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Fox's laughable case for Romney
(CNN) -- Who says the media aren't interested in good news? Fox News has been broadcasting lots of it for Mitt Romney this week. Never have so many gray clouds had silver linings as those hovering over the hapless Republican candidate and his deflating campaign.
I bring you this report after having ventured into Bill O'Reilly's "No-Spin Zone," and believe me, his initial shout-out urging viewers to exercise "caution" before watching is fully, if unintentionally, appropriate. Apparently in Fox World, "no-spin" means "I am now going to share my news-based fantasies."
The Wednesday broadcast featured **** Morris, Karl Rove and Dennis Miller, an a-cappella chorus humming O'Reilly's favorite tunes: that the mainstream media is rooting for Obama; that the polls consistently misrepresent a race that is still a dead heat; that Romney will re-emerge from this autumnal swoon by winning the October 3 debate through his superior if often-invisible oratorical skills; that Romney is in decline simply because voters don't yet understand the necessity of top-end tax cuts, the sanctity of corporate profits and the horror of social welfare spending run amok.
Across its programs, the Fox News mantra is "there's still plenty of time." That's a truism, but chanting the obvious is not among the standard definitions of journalism. Institutionally, Fox is in denial about the state of the campaign. Romney is looking very weak very early. The attempt to avoid reporting this state of play in a "fair and balanced" way is producing comical results.
Stylistically, the O'Reilly quartet may be on to something new. We've had mainstream journalism, alternative journalism, conservative journalism. This appears to be vaudeville journalism. Wednesday, the verisimilitude of the performance was maintained by the illusion that of the four, only Miller is a stand-up comic.
Rove's role is nuttily professorial. He has adopted one of those erasable white slates popularized by the late Tim Russert. On it he scribbles integers with plus or minus signs. These, he alleges, are the amounts being added to President Barack Obama and/or subtracted from Romney by such daredevil organizations as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, NBC, CNN, Gallup and the co-opted poll-averagers at the website RealClearPolitics. Bottom line: This vast conspiracy is downgrading Romney three to nine points by using screens that overstate the votes of blacks, Latinos, Asians, women and the young.
Morris, who is beginning to bear a waxen resemblance to Orson Welles, explained, I think, that pollsters cheat by using false baseline figures from previous elections. Morris didn't have time to explicate fully how every news organization except Fox has signed up to help Obama by disseminating these cooked figures. Even so, O'Reilly thanked Morris for explaining polling mysteries he said he had not previously understood.
The effect was somewhat spoiled by an unscripted guest from reality, Larry Sabato, the scholarly political scientist from the University of Virginia, who immediately dismissed Morris' rant as "grassy-knoll" statistics. He added that the poll averages on RealClearPolitics had things about right. Obama was ahead by about four points nationally. Of the big-three swing states, Sabato said, perhaps in order not to appear rude to his host, only Florida is still close.
The presence of Miller is apparently driven by commercial considerations. He and O'Reilly now have a lecture-circuit act that is selling out in such venues as Houston and Las Vegas. The closest I've heard Miller come to elegant public-policy analysis was to call Obama a "crap president" earlier this week. As a nod to factuality, O'Reilly does call Miller a "satirist" and, less plausibly, an NFL expert, due to his badly reviewed stint on Monday Night Football. In any event, it's hard to imagine anyone with a master's in public policy from Harvard, which O'Reilly has, consulting Miller on an important national election -- unless there's money in it.
Which brings us to the interesting case of O'Reilly himself. O'Reilly is no dummy, and he did work as a broadcast news professional before veering into infotainment with "Inside Edition" and the Fox gig. For all his pugnacity, these days O'Reilly has the look of a man doing beautiful pirouettes on increasingly thin ice. He's clearly angling to survive a Romney train wreck with some credible deniability by leaving the delusional commentary to Rove et al. and hinting at his suppressed misgivings about Romney's chances.
He's not a man easily knocked off balance by contrary evidence. Thursday he opened with Fox's own poll, which presumably lacked the evils defined by Rove and Morris. It showed Obama's favorability up by 51% to Romney's 48%. It was, from a Foxian point of view, a nicer number than Obama's five point head-to-head lead, 48% to 43%.
Cannily, he drops in terms such as "in fairness to Obama," praises the president's campaigning skills and takes note of criticism of Romney by other conservatives. He hangs his hat on the observation that October 3 is Romney's last chance to get back in the race. This leaves him room to turn around if the polls -- we're talking the real ones here -- don't.
O'Reilly's newest hedge, unveiled with Fox's bleak new poll, is that the "likability" factor gives Obama an advantage with "uninformed, casual voters."
I think there's a secret behind O'Reilly's trademark smirk. Were it in his interest to say what's on his mind about the candidates' performance to date, he'd almost certainly admit that Obama has come on like a superstar candidate of the Reagan ilk, and so far Romney is one of the biggest duds in post-World War II presidential elections.
Right now, Fox News' general excuse for Romney is that he's not getting his "message" across. I'll tune in from time to time to see when the news from the real world arrives in the Fox studios. The message of Romney's tooth-and-fang financial-market capitalism is driving down the polls, and the messenger is coming across as an unlikable empty suit, even when he ditches his tie and jacket.
At a certain point, campaigns in early decline begin to reek of impending defeat. I can't wait to see how they spin that in the no-spin zone. Meanwhile, we can contemplate the dilemma of another O'Reilly regular, the Loneliest in the Public Opinion Trade, aka pollster Scott Rasmussen. He's telling O'Reilly the race is tied within the margin of error around 46% or 47%.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/28/opinion/raines-fox-romney/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
I bring you this report after having ventured into Bill O'Reilly's "No-Spin Zone," and believe me, his initial shout-out urging viewers to exercise "caution" before watching is fully, if unintentionally, appropriate. Apparently in Fox World, "no-spin" means "I am now going to share my news-based fantasies."
The Wednesday broadcast featured **** Morris, Karl Rove and Dennis Miller, an a-cappella chorus humming O'Reilly's favorite tunes: that the mainstream media is rooting for Obama; that the polls consistently misrepresent a race that is still a dead heat; that Romney will re-emerge from this autumnal swoon by winning the October 3 debate through his superior if often-invisible oratorical skills; that Romney is in decline simply because voters don't yet understand the necessity of top-end tax cuts, the sanctity of corporate profits and the horror of social welfare spending run amok.
Across its programs, the Fox News mantra is "there's still plenty of time." That's a truism, but chanting the obvious is not among the standard definitions of journalism. Institutionally, Fox is in denial about the state of the campaign. Romney is looking very weak very early. The attempt to avoid reporting this state of play in a "fair and balanced" way is producing comical results.
Stylistically, the O'Reilly quartet may be on to something new. We've had mainstream journalism, alternative journalism, conservative journalism. This appears to be vaudeville journalism. Wednesday, the verisimilitude of the performance was maintained by the illusion that of the four, only Miller is a stand-up comic.
Rove's role is nuttily professorial. He has adopted one of those erasable white slates popularized by the late Tim Russert. On it he scribbles integers with plus or minus signs. These, he alleges, are the amounts being added to President Barack Obama and/or subtracted from Romney by such daredevil organizations as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, NBC, CNN, Gallup and the co-opted poll-averagers at the website RealClearPolitics. Bottom line: This vast conspiracy is downgrading Romney three to nine points by using screens that overstate the votes of blacks, Latinos, Asians, women and the young.
Morris, who is beginning to bear a waxen resemblance to Orson Welles, explained, I think, that pollsters cheat by using false baseline figures from previous elections. Morris didn't have time to explicate fully how every news organization except Fox has signed up to help Obama by disseminating these cooked figures. Even so, O'Reilly thanked Morris for explaining polling mysteries he said he had not previously understood.
The effect was somewhat spoiled by an unscripted guest from reality, Larry Sabato, the scholarly political scientist from the University of Virginia, who immediately dismissed Morris' rant as "grassy-knoll" statistics. He added that the poll averages on RealClearPolitics had things about right. Obama was ahead by about four points nationally. Of the big-three swing states, Sabato said, perhaps in order not to appear rude to his host, only Florida is still close.
The presence of Miller is apparently driven by commercial considerations. He and O'Reilly now have a lecture-circuit act that is selling out in such venues as Houston and Las Vegas. The closest I've heard Miller come to elegant public-policy analysis was to call Obama a "crap president" earlier this week. As a nod to factuality, O'Reilly does call Miller a "satirist" and, less plausibly, an NFL expert, due to his badly reviewed stint on Monday Night Football. In any event, it's hard to imagine anyone with a master's in public policy from Harvard, which O'Reilly has, consulting Miller on an important national election -- unless there's money in it.
Which brings us to the interesting case of O'Reilly himself. O'Reilly is no dummy, and he did work as a broadcast news professional before veering into infotainment with "Inside Edition" and the Fox gig. For all his pugnacity, these days O'Reilly has the look of a man doing beautiful pirouettes on increasingly thin ice. He's clearly angling to survive a Romney train wreck with some credible deniability by leaving the delusional commentary to Rove et al. and hinting at his suppressed misgivings about Romney's chances.
He's not a man easily knocked off balance by contrary evidence. Thursday he opened with Fox's own poll, which presumably lacked the evils defined by Rove and Morris. It showed Obama's favorability up by 51% to Romney's 48%. It was, from a Foxian point of view, a nicer number than Obama's five point head-to-head lead, 48% to 43%.
Cannily, he drops in terms such as "in fairness to Obama," praises the president's campaigning skills and takes note of criticism of Romney by other conservatives. He hangs his hat on the observation that October 3 is Romney's last chance to get back in the race. This leaves him room to turn around if the polls -- we're talking the real ones here -- don't.
O'Reilly's newest hedge, unveiled with Fox's bleak new poll, is that the "likability" factor gives Obama an advantage with "uninformed, casual voters."
I think there's a secret behind O'Reilly's trademark smirk. Were it in his interest to say what's on his mind about the candidates' performance to date, he'd almost certainly admit that Obama has come on like a superstar candidate of the Reagan ilk, and so far Romney is one of the biggest duds in post-World War II presidential elections.
Right now, Fox News' general excuse for Romney is that he's not getting his "message" across. I'll tune in from time to time to see when the news from the real world arrives in the Fox studios. The message of Romney's tooth-and-fang financial-market capitalism is driving down the polls, and the messenger is coming across as an unlikable empty suit, even when he ditches his tie and jacket.
At a certain point, campaigns in early decline begin to reek of impending defeat. I can't wait to see how they spin that in the no-spin zone. Meanwhile, we can contemplate the dilemma of another O'Reilly regular, the Loneliest in the Public Opinion Trade, aka pollster Scott Rasmussen. He's telling O'Reilly the race is tied within the margin of error around 46% or 47%.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/28/opinion/raines-fox-romney/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
No cigar el. Not even close. And you know it. Do I need to provide more videos?
Romney has changed his mind and his stance on particular topics, just about as many times as Obama has. There's that old double-standard thing again.
When a Republican changes their stance, it's a "flip-flop".
When a Democrat does it, it's an "evolution".
When a Republican changes their stance, it's a "flip-flop".
When a Democrat does it, it's an "evolution".
I dont want any of what Romney is selling. Now what he was selling yesterday, the day before that or today and I would remind you that his opinion and stance changes according to his audience. I wonder which guy is gonna show up at the debates and if he has had enuff tutoring that he isnt going to have to try to remember when he said what last. Romney has done it to hmself. Im sorry but I have never seen a worse politician in my life, and I am old!
Honestly, just the fact that the numbers have been as close as they have been simply astounds me as he is that bad....
I watch CNN and I watch Bloomburg and I read the papers and I do not agree with your perception of media bias. Romeny might want to give them something besides negative to report? The guy is not a good actor and that is what he has been doing, acting. And it shows imo.
Honestly, just the fact that the numbers have been as close as they have been simply astounds me as he is that bad....
I watch CNN and I watch Bloomburg and I read the papers and I do not agree with your perception of media bias. Romeny might want to give them something besides negative to report? The guy is not a good actor and that is what he has been doing, acting. And it shows imo.
I didn't say all the news was "rigged"... I said it was Left'leaning.
None of them come right out and declare support for Obama. They're basically, closet Obama supporters, and it shows in the way they write their stories, and report the news.
Never said they were necessarily AGAINST Romney, but they definitely don't shed any good light on him.
Go to CNN "Politics" right now, and I'll bet you dollars-to-donuts, that all the headlines that have Obama's name in them are title and contain positive news and articles about all the good stuff he's doing.
Now look at all the Romney articles. They're all titled something negative (which sets the tone for the article), and the contents of the article lean a little in BO's favor.
It's just the way they're written.
You can't for a single second, tell me that there's not a single, solitary shred of good to say about Romney.
You may not LIKE the guy, but the way he's painted by you, people here in the forum, and the media, you'd think he was the devil reincarnate.
He may have done some stupid things, and said some stupid things, but tell me... in a blind "taste test", not knowing which candidates credentials you were looking at... if you looked at BO's credentials (ie: junior senator, former community activist) sitting beside Romney's credentials (ie: former CEO, governor of mass), which would you choose?
Keep in mind, you can't see what they look like, nor do you know which one is a dem and which one's a repub.
?
None of them come right out and declare support for Obama. They're basically, closet Obama supporters, and it shows in the way they write their stories, and report the news.
Never said they were necessarily AGAINST Romney, but they definitely don't shed any good light on him.
Go to CNN "Politics" right now, and I'll bet you dollars-to-donuts, that all the headlines that have Obama's name in them are title and contain positive news and articles about all the good stuff he's doing.
Now look at all the Romney articles. They're all titled something negative (which sets the tone for the article), and the contents of the article lean a little in BO's favor.
It's just the way they're written.
You can't for a single second, tell me that there's not a single, solitary shred of good to say about Romney.
You may not LIKE the guy, but the way he's painted by you, people here in the forum, and the media, you'd think he was the devil reincarnate.
He may have done some stupid things, and said some stupid things, but tell me... in a blind "taste test", not knowing which candidates credentials you were looking at... if you looked at BO's credentials (ie: junior senator, former community activist) sitting beside Romney's credentials (ie: former CEO, governor of mass), which would you choose?
Keep in mind, you can't see what they look like, nor do you know which one is a dem and which one's a repub.
?
No el, I dont think the news is all rigged against your guy. Not for a second. But keep in mind that fox news gave how many millions to the republican party? How could they do that? Because they are not considered a news source is how.
The republican party is shrinking for starters, so is the democratic party, more people are becoming independent of party but in most states you have to vote a party in the presidential election. Its gonna come down to a one party system before long because everyone I know thinks this is not working...
I agree Mike, you can gripe about a poll here and there and everyone knows Rasmussen is conservative leaned and that is why republicans like them and choose them to quote, but to call every other single poll source out there bias cause they all are saying the same thing is well, out of touch shall we say.
I agree Mike, you can gripe about a poll here and there and everyone knows Rasmussen is conservative leaned and that is why republicans like them and choose them to quote, but to call every other single poll source out there bias cause they all are saying the same thing is well, out of touch shall we say.
I listen to ALL the Right'biased news coming out of FOX, and don't pick and choose.
"Name me one instance republicans have claimed bias when the numbers were in their favor?"
Unfortunately, I can't cite a single, solitary instance, where there's been any reporting of "numbers" that have been in favor of Romney.
And even if FOX did release numbers, that were in favor of Obama, I STILL wouldn't believe them (I don't buy into polls).
Listen, Teko... I know for a fact that FOX is a Right'leaning news-source. But at least I can admit that.
All I keep hearing here (in the CE Forum), is about how fair-and-balanced the news-reporting is at all the OTHER networks, when it's clearly NOT, and is extremely Left'wing.
The only reason you get behind the news that's reported, and the poll numbers that come out, is because "your guy" is winning.
If the numbers showed Obama behind, even by a little, you'd cry foul, and say that it was biased.
I'm smart enough, and I read enough, and I watch the news enough, and I listen to the radio enough, to generate my own thoughts & opinions about what I'm fed by the sources, and I don't take anything they say completely at face value.
All of them have an agenda, and the agenda of the 99% Left'leaning media in this country, is to see BO in the WH in 2013.
Can you even admit that the media (besides FOX), leans WAY to the Left, and presents BO in a more favorable light than he may deserve, at times?
"Name me one instance republicans have claimed bias when the numbers were in their favor?"
Unfortunately, I can't cite a single, solitary instance, where there's been any reporting of "numbers" that have been in favor of Romney.
And even if FOX did release numbers, that were in favor of Obama, I STILL wouldn't believe them (I don't buy into polls).
Listen, Teko... I know for a fact that FOX is a Right'leaning news-source. But at least I can admit that.
All I keep hearing here (in the CE Forum), is about how fair-and-balanced the news-reporting is at all the OTHER networks, when it's clearly NOT, and is extremely Left'wing.
The only reason you get behind the news that's reported, and the poll numbers that come out, is because "your guy" is winning.
If the numbers showed Obama behind, even by a little, you'd cry foul, and say that it was biased.
I'm smart enough, and I read enough, and I watch the news enough, and I listen to the radio enough, to generate my own thoughts & opinions about what I'm fed by the sources, and I don't take anything they say completely at face value.
All of them have an agenda, and the agenda of the 99% Left'leaning media in this country, is to see BO in the WH in 2013.
Can you even admit that the media (besides FOX), leans WAY to the Left, and presents BO in a more favorable light than he may deserve, at times?
*** After nine battleground polls: We've now released nine battleground state NBC/WSJ/Marist polls in the last three weeks, and what have we learned? President Obama is ahead of Mitt Romney in all nine, with his biggest leads being 7 and 8 points (in Ohio, New Hampshire, and Iowa) and his smallest edge at 2 points (in Nevada and North Carolina). Obama's average percentage in these polls is 49.5% and Romney's is 44% -- which is consistent with the national polls (see below). Our state surveys also show a slight improvement in voters who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction. And they find Obama and Romney essentially tied on who would better handle the economy, while Obama mostly enjoys double-digit leads on foreign policy.
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/28/14137872-first-thoughts-after-nine-battleground-
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/28/14137872-first-thoughts-after-nine-battleground-
How come you only hear them complaining bias in the numbers when they are against them? Name me one instance republicans have claimed bias when the numbers were in their favor?
Great big scam and its not working. Mainstream media is wrong, polls are biased in the presidents favor, give me a break here! Seriously? They make their living off of these polls so why would they risk everything to be bias toward obama. Quite a stretch I must say. Even fox polls showed obama ahead so how does that work again?
Great big scam and its not working. Mainstream media is wrong, polls are biased in the presidents favor, give me a break here! Seriously? They make their living off of these polls so why would they risk everything to be bias toward obama. Quite a stretch I must say. Even fox polls showed obama ahead so how does that work again?
hehehehe
I've said it before, and I'll say it again...
The Left control 99% of the media outlets here on US soil.
Can't the Right have just ONE? PLEASE?!?
Let us have Fox (Faux), and leave us alone!!! If we want to lul ourselves into a false sense of security, by watching Fox's obviously Right'biased news reporting, then let us.
Why do you people on the Left care SO much that we have a SINGLE news source that's OURS, and doesn't bend to the will of the WH???
Seriously, why is it SO, SO, SO important that you control ALL media?
The Left control 99% of the media outlets here on US soil.
Can't the Right have just ONE? PLEASE?!?
Let us have Fox (Faux), and leave us alone!!! If we want to lul ourselves into a false sense of security, by watching Fox's obviously Right'biased news reporting, then let us.
Why do you people on the Left care SO much that we have a SINGLE news source that's OURS, and doesn't bend to the will of the WH???
Seriously, why is it SO, SO, SO important that you control ALL media?
hehehehe
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