the Ronald Reagon variety — Art Laffer was a member of President Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board — to skewer President Obama’s 2011 budget plan. Here’s the video:

As Laffer claims, and as mediamatters.org disputes,

Laffer claimed that in fiscal 2011, “all of the Bush tax cuts expire,” ignoring that President Obama’s budget plan allows those cuts to expire only for those making more than $250,000 per year

How many times does Obama have to cite the $250,000 figure?? He’s only been using it since the campaign and still states that it is the mark someone has to reach to be denied tax cuts. Has this sunk in at all?

Regardless, I thought one commenter to this post got it right when he said Reagan’s famed tax cuts for the top 1 percent of earners didn’t “trickle down” at all, and indeed, it was a full two years before the unemployment rate in the early 1980s approached anywhere near where Reagan said it would — 6.9 percent — after the savior-esque tax cuts for the rich.

Here’s that telling information (Thanks jarossiter):

Reagan was sworn into office in 1981 – and 22 months LATER the unemployment rate was 10.4%

How long did it take Reagan to reduce the unemployment rate to below 8%?
1/1981 – unemployment rate 7.5% …. Reagan sworn in.
1/1981 – 7.4%
3/1981 – 7.4%
4/1981 – 7.2%
5/1981 – 7.5%
6/1981 – 7.5%
7/1981 – 7.2%
8/1981 – 7.4% * Reagan CUTS taxes for top 1% & said unemployment would DROP to 6.9%
9/1981 – 7.6%
10/1981 – 7.9%
11/1981 – 8.3%
12/1981 – 8.5%

1/1982 – 8.6%
2/1982 – 8.9%
3/1982 – 9.0%
4/1982 – 9.3%
5/1982 – 9.4%
6/1982 – 9.6%
7/1982 – 9.8%
8/1982 – 9.8%
9/1982 – 10.1%
10/1982 – 10.4%
11/1982 – 10.8%
12/1982 – 10.8%

1/1983 – 10.4%
2/1983 – 10.4%
3/1983 – 10.3%
4/1983 – 10.3%
5/1983 – 10.1%
6/1983 – 10.1%
7/1983 – 9.4%
6/1983 – 9.5%
7/1983 – 9.4%
8/1983 – 9.5%
9/1983 – 9.2%
10/1983 – 8.8%
11/1983 – 8.5%
12/1983 – 8.3%

1/1984 – 8.0%
2/1984 – 7.8%

Took Reagan 28 MONTHS to get unemployment rate back down below 8%.

***Stock Market C R A S H E D in 1987.

Haitians condemned … classy, Robertson

Christians should be embarrassed and ashamed that Pat Robertson is still on the air, and worse, that he’s still a respected (by who at this point, one can only wonder) religious leader. A day after, perhaps, 100,000 people died in a 7.0-level earthquake in Haiti, and ironically with his black, female co-host obligatorally nodding along like a newborn cow, Robertson had this to say about the lost (apparently he meant spiritually lost as well, an unfortunate twofer!):

ROBERTSON: And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.” True story. And so, the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.

Here’s the video … or, whatever:

Needless to say, folks have been outraged by this, not the least of whom was FOX News’ Shepard Smith, who said:

The people of Haiti have been used and abused by their government over the years. They have dealt with unthinkable tragedy over the years, day in and day out. And were in the middle of a crisis that the Western Hemisphere has not seen in my lifetime. And 700 miles east of Miami, hundreds and thousands of desperate human beings need our help, our support, our money and our love. And they don’t need that.

Or, to reference and even more scathing criticism of Robertson (I can’t say it’s not ill-deserved), and here we return to the black co-host:

The next time your (sic) wondering why there are so few black Republicans, consider the fact (that) this unreconstructed Confederate was not long ago one of their greatest crusaders. Consider that he is equating the resistance of slavery, with a rejection of Christ. And there’s an African-American right next to him, nodding in agreement.

Fuck Pat Robertson. Fuck the “Christian” Broadcasting Network. And fuck any black person who’d nod reverently while a white supremacist slanders our founding fathers. She should be ashamed of herself. — Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic magazine

And he should be too, as I’ve already said. First, let me bring some tedious facts to light, ignoring, for a moment, the ridiculous, anachronistic notion that current Haitians should be punished for the sins of their forefathers. I know “facts” often get in the way of some good-ol’-curses-handed-down-from-God talk, but the actual devil to whom Robertson may have been referring was possibly Jean Jacques Dessalines, who with the help of the British, drove out the French once and for all, ending the reign of slavery that had gripped Haiti.

True, Dessalines was no angel, and clearly was hostile to whites after his people were enslaved for so long. He may have indeed been as racist as anyone else at the time. He killed white folks and ruled as a dictator before he was assassinated. But to suggest, as Robertson has, that “they” made a deal with the “devil” by agreeing to let Dessalines drive out the French in exchange for getting out of French rule and letting him run things is a non sequitur and complete drivel, continuing Robertson’s long run of blaming disasters, natural and manmade, on God’s wrath.

“They,” the Haitians, didn’t have a choice, as Dessalines was a despot, and with him and after him, the troubles in Haiti continued. “They,” in fact, were the oppressed before and after slavery by despot after despot. “They,” more than ever, should be thrown every thread of sympathy we have as humans. “They” have real families, real children and real lives. As I have said again and again, and will continue to say, about the immigration issue and others, these people are fellow, living, breathing human beings with beating hearts. “They” are not an indicted multitude, as religion, and Robertson’s brand in particular, would have us believe. In fact, dare I say it, many Haitians are almost certainly Christians. In Robertson’s world, however, they too are among the condemned.

Beck’s sad rush toward gold, decline

So, out of sheer boredom and mostly for entertainment value, I watched about five minutes of Glenn Beck on FOX News tonight, for that’s about all I could stomach and, coincidentally, it only took Beck that long to begin quivering over some rags to riches tale of a fellow who was about to oust himself by overdosing on sleeping pills when, wouldn’t ya know, as he was walking into the drug store, the guy heard over the radio a quote from one of Beck’s books, The Christmas Sweater (available in fine bookstores everywhere).

According to a letter read from the man to Beck that he read on the air, the man immediately fell on his knees in tears and vowed to pull himself up and get his life together. He had fallen into drugs, lost his job, started living with his economically disadvantaged mother, you know the bit. First, and this isn’t what I sat down to write about (I’m getting to that in a minute), how egomaniacal does one have to be to shill your own book, of which he’s apparently performing some sort of stage show across the nation, at the expense of some poor sap’s tale of ascension, as if to say, “Sure, this man’s story is all about redemption, and that’s what the Christmas season is all about, but look who inspired him to turn things around? Me.” Also, Beck, most humbly, didn’t fail to mention that he plays eight different characters by himself. Viewers also saw clips from the production during this five minute segment. How many more self-advertisements viewers were forced to suffer through during the entire show is anyone’s guess. But, no matter. They probably think, ‘The more Beck the better’.”

The main observation that I wanted to make was that immediately following all the quivering and Beck nearly tearing up over the man’s story came a commercial about Beck’s often touted sponsor, Goldline International, Inc, and another shorter spot about U.S. Gold. So, essentially, if you are Beck, you are on the air telling all these stories of folks in need, some people just plain worried about the economy and others who have managed to pull themselves out of the gutter, what better way to tell people you are rooting for the common man by encouraging folks to stockpile gold, a la, a pirate on the high seas. The oxymoron of all this was so stunning that I nearly tossed my weiner dog through the window. But, of course, it’s only an oxymoron when you look at the content of Beck’s show. When you look at the viewership, yeah, it’s folks who have sipped the FOX News Kool-Aid from Day One, but it’s also the Reagan trickle down economic crowd, who somehow think that the upper 99 percent of the population’s wealth is going to flow like a graceful, cooling stream down to the proletariat masses.

But, of course, Beck’s obsession with the gold industry won’t be news to regular viewers. He’s been talking up gold for quite some time now, while framing it in the context that the American dollar might be on the verge of a collapse. After all, he’s got to make up some frame of reference. Here’s a full piece on this by Think Progress. To read this article is to see just how pathetic, and desperate, Beck has become after losing the lion share of his sponsors with his fringe notions that, contrary to what he contends, are quite at odds with that of the real Thomas Paine, who was a progressive if he was nothing else. It’s entertaining that so many on the fringe right, the Tea Party crowd, and the like, summon Paine every chance they get while forgetting, or probably without knowing in the first place, that Paine was a deist and certainly not a Christian. Further, he was most likely against nearly everything for which they stand. Again, he was one of the most progressive men of his day. Any serious student of history knows this.

Here’s a comparison of Beck to Paine by Chris Kelly, in the piece, “Glenn Beck is Thomas Paine, Except for Everything“:

Do you like estate taxes? Paine was pitching them in 1791.
How about progressive taxation? Paine wasn’t just for it, he made charts and graphs.
Welfare? Absolutely.
Government make-work programs? Yep. Pay for them with the estate tax.
Public education? Yes, please.
International organizations? Paine said we needed them. Thought they might be useful for preventing wars after we disarmed.
Feminism?
If a woman were to defend the cause of her sex, she might address him in the following manner … If we have an equal right with you to virtue, why should we not have an equal right to praise? … Our duties are different from yours, but they are not therefore less difficult to fulfill, or of less consequence to society … You cannot be ignorant that we have need of courage not less than you … Permit our names to be sometimes pronounced beyond the narrow circle in which we live. Permit friendship, or at least love, to inscribe its emblem on the tomb where our ashes repose; and deny us not that public esteem which, after the esteem of one’s self, is the sweetest reward of well doing. — T. Paine
Compare and contrast:
OK, so anyway, I was talking about ugly people. Ugly people, if you’re a guy, you can get past it. I don’t think you can as an ugly woman. I don’t — no, I don’t. If you’re an ugly woman, I apologize. Oh, you’ve got a double cross, because if you’re an ugly woman, you’re probably a progressive as well. –G. Beck
Animal Rights Nuts?
Everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty. — T. Paine
Religion?
Religion is under attack! — G. Beck
Priests and conjurors are of the same trade. — T. Paine

Thus, it’s quite a sideshow at this point that Beck and others know so little about the history they so often summon, or spin the Founders’ words to bolster their own ill-conceived arguments. But if they actually knew a wit about the Founders, they would realize that the Founders could take intellectual backstrokes around the current lot of fringe-crowd conservatives who are only attempting to elevate themselves, unjustifiably so, by calling up Paine or Jefferson or whichever Founder is, unbeknownst to them, their intellectual superior.

But, I was talking about gold wasn’t I? As noted, it’s sad and pathetic that Beck has so few sponsors left. It’s contemptible how he got to this point. He does have National Review, but wait, that’s a conservative outfit too, isn’t it? Real companies, like General Mills, AT&T, Walmart and Bank of America have all flown the coop. No matter. Beck still has his fringe crowd and others to ride the gold-colored Kool-Aid machine through some mythical history and future of their own making. Which makes me wonder. Did the aforementioned beneficiary of Beck’s sweater book become a client of Goldline as well? I’m willing to bet so. That would have been an entertaining twist to the story, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

H1NI, H5NI1, panda-monium flu, anyone?

Today, or should I say yesterday, as it’s 12:23 a.m. as I write this, the World Health Organization made it official: the H1N1 virus, known as swine flu, is a pandemic. And I, for one, couldn’t be giddier. I think we actually need more frightening, and quirkily-named, diseases looming over our heads. I think it’s actually time for another, good old-fashioned bubonic plague. That’ll get folks’ attention.

The media hype over the various strains, aveon bird flu, swine flu, the duck-billed platypus flu, the panda-monium flu, you name it, is getting a bit ridiculous. Regular ‘ol flu  seems to be taking a back seat and getting a raw deal when it kills far more people than H1N1. How long have we been talking about this thing? Six months? Nine months? And in that time, we have about 145 deaths. Regular old flu kills 500,000 per year!

Howard Kurtz, speaking on May 11 of this year had this to say in response to a reader question about the media coverage of the H1N1 strain:

I have good news to report this morning. We’re not all going to die…

The tone and the volume were just out of proportion to what we knew about the outbreak. Of course it was a story that people were interested in, that journalists had to cover, that had the potential to turn into a public health crisis. But the key word is “potential.”

Even as medical reporters sounded cautionary notes, the saturation coverage turned excessive, even scary. And then, well, the thing fizzled…

I can’t tell you how many people have complained to me about what they see as the media’s wild overreaction on swine flu. Whatever short-term bump you might get in the ratings is outweighed by a loss of confidence among news consumers, and there’s no vaccine for that. — The Washington Post

But Media Matters seems to suggest the media had done its job in presenting the story about the flu strain “very well:”

The fact that half the country didn’t end up dead wouldn’t mean that the media hadn’t done it’s job. It would mean that the media had done its job very well – it had made the public aware of vital information in time for the public to act upon that information.

Is that what happened? I don’t know. But Kurtz, and many others, aren’t even considering the question of what would have happened had the media downplayed the story, or what could have happened.

Half the country didn’t die because this strain hasn’t spread enough, and it’s not near the destructor that we are led to believe it is. One hundred forty-four out of 28,000-plus is the sort of ratio that does not concern me. That amounts to 0.5 percent of those who get the H1N1 die from it. I don’t know what the same ratio for seasonal flu would be, but chances are, it’s much, much higher.  This CNN story backs up this point. And this doesn’t even mention the H5N1 virus, of which the Wall Street Journal Market Watch story said it was  “particularly deadly” but also that it was “relatively difficult to contract.” So, do I have like bite the head off an infected bird to get it or what?

Regardless, the media — and by media, I mean the news television networks, which aren’t really serious news organizations, just moneymakers and thrill-seekers and little more —in short had nothing to do with anything. Did Americans generally wash their hands more or buy some hand sanitizer and use it more from watching the news than they normally would have when this swine flu outbreak frenzy kicked in? I didn’t. Did you? Sothis is apparently the first case where WHO has declared a pandemic since the 1968 Hong Kong flu. How many did it kill? About 1 million.

A million versus 144. I’d say that’s rational.

‘White working class folks’

Media Matters recently posted a video clip titled, “Buchanan has ‘no problem’ with legacy systems, says ‘working class whites’ are ‘the ones discriminated most today,'” in which he supported Ivy League colleges which let kids in because of who’s child they were, not just on academic merit. Or, as Buchanan put it, their “clout.” He also said “white working class folks” (to correct the Media Matters headline) are “discriminated against most today” (to again correct Media Matters):

To put it bluntly, inserting race into the issue makes Buchanan’s claim, which cites no evidence, seem even more distasteful. How does he justify in one sentence, talking about how privileged college kids (the majority who earn bachelor’s or higher degrees are white) are and should be admitted to prestigious institutions based on clout and connections, provided they pass a test, and in the next sentence, talk about the rights of working class people (Using the word “folks,” as many politicians do, to sound more convivial and down to earth)? I would be curious to know how one defines “working class” in the first place. Blue collar? White and blue collar? Anyone who can hold down a job making less than Obama’s $250,000 benchmark?

Buchanan uses the “working class” line (like so many others interested in pushing a political mindset) to apparently lionize those of the laboring order (Buchanan is not, of course), when Buchanan, in nearly the same breath, appears to favor the notion of success by proxy. I’m reminded of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero,” which Buchanan would probably write off as some socialist anthem.

According to Lennon himself, the song is about the pressure to succeed, to go to college, to pick a career, and how maddening that pressure can be, when in the end, one’s efforts are often in vain  (“But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see …”) unless, of course, one is willing to “learn how to smile as you kill | If you want to be like the folks on the hill …” But that’s, of course, a paraphrase and an estimation of what Lennon actually meant.

Side note: Here is an interesting analysis of Green Day’s own take on the song. The comments that follow are intriguing as well. But as the posters and repliers don’t seem to note, song lyrics aren’t essays or news articles. They don’t always have a specific and defined meaning. Take The Beatles’ lines, “He’s got feet down below his knees” or “He wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football | He got monkey finger, he shoot coca-cola” or any number of lines from the White Album, great as it is. Stream of consciousness, daydreaming, drugs, personal stories or any number of factors can account for lyrics that don’t jibe or are hard to decipher.

But back to race, Slate offers an article on the seeming decline in Ivy-league schools, which notes the proliferation of solid programs at public institutions, like Northwestern, Stanford, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, and University of Virginia. Buchanan likely has affirmative action in mind when he made his comments about the white working class. True, blacks generally have a higher acceptance rates at colleges than whites, but college attendees, especially of the sort Buchanan mentions, are hardly “working class folks.” College is a privilege, not a right (though it should be), in this country. As such, most don’t earn college degrees:

According to new tables released on the Internet titled Educational Attainment in the United States: 2004, 85 percent of those age 25 or older reported they had completed at least high school and 28 percent had attained at least a bachelor’s degree — both record highs. — U.S. Census Bureau

What about the black working class? Affirmative action is used too often as a crux to explain away some white people’s anger. Note these two bits from Policy Almanac:

Over the past three decades, minorities and women have made real, undisputable economic progress. Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the median black male worker earned only about 60 percent as much as the median white male worker; (10) by 1993, the median black male earned 74 percent as much as the median white male.

and

There has not been an improvement in the employment-population rate of black workers relative to whites since the 1960s. If anything, there has been a deterioration in the relative employment-population rate.

Media Matters, fairness matters

I don’t normally do this because, even if FOX News is the victim in some essay or argument, I figure, “Heck, they had it coming.” And they do. But because partisanship just for the sake of partisanship gets us nowhere as a country, I reference this article posted today by mediamatters.org, which is a watchdog group that scopes out “conservative misinformation — news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda.”

The organization typically gives folks like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the like a pretty hard time — and deservedly so.

Today, the Web site claimed a list of seven FOXfacts, informative bits of information given by the channel during its news segments and interviews, were nearly identical to points made by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in a Wall Street Journal column.

Here’s the seven points from Ryan’s column and the accompanying FOXfact from a recent interview with Ryan in parenthesis:

  1. “The Republican budget achieves lower deficits than the Democratic plan in every year.”  (GOP budget: Achieves lower deficits than Dem budget in every year)
  2. “Under our plan, debt held by the public is $3.6 trillion less during the budget period.” (GOP budget: Debt held by public $3.6 trillion less during budget period)
  3. “Our budget gives priority to national defense and veterans’ health care.” (GOP budget gives priority to natl defense and vet health care)
  4. “We do these things by rejecting the president’s cap-and-trade scheme.” (GOP budget rejects the president’s cap-and-trade scheme)
  5. “Our budget does not raise taxes, and makes permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax laws.” (GOP budget doesn’t raise taxes; makes permanent ’01 & ’03 tax laws)
  6. “Capital gains and dividends are taxed at 15%, and the death tax is repealed.” (GOP budget: Capital gains and dividents taxed at 15% and death tax repealed)
  7. “The budget permanently cuts the uncompetitive corporate income tax rate.” (GOP budget permanently cuts corporate income tax rate)

So, here’s the rub. Either Media Matters doesn’t understand what colons mean when writing headlines on news stories or FOX News doesn’t. When a headline, for instance, says, “Bush: Mission accomplished.” That means Bush said the mission was completed. So, whatever is on the right side of the colon is supposed to be a very succinct summary of what the source actually said or thought. In the above example, colons seem to be used without rhyme or reason. Typically, a writer or editor would use them to tell the reader about some editorial point or opinion held by the source, like  this: “Bush: Presidency was the best.” That would imply that Bush said he thought his presidency was tops.

In this example, it appears that points 1, 2 and possibly 3 and 4 have a twinge of opinion or contention to them, while 5-7 are likely quantifiable. Hence, points 1, 2 and possibly 3 and 4 should have all included colons after “GOP budget” to suggest that FOX wasn’t saying these things outright, but those were assertions of the GOP’s plan. But, point 3 has no colon, while point 6 has a colon for seemingly no reason. (In actuality, one could argue that all the points need colons because the budget is simply a plan and FOX has no way of knowing whether the GOP’s claims will actually come to pass or hold water. Thus, the channel can’t accurately state such claims as facts.)

Regardless, for Media Matters to claim that FOX was merely stating as fact what Ryan had previously written in an opinion piece is a little misleading because FOX did add the colons to a couple of the more editorial-leaning points. But neither is in the clear because neither seems to see the distinction between a news headline with a colon and one without. Details matter, even two vertical dots. And perhaps that makes the entire Media Matters post and the FOX News report null and void. Of course, of the latter, we knew that from the get-go.