Maddow: Fox Isn’t a News Channel – It’s a ‘McCarthyite Chamber of Horrors’
The presumptive face of the most biased and propagandist television news outlet in America had some harsh words for the media organization that bests hers in ratings virtually every hour of every day. In a piece published by the Daily Beast Sunday, Rachel Maddow hypocritically told Howard Kurtz that Fox News has “become a McCarthyite chamber of horrors… You can't really call yourself a news channel if that's what you broadcast”: In the Olbermann tradition, Maddow is increasingly denouncing Fox, saying that Glenn Beck, in monologues about Muslims, has been “running baroque conspiracies that are designed to freak people out about bogeymen coming to get them, conspiracies that are unsupported by the facts.” Fox, she charges, has “become a McCarthyite chamber of horrors… You can't really call yourself a news channel if that's what you broadcast.” Maddow's repeated attacks have not provoked a response from Fox. This coming from a woman that has recently been skewered by NewsBusters, Politifact, and the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik for her highly-partisan, often false statements on air. In the past ten days alone, Maddow has come under fire for a number of clearly erroneous comments she's made about the union battle in Wisconsin. Kurtz even addressed this on CNN's “Reliable Sources” Sunday, but failed to point it out in his rather glowing column: While the host devours information online, stuffing printouts in thick folders, there are missteps. She touted an item on the website ChristWire urging Sarah Palin to speak out on Egypt—unaware that it was a satirical blog with such headlines as ARE FACEBOOK SEX GANGS USING “WIKILEAKS” TO TARGET YOUR TEENS? (Maddow good-naturedly confessed her error on Twitter.) Indeed, but that was weeks ago and clearly a trifle compared to what she stepped in last Thursday when she claimed Wisconsin had a budget surplus. As Kurtz was going to be interviewing Politifact's editor about this episode on the same day his profile of Maddow was to be published, it is quite curious why he didn't mention it in his piece. Consider, too, that Politifact has to date reviewed eleven statements by Maddow finding four false, one barely true, three half-true, two mostly true, and only one completely true. That means she was scored 100 percent right in only nine percent of their analyses. And this woman has the nerve to say Fox isn't a news channel.
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Maddow: Fox Isn’t a News Channel – It’s a ‘McCarthyite Chamber of Horrors’
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on February 28, 2011. Filed under