Fox News under fire over switched videotape
Albuquerque Express Thursday 17th February, 2011
Fox News is under fire following Republican Ron Paul’s victory in a 2011 straw poll which has nominally made him the front-runner for his party’s nomination for the 2012 presidential election.
Fox News interviewed Paul after he won the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) poll but played a video clip of the announcement of his win which showed crowds overwhelmingly, and loudly, booing the result.
Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer confronted Paul after the clip saying, “Probably not the reaction he was hoping for.” He then asks Paul, “So who was in the audience booing you?”
As it transpires, nobody was. The tape was a deception. It had been taken from a reception to the announcement of last year’s winner, who again was Ron Paul. At that time supporters of Mitt Romney had packed the hall for the announcement in the expectation their man had won. He hadn’t. Paul had. So they booed the announcement enthusiastically. That tape was then taken and used for Tuesday’s night Fox News interview and presented as being the reception Paul had received for winning this year’s poll. Ron Paul who was not in attendance when the announcement was made was caught unawares and answered Hammer by saying the booing only proved he was not unanimously popular, which is something Fox opponents say is a perception the Network was trying to promote.
Fox News has long been accused by many sectors of the community, and many political leaders, mostly Democrats, of being a propaganda arm of the Republican party. It staunchly supported the George W Bush administration and heavily supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Contrary to what Fox News's viewers saw on Tuesday night, the announcement of Paul’s victory in the 2011 straw poll was actually wildly applauded and cheered for an extended period. In fact after his speech at the event, Paul was given an extended standing ovation.
Following allegations widely disseminated through Internet blogs that Fox News deliberately created the deception to damage Paul, possibly in favor of other candidates that the Murdoch interests prefer, the network issued a statement saying the airing of the wrong video was a mistake. “We made a mistake with some of the video we aired, and plan on issuing a correction on America's Newsroom tomorrow morning explaining exactly what happened,” Michael Clemente, Senior Vice President of the network said.
Whether it was a mistake or not, Paul is clearly not Fox News’s preferred candidate for 2012. He was shunned in the 2008 campaign. Fox News refused to allow him to participate in a debate which featured other candidates. Paul opposes the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and believes America should not be intervening in the affairs of other countries. He has said in the past he believes Fox News’s bias towards him is because of the network’s support for the industrial military complex.
Fox News is likely to support another talked-about candidate Newt Gingrich, who was House Speaker in the mid to late 1990s. Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corporation which owns Fox News, has spoken of Gingrich’s suitability for the top job. In the 1990s Murdoch’s book-publishing company HarperCollins did a deal with Gingrich advancing him $4.5 million for a book he had not yet written. Gingrich met with Murdoch at the time. Gingrich initially denied any meeting had taken place. The deal was controversial because at the time Murdoch was lobbying Congress over proposed changes to foreign ownership laws as his ownership of the Fox network was under threat from an FCC investigation. Gingrich as House Speaker was heavily involved in the issue.
In what appears to be another potential deception the widely regarded Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, in its page on Gingrich, has a glaring omission in that it fails to record any mention of the controversial book deal with the Murdoch interests. (It should be noted Gingrich renegotiated the deal with HarperCollins to exclude the advance payment component because of the controversy that arose).
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