Collective whitewashed 65-metre penis on drawbridge in St Petersburg Voina, the scatological Russian art collective supported by the British street artist Banksy , has won a state-backed art prize for painting a 65-metre penis on a drawbridge. Members of Voina (the war) – two of whom are awaiting trial on hooliganism charges – whitewashed the decoration on a bridge in St Petersburg last June. When the bridge was raised the erect phallus faced the local headquarters of the FSB, the successor to the KGB. The work, entitled A Dick Held Prisoner at the FSB, was awarded the 400,000 rouble (£8,700) 2010 Innovation prize by the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Moscow on Thursday evening. The graffito was scrubbed off the bridge by authorities after a few hours but pictures of it became an internet sensation. The prize, which is supported by the ministry of culture, was awarded after weeks of wrangling, during which Voina’s entry was excluded, then reinstated. Andrei Yerofeyev, the curator who announced the winner, described the phallus as an outstanding work which stemmed from a Russian tradition of “socially engaging art”. No representatives of Voina were at the glitzy ceremony at an art gallery run by Roman Abramovich’s partner, Dasha Zhukova. However, the collective issued a statement saying it would donate the prize money to political prisoners. Two members of the group, Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev, are awaiting trial in relation to a guerrilla performance in September called Palace Revolution, when the group turned over several police cars in St Petersburg. The pair were arrested in November but released on bail in February. They face up to seven years in jail if convicted. Banksy donated £80,000 from a print sale to Voina after hearing about the prosecution. Vorotnikov suggested that the prize jury had defeated bureaucrats who tried to deny the group the prize. “They are professionals after all, and some of them are brave people,” he told the Sol website. Other members of Voina said it should have won the prize for a different “action” – when a woman in the group was filmed stealing a chicken from a grocery store by inserting it into her vagina. “Now that was something,” said Vorotnikov. Russia Banksy Awards and prizes Tom Parfitt guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …On MSNBC, Dem Sanchez Tries To Drown Out Republican With ‘Broke Because of Bush’ Chant
April 8, 2011 No Comment
Loretta Sanchez would need to double her maturity quotient to qualify as juvenile . . During an interview on MSNBC this morning on the subject of the budget and possible government shutdown, the Dem congresswoman from California tried to drown out her Republican colleague from New York, Michael Grimm, by chanting “broke because of Bush.” Ironically, her infantile display came moments after host Richard Liu struggled with Sanchez's filibustering to ask whether the pair were “proud about the way this process is going forward as people watch the two of you debate the issues?” I'll be back with transcript, but in the meantime watch Sanchez middle-school worthy antics.
Continue reading …Adrian Law found guilty of injuring Abdul Alfadley’s lower body and genitals by flinging liquid through door hatch A civilian police worker has been jailed for three years for throwing scalding water over a prisoner in a police station cell. Adrian Law, 45, was accused of “gross abuse and wickedness” by a judge and condemned by senior police for letting down his force and colleagues. He was taken from the dock at Leeds crown court by security officers, a job he did himself before transferring to work as a detention officer at Barnsley police station in South Yorkshire. He had denied causing grievous bodily harm to Abdul Aziz Alfadley, 26, but, after deliberating for nine hours, a jury found him guilty. He was cleared of an additional, more serious charge of GBH with intent. The court heard that Alfadley suffered serious injuries to his lower body and genitals after Law showered him with a cupful of water taken from a boiler. Tests later suggested its temperature was 94.7C. Alfadley had been “agitated and disruptive” after being arrested in Barnsley centre for a public order offence, and had persisted in shouting and banging on his door. Jurors were shown CCTV footage of Law flinging the water through the cell’s door hatch. In spite of this, he denied the charge and claimed he was trying to pass a cup of cold water to the prisoner. Passing sentence, Mr Justice Spenser told Law he had acted cynically and brought South Yorkshire police service into disrepute. Accepting that Alfasley had been a very disruptive prisoner, and that a detention officer’s job was challenging, the judge said: “None of that is any excuse for what you did. The public has to trust police officers and detention officers at a police station to treat detainees fairly and humanely. It is the mark of a civilised society.” Relatives of Law, who lived at Goldthorpe, near Barnsley, were in tears as he was taken from court. A former miner, he worked for Group 4 as a prison escort before the move to Barnsley police station. He had an exemplary discipline record and no previous convictions. South Yorkshire’s deputy chief constable, Bob Dyson, said: “The actions of Adrian Law on that day fell far below the standards that we expect. He let down the public and let down his colleagues. On behalf of the force, I apologise to Mr Abdul Alfadley for the injuries he received.” Nicholas Long, a member of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, said Law’s actions had been compounded by an experienced custody sergeant whose only action after the assault was to turn off the water supply. The sergeant has been given a written warning after an internal misconduct hearing. Crime Police Martin Wainwright guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Military the target of Egyptian demonstrations as people demand more prosecutions against Hosni Mubarak-era ministers Protesters have packed Cairo’s Tahrir Square, piling pressure on the ruling military council to meet demands including the prosecution of Hosni Mubarak in one of the biggest demonstrations since he was ousted. By early afternoon the protest had swollen to more than 100,000. Thousands waved red, white and black Egyptian flags in scenes reminiscent of the height of the protests that toppled Mubarak and helped ignite revolts in other Arab countries. “Oh field marshal, we’ve been very patient!” chanted some of the protesters, gathered in the square that was the hub of protests that toppled Mubarak from the presidency and left the army, led by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, in charge. “Tantawi, Tantawi get your act together or do you want a pool of blood?” chanted some of the protesters. The military has enjoyed broad support since it took control of the country on 11 February but frustrations have grown over the pace of reform. Attention is now focused on the perceived tardiness of legal steps against Mubarak and his entourage. Mubarak and his family have been living in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh since he left Cairo on 11 February. The public prosecutor, who has filed charges against some but not all of the Mubarak-era officials, was also the focus of anger during a demonstration which one activist group declared “The Friday of Purification and Accountability”. A military helicopter hovered over the city centre as protesters poured into the square after Friday prayers to support demands including the removal of remaining Mubarak-era officials, such as the powerful provincial governors. Banners included economic demands, such as the imposition of minimum and maximum wages. “The revolution is continuing until democracy is achieved,” read one banner. “It’s a strong message that the revolution is not over yet and is still going on and will not quieten down before its goals are realised,” said Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science and a prominent figure in the reform movement. Street action remained “the real guarantee to the success of the revolution,” a coalition of youth activists said in a statement. “There has to be continued pressure for the quick and effective realisation of the demands of the revolution,” it said. “Oh field marshal, oh field marshal, we are staying in Tahrir,” read one of the banners directed at Tantawi, who served as defence minister in Mubarak’s administration from 1991 until he was ousted from the presidency. The military has scheduled a parliamentary election for September. It has said a presidential election will be held in either October or November, until when the army will hold presidential powers. At one point eight young men in military uniform appeared on stage, calling for Tantawi’s removal. It was not possible to verify whether they were serving in the military. “The people want the field marshal to fall,” one shouted over loudspeakers. Some in the crowd applauded and repeated the refrain. Others declared them imposters seeking to create trouble between the army and the reform movement and urged them to get off the stage. “We are calling on the field marshal to meet the demands of the people,” said Ibrahim Ahmed, a 20-year old student. “Enough collusion in not carrying out prosecutions,” he said. The interim government installed by the military council has set up a new committee to uncover corruption from Mubarak’s 30-year rule. The illicit gains panel is set to question Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son, next week. “If Mubarak is not prosecuted, we will go to Sharm el-Sheikh,” read another banner held aloft by the protesters. The military has said the 82-year-old president, himself a former military officer, is banned from leaving the country. The campaign against Mubarak-era figures has resulted in the arrest of once untouchable figures including the former interior minister and other ministers who held economic portfolios and are accused of corruption. Zakaria Azmi, a leading Mubarak aide, was the latest high-profile figure to be arrested. He was detained on Thursday on accusations of illegal gains. Reformists questioned why it had taken so long. “There is a feeling that the military council faces many restrictions,” Nafaa, the political science professor, said. “The aim of the protest isn’t to criticise or revolt, but to express a sense of frustration because of the tardiness in bringing to trial those responsible for corruption,” he said. Egypt Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Protest Hosni Mubarak guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Lawrence O’Donnell Lays Into Rep. Tom Graves For Being Willing to Shut Down the Government to Defund Planned Parenthood
April 8, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Despite the fact that the funding for Planned Parenthood only accounts for a tiny portion of the budget, Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) insisted to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that this assault on women’s reproductive rights and health care was somehow about getting our deficit under control. I’m not sure how someone like this guy sleeps at night because given the smirk on his face as O’Donnell laid into him for playing politics with women’s health care, he thinks this is some kind of a game. It’s a deadly game they’re playing and one where they obviously don’t care how many lives might be lost in the process of either threatening to or actually shutting down the government, or as a result of their extremist ideology. And as far as his claim that the Republicans are somehow doing “the will of the American people”, well here are some polls to the contrary : Two new public polls released today show majority support for Planned Parenthood, and clear opposition to efforts to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funds for preventive health care such as lifesaving cancer screenings, breast exams, birth control, and STD testing and treatment, including HIV testing. A Quinnipiac University poll released today found that a majority of voters (53 percent) opposed “cutting off federal government funding to Planned Parenthood.” The margin was 53 percent to 43 percent. The poll also found that 50 percent of Independent voters — as well as 66 percent of voters aged 18–34 and 60 percent of “moderate” voters — opposed “cutting off federal government funding to Planned Parenthood.” Read the full poll HERE . An NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll also released today found that 53 percent of Americans found it “mostly or totally unacceptable” to “eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventive health services.” Among women overall, 56% found it “mostly or totally unacceptable” to “eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventive health services.” Among women 18–49, 60% found it “mostly or totally unacceptable” to “eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventive health services.” Read the full poll HERE . (Planned Parenthood question on page 16). Below, please find a statement by Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, on the two new public polls: “It’s clear that Americans understand that the proposal to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funds for preventive health care such as lifesaving cancer screenings, breast exams, birth control, and STD and HIV testing, would have a devastating impact on women’s health, lead to more unintended pregnancies and more women detecting cancers at a later and less treatable stage. Americans know this to be true, because one in five women has been cared for by a Planned Parenthood health center at some point in her lifetime. O’Donnell also tore into Graves for his support of their ridiculous and unconstitutional bill titled the “Government Shutdown Prevention Act.” O’Donnell slammed Minority Leader Eric Cantor for his defense of that bill last week — Lawrence O’Donnell Slams Eric Cantor For Not Knowing How a Bill Becomes a Law .
Continue reading …
Nicki Durbin’s son Luke disappeared in 2006. What more can be done to help her and others left behind by missing people? It was one of the shortest but most poignant messages posted by old friends of Becky Godden-Edwards on an online tribute page: “I love u Becky. Why did u lose contact?” The discovery of Godden-Edwards’s remains in a farmer’s field in Gloucestershire by police investigating the murder of the Swindon nightclubber Sian O’Callaghan has prompted many to ask the same sort of question. Why do so many people – at least 200,000 a year in Britain – simply vanish, and can more be done to try to find them and to support people they leave behind? Nicki Durbin’s son, Luke , a bright, sociable 19-year-old, disappeared in May 2006 after going out clubbing with friends in Ipswich. “I know families always say that not one day goes by without them thinking about their loved one. But if I’m very honest there’s not an hour goes by without me thinking about Luke,” she says. “Certain times are very difficult. Anniversaries, or when the season changes. It’s another spring or winter that he’s not here. I hope I’ll see him again but I know it’s not a very realistic hope. I can be working and hear a song in the background and I’m thinking of Luke and I have to keep functioning somehow.” Durbin, a charity fundraiser, says she finds herself glued to the television when a big missing persons story is in the news. She feels relief when a newly found body turns out to be a woman’s – then something like envy that at least the family knows what happened to their loved one. She says her confidence in the police has been eroded over the years. At times she has felt they were not listening to her and Luke’s friends. She has had to “basically scream” to get her son’s case taken on by Suffolk’s major investigation team. According to the National Police Improvement Agency, which runs the national Missing Persons Bureau , police in Britain record about 1,000 missing reports every day, although some refer to the same person. It estimates that 200,000 people went missing in 2009/10. Most return or are found quickly but almost 2,000 people a year remain outstanding and around 20 people a week are found dead after being reported missing. The numbers could be bigger; the NPIA accepts that its data is not complete, partly because not all forces (including Wiltshire, the force investigating the deaths of Godden-Edwards and O’Callaghan) handed in their figures. A study by researchers at the University of York estimated that two thirds of those who go missing decide to go. A fifth “drift” away. Most of the rest are unintentionally absent – for example, they have mental health problems – and 1% are “forced”. The charity Missing People is campaigning for legislation to enshrine the rights of those who have vanished and those left behind. It is calling for every region to have a local missing persons co-ordinator who will hold local services to account, and for every family to have a single point of contact in the police force dealing with their case. It also wants a network of counsellors to be developed to help people whose loved ones have gone missing. Martin Houghton-Brown, chief executive of Missing People, said: “It is incredible that in England and Wales we have no legislation relating to missing people. It is an issue that has been hidden for a long time. We are so far behind places like the US.” Missing People wants families of people who have disappeared to be given the same rights as victims of crime. “If your DVD player is stolen from your house, you’ll get a letter from the police detailing all the help you can get. If your child goes missing you may get nothing,” Houghton-Brown said. Rachel Elias, the sister of the Manic Street Preachers guitarist Richey Edwards who vanished in 1995, said there was a lack of sympathy and understanding when it came to missing adults. “I think it’s because of the sheer number of adults who go missing,” she said. “There’s also the feeling that many people choose to go missing and should be allowed to.” There was also a lack of consistency over how missing people cases are handled, Elias said. “I think there should be a single contact with the police. We didn’t have that. Different forces seem to do it all in different ways, which is frustrating.” Peter Lawrence, the father of the chef Claudia Lawrence who went missing from York in 2009, said he was “totally amazed” at the problems facing families of missing people. “If you’re the subject of a minor crime, even a minor theft, the state gives you victim support, all sorts of things. If someone goes missing there’s absolutely nothing there at all.” It remains unclear what contact the family of Godden-Edwards – who went missing from Swindon in about 2003 when she was in her early 20s after struggling with drug addiction – had with the police and other agencies. Initially, well-placed sources said that when police broke the news to them that her body had been found, her family said they had reported her missing to officers. But the police have been unable to find any such record and are continuing to investigate whether such a report was made. Her family’s wait for news is over. Not so for Nicki Durbin, who accepts it is likely Luke is dead. “If that is the case, please let it have been an accident. If someone else is involved it’s just too horrifying,” she says. The best scenario for her is that Luke went off and is living a “fantastic life” somewhere. “And if he ever comes home he’ll get the biggest slap of his life – and then the biggest hug.” Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
NoW publisher admits liability for hacking into phones of eight public figures and offers to set up compensation fund News International is to apologise and offer to pay damages to eight News of the World phone-hacking victims who are currently suing the paper, including actor Sienna Miller, former culture secretary Tessa Jowell and ex Sky Sports commentator Andy Gray. In one of the most dramatic apologies in the history of Fleet Street, Rupert Murdoch’s News International said its previous inquiries into phone-hacking were “not sufficiently robust” and issued an “unreserved apology” for the fact hacking took place at the News of the World. The others who will be offered apologies and damages are Jowell’s former husband David Mills, football agent Sky Andrew, publicist Nicola Phillips, Joan Hammell, an former aide to former deputy prime minister John Prescott, and interior designer Kelly Hoppen. News International will offer to pay damages and legal fees. In the Hoppen case, News International is admitting her phone was hacked into on several occasions from 2004 to 2006. It still contests her claim that her phone was hacked in 2009. News International is likely to offer to settle more cases. A total of 24 people have begun legal actions but the company believes that in many of the cases too little evidence has so far been produced to judge whether or not it was culpable. Others taking legal action including actors Steve Coogan and Leslie Ash. It will propose next week to Justice Vos, the high court judge in charge of all the hacking cases, that all the cases should be heard together. The publisher said: “Following an extensive internal investigation and disclosures through civil legal cases, News International has decided to approach some civil litigants with an unreserved apology and an admission of liability in cases meeting specific criteria. “We have also asked our lawyers to establish a compensation scheme with a view to dealing with justifiable claims fairly and efficiently.” It added: “We will, however, continue to contest cases that we believe are without merit or where we are not responsible.” No executives are expected to resign as a result of the apology. The Guardian revealed in July 2009 that News International had made secret payments totalling £1m to settle cases involving three people including Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the PFA. News International claimed hacking at the paper was carried out by a “rogue reporter”, former royal editor Clive Goodman. He was jailed in January 2007 along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire for illegally intercepting voicemail messages left on mobile phones belonging to members of the royal household. Andrew Neil, a former Murdoch executive and former Sunday Times editor, told BBC News: “I don’t think NI had anywhere else to go. The evidence was piling up against them. It may cost them a lot more than they think. There are plenty of other people involved. They are trying to close it down with their chequebook but I don’t think they’re going to succeed.” He added that settling civil actions would have no bearing on the criminal investigation currently being carried out by the Metropolitan police. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook James Robinson guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Watch Glenn Go: When he’s finally freed from Fox, expect Beck to build on his apocalyptic cult
April 8, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Finally, Glenn Beck really will get to feel a little like Martin Luther King — because he is free, free at last, God almighty, free at last. Unfortunately, our long national nightmare … is probably just switching to a new phase. He explained to his audience yesterday on Fox that he was leaving his regular show there because, gosh, he had to have his arm twisted in the first place just do it: BECK: When Fox was generous enough to offer me the time at 5 o’clock, I originally didn’t take them up on it. I turned them down. One of the reasons was I didn’t want to — I just — didn’t wanna do this. I hated doing it at the other place. This place is sweet! — in comparison. But I also knew — believe it or not, anybody who knows me in my real life as everybody — wee little Erin will tell you too — I avoid confrontation like nobody’s business. Unless I am forced. But it also — I don’t like it. But — sometimes you have to stand. I took the job two years ago because I thought I had something important to share. I really thought if I could prove my case — that something wicked this way was coming — something in America was wrong, America would listen. And they have. What noble guy. Brings a tear to your eye and puts a swell in your heart, doesn’t it? Beck’s removal from the Fox daily lineup really is, as David Brock puts it, “A victory for civil discourse” . (Media Matters, by the way, has put together a list of the 50 Worst Things Glenn Beck Has Said .) And it was overdue. As George Zornick at ThinkProgress explains: Beck entered the year without one-third of his earlier audience. Only months into his show, advertisers began deserting his program, and pressure by liberal groups resulted in a loss of nearly 300 advertisers during the course of his show. Last month, Fox News officials told the New York Times anonymously that they were “contemplating life without Mr. Beck.” The Times also reported that “[m]any on the news side of Fox have wondered whether his chronic outrageousness — he suggested that the president has ‘a deep-seated hatred for white people’— have made it difficult for Fox to hang onto its credibility as a news network.” That seems like a reasonable concern. Beck, meanwhile, is actually in a bizarre defensive-gloating position, telling his radio audience this morning : BECK: Let me just tell you something. Liberal left — let me make a prediction. … One year from now, you on the left will be crapping yourselves so much — you haven’t, you haven’t crapped in your pants as much as you will in a year from now, as you did since you were a child. Maybe more. You’ll be making — you’ll crap yourself more than when you were a baby! And you will find Jesus. You will suddenly find religion and you will be kneeling at some altar lighting candles every day praying to Jesus that Glenn Beck would please just do 5 o’clock on the Fox News Channel.There’s my prediction. Alexander Zaitchik, who (as the author of Common Nonsense ) should know, forward his own speculation about Beck to Dave Weigel, who thinks Beck will do the Oprah thing now: I’d be careful about comparisons to Oprah, who has a scale of resources, commercial appeal, and popularity that Beck never will. But he’ll remain active and ambitious and his projects will continue to be controversial from time to time. He’s been too much guilty-pleasure fun as a pinata for his critics to completely ignore him. But now that he has a shrunken media footprint, I think a lot of people will go on a much-deserved Beck Vacation, and maybe never return. Moving forward, I see him turning into a sort of hybrid-figure, part Limbaugh, part Breitbart, part Pat Robertson, maybe a little Ben Stein on the documentaries front. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that his days as a heavy, constant presence in the mainstream conversation are over. Whatever media shape-shift he’s about to perform post-Fox, he’s a greatly diminished national presence for those who aren’t “Insider Extreme” members at glennbeck.com. Which is a blessed, blessed thing. I wish I could be so optimistic. My own hunch, as I described it yesterday : [L]ook for him to become Alex Jones on steroids. Which means that someday we probably CAN figure on watching the armed FBI standoff from the GlennBeckian Cult Compound someday down the pike. Beck has been the leading figure for the Tea Parties this year, and he is certain to be out leading them in the trenches next year too — probably organizing more Lincoln-Memorial-type rallies, and maybe doing a national tour promoting Tea Partyism. Along the way, he’ll be gathering more cult followers and establishing them as an outside-politics force. He’s not going away, that’s for sure. But we don’t have to watch him mainstreaming his extremism to an audience of millions every day any more, either. And that’s a real victory all by itself.
Continue reading …Rep. Slaughter, Who Wanted to ‘Police’ Speech After Tucson, Says GOP Wants to ‘Kill Women’; Media Mum
April 8, 2011 No Comment
“In '94 people were elected simply to come here toy kill the National Endowment for the Arts,” claimed senior Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter at a pro-choice rally on the National Mall Wednesday. ” Now they're here to kill women .” Slaughter, the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, went on to compare proposed GOP proposals on abortion, bizarrely, to “show-me-your-papers” policies in the Third Reich. It's been two days since Slaughter made these incendiary and baseless remarks, yet there has been a virtual media blackout. So once again we have to ask, as did the Washington Examiner's David Freddoso , what if a Tea Partier had said it? The story was initially reported by NewsBusters sister site CNSNews.com, and aside from the Examiner, no other news organization has reported on Slaughter's absurd statement thus far. It's safe to assume that if a conservative Republican had made similar remarks, coverage would be significantly greater (check out the video of Slaughter's remarks below the break). CNSNews.com's Dan Joseph reported Thursday: Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said today that the new Republicans elected to the House of Representatives last November came to Congress “to kill women.” She also likened Republican efforts to prohibit federal funding of abortion except in cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is endangered to actions taken by Nazis. “This is probably one of the worst times we’ve seen because the numbers of people elected to Congress. I went through this as co-chair of the arts caucus,” Slaughter said. “In ’94 people were elected simply to come here to kill the National Endowment for the Arts. Now they’re here to kill women.”… Although the text of the bill makes no reference to people needing a “receipt” to prove their abortion was for one of the excepted categories if they try to deduct the abortion fee they paid from their federal taxes, Slaughter suggested that under the bill, if enacted, people would need receipts for their abortions in such circumstances. She then equated that perceived need to the sort of requirement that would be imposed by Nazis. “You are allowed to have an abortion if you have been raped or it’s a matter of incest,” said Slaughter. “However, you have to keep a receipt. Did you know that? It’s sort of like an old German Nazi movie. Show me your papers!” Interestingly, after January's shooting in Tucson, Slaughter said “she would look at ways to better police language on the airwaves,” according to The Hill . The implication was that “language” had something to do with the shooting spree that hospitalized Rep. Gabby Giffords and 12 others, and killed six. It seems that accusing one's political opponents of wishing death on women generally and comparing their policies to those of the Nazis would fall within the bounds of speech Slaughter apparently felt had somehow led to that shooting. Neither the absurdity of Slaughter's remarks nor her rank hypocrisy in making them, however, have seemed to satisfy the media's standards for newsworthiness.
Continue reading …
Ditching one toxic host is welcome, but Fox now has a choice to make between serious journalism and poisonous partisanship This week, we heard the welcome – and overdue – news that toxic host Glenn Beck will be leaving his Fox News programme later this year . It shouldn’t have taken so long for News Corp to realise that Beck was bad for business – that a million lost viewers, more than 300 lost advertisers and widespread criticism all added up to a disastrous business model. And it should have been clear from the moment in 2009 that Beck called President Obama a “racist” who “has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture” that he wasn’t an appropriate host for a responsible journalistic outlet to put on the air. But Fox News is not a responsible journalistic outlet, and we shouldn’t think for a minute that Beck’s departure means Fox News has suddenly embraced accountability and restored credibility. One of the biggest of the many falsehoods repeatedly pushed on the network is not about any specific policy issue, but about Fox News itself: the continued insistence that the network is a “fair and balanced” source of news. The truth is that, even without Beck’s hour of hate, lies, extremism and paranoia, Fox News will remain a Republican political operation masquerading as a news network. Its executives and personalities insist there’s a clear line between its “straight news” programming and its “opinion” programming. But the research and investigation we’ve done have shown that claim to be laughably hollow. Those looking to see how the “straight news” portion of Fox’s programming works need look no further than Fox News’s DC managing editor, Bill Sammon. In numerous emails leaked to Media Matters for America , Sammon has passed down the order to slant news coverage of Barack Obama and of issues like healthcare, the environment and the Middle East. In audio uncovered by Media Matters , Sammon let slip his lack of journalistic ethics to attendees on a high-priced cruise for donors to a conservative college. In front of the friendly crowd, here’s how Sammon gloated about pushing lies about Obama on air: “Last year, candidate Barack Obama stood on a sidewalk in Toledo, Ohio, and first let it slip to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to, quote, ‘spread the wealth around.’ At that time, I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched.” The effort to push this lie wasn’t just a passing fancy for Sammon: he sent an internal email to Fox News staff pressuring them to push it, and Fox employees responded by linking Obama to socialism on air 35 times in the final days before the 2008 election. Sammon, an ideologue who has hosted fundraisers for conservative candidates, drives the network’s “news” coverage. And the evidence shows he asks his “news” staff to cast doubt on climate science, use poll-tested GOP language to talk about policy and promote attacks on President Obama. And Fox has made no effort to hold Sammon accountable. That’s because, for Fox News, promoting political smears instead of truth is a feature, not a bug. If Fox’s spread of misinformation is prescribed at the institutional level, it is also contagious from Beck to other hosts: Beck’s brand of extremism runs through the network. Numerous Fox personalities, including Sean Hannity and Sammon, have, like Beck, insisted that the president has a problem with race. Beyond Beck, the network has spread race-baiting conspiracy theories, from attempting to link Obama to the New Black Panther party to the smears of Shirley Sherrod. Recently, Fox has increasingly highlighted delusional, discredited accusations about Obama’s birth certificate. With Beck on his way out, Fox News has a choice to make. Getting rid of one person does not stem the flow of extreme rhetoric, wilful dishonesty, conspiracy theories and outright political attacks from Fox. And as Glenn Beck proves, this behaviour not only harms the institution of journalism, but News Corp’s bottom line as well. News Corp learned the hard way with Beck’s show that extremism and misinformation are bad for business. Will the company treat this moment as an opportunity to make Fox a responsible news network, or will it continue to ignore any semblance of journalistic integrity, making Beck the first in a line of exits of a flawed business model? Glenn Beck Fox News Fox News Corporation United States US politics US television US television industry The far right David Brock guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …