O'Reilly v. Krugman on Tim Russert Show this weekend

That's enough. I'll watch. (Actually, I watch Meet the Press every Sunday. But this Sunday I'll watch it enthusiastically.)

 

Its kind of a shame that Krugman is devaluing his rep as a serious academic by stooping to O'Reilly's level. Plus he's lousy on camera.

 

But that begs the question, Sam Fisher: How do you deal with O'Reilly and others at his level?

(I've tried ignoring them, but one look around shows that sure isn't working.)

As far as economists go, doesn't the dearth of the telegenic among them mean that they, and more importantly their opinions, get the media shaft?

Sort of like Brian Greene explaining quantum mechanics to us in little words, so that we peons can understand, don't we need a public face to explain the longterm impact of the administration's current fiscal policies? If that's the case, I fear Krugman's the coolest economist we've got.

 

FOX News or Fascist News?

We report, you decide.


by


Gerald Plessner





I try never to use the word "fascist" to describe someone. The word represents all the horrors of Nazi Germany. It is so loaded with hateful meanings that it is almost impossible to find someone who lives up to its horror.

But I am inclined to use fascist to describe FOX Network owner Rupert Murdoch, his main mouthpiece Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes, who runs FOX News. Murdoch's and Ailes' goals and O'Reilly's conduct share so much with the actions and words of the Third Reich it is frightening. A new movie proves this in very stark terms.

Murdoch began his career as a media owner in 1964 when he inherited his first newspaper. Today his newspapers --- most of which are tabloid scandal sheets --- his television stations, networks and satellite television systems reach 4.7 billion people.

OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is a new documentary film on DVD available only from selected websites.(I got mine from BuzzFlash.com.) "Outfoxed" tells the story of how FOX News, as the full time propaganda arm of the Republican party, has reshaped America by giving millions of viewers a diet of concocted outrage, glowing reports on the Bush administration, lies, distortions and the misrepresentation of facts.

The film shows how FOX News controls its message through a daily memo from Roger Ailes and other managers to all producers, directors and on-air personalities. Every employee is expected to follow and reinforce the daily line, which is enforced with Stalinist-style discipline.

The daily memo even issues words to be used by every on-air personality, words like flip-flop. So if you watch FOX and everyone refers to John Kerry as a flip-flopper, it's because the White House and the Republican National Committee did so and FOX backs their propaganda 100%.

Everything on FOX News is designed to advance the Republican party. One person in the film said, "Their slogan 'We report. You decide' is the greatest hoax. No news channel reports less and tells its viewers more of how to decide."

Bill O'Reilly is the on-air personality who best represents the FOX News style and philosophy. The film plays a disgraceful performance where O'Reilly verbally assaults a young man whose father died in the Word Trade Center atrocity. In this example of O'Reilly's thug-like behavior, he tells the young man that his father would be upset by his signing of an anti-Iraq war petition.

He repeatedly talks over his guest, tells him to "shut up", accusing him of disloyalty to America and what his father would think. It is a telling and distasteful performance, reinforced by later lies and distortions coming from O'Reilly.

Sean Hannity receives little attention in the film but is identified by one former FOX News consultant as a "Republican cheerleader". Brit Hume, the channel's featured respectable journalist, is shown as a brittle right-wing spokesman who mixes news with opinion.

One of the more laughable sections of the film explains how FOX News uses the phrase, "some people say" to confuse the idea of public questioning with editorial opinion. The entire film provides a valuable primer on propaganda and how to use it to shape public opinion. It should be required viewing in every high school civics class.

I once believed that Alan Colmes, who is Sean Hannity's limp foil, was the most pitiful person on FOX News. But after viewing this film, I wonder how anyone who works there can hold their head up at the supermarket. I am sure money has something to do with it, but even the guy at the news stand in the lobby must have trouble looking at himself in the mirror each morning.

This film proves that it is time to return the equal time provision to electronic media which use our airways to make billions. OUTFOXED, Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism should be exhibit one at the hearings.

link

 

is o'reilly not educated enough to be considered an academic?

 

No, the fact that he is a tv talk show host, who, to my knowledge, currently holds no professorships, lecturerships, or any other position in academia of any sort is also generally enough to disqualify him from being considered an academic.

I hope they discuss taxes and fiscal policy; it's like Oprah debating Stephen Hawking on superstring theory.

 

I agree with this, but I think Krugman probably believes this is no time to hide behind the ivory tower, so props for him putting his rep on the line. He is lousy on camera, but he is also an academic from a confrontational field. I suspect he's had to heatedly defend or attack propositions in conference settings and the like.

 

That is pretty funny. You uncovered another liberal plot.

 

I think you let Al Franken expose them. O'Reilly will still occasionally make comments about that. That book really burned him up. He was obsessed with it for a long time, and the residing bitterness he holds about it, shows that Franken struck a nerve.

The book exposed some lies, and touched a nerve. I like it.

 

From Bill's Bio:

"He graduated with a degree in history from Marist College, with a Master's Degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University, and attained another Master's in Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government."

Wow, no sh*t... too bad he's still a dumbass.

 

They can blast ole Bill all they want! He's got the ratings. Articles like this show he has made it to the top and it is only expected that many people try to bring him down.

SCOREBOARD !!

 

First reports are in... see bolded..
____________

On ABC, CBS and Fox, a Whole Lotta Cross-Pollination Going On


By Lisa de Moraes

Friday, August 6, 2004; Page C07


Remember how the broadcast networks explained that they would cover only three hours of each of the four-day Democratic and Republican conventions because they are nothing more than infomercials out of which no real news comes?

This is why it's perhaps unfortunate that, just one short week after the close of the Democratic National Convention in Boston, both ABC News and CBS News will devote portions of their Friday newsmagazines to infomercials for products in which the networks have a financial interest.

Let's start with ABC News, which tonight on "20/20" will interview "the latest reality star" Victoria Gotti "about her hot new television show, 'Growing Up Gotti.' " Gotti, who also will discuss raising her three sons as a single mom -- they also star in "Growing Up Gotti" -- is the daughter of mobster John Gotti. Her show debuted this week to 3.2 million viewers, which, although not a number that will rewrite history books, is the biggest series debut in cable network A&E's 20-year history.

ABC is one of the owners of A&E.

Now on to CBS News, which tonight on "48 Hours" will speak to Yoanna House, who dreamed as a child of becoming a model. House is worth devoting a segment of "48 Hours" to because she developed a regimen that helped her lose 60 pounds. And if that isn't interesting enough, she then tried out for the UPN reality series "America's Next Top Model" and was one of 12 women chosen from 8,000 applicants to participate.

"Does House have what it takes to be the top model?" CBS News asks in its news release.

CBS is owned by Viacom, which also owns UPN; Leslie Moonves, who oversees CBS, including its news division, also oversees UPN.

To its credit, CBS News noted that UPN is owned by CBS's parent company. CBS has been extremely careful about noting such overlaps of interests ever since "60 Minutes" did an interview with Richard A. Clarke about his book "Against All Enemies" without noting it was published by Viacom's publishing division, Simon & Schuster. Even though "60 Minutes" Executive Producer Don Hewitt dismissed the criticism, saying something snappy like if that's the best his detractors can come up with, he'll take it.

Meanwhile, over at Fox, plans are to run a half-hour infomercial -- the same length as the speech given by former president Bill Clinton at the Democratic convention -- for the 20th Century Fox movie "Alien vs. Predator" on Thursday.

Fox and 20th Century Fox are both owned by News Corp. Hosted by the flick's star, Lance Henriksen, the "special," Fox says, will include "an exclusive behind-the-scenes peek at the new 20th Century Fox film," which, in one of those happy coincidences, opens the very next day. Better yet, this infomercial will contain commercial breaks. Which means you, the viewers, can experience commercials within a commercial.

Of course, Fox has no dog in the convention-coverage feud between the broadcast networks and political parties because the Fox broadcast network has no news division. And Fox's sister network, cable's Fox News Channel, was all over the convention, knowing full well what a great backdrop the conventions make for its talking heads.

We think Tim Russert has found a surefire way to get more viewers for his weekend CNBC show.

Book Bill O'Reilly as a guest with fill-in-the-blank from the New York Times.

Fox News Channel's chief talking head was invited to "chat" with Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and author of "The Great Unraveling," after one of the "Tim Russert Show" producers learned that O'Reilly had issued a challenge to any New York Times reporter or columnist to engage in a debate with him.

"Eureka!" we're sure this producer must have shouted -- at least in his or her head -- knowing that Krugman was scheduled to appear on Russert's CNBC show anyway this weekend to discuss his book. The producer offered Krugman the opportunity to be that person; he agreed, a show rep assured the TV Column.

According to a transcript of their "conversation," a copy of which was given to the TV Column, it was everything you'd expect.

O'Reilly called Krugman a "quasi-socialist"; Krugman called that "slander" and said if he is a quasi-socialist then O'Reilly is a "quasi-murderer"; O'Reilly pronounced Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" a bit of "Nazi propaganda" that reinforced all of Krugman's "paranoid delusions"; Krugman insisted Moore's flick was "flawed" but was made by "a guy who really does love this country"; Russert hardly got a word in edgewise; and a good time was had by all. One of those exchanges that make you so proud to be a journalist.

During their give and take -- okay, maybe it's more accurate to say push and shove, or slap and smack -- O'Reilly would periodically accuse Krugman of not letting him get in a sentence, or words to that effect.

So we counted and, according to The Washington Post TV Team Transcript Tally, O'Reilly actually got in 321 sentences during the "debate," to Krugman's 258.

Remember when Oprah was going to do her daytime gabber only a couple of years into this millennium? And then she changed her mind and said she'd do it only through 2008? Well, she has cried wolf again, this time signing up to do the show through 2011.

In a news release from Oprah's Harpo production company and Viacom-owned King World, which distributes the show, Oprah said she decided to extend her cutoff date because "the thought of taking the show to its 25th anniversary is both exhilarating and challenging" and because "the years ahead will allow me to continue to grow along with my viewers and will give my production company the time and opportunity to use the show as a launching pad to create and develop additional projects and potential future shows."

Personally, we think it's because she finally started reading Leo Tolstoy's 838-page novel "Anna Karenina," the latest book she has picked for her Oprah's Book Club reading list, and has come to the realization that it will take her the three extra years to get through it.

Lucky she didn't pick Tolstoy's "War and Peace," which comes in at a denser 1,472 pages, or we might have learned today that she'd re-signed through 2020.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44149-2004Aug5?language=printer

 

I give up.

 

This is going to be on the Tim Russert show, not Meet the Press. It's actually going to be on CNBC at 6:00 cst tonight.

 

I think that Krugman made better points but O’Reilly sells it harder. Krugman was nervous and at times looked intimidated by O’Reilly. O’Reilly tried to bully Krugman by pointing at him and using an aggressive tone. Very interesting back and forth between the two and Russert did a good job of staying the hell out of the way.

 

Did anyone see when O'Reilly got mad at Krugman because Krugman was going to be at a book signing with Al Franken?

That was hilarious. O'Reilly really can't take the fact that Franken exposed him. He's bitter. So much time has passed, and O'Reilly is still incredibily bitter. I love it.

 

That blowhard Franken exposed nothing. In fact, it is Franken that holds a great deal of rancor for O'Reilly. Why is it that with you people that everyone on the right is a facist jerk and yet..... the Carvilles and Begala's of the world are well-meaning, good people?

 

I didn't make any comments about Bill being a facist or anything else. I just pointed out that he was still very bitter.

As for the facts mentioned in Franken's book, I've yet to see you refute them. There was one thing that Franken's book got wrong. It talked about 23 mentions of a topic as 23 seperate articles. While it is an inaccuracy it doesn't change the point Franken was making, and that puts his book at 99.99% accurate.

If there is anything in the book you find inaccurate please list them here, or another thread, and it would make a great discussion.

 

McCain. All the "lefties" of the board appear to love McCain. Explain that.