(Thumbnail image from the912project.com)
“400,000 members in three weeks. Has it been three weeks? I’ve been asking you what do you want? The 9/12 project, what should we stand for? What is that we should get together and say ‘This is what we want, Washington.’ This is your voice, not mine.”
FOX News anchor Glenn Beck recently launched his very own conservative movement. On September 12th 2009 he urged Americans to remember the patriotism they felt the day after the September 11 attacks, 8 years ago. It was celebrated by a rally in Washington D.C.
FOX News heavily promoted and covered conservative host, Glenn Beck’s, 9-12 Movement. But Beck’s involvement and a new video showing a producer hyping up rally goers has some asking: did FOX cross the line from covering the news to manufacturing it?
We’ll take a look at coverage from MediaMatters.org, CNN’s Reliable Sources, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, FOX’s Glenn Beck, and political bloggers.
MediaMatters gathered the two following clips. Here’s a behind-the-scenes video shot between news reports. In it you’ll notice the cable outlet’s staff playing the part of cheerleaders.
Now this is what FOX viewers actually saw on national television. You’ll notice they never saw the producer winding up the crowd.
MediaMatters take on this:
“I guess it wasn't enough for Fox News to promote the hell out of Glenn Beck's 9/12 death march – they also needed to incite the crowd – you know, get them nice and pumped up so they'd looked good for the cameras. Fair & Balanced? More like Fake & Staged.”
Jason Easley on liberal political news site, Politc-us-usa, agrees with MediaMatters. He believes FOX crossed an important line in journalism.
“In theory, they should be covering the news, not making it. This is why when people try to defend FNC as a credible and objective news source, savvy viewers should laugh. FNC has branched from being a conservative news network to engaging in conservative activism. This is why they have no journalistic credibility.”
But FOX isn’t backing down. They’re persistent it was just one producer’s mistake and the person in question has been disciplined.
The Washington Independent quotes Jim Pinkerton of FOX News Watch for why the network’s objectivity is under scrutiny.
“…it’s just a part of the ongoing efforts that you’re going to be seeing against Fox as the federal government does its best to squelch what Barack Obama said was his greatest source of pain in the media was FOX.”
Furthermore, FOX’s Bill O’Reilly says the network’s huge ratings are evidence FOX does great journalism.
“When you break an ACORN, when you break a Van Jones, you have Glenn Beck on the cover of Time magazine, we’re going to talk to Glenn in a moment. It is now getting almost frightening to liberal media people that FOX (which is obviously not a liberal network, I say it’s center right/traditional) um commands so much power.”
O’Reilly is convinced FOX is at quote “war” with other news outlets. To punctuate the division the network took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post claiming other major American networks, including CNN consciously ignored the 9/12 event.
A heated Rick Sanchez on CNN hit back with this…
“Here’s the fact we did cover the event, what we didn’t do is promote the event… Bottom line is we do cover the news and we did extensively cover this event but we didn’t promote the event. That’s not what real news organizations are supposed to do. We covered the event. I would invite you to look into that distinction between those two words – promote and cover. Cover is kinda like a fair and balanced way of doing things.”
So what do you think? Does FOX blur the line between news and propaganda...or do all news outlets? Do you trust the coverage you get on cable?
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