Media Matters Daily Summary

Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story. Fox News suspicious of Chamber defections, but network cheered AARP membership losses Following reports that the White House has sidestepped the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to meet directly with CEOs about health care reform and that the Chamber believes the White House has encouraged defections of its members because of its positions on health care reform and other issues, Fox News figures and guests have asserted as fact that the Obama administration has urged these defections and have denounced the alleged White House strategy as, in the words of Charles Krauthammer, "Chicago-level politics." However, when reporting in August that 60,000 members had left AARP since July 1 because of AARP's support for health care reform, Fox News cheered the defections as being the result of, in Sean Hannity's words, AARP's "love affair" with President Obama and repeatedly hosted AARP defectors, who often fearmongered about the effects of health care reform on seniors. Read More Fox & Friends cites year-old poll to claim its audience is "more balanced," but more recent poll shows the opposite Fox & Friends hosts Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson, and Brian Kilmeade cited a year-old Pew Research Center survey to misleadingly suggest that Fox News' audience is "more balanced" between Republicans and Democrats than CNN and MSNBC, and an on-screen graphic falsely claimed that the report found that Fox News "has most unbiased coverage." In fact, similar to numerous other surveys that show that Fox's viewership skews to the right, a Pew Research Center survey from September shows that more than three times as many Republicans as Democrats consider Fox News to be their main source of news; additionally, the Pew survey Fox & Friends cited made no assessment of the slant of Fox's coverage. Read More Scarborough overstates cost of doctor pay fix by a factor of three MSNBC host Joe Scarborough falsely asserted that "the White House did something very quietly yesterday that The Wall Street Journal and others are talking about this morning. ... [T]hey bought off the doctors' lobby by hiding about a $750 billion payoff to the doctors' lobby interests." However, the Journal reported on October 21 that Senate Democrats' plan to prevent scheduled cuts to Medicare physician payments costs about $250 billion over 10 years -- one-third of what Scarborough claimed. Read More In "heavily edited" video rebuttal, O'Keefe does not dispute Philly police report filed after his visit to ACORN office In a heavily edited video released on October 21, conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe purported to rebut statements made by Philadelphia ACORN worker Katherine Conway Russell about O'Keefe's and Hannah Giles' visit to the Philadelphia ACORN office, but O'Keefe did not dispute the authenticity of the police report ACORN filed with Philadelphia police following their visit. The filing of the police report by ACORN -- Russell can be seen holding a copy of it in O'Keefe's video -- indicates the Philadelphia ACORN office had no intention of helping O'Keefe and Giles conduct any illegal activities, and ACORN said the police report "proves our clear understanding of this scam that was being portrayed." Read More Beck through the looking glass: smears net neutrality as a Marxist plot to take over the Internet Glenn Beck argued that the Obama administration's support for net neutrality amounted to a Marxist takeover of the Internet that would stifle innovation, when in fact net neutrality -- which was the law of the land from the creation of the Internet until 2005, and which ensured that Internet Service Providers were not able to control content -- has been cited by numerous Internet pioneers as the guiding principle in Internet development and innovation. Moreover, in smearing supporters of net neutrality, Beck esentially included groups such as the Gun Owners of America, the Christian Coalition, and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council in what he described as a plot "design[ed]" by "Marxists." Read More Attack on White House criticism of Fox follows years of GOP assaults on media Following White House communications director Anita Dunn's entirely justified criticisms of Fox News as an "arm" of the Republican Party, conservative media figures have attacked both Dunn and the Obama administration. But Media Matters for America has compiled a list of organized attacks that GOP leaders -- often aided by Fox News -- have conducted against media outlets based on groundless complaints of bias; those attacks have included boycotts or threatened boycotts of media outlets, efforts to revoke journalists' credentials or ban them from press planes, and even calls to have journalists prosecuted. Read More Beck, conservative media use violent rhetoric suggesting White House will retaliate against Fox News and opponents Following the White House's recent criticism of Fox News for its conservative slant, Glenn Beck and other conservative media have fearmongered that the Obama administration will harm Fox News and its supporters -- physically or otherwise -- because of their opposition to its policies. Since September alone, Beck has asked listeners to "pray for protection," compared Fox News to Jews during the Holocaust, and suggested the White House was pointing missiles at Fox News, and Newt Gingrich asked on Hannity if the administration would subject Fox News commentators to the Chinese "Cultural Revolution" because of their objections. Read More Media conservatives baselessly declare poll finding majority support for public option "fraudulent," "rigged" Numerous conservative media figures have attacked a recently released ABC News/Washington Post poll that found that 57 percent of respondents supported "having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans," with Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich reportedly claiming that "this poll was deliberately rigged and produced a result that's fundamentally false" and that "It's a typical Washington Post effort to slant the world in favor of liberal Democrats" and Rush Limbaugh calling the poll "totally fraudulent." Additionally, Fox News' Gretchen Carlson suggested that the poll should have referred to a "government-run option," and Fox News' Steve Doocy suggested the poll should have instead asked about the "government taking over the health care situation in this nation" - terms similar to the preferred language Republican pollster Frank Luntz has identified for the use of opponents of the public option and h ealth care reform. Read More You can help support our work; become a volunteer media monitor, or donate to Media Matters for America.