Lauren Green, Fox News, and Bickmore’s First Law Of Being Biased

Watch this, if you dare.

I have been using the phrase “Bias makes you stupid” for many years, but only recently learned that a Utah climate-change scientist has claimed the observation as his own. In fact, Barry Bickmore has a lot of useful, perceptive observations among “Bickmore’s Laws” ( Example: Bickmore’s First Law of Being Reasonable Reasonable people understand that good arguments can sometimes lead to false conclusions, and bad arguments can sometimes lead to true conclusions ), though they all were apparently devised to help him debunk the arguments of climates change skeptics. Most of them have general applicability. and that includes his version of what I once called “Marshall’s First Law”: Bickmore’s First Law of Being Biased: Bias makes you human.  Unchecked bias makes you stupid.

Which brings us to Lauren Green, and Fox News.

I have no idea whether Ms. Green is really stupid or not. I do know she is a former beauty queen, and that Fox (other networks too, but Fox is blatant about it) clearly values pulchritude over journalistic acumen and skill when making their on-air talent decisions not involving Y chromosomes. This itself is stupid, unprofessional, sexist, insulting to women, unfair to better journalists with smaller bra cups and courser features, and I must admit, when it leads to an epic live embarrassment such as Green’s, I take some satisfaction that Roger Ailes is getting exactly what he deserves for such a cynical, reckless, ratings ploy.

If Lauren Green is not stupid, then her frantic efforts to play to the core Fox audience’s presumed bias in favor of Christianity of the literal variety and related bias against non-Christians, especially Muslims, sure caused her brain to take a holiday. Or, perhaps, her own unchecked Christian biases—she is Fox’s “religion correspondent” these days—triggered a classic display of Bickmore’s First Law of Being Biased. In either case, I think her credibility is permanently shot, even at Fox. She might want to consider a different line of work. Continue reading

Ethics Dunce: Fox News, Serving Nobody And Disgracing Itself

The combatants on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show were flaming right-wing madman Bill Cunningham, a god-awful radio talk-show host who must have photos of Sean in flagrante delicto with Nancy Pelosi or something, and Fox house Obama defender Tamara Holder, who is none too sharp herself.  The topic is thoroughly obscured by the invective and petty bickering. It began as a discussion over whether Attorney General Holder committed perjury before Congress regarding his involvement in the James Rosen warrant (he didn’t, barely).

This video clip is self-indicting, but before you watch it, allow me make a couple of points:

  • This kind of uncivil, unprofessional, shouting, insulting, ranting gutter fight provides no information and no illumination. It is an insult to the audience.
  • If, because of misconduct by guests, such an atrocity breaks out on the air, a responsible network should pull the plug on it, and apologize to viewers.
  • A responsible host and moderator should never, ever permit a segment to deteriorate to the degree.
  • Sean Hannity did, and ought to be held accountable. He failed his duty to viewers and to the network.
  • Hannity was on notice that talk show host Bill Cunningham is an offensive, irresponsible blow-hard. This right-wing racist—anyone who habitually calls President Obama by his middle name is by definition a racist, as well as a jackass—is a serial offender that Hannity has on his show frequently. The man isn’t fair, civil, persuasive, pleasant to listen to, funny, wise or smart.
  • Tamara Holder should have walked off the set, if Hannity wasn’t going to be professional and tell Cunningham to be civil or leave. Instead, she eventually responded in kind—understandable, but wrong.
  • Fox should ban Cunningham from TV. Everyone should ban him, for that matter. The message has to be sent that this kind of conduct isn’t “good television,” it is an abuse of public speech.

Now, the clip:

The Ethics Irony of the Justice Department’s First Amendment Chill

040308-N-0000P-002The AP’s president and chief executive Gary Pruitt told the National Press Club this week that the US government’s secret seizure of Associated Press phone records has had a “chilling effect” on news gathering by the agency and other news organizations “Some longtime trusted sources have become nervous and anxious about talking with us,” he said in his speech. .”In some cases, government employees we once checked in with regularly will no longer speak to us by phone. Others are reluctant to meet in person.” He added that this  chilling effect on newsgathering is not just limited to the Associated Press.

My reaction? Bad…and also good. The unprecedented incursions on the news media by the AP operation and the search warrant executed on Fox reporter James Rosen are, I think, pretty obviously, government action that has the effect, and maybe the intent, of intimidating and muzzling the press, and in the case of Rosen, “criminalizing the act of journalism.” This is all ominous for the country, democracy, freedom and the public, and seriously so.

The fact that these efforts have also discouraged leakers and others who breach laws, regulations, promises and professional ethics to satisfy their personal agendas, however, is nothing to mourn. I have long termed the process whereby an untrustworthy employee illegally or unethically leaks information to the press, which then publishes it with impunity, as information laundering. I don’t think such sources ought to have their identity protected—this is an accommodation for reporters that has nothing to do with ethics at all, just pragmatics. Sources should be on the record, not anonymous, and when they reveal information they had promised not to, they should be willing to accept responsibility, accountability, and penalties. Continue reading

Bad Valedictorian Ethics, Round #2: The Cut-Off Mic

This one is easy.

I would have pulled the plug too.

I would have pulled the plug too.

At  Joshua (Tex.) High School, a Valedictorian, in this case one Remington Reimer, agreed to deliver school-approved text and nothing else as his graduation speech. Following the unethical example of double-crossing Valedictorian Roy Costner, recently slobbered over by Fox News as if he were a hero (imagine if Costner had torn up his promised speech and began bashing the Tea Party—do you think Megyn Kelly would have been kissing his shoes on the air then?), Reimer decided to grandstand as well, changing his speech from what he had assured the school he would be delivering. But while he broke his promise, the school, to its credit, did not. He had been told that if he pulled a Costner, his microphone would be turned off. As the wags at Fark neatly put it,  “If you go off-script during your valedictorian speech and mention that you were threatened with having your microphone cut if you were to indeed go off-script, then your microphone just might get cut off for going off-script.” That’s what happened to Remington.

Good. Continue reading

Now Showing: “The Benghazi Chronicles,” or “How The Absence Of A Trustworthy And Objective Newsmedia Undermines Democracy”

If you think she would lie to Congress, you must be one of those Obama-hating conservatives!

Never mind what the e-mails say: if you think she would lie to Congress, you must be one of those Obama-hating conservatives!

Did you know that the Obama Administration’s handling of the Benghazi fiasco last September and its subsequent explanations to the Congress, the American people and the world is under legitimate scrutiny once again, and that there may be credible and irrefutable evidence that the Administration both botched the response and lied about it? Did you know that at least three whistleblowers—Mark Thompson, deputy assistant secretary of state for counter-terrorism; Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission/charge d’affairs in Libya; and Eric Nordstrom, who acted as a regional security officer in Libya for the State Department—who had direct knowledge of the inner workings of the government during and after the crisis, will be testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, perhaps this week? Did you know that there is a significant possibility that, as Conservative pundits and Republicans were screaming at the time, the Obama Administration executed a deliberate and purely politically motivated cover-up operation designed to withhold the truth about the Benghazi attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and other U.S. personnel until after the elections, if not permanently?

Since this is an important and perhaps transformational developing news story, one would hope that you would know at least some of thus if you have frequented any “respectable” news source over the past few days, and not been spelunking. One would hope, and one would have that hope dashed. There was nothing about Benghazi over the weekend in the New York Times, or on NBC, ABC’s Sunday Morning news show. There was plenty of coverage, all day long yesterday, at Fox, and you know what that means (and is supposed to mean, and in carefully manipulated by the rest of the media to make sure it means), don’t you? The re-opening of the Benghazi issue is a “conservative story,” just concocted, twisted and massaged by the Obama-hating cabal!

To its credit, CBS, via “Face the Nation,” covered the story on Sunday while ABC, NBC and CNN chose to focus almost exclusively on Syria and immigration reform. Bob Shieffer opened the segment by referring to it as “the story that will not go away,” a self-revelatory intro, I think, since Bob, like most of his Obama-worshiping colleagues, probably wishes the story would go away. Yet he quoted one of the so-called whistleblowers, Greg Hicks, who  reportedly told investigators that the Administration, contrary to what Susan Rice was sent out to tell the public and what the President told the world, knew “from the get-go” that the attack wasn’t a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islamic video, but a coordinated terrorist act. Continue reading

Ethics Hero: Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace

It has come to this: a journalist doing his job properly and meeting his professional duties now qualifies as exemplary conduct.

To hear the White House tell it,Fox News is nothing but a shill for conservative positions and anti-Obama criticism. This has always been an exaggeration, but especially so with regard to the Fox starting line-up of news anchors—Chris Wallace, Shepard Smith, Greta Van Susteran, Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, who are generally fair and professional. Wallace is the best of the lot, and showed why in an interview with Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s  CEO who has been the group’s public face during the post-Sandy Hook gun control debate.

Wallace raised the ill-conceived NRA  advertisement that criticized President Obama as a hypocrite for not supporting the NRA’s proposal to have armed guards in schools, while sending his own daughters to a private school that has exactly that.

“They also face a threat that most children do not face,” Wallace said, making the obvious distinction between the  daughters of the President and the average student. “Tell that to the people in Newtown,” was LaPierre’s facile response.

“You really think that the president’s children are the same kind of target as every other school child in America?” Wallace said, eyebrow arching right off his forehead. “That’s ridiculous and you know it, sir.” Continue reading

Some Ethics Observations On A Ridiculous Sean Hannity Segment

Last night, Fox New host and conservative radio talk show star Sean Hannity moderated what purported to be a debate on the topic of —guess what?— gun control on his cable TV show. The  guests were “civil rights attorney” Leo Terrell (I’ll explain the scare quotes in a second) and conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow. The two adversaries—and Hannity, who was hardly neutral—discussed The Journal News’ recent decision (Covered and criticized on Ethics Alarms) to publish the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in two New York Counties. The ensuing dialogue, if you can call it that, was painful to watch (but you’ll have to watch it to know what I’m referring to.)

Some observations on the miserable ethics of a nauseating episode: Continue reading

Now THIS Is Hypocrisy!

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Fox News reporter Jesse Waters in his spare time

Fox News reporter Jesse Waters in his spare time

Hypocrisy is a concept that is widely abused by critics, who misidentify it with startling regularity. Someone who has engaged in conduct that he now opposes is not necessarily a hypocrite, for example. It is not hypocrisy to reform or change one’s mind. Nor is it hypocrisy for someone to criticize conduct that he or she knows is wrong, but cannot control in his own life. Someone who opposes official approval of status that the individual secretly holds is not necessarily a hypocrite either. A closeted gay public official who publicly opposes gay rights may be self-loathing, but not hypocritical. A gay public official can plausibly believe that gay marriage is not necessary, or that marriage is a tradition that can only refer to a couple of opposite genders: holding a sincere position that is self-critical or against self-interest isn’t hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is a lie, not mere inconsistency. It is knowingly posing as something you are not, pretending to believe something you don’t believe, demonstrated by not making an effort to meet the standards you insist that others follow. D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, lecturing children about the evils of illegal drug use while smoking crack in his spare time, was a hypocrite. Law enforcement officials who intentionally break the law are hypocrites. Rep. Joe Walsh,  the Tea Party, “family values” Congressman who refused to meet his own child-support obligations, stands out among the many hypocrites in government.

Then there is Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters. One week after President Obama was re-elected, Watters told Fox Head Bloviator Bill O’Reilly that the Obama voters were mindless zombies who supported the President “as long as there was Obamacare, gay marriage and abortion on demand.” Now Federal Election Commission records have surfaced showing that Watters himself contributed $500 to the President’s re-election campaign.

Yes, he is a zombie. Continue reading

Yahoo Flunks A Confirmation Bias Test

Just as you always suspected: THIS is the average Fox News viewer.

Just as you always suspected: THIS is the average Fox News viewer.

Be honest now: If you were a news editor and this press release came across your desk, what would you think? What would you do?

Birmingham, Alabama (PRWEB)

December 04, 2012

The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence. Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group.

One test involved showing subjects a series of images and measuring their vitals, namely pulse rate and blood pressure. The self-identified conservatives’ vitals increased over 35% when shown complex or shocking images. The image that caused the most stress was a poorly edited picture of President Obama standing next to a “ghostly” image of a child holding a tarantula. Test subjects who received their news from other outlets or reported they do not watch the news scored an average IQ of 104, compared to 80 for Fox News viewers. Continue reading

The Benghazi Express: It’s Hard To Hide An Ethics Train Wreck

Did you hear the gross and inappropriate remark Joe Biden made to the father of one of the soldiers killed in the Benghazi attack? Of course not! Because it makes the Vice President appear to be a clueless and insensitive fool…we can’t have THAT…not before an election!

It’s pretty simple, really. The American people have a right to know what really happened in Benghazi, and as new questions keep arising, the appearance of a cover-up on the part of the Obama Administration keeps getting more difficult to deny.

  • On 9/11 of 2012, an armed attack on the American embassy in Libya left four dead, including the Ambassador. After the attack, the only official U.S. comment was on the website of the Cairo embassy, which had experienced a violent protest, disavowing an anti-Islam film trailer that had been posted on YouTube, essentially suggesting that the violence had been provoked by offensive American speech.
  • Many days afterward, that remained the official position of the Obama Administration, to such an extent that ten days after the raid the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. visited all the Sunday talk shows to describe the attack as spontaneous, not planned terrorist actions, and sparked by indignation over the video. President Obama went before the U.N., and again disavowed and blamed the video. Continue reading