World News Korner

Fox News finds out that there is at least one public television in America where their network is NOT playing 24 hours a day, freak out about it and compare the non-viewers to POW's.

Courtesy of News Corpse:

A local TV station in Fresno, California did a rather trivial story about a waiting room at a Veterans Administration pharmacy. The story concerned an allegation that Fox News had been banned from the televisions at the facility. So the reporter sent one of his veteran buddies into the pharmacy to pretend to want to view Fox News. Whereupon they discovered that the channel was not accessible.

That set off a flurry of outrage over at the Fox News mothership. They aired panicky segments on this massive censorship plot on multiple programs, including America’s News Headquarters, The O’Reilly Factor, and Fox & Friends. In each case they characterized the situation as a blatant attempt to silence Fox News due to their reporting on the scandalous backlogs and corrupt management at some V.A. hospitals. The only thing wrong with these reports was – well – everything.

First of all, there was no attempt to censor Fox News. A spokesperson for the facility made it clear that that the channel was removed because of patient concerns. At least some of the patients explicitly objected to Fox News and the resultant controversy created an uncomfortable environment.

“It was just a misunderstanding. We’ve had a lot of veterans with diverse personalities. A lot of veterans complaining about one news station or the other, so the intent was really to be fair and equitable and take all stations off. [...] We’ve had several incidents of veterans actually arguing, fighting over the different news stations. Some wanted to watch news, some did not. Others wanted to watch specific stations.”

This kid of reminds me of the so-called "IRS Scandal" where the IRS dealt with the influx of applications by 501 (c) (4) organizations by flagging those that seemed suspicious for later review, which the Right Wing distorted to make it appear as if it were an attack on them.

In this case all cable news stations get removed, but the only one to play the victim is the one that promotes Right Wing ideologies.

Notice a pattern?

News Corpse then goes on to explain that there was no reason to single Fox News out over reports on problems with the VA, as they did no more than any other cable news network. (And besides CNN broke the story, NOT Fox News.)

But what was REALLY troubling was HOW Fox played the victim:

Particularly disturbing was the framing of this phony whining about censorship by the Fox & Friends crew, where co-host Brian Kilmeade packaged the segment as “Abandoned Brothers.” They actually employed language generally reserved for prisoners of war or fallen soldiers on the battlefield to describe people waiting to get their prescriptions filled in a downtown Fresno drug store who weren’t able to watch a gaggle of Fox News blondes in short skirts mutilate journalism.

Kind of icky. Especially considering how they tried and convicted Sgt. Bergdahl, an actual POW, without bothering to get the whole story about his capture and subsequent release.

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