Fox in the Chicken Coop

Daily Howler

If you watch the propaganda mill euphemistically known as the Fox News Channel, you may not have the slightest idea why Armstrong Williams is in hot water. On Friday night’s O’Reilly Factor, then on Sunday’s Fox & Friends, the channel’s stars let Williams pretend that he had simply taken money to run legitimate TV/radio ads about the No Child Left Behind program. By Friday morning, it was clear that Williams had been paid to do far more than that. But his Fox hosts stared into air, letting Williams pretend he was being slammed for a “perfectly legitimate” ad buy. …

[B]y Sunday, when Williams did Fox & Friends, the deception was total and repetitive. In the course of a nine-minute interview, Williams kept framing the issue in terms of selling ad time, mentioning nothing else for which he’d been paid. And his three Fox hosts went along with the sham. …

[A]t no time in the nine-minute session did anyone note that Williams was paid for more than a simple ad buy. And Williams kept pimping the bogus idea that the flap concerned nothing but legitimate ads.

Over and over (and over and over), Williams kept pretending that he was only paid to run legitimate ads. And none of his three Fox hosts ever tried to correct or challenge him. Indeed, by the end of the session, the hosts had reached new ground in their open pandering, agreeing with Williams when he said he was being held to “a higher standard than anyone else.”

Was Williams paid to pimp for Bush? Yes. But then, these hosts are paid to pimp for Williams! They know what Roger Ailes pays them to do, and they delivered on Sunday like cash machines. “God bless you,” one host said to Williams as The Three Storeboughts signed off.

So anyone who depends upon Fox as their primary ‘news’ source concludes this is much ado about nothing, oblivious to the government buying propaganda to mislead the public in violation of federal law. mjh

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