He's NOT watching out for you!
By Brad Friedman on 10/4/2004, 10:43pm PT  

"The orders have come down - Be as fair as you possibly can." --- Bill O'Reilly, on tonight's O'Reilly Factor

Apparently the orders did not "come down" far enough. O'Reilly tonight opened his All-Spin All-The-Time Zone this evening on how close the race now is. (I differ with that opinion, but that's fine and not the point of this item.)

He assured his viewers in his "Talking Points" segment that, with the race this tight, it's only going to get still nastier, and thus, he will be there to help viewers to sort out what's really going on in the race. He will help sort out the "spin" of the two candidates by examining their ads to expose who's telling the truth and who isn't.

To help us get started, he then showed two of the latest Video Ads from the campaign. He showed this one for Bush, and immediately followed it with this reponse ad from Kerry.

Here's the voice-over of the Bush ad (read carefully...emphasis added for text that also appears on screen during the spot):

BUSH AD: "He said he'd attack terrorists who threaten America. But at the debate, John Kerry said America must pass A Global Test before we protect ourselves. The Kerry Doctrine: A Global Test. So we must seek Permission from foreign governments before defending America? A global test? So America will be Forced to wait while threats gather? President Bush believes decisions about protecting America will be made in the Oval Office, not foreign capitals."

Here's the voice-over from the Kerry ad (emphasis added again for text that also appears on screen as it's read):

KERRY AD: “George Bush lost the debate. Now he's lying about it. This is what you heard John Kerry really say: 'The president always has the right for pre-emptive strike.' 'I will hunt and kill the terrorists, wherever they are.' But here's something new about George Bush – newspapers report he withheld key intelligence information from the American public so he could overstate the threat Iraq posed. Bush rushed us into war. Now we're paying the price. It's time for a fresh start."

Now the Bush ad is demonstrably misleading and/or downright false. The ad referred to this statement that Kerry made during the debate:

"No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

And there is not a single incorrect fact, statement or even word in the Kerry ad.

So how did O'Reilly help us "sort out the spin"? He had an entire segment, with an expert who --- surprise! --- agreed with O'Reilly's analysis that Kerry's ad crossed the line because he used the word "lying" in it!

Yes, that's right. Not a single word about the demonstrably misleading and/or false substance in the Bush ad. Not one.

Does it really matter that Fox is so unfair and so unbalanced? Is that news to anyone? Perhaps not. But the fact that they are the number one most watched news channel --- clearly for their pure entertainment value --- and so flagrantly do everything possible to support Bush and while telling tells folks they are "fair and balanced" is simply outrageous.

I'm still waiting for any real conservative (other than our friend and frequent BRAD BLOG commenter Teddy here) to speak up and denounce the appalling and flagrant bias of Fox News. I'm waiting for those same conservative wingnuts who are still bashing Rather and CBS, who actually made a lazy mistake versus out and out partisanship over the airwaves, to speak out against Fox.

Sidenote: Fox News Watch, the weekend show on Fox that claims to "cover the coverage" spent 3 of their 4 segments on various CBS related "controversies". They spent exactly zero segments covering any of this week's many Fox News, um, "digressions". And so it goes.

(If you're new here, read this and this and this and this for an idea of just a few of the outright lies and anti-Kerry bias that Fox News has sold America in just the past few days alone!)

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