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FOX News Creates Fraudulent Video to Discredit Ron Paul

Submitted by EB on 02/17/2011 09:27 -0400

As Paul Joseph Watson of PrisonPlanet writes:

In a shocking act of mass public deception, Fox News attempted to skew Ron Paul’s 2011 CPAC straw poll win by representing it with footage from the previous year’s CPAC event, at which Mitt Romney supporters had loudly booed the result, another example of the continuing dirty tricks campaign being waged against Paul by the establishment media.

Congressman Paul replicated his 2010 victory over Mitt Romney by defeating the former Governor of Massachusetts for a second consecutive year at the annual CPAC conference.

However, before anchor Bill Hemmer introduced a segment concerning the story, Fox News played a clip of the 2010 announcement of the poll results, during which Mitt Romney supporters had loudly booed Ron Paul’s victory, passing off last year’s footage as representative of this year’s event.

Hemmer then proceeded to state, “In the end he was the winner, probably not the reaction he was hoping for,” describing the reaction as “mixed applause and boos,” before directly asking Ron Paul if he knew who was booing him.

Now, watch the video:

Robert Wenzel comments:

This is the most incredible act of news media deception ever caught in smoking gun style. This video is a must view, and notice how the FOX anchors set up the lie and Bill Hemmer, the anchor interviewing Congressman Paul, brings the LIE right into the interview, in a further attempt to dilute Paul's victory.

These boys are scared, really scared. Get this video clip out to everyone and let people know what is going on.

Did FOX News [sic] and Bill Hemmer just have their very own CBS/Dan Rather moment?

Update per Mediaite (ht Cleve Meater):

...Fox News claims it was completely accidental. Mediaite received the following statementfrom Senior Vice President of News Michael Clemente:

“We made a mistake with some of the video we aired, and plan on issuing a correction onAmerica’s Newsroom tomorrow morning explaining exactly what happened.”

Update2: Paul Joseph Watson compiles FOX's track record with respect to Paul, providing no fewer than ten eggregious examples. A sampling:

Was it another “mistake” on behalf of Fox News to exclude Paul from a January 6 2008 presidential forum event because they saw the prospect of anti-war opinions being voiced by the most conservative member of the House as a “threat”?

Was it a “mistake” for Fox News to claim that their own May 2007 presidential poll, which Ron Paul won, was unreliable, because online Paul supporters had skewed the result, despite the fact that the survey was conducted via cell phone text messaging and no online votes were taken?

Was it a mere “mistake” for Fox News host Sean Hannity to deride the Texas Congressman’s runaway success in the text messaging poll as nothing more than “Paulites” flood voting, when in reality only one vote per cell phone number was allowed? Hannity’s contention that Ron Paul supporters were “were simply dialing in over and over again” was nothing more than a brazen lie intended to dismiss the Congressman’s widespread popularity. No one at Fox News bothered to correct Hannity and no retraction was issued.

Was it another “mistake” when Fox News started editing Ron Paul’s name out of Associated Press stories they syndicated before the 2008 presidential campaign?

(ht ShankyS)

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Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:13 | 969824 johnQpublic

and people bash me for being a conspiracy 'theorist'

updated:

we are one shape shifting reptilian distributing ameros at roswell away from every conspiracy theory known to mankind being proven true

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 17:25 | 971734 Surly1

Absolutely brilliant observation.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:18 | 969841 EB

we are one shape shifting reptilian distributing ameros at roswell away from every conspiracy theory known to mankind being proven true

Funniest thing I've read today.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 12:16 | 970295 Cognitive Dissonance

Not all conspiracy theories are equal when hatched. And most certainly their "validity" ebbs and flows with time and public awareness.

I've actually been (slowly) writing an article about this. But considering the recent infestation of trolls on ZH I've been thinking it might be better to wait and post it after the revamped ZH is introduced.....whenever that is.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 21:10 | 972595 RockyRacoon

Post it! We ain't intimidated by no trolls.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 14:21 | 970622 EB

---

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 13:07 | 970559 EB

Look forward to reading it.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:10 | 969808 johnQpublic

well, there goes all respect i had for Fox news

lol...like i had any in the first place

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:07 | 969798 Misean

"This video is a must view,"

No, it isn't. Nothing on TVeee news is worth watching except for comedy value (mostly unintended). That Faux and the rest of the MSM engage in blatant propoganda is hardly must see.

Now, if a particularly attractive female reader were to have a wardrobe malfunction, that would be must see...

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:03 | 969776 Yes_Questions

In the class of Media Puppets, FOX is the clown..

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 12:04 | 970218 Problem Is

Who let that undesirable alien, Murdoch into the country in the first place?

"In the class of Media Puppets, FOX is the clown.."

But there is plenty of Corporate Whore Media Clownery afoot...

I get more laughs watching Tyler's clips of the CNBC stupidity, Cramer the Clown, Cokehead Kudlow, Bouncing Breastesses Anchorettes, Erin "Mannish Boy" Burnett (she of the classic idiot comments), Cue-ball Lies-man, and a cast of morons too numerous to mention (Tyler's Napoleon Dynamite!)...

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:23 | 969859 rocker

I know I will draw some Turd Fire. But the self proclaimed professor Glenn Beck teaches Americans how to think and act. His comment a little while back, "You have to shoot them in the head", went unnoticed until somebody shot a congresswomen in the head. After Keith Olbermann played it on the air, he was quickly dismissed it seems. That is what happens when you report the truth to Americans on TV or MSM.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:02 | 969775 dcb

I was having this conversation yesterday with someone on how they would never let the guy win. If he got the nomination, or won, he'd be assignated.

1) they aint going to let the administrative branch go after the fed

2) they ain't going to let the corporate subsidies get elimated. meaning they aint going to allow a "free market" to be exchanged for the federal gimmicks that led to all of their wealth

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 11:54 | 970199 pyite

they would never let the guy win.

I am as big of a Ron Paul supporter as anyone, but I agree that he can't win in the age of TV - not enough charisma. He also doesn't do a good enough job of tailoring his views to his audience. For example his view of the Civil War being avoidable is correct, but he has to be careful to phrase it properly!

He is doing a great job of making the national debate more rational, at least.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 12:46 | 970425 kaiserhoff

Sad, but true. Television speak is a set of lies, pandering, ignorance, and bad attitudes agreed upon. Fortunately, the old media is dying.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 21:08 | 972590 RockyRacoon

Wasn't it cute that The Donald says (at CPAC) that Dr. Paul is not electable. I guess he'd know what that would involve.

Fri, 02/18/2011 - 00:33 | 973125 StychoKiller

What, lots of 'borrowed' FRNs and a bad hair-piece??

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:15 | 969829 Dadoomsayer

I agree, the establishment can't have a balanced playing field. How are they going to make money?

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:01 | 969768 Cognitive Dissonance

1984 plus 27 equals 2011

I think the average TV viewer would be surprised how many times "stock" or "old" footage is substituted in as representing current events without the proper attribution. Even when it is noted, it's usually in a small nearly transparent on screen graphic in the upper left hand corner of the video where the eye rarely looks.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 12:19 | 970306 Amish Hacker

Another recent favorite was the Chinese video report on their latest stealth fighter, with footage cribbed from "Top Gun."

Fri, 02/18/2011 - 00:31 | 973123 StychoKiller

With "Maverick" written on the jet, it was 'plane' as day! :>D

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 12:24 | 970324 Temporalist

Did they have Kenny Loggins playing in the background?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPYF2p-cGx8

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 11:30 | 970125 Miss Expectations

Even when it is noted, it's usually in a small nearly transparent on screen graphic in the upper left hand corner of the video where the eye rarely looks.

CD, Are you sure about the upper left hand corner...where the eye rarely looks? If I recall my study of print advertising, print advertising is evaluated based on "gaze motion" and the upper left is the first place the eye goes, then upper right, then lower left, the lower right.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 11:46 | 970169 Cognitive Dissonance

I reserve the right to be wrong all the time. :>)

It is my understanding that images in motion are different than stationary images. In print, the (English language) mind is trained to look towards the upper left because that's where we all start any written sentence.

But in moving images and specifically on TV, the mind is trained to look for movement first which is usually centered in the screen, then the bottom for scrolling info or printed info, then the bottom right, then top right for logo's or messages, then finally top left. This assumes we are not simply gazing at the motion on the screen and are actually trying to read while also watching the motion and listening to the audio.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 18:09 | 971932 MrSteve

It's just like women wearing Tee shirts that say "my eyes are up here" with an arrow pointing up, ya gotta know where to look to find what you're interested it.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 13:52 | 970766 Rusty Shorts

Augmented Reality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvTtJVjT8S8

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 11:56 | 970203 Miss Expectations

D'Accord

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:17 | 969837 EB

This may very well be the norm and not the exception. Egregious examples need to be called out.

Nice poster.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:57 | 970002 Cognitive Dissonance

Usually when it's done, the purpose is only to give the viewer something to look at. At least that has been the industry standard excuse. But more and more these manipulated images are being represented as current or "real time" by way of insinuation or outright fraudulent representation by the interviewer or narrator.

American Pravda isn't one TV station or newspaper, but an overall meme in the "news" industry. 90% of American MSM is controlled by 6 international corporate entities. The head cheese doesn't need to make daily phone calls to the media heads in order to control or slant the news. It's simply understood what drum beat to march to based upon private conversations and insinuations made by the head cheese to his or her underlings.

We've all worked in corporate environments. We understand how easy it is to get a message across without saying much.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 12:27 | 970335 bernorange

...
Note the story here isn’t that Fox News leans right. Everyone knows the channel pushes a conservative-friendly version of the news. Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s inception more than a decade ago. The real story, and the real danger posed by the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the right and instead became an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on fabrications and falsehoods.

“They say one thing and do another. They insist on maintaining this charade, this façade, that they’re balanced or that they’re not right-wing extreme propagandist,” says the source. But it’s all a well-orchestrated lie, according this former insider. It’s a lie that permeates the entire Fox News culture and one that staffers and producers have to learn quickly in order to survive professionally.

“You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks,” says the source. “And God help you if you don’t because sooner or later you’re going to get burned.”

The source explains:

“Like any news channel there’s lot of room for non-news content. The content that wasn’t ‘news,’ they didn’t care what we did with as long as it was amusing or quirky or entertaining; as along as it brought in eyeballs. But anything—anything--that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is.”

What if Fox News staffers aren’t instinctively conservative or don’t have an intuitive feeling for what the spin on a story should be? “My internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead,” the source explains. “You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.”

The source recalls how Fox News changed over time:

“When I first got there back in the day, and I don’t know how they indoctrinate people now, but back in the day when they were “training” you, as it were, they would say, ‘Here’s how we’re different.’ They’d say if there is an execution of a condemned man at midnight and there are all the live truck outside the prison and all the lives shots. CNN would go, ‘Yes, tonight John Jackson, 25 of Mississippi, is going to die by lethal injection for the murder of two girls.’ MSNBC would say the same thing.

“We would come out and say, ‘Tonight, John Jackson who kidnapped an innocent two year old, raped her, sawed her head off and threw it in the school yard, is going to get the punishment that a jury of his peers thought he should get.’ And they say that’s the way we do it here. And you’re going , alright, it’s a bit of an extreme example but it’s something to think about. It’s not unreasonable.

"When you first get in they tell you we’re a bit of a counterpart to the screaming left wing lib media. So automatically you have to buy into the idea that the other media is howling left-wing. Don’t even start arguing that or you won’t even last your first day.

“For the first few years it was let’s take the conservative take on things. And then after a few years it evolved into, well it’s not just the conservative take on things, we’re going to take the Republican take on things which is not necessarily in lock step with the conservative point of view.

“And then two, three, five years into that it was, we’re taking the Bush line on things, which was different than the GOP. We were a Stalin-esque mouthpiece. It was just what Bush says goes on our channel. And by that point it was just totally dangerous. Hopefully most people understand how dangerous it is for a media outfit to be a straight, unfiltered mouthpiece for an unchecked president.”

It’s worth noting that Fox News employees, either current or former, rarely speak to the press, even anonymously. And it’s even rarer for Fox News sources to bad mouth Murdoch’s channel. That’s partly because of strict non-disclosure agreements that most exiting employees sign and which forbid them from discussing their former employer. But it also stems from a pervasive us-vs.-them attitude that permeates Fox News. It’s a siege mentality that network boss Roger Ailes encourages, and one that colors the coverage his team produces.

“It was a kick ass mentality too,” says the former Fox News insider. “It was relentless and it never went away. If one controversy faded, goddamn it they would find another one. They were in search of these points of friction real or imagined. And most of them were imagined or fabricated. You always have to seem to be under siege. You always have to seem like your values are under attack. The brain trust just knew instinctively which stories to do, like the War on Christmas.”
...

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102100007

Fri, 02/18/2011 - 00:29 | 973116 StychoKiller

All I can say to this is apparently, Conservative != Libertarian -- too bad for the conservatives -- they've abandoned their values!

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 17:43 | 971821 ColonelCooper

Look. I'm not defending FOX news in any way, but to source "Media Matters" as having any sort of credibility when commenting on FOX???

Couldn't you have dug up some old Olbermann footage to make it perfect?

You're playing the same game you're bitching at FOX about.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 23:21 | 972996 Bringin It

Fox News leans right...

I stopped reading right there.

Honest reporting, making an attempt at honest reporting is not a left/right issue. Ron Paul, as a conservative is part of what can be called the right.

Claiming Fox did this because they favor the 'right' is just bs dis-information. Fox did this because they favor/ they are a creation of the oppressors driving the country off the cliff.

I hope it's the end of this guy Hemmer's career.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 23:49 | 973043 chopper read

agreed. Rupert Murdoch is CFR scum, so is Mitt Romney (CFR scum).

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 20:15 | 972399 gmrpeabody

+++

Ain't that the truth!

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 16:42 | 971478 Pat Hand

"Compassionate conservatism" has morphed into "friendly fascism"

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 15:52 | 971248 tarsubil

I have a more worth while link:

http://goo.gl/lt9dg

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 16:41 | 971474 tarsubil

How did people manage to click the wrong link?

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 11:35 | 970135 EB

v Pravde net izvestiy, v Izvestiyakh net pravdy

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 11:42 | 970154 umop episdn

? ?????? ??? ???????, ? ???????? ??? ??????
A Soviet proverb:
“In The Truth there is no news, and in The News there is no truth.”
(Pravda = “The Truth”, Izvestiya = “The News”)

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 12:18 | 970305 Cognitive Dissonance

I was stumped. I ran it through Google translate and the algo laughed at me. It did come up with Pravda and news but that was all.

EB must be speaking with a forked tongue. :>)

Fri, 02/18/2011 - 00:26 | 973107 StychoKiller

Perhaps you shoulda used the Cyrillic alphabet.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 11:12 | 970052 Agent P

"Usually when it's done, the purpose is only to give the viewer something to look at. At least that has been the industry standard excuse. But more and more these manipulated images are being represented as current or "real time" by way of insinuation or outright fraudulent representation by the interviewer or narrator."

Kind of like facebook and match.com photos.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 15:29 | 971164 hbjork1

Duplication

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 15:27 | 971162 hbjork1

Not suprising.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:44 | 969926 woolly mammoth

F**king mammoth dung. Thanks for bringing this forward EB. Anyone walking through my business in the next few days that stands still for the slightest moment will be forced to watch this.

Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:52 | 969974 MolotovCockhead