Hannity Fox News a Proven Propaganda Machine, not a News Organization….
The news this past week confirms it! Hannity Fox News has basically admitted they’re no longer a news organization abiding by accepted media norms. Hannity has been caught violating basic news/journalistic standards while Fox lets him get away with it. Outside their faithful viewers, they’ve lost all credibility & can no longer be trusted. Fox fake news has also become a main source of America’s polarization & bitter divisiveness which squashes bipartisan dialogue to pursue the common good, keeping us entrenched in our problems.
Ever since that bombshell moment a week ago when his name was announced in court, Hannity has gotten a pass on his client relationship with Trump’s lawyer, who constantly appeared on his show & was praised by Hannity, without disclosing Cohen was legal representation for him. But he doesn’t get a pass here with The Voracs, as we have tons of links below in the Related Articles all about this. In a real news organization, a real journalist/commentator would never be permitted to get away with hiding their personal &/or professional ties, so Fox viewers aren’t being informed why his views are being biased. But as we’ve seen with the Hannity Fox News duplicity, they no longer have standards.
So they’ve blown their cover, especially the early morning & evening shows who’ve abandoned any pretense of being news shows, now becoming pure extremist propaganda & shills for this president. And that’s a shame. The GOP badly needs a messaging source offering sensible conservative opinions & solutions, not a corrupted network like Fox who’s gone off the rails. The hope is Fox will so badly blow their credibility, it will expose their extremist far-right agenda & over-the-top lying on behalf of the prez, so in dismissing that nonsense we can start fixing the GOP messaging back to sanity.
Fox News really was once a valuable messaging source, offering important conservative perspectives as an effective counter to the largely left-leaning mainstream media. But they’ve lost their way. Another more extreme cottage industry that started as conservative talk radio & expanded over to social networking groups on the internet, it steadily dragged their conservative audiences further & further to the right, crossing the line from conservatism to irrational nihilism. And along the way, that fledgling cottage industry turned into a monster, spreading a toxic message that has turned a (arguably) majority of the GOP base from rational to radical ideologies. By shifting their rhetoric to match their viewers’ more hardcore far-right viewpoints, Fox adapted their approach to the same fact-free propaganda long heard on talk radio & the internet, which only serves to double-down on that false messaging & make it seem more credible to their viewers. As I’ve often said, it’s a form of brainwashing. So it’s nothing short of tragic. I’m not being melodramatic, because it’s destroying the overall popularity & better purpose of the GOP, which in turn is seriously dragging down our nation.
Thinking people who pay attention can plainly see the way Trump & his echo are attacking the foundations of our free society. To the extent they might succeed & do permanent damage, depends on their ability to spread their fanatical nihilism to a little higher percentage of the misinformed public than they currently have, & by doing so America could be in big trouble. The relentless attacks by Trump & his echo against the media, courts, intelligence agencies & political opposition are nothing more than trying to weaken the pillars of democracy in order to usurp power, establishing a totalitarian rule that runs far outside our Constitution. Separation of powers would simply become an afterthought. So with the help of echo-brainwashing, Trump already seems to have nearly 40% in his corner, so bumping that up another 10% or so could result in our nation becoming the Putin-type Russia the prez dreams about. So we’re on the precipice of disaster. Trump could become the American dictator &/or pave the way for future presidents to do so. Once we cross that line to being repressed by an authoritarian state, there’s no going back.
Losing our democratic freedoms can only come about when almost everyone in the conservative base believe &/or support the lies coming from Trump & his echo, which incredibly, it’s not that far away from actually happening. Trumpeters & echo-fans can only believe in this dangerous assault on the rule of law by being extraordinarily gullible, or they can only support that through being corrupted by blind tribal loyalties. Whatever the reasons, it seems to be working to corrode the thinking of the GOP base, as seen in this conclusion to trumps-assault-on-the-rule-of-law-is-working:
So long as Trump and the Republicans can poison the minds of their base into believing that the rule of law is actually a tool of the Democrats rather than a pillar of democracy, then they can just shrug when the almost certainly damning Mueller report comes out. Yet we must not shrug off what is happening before our eyes. Disagreements over policy are part and parcel of democracy. Tax policy evolves. Immigration debates wax and wane. What Trump and his supporters are doing now is weakening a core principle of our system. The rule of law, once subverted, is hard to restore. We cannot allow it to crumble.
The dangers are further illuminated in this Trump news from corker-calls-trumps-attacks-on-fbi-justice-damaging-to-us. While I suspect most GOP reps in Congress are thinking this, so far the ones actually speaking out are the reps stepping down from office. Maybe more will find their backbones once we get through the primary season, where this Trump worshipping can hopefully subside:
President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the FBI and the Justice Department could do irreparable harm to American democracy, Republican Senator Bob Corker said. “I do not like the tearing down of institutions and I’ve shared that with him,” Corker of Tennessee, who is retiring at the end of the year, told reporters at a breakfast Wednesday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “Continual tearing down of institutions in order to inspire your base and keep yourself protected with your base, to me, is damaging to our nation.”
Corker, who has traded barbs with the president several times over the past year after initially being considered a candidate for secretary of state, said that any Republican senator who hasn’t felt conflicted about Trump has either been “comatose or pretty useless in their blindness, OK? And we’ve got some of both.” The comments echoed those of Republican Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who says he will be retiring “in the coming weeks” rather than serving out his term. He said on MSNBC on Wednesday that “since Donald Trump has stepped into the breach the litmus test has become loyalty to The Man.”
Here are appropriate warnings & worries from who-better-than-justice-department-alumni-to-defend-the-rule-of-law, especially the way we routinely/disgracefully see Trump & his echo attack the DOJ & FBI:
Attacks on the apolitical civil service and interference with the criminal-justice system are hallmarks of authoritarian regimes. When law enforcement, prosecutors and courts are attacked, they must be defended before these institutions are permanently damaged and lose their independence. A bipartisan white paper, “The Republic at Risk,” published this year urged:
Being able to identify the causes and symptoms of modern democratic decay is a good first step toward stopping those who seek to undermine our institutions and values. The end of democracy in America is not by any means inevitable. But democracy is only as strong as those willing to fight for it, and it cannot long endure in a political vacuum. Now, then, is the moment for Americans who have never been engaged in politics before to become engaged, and for those who have been involved to increase their involvement. At the end of the day, the final check on an authoritarian president comes from our democratic system itself, and the citizens who fill their role as active participants in governance.
The signatories to the open letter exemplify this type of active citizenship required in the Trump era.
Also read this last paragraph from leaders-worldwide-are-falling-for-a-deadly-illusion. THE THREAT IS REAL!!!
Not all efforts by the United States to promote and defend democracy have been successful, but that is no reason to give up. Mr. Macron’s address was a needed summons. Irresponsibly, President Trump cannot find a voice for such essential principles. In this vacuum, it would be reassuring to hear German Chancellor Angela Merkel be more outspoken, as well as others who lead democratic societies. The danger of sleepwalking is real. So are the consequences of losing this battle, which would consign tens of millions of souls to live in a darker world without the dignity to think, talk and be ruled as they choose.
There are lots & lots of articles on insanity Hannity in the Related Articles, which the latest caper hitting the headlines this past week just goes to show what I’ve been saying all along, he’s a lying phony. These excerpts from the first link under Fox s-e-cupp-fox-news-increasingly-becoming-untethered-from-what-we-expect-news-to-be are from a commentator who until recently has often appeared on Fox, which she points out their opinions are no longer rooted in fact, but they just make stuff up to fit their preconceived agenda. It wouldn’t be so much a problem if their viewers would stop falling for it:
HLN’s S.E. Cupp––who used to appear on Fox News––had some tough words for the network tonight over the ongoing scrutiny surrounding Sean Hannity. She reviewed the Fox News host’s “lawyer problem” over the revelation of his connection to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and the lack-of-disclosure issue. “On this face, it seems obvious,” she said. “It’s a clear conflict of interest for Hannity to defend Cohen and his star client, the President of the United States, on his show regularly without revealing one of the reasons he might be doing so.”
But the bigger issue here, Cupp argued, is about Fox News and its place in the sphere of cable news:
“It is increasingly becoming untethered from the standard preconceptions of what we expect news to be. Now, to call Fox ‘infotainment’ is not new, nor do I think it’s particularly pejorative. Like other cable news channels, the network offers a melange of colorful personalities, ideological outrage, and, yes, good reporting too. Opinion infiltrated cable news long ago, but increasingly, and especially at Fox opinion, is not rooted in fact anymore. Instead alarmingly it is sometimes rooted in flat-out fiction, and more often than not in feelings.”
She brought up Hannity’s “macabre obsession with Seth Rich” and “provably untrue” things he’s said.
And many staff still with Fox were alarmed by what happened, as seen in these excerpts from fox-news-staffers-reportedly-shocked-by-hannity-cohen-revelation-this-is-bad. Remember what I always say about Trump corrupts all he touches, so this article says so far Fox is giving Hannity a pass on this conflict-of-interest outrage (because the network has been corrupted):
Pretty much everyone was shocked yesterday when Sean Hannity was announced as Trump lawyer Michael Cohen‘s third client. And yes, that includes people at Fox News. We already knew that to some degree, as was made clear by the awkwardness of how some of Hannity’s colleagues covered this news, but a new report from Gabriel Sherman in Vanity Fair gives some more insight into what the internal reaction was:
“What the fuck? This is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen,” one staffer told me. “This is bad,” another Fox staffer said. “It violates every rule of journalism”… According to employees I spoke to, a range of theories swirled through the newsroom. Did Hannity have a woman problem like Cohen clients Trump and Elliott Broidy, the former Republican fund-raiser who paid $1.6 million to a former Playboy model who had an abortion amid an affair with Broidy? “Everyone’s first impression was the same: you only hire Cohen for one reason,” one staffer said. Another staffer speculated Hannity hired Cohen to help him fight left-wing groups that were orchestrating an advertiser boycott after Hannity fanned the Seth Rich conspiracy last year. “Hannity was paranoid and hiring lawyers,” the staffer said. Still another theory posited that Cohen perhaps brokered a meeting between Hannity and Julian Assange last year.
Some of Hannity’s colleagues, like Juan Williams and Judge Andrew Napolitano, have publicly criticized Hannity for not disclosing his relationship with Cohen. Sherman reports some staffers were “frustrated” that Hannity wasn’t disciplined by the network. Fox News made clear in a statement today that the network is standing by Hannity: “While FOX News was unaware of Sean Hannity’s informal relationship with Michael Cohen and was surprised by the announcement in court yesterday, we have reviewed the matter and spoken to Sean and he continues to have our full support.”
More proof of the corruption existing within Fox comes from these excerpts in Fox-News-on-Hannitys-Cohen-conflict-We-dont-care, which confirms what I’ve been saying about them for years, they’ve become the evil network. As a student of politics & news coverage, & a center-right conservative who once considered Fox my go-to news source, I’ve seen the dramatic change in their reporting/commentary over the past few years, going from conservatism to radical/irrational nihilism. Since so many Fox viewers don’t have the discernment to recognize these extreme changes, I’d suggest we’d better warn them:
If anything good came from Monday’s revelation that Sean Hannity had concealed a massive conflict of interest from Fox News’ viewers, it was that his conduct was so egregious, and his network’s lack of interest in journalistic ethics so obvious, that it may have cleared things up for any mainstream reporter who still considers Fox a real news outlet. As part of Hannity’s campaign against special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Donald Trump, the Fox host last week repeatedly denounced the FBI’s raid of the office of Trump personal lawyer Michael D. Cohen on the network’s airwaves. Only yesterday did the public learn of a secret tie between Hannity and Cohen — Hannity had been Cohen’s legal client. For many, including myself, this was simply confirmation of the obvious: Fox has no rules for the likes of Hannity. The network prioritizes keeping its top ratings star happy over its responsibility to the public. But for others, this was an opportunity for the network to prove itself.
Fox doesn’t care about ethics. The network isn’t interested in whether Hannity has a conflict of interest. It will take Hannity’s claims at face value without delving into his relationship with Cohen. Fox’s executives don’t feel that they owe it to their audience to apologize. There’s no indication that the host will be restricted from discussing Cohen going forward. There’s no signal that the network believes Hannity did anything wrong. He certainly won’t be disciplined. There’s not even a name attached to the statement taking responsibility for the comments. Fox has, through word and deed, consistently shown that the network doesn’t operate like a normal news organization. Journalists should pay attention.
With these next excerpts, the first paragraph is how the article begins, with the second paragraph how it ends, but to see how Hannity once went apoplectic over a similar lack of disclosure incident with George Stephanopoulos, you’d need to read the whole thing here in this link: Hannitys-disclosure-hypocrisy:
Sean Hannity is the perfectly crystallized representation of Trump-era punditry. Much like the president he slavishly devotes his entire programming schedule to deifying, Hannity is aggressively dishonest, unencumbered by anything remotely resembling a principle, and eager to rigorously impose harsh standards of conduct on his enemies that he would never dream of applying to his allies or himself. And, as with Trump, Hannity thrives despite his toxic, corrupt behavior because he operates within the poisonous world of conservative politics where the myopic pursuit of power and wealth are the only things that matter. That brings us to yesterday’s revelation that Hannity was the mystery client of Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who is currently under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. Hannity never disclosed his relationship with Cohen, even as he railed against the FBI raids on Cohen’s home and office last week, calling them a declaration of “legal war on the president” and part of an “overreaching witch hunt.” This lack of disclosure comes nowhere close to being the worst abuse Hannity has committed, but it does help illustrate how Hannity exploits his utter lack of accountability and holds himself to a far laxer standard of conduct than he holds other media figures to.
(Hannity offered) a vague excuse that offered no concrete details as to the extent of their relationship (Hannity said he sought Cohen’s advice on real estate-related matters) packaged in a wounded attack on the media for even covering it. Hannity, meanwhile, is as deeply immersed in Trump’s world as one can be without actually being a Trump employee and/or family member, but all those unseemly (and unethical) ties to the president apparently have no significance to this supposed non-story. Fox News (which, by Hannity’s standard, has its credibility on the line) has been silent on the Cohen issue, and there’s little reason to believe it will take any action against Hannity given that the network has already let him get away with stoking insane murder conspiracy theories. Network executives seem to be perfectly content to let Hannity tell whatever story he wants, and if it turns out later on that he lied, they won’t care about that either. Hannity, like Trump, thrives on lies, flagrant hypocrisy, corruption, and the promise of never facing serious consequences for anything he does.
In this opening excerpt here from sean-hannity-continues-to-uphold-fox-news-standards, perhaps it sheds light on why Fox hasn’t yet reprimanded Hannity. The article projects the reasons why Hannity is fulfilling his role as show host exactly as this Fox entertainment media would wish. Hannity Fox News are a deceitful pair teaming up to spread their delusions on a mass scale:
We at Fox News continue to have rigorous standards, and Sean Hannity continues to uphold them. He has not criticized Donald Trump in thought, word or deed, by anything he has done or anything he has left undone. He has not failed to love Donald Trump with his whole heart, his whole mind, his whole strength. He has not held any other gods before Donald Trump. He has not sacrificed anything — food, drink, integrity — to a deity other than Donald Trump. He has not failed to denounce Hillary Clinton and all her works. All his graphics have pointed to Hillary Clinton as the ultimate mastermind of all that is wrong in the country — even graphics of great complexity. He has not lent credence to anything said by James B. Comey, by way of graphic or gesture. During evenings when there is breaking news related to ethical problems for the Trump administration, he has been careful to discuss some unrelated subject in great detail. He has not taken Donald Trump’s name in vain. He has devoted several segments to a gruesomely irresponsible conspiracy theory about a DNC staffer who was murdered, and there hasn’t really ever been a retraction of any kind, but the man in question was not Donald Trump, so — no harm, no foul. He has been relentless in his pursuit of Hillary Clinton’s crimes and shall continue to strive until at last we arrive at the glorious day of her impeachment and judgment.
Even after hiding his associations with those he offered strong opinions/support for on his show, Hannity & other lying cohorts keep offering some of the most bizarre conspiracy absurdities. There are some links below like this one trump-hannity-mueller-whitey-bulger where 4 men were once framed by gangster Whitey Bulger, which show hosts using their convoluted echo-logic are somehow finding a way to blame Mueller & Comey. No doubt they’ll soon implicate others in this sinister caper, like Rosenstein, Sessions, Obama, Hillary, Pelosi, Jimmy Carter & Hubert Humphrey. This stuff is crazy! And proving there are no bounds to the Hannity Fox News ridiculousness, I’ve posted here this little ditty from sean-hannity-cannot-tweet-his-way-out-of-journalistic-corruption:
Fox News. Whatever Hannity or a Fox News representative may say, the network’s viewers are being trained to believe that they’re getting news during Hannity’s always-frothing hour of chatter. News is delivered by journalists. If the host and his bosses wish to exempt Hannity from the attendant requirements, they should change the logo in the bottom left of the screen. “Fox Talk” might work, or perhaps “Trump Time with Sean.”
Another conspiracy theorist who is, believe it or not, even worse than Hannity Fox News is Alex Jones. He’s not as destructive as Hannity/Fox, since his audience isn’t as large, but he is a raving lunatic. I hope the lawsuit brought against him by Sandy Hook parents succeeds big time, since there is a difference between free speech & demonic hate speech that impugns the integrity of innocent people, which that type of evil rhetoric should not go unpunished. It’s also put these parents who already suffered unimaginable tragedy at risk for their personal safety: sandy-hook-parent-explains-alex-jones-lies-are-public-threat-put-families-risk.
In other links from Related Articles, to me it’s a disgrace that moronic buffoon Rep. Jordan comes from here in Ohio. And now that radical nudnik wants to be Speaker? Ha ha! There’s a section where we see James Comey’s memos being released, which mostly go along with his book & previous public testimony. Those memos do reveal conversations where Trump had expressed a desire to put reporters & opponents in prison, highlighting his dangerous dictatorial desires: james-comey-welcome-to-the-long-list-of-people-trump-wants-to-jail. Also brought up was Putin enticing Trump with beautiful Russian hookers: comey-memos-trump-talked-about-russias-beautiful-hookers-couldnt-keep-mideast-countries-straight. As we keep learning, the Steele dossier looks authentic, maybe even the pee tape part. Some Trump cronies in Congress wanted these Comey memos released, but it’s baffling to figure out why since Trump won’t be helped by them.
In the last group of links, we see the spirit of deception invading the thinking of unsuspecting souls. It looks like the nutheads are still trying to impeach Hillary, but what they’re impeaching her from I have no idea. This reminds us of Russia, North Korea & other totalitarian regimes, where they round up political opponents & haul them away: desantis-letter-prosecute-clinton-comey. But now we’re seeing that attitude here in America! Extremely scary! Deranged lunatics like Meadows & Jordan from the HFC (House Freedom Caucus, or as I’ve referred to as Hamburger, Fries, Coke) are using a circus sideshow with the only purpose being to besmirch Rosenstein, trying to give the prez cause to fire him as seen here: trump-house-allies-pressure-rosenstein. We also see articles that Trump’s support among white evangelicals has risen even higher: poll-white-evangelical-support-for-trump-at-record-high. I find that to be another head-scratcher. And as I keep warning those in my evangelical faith, it risks ruining the faith when it’s seen as dancing with the devil.
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