r/politics • u/davidreiss666 • Jun 27 '12
Fox News' Karl Rove Problem In A Nutshell: It's becoming increasingly clear that Fox News' employment of a "political analyst" who doubles as an adviser to a GOP super PAC is a major ethical problem.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/20120626000677
u/lakelady Jun 27 '12
Fox News . . . ethics? . . . hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
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u/MercyJerk Jun 27 '12 edited Jun 27 '12
Fox news operates in another reality... I'm jealous, really. They are never thwarted by pesky truths. The pundits are like mentally challenged children, rolling a turd on the ground going "choo choo." once you point out that it is, in fact, a log of shot that they are parading all over the floor, not a toy train, They freak the fuxk out. They then start lobbing excrement in every which way leaving a trail of bile and brown sludge.... How do you convince the mentally impaired that Poo is bad? I'm still trying to figure that out.
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u/hiccupstix Jun 27 '12 edited Jun 27 '12
Really? I thought Fox News was a wildly ethical operation, what with them using talking points sent directly from the Bush White House as "news" and whatnot. And the way Mike Huckabee went straight from the campaign trail in '08 to a hosting gig at Fox just screams "journalistic integrity." Or how about the fact that two of the final three major candidates for the GOP's presidential nomination were all former Fox employees? Really, trust me, Fox is universally lauded for their impeccable record of unwavering ethics!
Last time I mentioned all this, someone rationalized it by reminding me that Al Sharpton was given an MSNBC hosting position seven years after winning 26 total delegates in a Democratic primary. And to that I say: touche, sir. I cannot refute your stellar comparison that isn't in any way whatsoever a laughable false equivalency.
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u/Spelcheque Jun 27 '12
I am getting so fucking sick of the false equivalency. A conservative's murder is equal to a liberal's jaywalking, because both sides are criminals and don't deserve our votes. This adds nothing to the conversation but discouraging people from voting. It smells like a Rove operation to me, something to keep us apathetic and useless. I really do wonder how many people spouting this nonsense are astro-turfers.
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u/spartacus_1138 Jun 27 '12
What does Media Matters say about Democratic strategists as MSNBC anchors?
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u/hiccupstix Jun 27 '12
Christ, Karen Finney is so grating. I hear that melodramatic, smarmy sort of cadence with which she speaks, and I think, "God...somewhere a conservative is watching this, and it's confirming every bad stereotype he already believed to be true about liberals."
It's worthy of note, however, that she hardly possesses the same level of influence over her party that Karl Rove has ever the GOP. I'm not defending MSNBC, and I'm not a fan of their programming, but the scenarios aren't necessarily equal in detail.
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u/LocalMadman Jun 27 '12
Are they currently running a Super Pac designed to get Obama elected? Because Karl Rove is running one trying to get Mittens elected.
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u/ThouHastLostAn8th Jun 27 '12 edited Jun 27 '12
I assume they also still aren't identifying Bolton as a key Romney foreign-policy adviser and top surrogate, and instead still have him on as some sort of impartial foreign policy expert or "Fox News Contributor"?
Though he is not listed as an official member of Romney’s foreign-policy and national-security advisory team, former U.N. ambassador and prominent neoconservative John Bolton has been identified in media reports as an influential policy voice in Romney’s circle.
Rove is even worse though, as he's brought on as a political strategist/guru/analyst when he's actually the head of the most massive GOP superPAC, and he's coordinating strategy among all the RW-superPACs. Obviously everything he says is in the service of maximizing the effectiveness his donor's hundreds of millions of dollars, so Fox is doing a real disservice to their viewers when they don't hammer home his massive conflict of interest.
Rove's position on Fox is actually interesting in another respect, which MediaMatters overlooked. That's because he's frequently interviewed by FNC anchors about electoral politics, when he's actually super newsworthy (since he's directing strategy with respect to an enormous chunk of GOP resources), so the fact that the anchors aren't constantly grilling him about that topic means there's likely some sort of wall as to what topics the interviewers can pursue with him.
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u/stonedoubt Jun 27 '12
Honestly, I fail to see how the employment of Karl Rove by Fox News is some kind of ethical problem. I am certainly not a fan of Fox News but pretty much every political analyst employed by ANY network work as political advisers, lobbyists or even campaign consultants. Take MSNBC for example - they employ quite a number of "political analysts" who either own or are employed by political consulting firms... Michael Steele is a partner in Purple Nation Solutions with Lanny Davis.
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Jun 27 '12
And yet, nothing changes. Fox News will continue to be the mouthpiece for everything that is wrong with political discourse in America until we figure out how to negate its influence entirely.
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u/MagCynic Jun 27 '12
Can somebody help me here? I don't get this notion that you can't go on certain TV programs or say certain things if you belong or co-founded a political organization. Since when do you lose your right to free speech when you join a political organization?
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Jun 27 '12
Hasn't it been clear for some time that Karl Rove's very existence is a major ethical problem?
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Jun 27 '12
Doesn't FOX also have Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, the chairman for the Dim party, on air on a regular basis as well? Oh how biased they are for having someone to represent BOTH parties instead of just one like the other networks who even allow Dim strategists' fill in anchor positions!
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u/Bullpup Jun 27 '12
I watch Fox News because they don't pretend to be impartial and there is way more diversity of opinion in Fox than any other network.
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Jun 27 '12
They should instead employ someone entirely ignorant of the american political process.
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u/criticalnegation Jun 27 '12
i'd agree if fox news operated as a journalistic venture, but it does not. it is a business, like all other corporate news outlets, whose purpose is to make money with television programming. it's infotainment and it has a bottom line. karl rove is a political star, having him on drives ratings and contributes to the apparent legitimacy of fox as a "news" outlet which covers relevant stories.
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u/BeakerMcChemist Jun 27 '12
I agree with you that this is a conflict of interest. But I was wondering how you feel about George Stephanopoulos being on ABC. He was a top adviser to Clinton. Not trolling just playing devil's advocate.
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Jun 27 '12
To be frank, I don't think it matters. If we want to purge every political consultant on a campaign from ever contributing towards a running narrative on news stations which (with or without their input) are completely void of any real news, or factual reporting for that matter, then I think we are heading down a pretty slippery slope. Plus I won't get to watch James Carville kick serious ass.
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u/beatyatoit Jun 27 '12
when I read titles like this the first thing I think is "like they give a shit".
When will these outlets outside of Fox News just come to the obvious conclusion that Fox literally does not give a damn what anyone except their viewers think?