Brett Baier proves himself to be an ignorant, arrogant, disingenuous asshole by disrespecting the President, the office and the nation with his childish Teabagger behavior. Watch:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Disgraceful.

Promoted. Originally posted 2010-01-30 19:54:46 -0500. -- GH

There is a story up on the AP at the moment which has News Corp agreeing to settle an anti-trust case with a company called Valassis for $500 Million.

News Corp. to pay $500M settlement to Valassis

Just to put this in perspective, payouts of this amount usually receive much more scrutiny:

Exxon Valdez : In the case of Baker v. Exxon, an Anchorage jury awarded $287 million for actual damages and $5 billion for punitive damages.

OK Tedi : A negotiated settlement worth approximately $500 million in compensation and commitments to tailings containment was reached in June 1996.

James Hardie: compensation worth up to $4 billion over the next 40 years

LIVONIA, Mich. (AP) -- News Corp. subsidiary News America Marketing has agreed to pay rival Valassis Communications Inc. $500 million to settle antitrust charges.

Valassis accused News America of threatening customers with price hikes for not offering exclusivity in marketing deals.

In a statement Saturday, News Corp. said it did not want to risk presenting the case to a jury in Michigan federal court, where it was scheduled for trial Tuesday. "it was in the best interests of the company and its stockholders to agree to a settlement."

The Exxon Valdez spill compensation claim was vigorously fought in court of law as well as in the public sphere, with the figure being reduced when the Bush administration was in office.

The OK Tedi disaster was a long term dumping of mining tailings filled with toxic metals, and cyanide contaminants into a river in Papua New Guinea.

The James Hardie payout was for continuing to market and manufacture asbestos building materials and fail to limit exposure to this product even when it was known of the effects on human health.

All of these, and I am sure there are many more, were played out in the press, in the media over and over. I know for a fact that News Corp would have headlined these three, if not many more in their newspapers day after day.

Hat-tip to David Waldman of DailyKos.

Check this out:

To excerpt from David's piece over on dKos, here's the nub of the gist:

__________

In the evening hour opinion shows (which, poisonous though they are, Fox is perfectly entitled to broadcast), you have your Hannity types spouting their wingnut applause lines unchecked, because gosh, it's just "opinion journalism." So it's all fair game when they come right out and claim Obama's a socialist, or communist, or fascist, or whatever the flavor of the day is.

But lo and behold, come next morning, the "news" side anchors pull out the infamous "Fox Question Mark" construction, dutifully delivering their line to the audience: "Is Obama a socialist? That's what some in Washington are saying..." Nevermind that both the "some" who are saying it and the talking heads "reporting" it take their morning memos and their paychecks from the same source.
__________

In a nutshell, if you're using Fox for your political insights or news and information, you're being intentionally misinformed and manipulated. By nuts.

  Promoted. -- GH

Cross Posted on Daily Kos as part of a series of commentaries or diaries on an Australians trip across the USA during the month of August.

Yesterday in An Aussie Visiting America - LA, I discussed my gut reaction to a segment on Fox News in the US on one of their cable TV talk shows. As an Australian watching another (ex)Australians television network instructing people what to hate about 'other' Americans, I have to take issue with this.
It may be that too often though that one watches the personalities on Fox News Network, Bill O, Hannity and Beck without remembering that the station itself and the organization is ruled by a single man. The overriding ideology, what you are seeing which is labelled as News, is simply a public airing of the belief structure and comes with the express approval of one man. This gives that individual incredible power over public opinion and it is international influence where this power is wielded.

Rupert Murdoch, 78 years of age, born in 1931 and raised in Melbourne Australia, only became an American out of convenience in 1985 when he was 54 years of age.

Another one of their videos has another hole shot in it by the police? The AP is reporting that Vera did call the cops on these two GOP juvenile delinquents:

Police say a worker with the activist group ACORN who was caught on video giving advice about human smuggling to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute had reported the incident to authorities.

Police have confirmed that Vera reported it to them. That means two of their videos have been proven as being nothing more than successful at harrassing ACORN workers.

Oh, boy -- the slings and arrows are just beginning to fly, and this time it looks like FOX News may have bitten off more than it can chew. And it got bitten back in return. Check out the following video from Media Matters TV (Hat-tip Bob in ABQ of DelphiForums and the Huffington Post):

For more information on this, see How Fox Justifies News Distortion as well as the tag Fox News and Citizen Journalist News Corpse.

In case you're wondering about responses to the idiot Fox News pundit Ralph Peters who suggested that the Taliban should kill a captured American soldier, here's what Rachel Maddow had to say:

Hat-tip BarbinMD of DailyKos.

Treat this as an Open Thread.

Courtesy Antman11 and leonard145b of DailyKos and ricardomath of DelphiForums comes this most telling betrayal of our troops and our nation...

These people have no honor.

They have no souls left sell.

The defenders of torture, the proponents of illegal and unConstitutional programs and the liars who'll deny health and equal rights to all Americans are now calling for the death of a captured American soldier.

Michael Scheuer Calls For Osama to Attack: Glenn Beck and Fox News Air It

Three days before the Fourth of July -- a holiday celebrating our nation's Independence Day -- and the reich-wing has stepped up the drumbeat toward insurrection, treason and sedition. Hat-tip to MinistryOfTruth of DailyKos

Every Republican member of Congress should be immediately called upon to voice their opinion on this outrage, on the record and in public.

Every right-wing pundit and "strategist" -- particularly those like Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh -- should have to weigh in, publicly and on the record.

This is the ultimate incitement of domestic and foreign actions by active enemies during a time of war: it is treasonous, it is seditious, it is wrong on so many levels.  In light of all the troops who have fought in our name and to protect our nation "over there" so that we could never again be attacked over here, this unrejected statement made by Schaeur on Fox News is the ultimate slap in their faces.

It is the ultimate in dishonor.

It is the ultimate un-American sentiment.

It is beyond fathomable.

Check out the diary by Ministry of Truth for action items, and get involved now -- before another Timothy McVeigh, James W. Von Brunn, Eric Robert Rudolph, Dan White, James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald or Scott Roeder.

Let's put the words of Mike Malloy to the test: do Republicans really want our nation to fail? Do Republicans really want us to bear the brunt of another 9-11 or Oklahoma City bombing?

They're worse than useless. These are terrorists. These are domestic terrorists. They want the country to fail, for God’s sake. They want exactly what anyone who attacked this country on September 11, 2001 wanted. The real internal terrorists are the Republicans, I mean, isn't that clear?

Those are the words attributed to Mr. Malloy; they ring too true, now. Let's put the Republicans in Congress to the real test, and see if they live up to their hype, or to their actions.  And in the meantime, let's ask the FCC and Secret Service to pay Fox and friends a little visit.

The so-called "Man of God", Pastor Willy Drake has been called out for his "praying for President Barack Obama to be killed" in a radio interview on FOX Radio.

These are the kind of people, including Ultra and Right Wing Conservative TV and Radio hosts and moderators, that those who are one flick of a match away and exploding like a powder keg, listen to and take their messages to heart.

Here again is the fine line of "free speech" versus "hate speech" and invoking incendiary comments.

Posted without further comment.

This is an Open Thread.

Posted with permission of Nicholas Benton, owner/editor of the Falls Church News Press.

by Nicholas Benton

The dismal state of American journalism was further demonstrated in the past week in a couple of cases that were called out in compelling ways by critics.

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC TV News took Fox News' Bill O'Reilly down in one of the more eloquent and truth-telling commentaries this week, expressing appropriate outrage for O'Reilly's pattern of incendiary rhetoric aimed at Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor who was gunned down in a Kansas church last week.

Olbermann called O'Reilly's relentless use of terms like "Dr. Tiller the Baby Killer" to describe the doctor as tantamount for inciting murder and domestic terror, and called on the American public to "quarantine" Fox News, insisting it not be aired in lobbies, restaurants, bars or wherever it is apt to be shown on a screen in a public place.

courtesy of Nicholas Benton, owner/editor of the Falls Church News Press.

"Media Matters" Foils Fox

by Nicholas Benton

For the better part of the decade, right-wingers in the media have been dogged relentlessly by a pesky fact-checker who has caught them over and over again willfully distorting and fabricating their news.

Fox News has been the special target of David Brock and his minions at the Media Matters for America non-profit based in Washington, D.C., and it's obvious why. If Fox was bad before, since the election of President Obama the network has become even more propagandistic and morally destitute than ever.

Let us take a peek at last year's Bill O'Reilly news starting here, shall we?

Bill O'Reilly Says He Will "Destroy" Daily Kos Today Hotlist
by Hunter
Mon Jul 30, 2007 at 03:28:17 PM EDT

Today, Father Coughlin -- er, sorry, frog in my throat -- Bill O'Reilly is planning another in his ongoing attacks against Daily Kos and YearlyKos. Fox News has apparently been emailing the Democratic campaigns asking them for "comment" on Bill's ongoing Jihad of Jackassery: the following email was sent on to us from one of those Democratic campaigns:

Read more

From Media Matters:

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In June 5 reports on CNN's The Situation
Room and Fox News' Special Report, CNN correspondent Carol Costello, CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry, and Special Report host Brit Hume falsely suggested that only the Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence approved the committee's June 5 "Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information." In fact, the report had bipartisan support: Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel (NE) and Olympia Snowe (ME) endorsed the report and stated that it "accomplished its primary objective." As Costello noted, the report concluded that "the Bush administration misused intelligence to build its case [for war in Iraq] in 2003 and misled Americans about links between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

_____

Aren't we getting a little old for this?

Hasn't enough blood been spilled while people play their games of misinformation and propaganda, just to score political points and win the ability to commit even more heinous crimes on our watch?

This is exactly the sort of poor, inaccurate and untruthful information that explains why the traditional media is losing ground to blogs, and it helps explain the growing support and popularity behind the rise of the blogosphere and citizen journalists.