The Witch Hunt Against Fox News

John on November 2, 2009 at 9:41 am

Since September 10th, Media Matters for America has put out 20 tweets declaiming the “witch hunt” Fox News has (supposedly) aimed at Obama’s czars. Several of those linked to posts on the Media Matters website which make the same claim.

Dated September 9, this entry titled “Fox News on a Witch Hunt for Obama’s Czars” may be the very first to use that formulation, but they’ve published several follow-ups since then.

Eric Burns, head of Media Matters, repeated the same line in a column at the Huffington Post on October 22nd, with a link to the 9/9 post.

Other groups apparently liked the ring of “witch hunt.” Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films created a new video aimed at Fox, specifically their airing of the Giles and O’Keefe ACORN videos. The video sidebar reads:

FOX News is on a witch hunt, aimed at destroying the Obama administration and the progressive movement. Theyve already succeeded in pushing Van Jones out of the White House and badgered Congress into passing an unconstitutional bill to defund ACORN. Glenn Beck actually keeps an enemies list on a blackboard thats a regular part of his show.

Coincidentally (?) just two days after Brave New Films issued the video, another leftist group launced stopthewitchhunt.org. This group turns out to be a spin off of a group where Van Jones was a member of the board. Not surprisingly, his ghost seems to haunt this effort as well:

False accusations and outright lies have cost good people their jobs and their reputations. And we don’t know who will be next.

I thought the official story was that Van Jones resigned on his own?

In any case, what all these groups have in common besides the timing is a reckless disregard for the truth. Van Jones was sacked (or quit) because he was exposed as a Truther. He signed a document asking for an investigation of 9/11 and suggesting that George Bush might be implicated. When it was brought to light, he didn’t deny having signed it but claimed he somehow didn’t understand what it was about.

Yosi Sergant was canned for recommending, on a phone call to dozens of artists and influencers, that they pick some portion of the administration’s agenda and push it.

Anita Dunn, who hasn’t been canned but should be, came under fire for praising Chairman Mao as one of her favorite political philosophers in front of a group of high school students.

Kevin Jennings came under fire for, by his own admission, failing to notify authorities about a sexual tryst between a high school boy and an older man. Jennings said the boy was 15, but the boy now claims he was 16 at the time and never actually had sex with anyone anyway. It’s a transparent lie, but good enough for Media Matters. Jennings was also attacked for praising Harry Hay a forerunner of today’s gay rights movement who also was a big fan of Nambla.

For daring to report on these stories and more, Fox news is portrayed as a torch-bearing mob. The anti-Fox coalition has found its meme and the attacks are beginning to coalesce. All of this, of course, was aided and abetted by the Obama White House. Having watched Robert Greenwald’s Outfoxed one too many times, they came out and declared Fox was not a real news organization even as they invited such balanced “journalists” as Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann to the White House for a chat.

The White House has since climbed down from its attack on Fox, having realized the strategy was backfiring. Meanwhile, their well funded surrogates have only upped the ante. Even as the White House and Fox have supposedly signed a truce, the real witch hunt — led by Media Matters, Brave New Films and others — is still busy gathering a mob and handing out torches.

Category: MSM & Bias, Politics |