No, I don’t think that title is hyperbole.
Via Talking Points Memo, here’s how a Fox affiliate “informs” its viewers:
A Fox affiliate in Baltimore aired a segment on Sunday showing footage from a “Justice For All” demonstration in Washington, D.C. in which it edited a chant to sound like protestors were shouting “kill a cop.”
“At this rally in Washington, D.C. protestors chanted, ‘we won’t stop, we can’t stop, so kill a cop,'” the WBFF broadcast said.
But the full footage, flagged by Gawker on Monday via C-SPAN, revealed that the chant was “we won’t stop, we can’t stop, ’til killer cops are in cell blocks.”
On being caught lying on the air, this is how the station responded:
We aired part of a protest covered by CSPAN that appeared to have protesters chanting “kill a cop”. We spoke to the person in the video today and she told us that is not what she was chanting. Indeed, Tawanda Jones, says she was chanting, “We won’t stop ‘til killer cops are in cell blocks”. We invited Tawanda to appear on Fox45 News at 5:00 and Fox45 News at Ten tonight for an interview so we can discuss the video and the recent violence in New York City. She has kindly accepted and we will bring you that tonight.
This is, of course, a double-dip of the bullshit. You can listen to the raw and edited clips at TPM. When you do so, you’ll see that there’s nothing but a lie in the phrase “appeared to have protesters chanting “kill a cop”.”
The Fox affiliate in Baltimore edited audio to create a statement no one said, one certain to inflame anger. Most important, as the GOP-led bullshit hailstorm around “anti-cop rhetoric” begins to founder on the fact that people like DiBasio, Holder and Obama didn’t utter any, audio like this provides an answer to folks like me and many here.
We say “show us this anti-cop stuff.” Give us links that plausibly tie those of us who argue that cops have been shown to be able to use excess force with impunity to the deaths of those two officers in Brooklyn.
They say, “let’s go to the videotape.” Which they manufacture.
Fox 45 Baltimore is a local broadcast station. As such, it is subject to licensing by the FCC. Once upon a time, it might have been possible to mount at least a vaguely threatening challenge to its license renewal for sh*t like this. The Reagan Revolution, aided by the GOP Congress under a Bill Clinton who did not wield a veto pen, has made that essentially impossible, while ensuring that broadcast TV will ever-increasingly belong to our oligarchs.
The FCC’s vision of the public interest standard and how to achieve diverse programming — underwent a significant transformation in the 1980s. As new media industries arose and a new set of FCC Commissioners took office, the FCC made a major policy shift by adopting a marketplace approach to public interest goals. In essence, the FCC held that competition would adequately serve public needs, and that federally mandated obligations were both too vague to be enforced properly and too threatening of broadcasters’ First Amendment rights.(17) Many citizen groups argued that the new policy was tantamount to abandoning the public interest mandate entirely.
Pursuant to its marketplace approach, the FCC embarked upon a sweeping program of deregulation by eliminating a number of long-standing rules designed to promote program diversity, localism, and compliance with public interest standards. These rules included requirements to maintain program logs, limit advertising time, air minimum amounts of public affairs programming, and formally ascertain community needs.(18) The license renewal process — historically, the time at which a station’s public interest performance is formally evaluated — was shortened and made virtually automatic through a so-called “postcard renewal” process.(19) The FCC also abolished the Fairness Doctrine, which had long functioned as the centerpiece of the public interest standard.(20)
In 1996, Congress expanded the deregulatory approach of the 1980s with its enactment of the Telecommunications Act.(21) Among other things, the Act extended the length of broadcast licenses from five years to eight years, and instituted new license renewal procedures that made it more difficult for competitors to compete for an existing broadcast license. These changes affected the ability of citizens and would-be license applicants to critique (at license renewal time) a broadcaster’s implementation of public interest obligations. The 1996 Act also lifted limits on the number of stations that a single company could own, a rule that historically had been used to promote greater diversity in programming.
The results? Unsurprising:
The range of programming has expanded as the number of broadcasting stations and other media has proliferated over the past twenty years. Yet market forces have not necessarily generated the kinds of quality, non-commercial programming that Congress, the FCC and others envisioned.
In any event, it’s not clear to me that one false report would have cost anyone a license even in the good old days (get offa my lawn!) — but this one is egregious. It’s shouting “Fire!” in an uningnited croweded theater. It’s gasoline on the bonfire. It’ s vicious and abhorrent.
And you know the worst thing. I’m not nearly as surprised as I wish I were.
Forget it, Jake, it’s Fox.
[no pic today — recovering from minor surgery and can only concentrate in intervals — doing the pic search is a bridge too far. Sorry]
NotMax
They’ll blame it on ebonics.
BGinCHI
Congrats on the calf implants!
AxelFoley
@NotMax:
Fix’d
TheMightyTrowel
@AxelFoley: no no no
Villago Delenda Est
Yet another example of the incalculable damage done to this country, a great experiment in Enlightenment thinking, by the minions of the shitty grade Z movie star.
When The Revolution comes, these people will regret their actions. Briefly.
MikeBoyScout
Manufacturing Consent
weaselone
Does not matter any more at this point. It is now gospel that protesters have been screaming for the blood of police officers and their first born and that Obama, Holder, and DeBlasio ordered the execution of the officers in New York. If that Fox news affiliate did nothing but run a retraction on continuous loop from now until next Christmas, it would do nothing but further reinforce the convictions of the people who believe this.
Jeffro
I could send the TPM link to quite a few of my relatives, and would get “yeah, well, you know they’re probably still saying ‘kill a cop’ when they aren’t on camera”. No need to address how Fox edited the clip to create the most incendiary reaction…or consideration of the obvious, that if “they” are acting that way off-camera, perhaps some enterprising young Rethug might be able to provide us with an iPhone video or even audio clip of that.
I’m sure the next line of defense would be, “why aren’t the protestors equally concerned with this horrible shooting of cops?”, followed by, “they sure have a lot of time to protest, don’t they? Must not have jobs..”
A list of conservative change-the-subject, ignore-the-obvious reactions would almost have to run to infinity, wouldn’t it?
Belafon
@Villago Delenda Est: They will be sorry that their actions offended some people.
lamh36
so is the Baltimore video the one people have been linking to all over YouTube and stuff, or is there actual video from NYC.
Schlemazel
@TheMightyTrowel:
Sorry to be pedantic but they will blame it on Obamas support for ebonics.
gwangung
@Jeffro: Same thing as people are absolutely CONVINCED that Michael Brown never had his hands up and Darren Wilson suffered a life threatening attack.
scav
Something along the lines of a trompe l’oeil should work for the image: I’ll toss in this one by Jacopo de’ Barbari, 1504 or maybe this alternate as it has a fox.
Faux Text for more low-hanging fruit.
Tree With Water
“The Reagan Revolution, aided by the GOP Congress under a Bill Clinton who did not wield a veto pen, has made that essentially impossible, while ensuring that broadcast TV will ever-increasingly belong to our oligarchs”.
I don’t recall either Clinton ever copping to that error of judgment. Unlike, say, their mea culpa in the Glass-Steagal business. Or am I mistaken? I do remember the prospect of a Fairness Doctrine being reimposed caused republican party media propagandists to lose their shit for the first couple of weeks of the Obama administration. They only relaxed when Obama made clear he had bigger fish to fry. Which I guess he did, at that. It’s regrettable, though. As the president continues to open cans of whoop ass on the GOP, he might want to revisit his options on that one.
Tommy
Oh the FCC. I have a lot of what I think are diverse interests in my life. In grad school I wanted to work for the FCC. I wrote my dissertation on the FCC. My major professor hired Walter Cronkite and fired Edward R. Murrow and told me to follow that. He always taught me to pay to attention to the world around me. Maybe a government organization focused on communication might be something I would pay attention to.
BBA
Given the FCC’s recent track record with content regulation – disproportionate fines for fleeting expletives, the inept “E/I” mandate – I have no doubt that a restored Fairness Doctrine would be used mainly to shut down PBS and NPR stations that, on occasion, have given a few seconds more of airtime to Democrats than to Republicans.
Tommy
@BBA: I am willing to bet that 99.9% of the population doesn’t know what the fairness doc is. That is a very sad thing.
Cacti
Fox 45 Baltimore is a property of Sinclair Broadcast Group.
That’s the same Sinclair Broadcast group who:
-Refused to air the April 2004 episode of Nightline when names of soldiers killed in the Iraq invasion were read on air
-Two weeks prior to the 2004 election, preempted prime time programming on all 62 of its stations to air Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, a polemic against John Kerry sponsored by the Swift Boat liars for Bush
Doctoring audio sounds like their typical m.o.
cmorenc
Megan Kelley on Fox News Network was tonight showing a clip of protesters apparently shouting “kill a cop” – query was this the same fraudulently altered tape shown by the local Fox affiliate (mentioned in the OP?) She also referred to “Obama Administration spokesman Al Sharpton”…while showing him ranting about police behavior, while the program repeatedly focused on the two NYPD who were shot by the deranged psychopath on Saturday.
Fox is going all-out with unusually heavy-handed propaganda tonight, even by their standards.
Tommy
@Cacti: I just started watching my local news station. I am only like 40 miles from Ferguson. I wanted to know what was going on.It is the worse then I thought. People ought to be taken out back and shot. The news is that bad.
jl
@cmorenc: A commenter posted a video of a relatively small demonstration that sounded like people were chanting ‘kill a cop’, it was from a local NYC affiliate, not Fox.
‘ She also referred to “Obama Administration spokesman Al Sharpton” ‘
What miserable excuses for journalists. Not even excuses at this point. The Obama administration should respond to that lie, and specifically call out Fox News. Not because there is anything so awful about Sharpton, but because it is just a damn and very knowing lie.
BTW, did they play any ciips of the many times Sharpton has denounced violent protests, or his condemnation of the murder of the two NYC cops? I’m just wondering if they might have found time to play that.
Well, on the bright side, Fox News viewers will all be in rest homes in a very few years. The average age of the viewership for some of their shows is about 70 now. And every time I hear a new estimate seems like the age has jumped up faster than can be explained by the age specific mortality rate. Maybe only the senile and weak minded oldsters still watch.
GregB
@jl:
It is the same thing with Muslims who do vocally protest violence done in the name of their religion. It is simply never heard because it doesn’t fit the agenda that they(rightwingers) are pushing.
Whenever someone pushes this line with me I can usually find what they claim never happened in a matter of seconds.
The most recent was that President Obama never went to a fallen in duty police officer memorial. Debunked in 30 seconds.
jl
@GregB: Man, I guess that is why I am not a politician, I am not cool enough. If I were Obama the next press briefing would be very interesting. “Hey, you, yah, you, the shit heel from Fawckedup News. No, you don’t get to ask a question, shut your damn mouth ’cause I don’t have time for your smartass BS today, I got a message for your crooked boss. HOOO KAY, asshole.?”
Tommy
@GregB: My best friend is a muslim Amerian. He would never harm you. Never. It is a hard thing to watch. He is the nicest person you will ever find.
Eric U.
I heard Fox on the radio today, and they were outraged about De Blasio and how he was hating on cops. I was listening to the BBC over the weekend, and that was exactly the opposite of what he had said. Don’t know why they feel they have to propagandize to this extent.
jl
@jl: I first typed “shut that ******** ******** **** you **** through and call a **** mouth, you ***** *****”, but I guess that would not be presidential, even for me.
Edit: I am confident that the discerning BJ reader can fill in the blanks, at least well enough.
burnspbesq
Surely you weren’t expecting truth from the Ministry of Truth.
lamh36
@jl: I believe that NYC clip is the one that the NYC pol is circulating too.
My questions/issues about that video:
1) it is literally the ONLY one I’ve seen from NYC. Only saw filmed by one person. No other video has been seen, it’s the same youtube link. Not from different angles, and not from inside crowd
2)the video I saw is only one small group, from only one night and we’re not even sure if/when the “dead cop” chanting started.
3)based soley on the activist I follow and know of from both Ferguson and NYC, NONE of them condone any type of violent rhetoric. Yet I can see some groups that have allied with the protesters, who are known to condone for violence and dangerous rhetoric (Anonymous for example) if in their anarchist zeal. I do know alot of the Ferguson activist I follow believe that alot of the riotous behaviour there could be attributed to “outside” groups that came to Ferguson.
4)let say the video is legit. It’s ONE video, on 1 day, in NYC in what’s been like what, 10-15 days of protest in NYC and even more if you begin with the Ferguson protest. So one video of an indeterminate number of protesters out of about 100’s is what lead this shooter to shoot his girlfriend and then drive to NYC to kill the officers.
All this to say, that NYC video is being used by both sides. the Fox news side, uses it in the usual nefarious ways Fox uses things. And it’s used by some on the side allegedly “allied” with the protesters to distance themselves from the protest, they claimed to support.
But as with the Mike Brown situation, a movement/protest needs to be a “perfect” or they lose support
lamh36
FYI:
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: I think making any kind of connection between the protests and the cops being shot is is tenuous at best. As far as pretests go, as long as they don’t bring out the giant puppets, I see no reason to distance myself from a set of protests I support. The puppets creep me out.
jl
@lamh36: I have same questions you do. I tend to give it more benefit of the doubt, since it was posted at a reputable local news channel, but it does seem odd that a demonstration could go in such an outrageous direction and no other news reports. (OTOH, it seems like a relatively small group, a couple of hundred people, maybe split off from a larger demonstration, so it is possible not much coverage)
Demonstrations in SF Bay, especially in Oakland, are infiltrated by anarchist jackasses with their hoodies and Guy Fawkes masks, from what I have seen from TV clips, what you can see of them indicates mostly white college age kids. Those people show up and it gets reported in local broadcast media and blogs immediately since that signals some rioting and property damage gonna go down that night. So I am wondering why a ‘kill the cops’ chant didn’t make any other news.
‘ But as with the Mike Brown situation, a movement/protest needs to be a “perfect” or they lose support. ‘
I call white bigots on that kind of bigotry directly. But I’m part of the club, and willing to call my misguided fellow whitey ignorant bigots to their faces. Not sure what good it does.
Mike E
@burnspbesq: And, much like when a cheap shot frames the retaliating player with the foul, Fox would love to see their targets get flagged for unruly behavior which would prove to their viewers who the ‘bad’ people really are.
Tag, you’re it.
J
Yes, this one is worthy of the Nazis: Fanning the flames of hatred with lies.
BruinKid
“A few bad apples”, you toss them out. That applies to cops. That also applies to protesters. Been talking with some friends online about this video, which is real. They say it was only for a minute, and was only a tiny handful of the protesters chanting for dead cops.
The problem is, that doesn’t matter anymore, now that this footage is out there. Guess which minute of footage Fox News and every single fucking right-wing blog is gonna replay over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again for the next god-knows-how-many years about people protesting police brutality. Guess which soundbite will become the defining moment in the conservative media machine. Sean Hannity is cumming all over himself because of the existence of this video. (Sorry for that horrific image.)
Now, combine that with what Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote today:
And that is why that short video linked above is so incredibly damaging to any reforms we may hope to accomplish. At least I get to take a little solace in that I live in Los Angeles, and we’re going ahead with the plan to put body cameras on police officers, and they’re now actively seeking public comments from the people on the guidelines to be written.
Villago Delenda Est
@GregB:
“The Narrative” is all. Worship “The Narrative”. Never question it.
War is Peace, etc….
These are the people Orwell warned us about.
TriassicSands
Some observations concerning the delusional individuals who have tried to blame Mayor DiBlasio for the murders of the two NY police officers:
The mayor did nothing to incite or encourage anyone to direct violence at the NY police. People who have made such assertions are despicable individuals who are exploiting the lamentable deaths of two cops for their own political purposes.
The fact that two police officers were executed by a criminal in retaliation for recent acts of extreme police violence — that is, by police, not against them — in no way diminishes the crimes that police officers have committed recently against unarmed civilians. Those who are accusing Diblasio are simply trying to divert attention away from what were potentially criminal acts committed by police officers in NY, Cleveland, Ferguson, and many other cities in the US. If a hundred police officers were murdered, it would not diminish in any way the culpability of police officers who failed miserably in their jobs by causing or allowing to take place the deaths of unarmed people. Whenever a police officer kills an unarmed civilian, there has been a catastrophic failure on the part of police. With rare exceptions, the police officers who have killed unarmed civilians should be fired from their jobs, and in most cases indicted for criminal behavior. The specific details of each case will determine and apportion responsibility and determine what the ultimate punishment for the police involved should be.
To delusional right wingers who might claim I am calling for illegal activity aimed at police, I can only say “you’re idiots.” The murders of the two NY cops were the worst thing that could happen for those seeking to hold police officers accountable for their unnecessary violence, since the murders allow people who are seeking to avoid accountability to divert attention away from documented criminal behavior on the part of cops and to make martyrs of all cops, not just those who were victims of senseless violence.
My message to police officers who kill unarmed civilians: You have, in most cases, failed miserably to carry out your responsibilities. The “protect” part of your job includes making arrests without resorting to lethal force. In case after case of the deaths of unarmed civilians, it is easy to see how the police officers in question made poor decisions that allowed events to spiral out of control. For some reason, the fact that police officers carry firearms, seems to make some people believe that any violent behavior on the part of civilians justifies the use of deadly force. I believe that better trained police following more intelligent tactics and strategies could prevent all but a tiny number of the deaths we’ve seen.
Omnes Omnibus
@TriassicSands: Basically, this.
catbirdman
Pure evil.
mclaren
And speaking of Goebbels…
Haber wir nun dieses informationstuecke:
NYC asks federal court to approve mass arrests of protesters.
Jawohl, Mein Kommandant! Das ist gut! Sehr gut, ja? Ja!
But I must say this news item had more impact when it ran in the original German in 1935.
lamh36
gwangung
Top NYPD minority police officer resigns.
Hm.
jl
@BruinKid: @TriassicSands: If that demonstration was real, then the people who chanted to kill cops should be condemned. And if they can be ID, cut out of any significant role in future demonstrations.
You sound a little too defensive to me, though. I don’t condemn all cops because a few are bigots, and a few abuse their authority against all sorts of people when they can get away with it. And I do not hold all police responsible for the actions of a few. I expect others to show the same degree of reasonableness and respect. If they cannot show that much, they deserve to be condemned. I am not going to patronize or be defensive in front of lying news networks and contemptible bigots.
Bigots are gong to find an excuse to smear anybody who gets in their way. Witness the knowingly dishonest smearing of Al Sharpton, who has absolutely not be out inflaming crowds with calls to violence or acquiescing in it.
Bigots going to bigot, and if we wait until every single person protesting is a perfect little angle at all times, nothing is going to get done.
So, I am against a moratorium on protests. I believe that a number of bigoted high ranking police officials and politicians, and pandering bigoted ex-politicians, responsible for inflammatory rhetoric (e.g. calling the demonstrations blanket ‘anti-police’) long before the assassinations of the two policement. They should face consequences. If this climate continues, many white bigots will be surprised how the disease spreads, maybe not sooner, but certainly later.
Edit: several police have been assassinated/murdered by reactionary loons. I didn’t hear any police calling for the NRA and Beck and others like them to take a time out from their poison. This started as racial politics from conservative and certain police, they gotta own it.
A Farmer
@Cacti: That’s also the Sinclair Broadcast Group that used to air The Point with Mark Hyman, a terrible 2 minute right-wing op-ed in their newscasts from a guy with a hilarious name. One I remember specifically blamed the Communist Party for being behind the Iraq War protests. In my view, the only thing that prevented Sinclair from going bankrupt was Citizens United.
TR
I saw Fox News in the airport yesterday and it was wall-to-wall “Obama and his anti-police rhetoric”
I hope the police unions aren’t dumb enough to think the right is on their side now, because that’s a suicide pact
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
A commenter several threads back (I believe it was spinwheel, on a Zandar post) linked to this a couple times.
I don’t think he was duped…I think he was part of the group doing the duping.