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Fightdirecto -> What you won't know if all you do is listen to Fox-News (5/28/2011 8:35:35 AM)
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http://jadedliberal.blogspot.com/2011/05/fox-news-and-republican-sex-scandals.html
quote:
I was having post-golf dinner with a buddy, who is fairly intelligent for a Christian conservative, and he mentioned the John Edwards indictment. I responded that John Ensign will probably be indicted, too. He asked who Ensign was.
“He just resigned in a sex scandal involving Tom Coburn,” I responded.
Blank look.
I said, “You are aware of the special election in New York yesterday?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know why there is a special election?”
“No.”
“Craigslist? Shirtless picture? Sex scandal? Any of this ring a bell?”
Blank look.
When we go on our annual golf trip, this friend always puts Fox News on, so I suspected there might be a connection. I went to Foxnews.com and ran a search for John Ensign. The search produces a selection of 4 videos at the top of the page, with text stories listed below. The text stories were fairly appropriate, listing the referral to DOJ and possible Sharron Angle run to replace him, as well as other articles on the scandal.
But the four video thumbnails at the top, right next to the FoxNews “Fair and Balanced” logo, were of Ensign on tax cuts, John Edwards’ sex scandal, tornado damage to Joplin, MO, and the sex charges against the former head of the IMF.
There is a link above these thumbnails for “more videos of John Ensign,” so I clicked. Through the first three pages of 10 videos each on “John Ensign,” Fox News had no videos of John Ensign except the first one showing his interview on tax cuts, and another dealing with the “tax compromise.” It wasn’t until the fourth page of videos that the sex scandal was mentioned, and even then it was a clip from 2009 followed immediately by three favorable videos of Ensign interviews on tax and budget issues.
I figure this must be a problem with the algorithm, finding “John” instead of “John Ensign,” so I did a search only for “Ensign.” This time, the first page of video results has the video from 2009, but the rest are Ensign interviews repeating the Republican talking points. I click on the next page, and 4 more videos are presented.There were no videos of the Ensign scandal, his resignation, his successor’s appointment--nothing, except a side mention in a segment on Governor Sanford hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Maybe there is a problem with the Fox News search engine, I thought, so I ran a search for video on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Each produced numerous videos on Ensign’s sex scandal. Almost all of them were from other networks. But I could see in the thumbnails that a couple of the videos were from Fox. I clicked. They were local Fox affiliate reports. No actual FoxNews videos to be found.
How about former Congressman Chris Lee? The results were eerily similar. Headlines on FoxNews show coverage of the sex scandal in text, but when it comes to video, it is almost a total blackout. There is a mention of Lee in one video, but it is a piece on the election to replace him.
I decided to be more specific in my FoxNews.com search, so I ran “congressman chris lee scandal.” No videos come up on that topic. Instead, I got videos on medicare and “Efforts to Stem the Hiring of Illegal Immigrants,” “Herman Cain Talks Campaign Strategy,” and “Deadly Twister Rocks Arkansas Town.”
The only thing I can figure is that Fox News has decided to avoid titillation in favor of hard news. If John Ensign or Chris Lee had been Democrats - the Fox viewer in the story would have known all about them.
IOKIYAR - It's OK If You're a Republican. Meaning some action which, if it were attached to a Democrat, would be cause for a firestorm of outrage on Fox-News and on AM Talk Radio, but not when committed by a Republican.
[image]local://upfiles/42188/F67D897B449F4E05A76EF28DC9A41AE3.jpg[/image]
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