Faux & Friends Retard Hilariousely Lies

[Flagg]

MEDIAMATTERS

Video

"What Hawaiian earthquake?" Fox News again runs with Internet falsehoods to attack Dems
March 18, 2010 1:09 pm ET

Fox & Friends perpetuated the false claim advanced on right-wing blogs that President Obama was incorrect in stating during a Fox News interview that Hawaii suffered an earthquake in 2006 -- a disaster Fox News itself reported on at the time. In a 2007 memo, a Fox News executive reportedly warned staff that "seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC."

Obama cites earthquake in Hawaii during Fox News interview

Obama: Medicaid fix "also affects Hawaii, which went through an earthquake." During an interview that aired during the March 17 edition of Fox News' Special Report, Obama discussed certain provisions in health care reform legislation that would affect various states and said of a proposal to adjust Medicaid reimbursement rates for states affected by natural disasters, "It also affects Hawaii, which went through an earthquake."

A magnitude 6.7 earthquake hit Hawaii on October 15, 2006. As Media Matters for America's Adam Shah noted in response to right-wing bloggers who claimed Obama was "making up" an earthquake, the U.S. Geological Survey states that Hawaii suffered a magnitude 6.7 earthquake on October 15, 2006.
Right-wing blogs: "What earthquake in Hawaii?"

Jim Hoft: "Um... What earthquake in Hawaii?" At 6:54 p.m. on March 17, right-wing blogger Jim Hoft wrote a Gateway Pundit post that stated, "Either Obama's completely making up stuff now or we all missed some horrible devastating earthquake in Hawaii." He later wrote: "In 1868 there was a major earthquake in Hawaii that killed 77 people. In 1975 an earthquake in Hawaii killed 2 people."

Breitbart.tv links to Hoft. At 10:18 p.m. on March 17, Andrew Breitbart's website Breitbart.tv linked to Hoft's post and displayed the headline, "Puzzling statement: Obama says 'Louisiana Purchase' will help with the earthquake in Hawaii."

Drudge links to Breitbart.tv post.

Hot Air follows Hoft focusing on 1975 earthquake. At 10:20 p.m. on March 17, HotAir's Cassy Fiano embedded video from the Fox News interview and wrote: "This moment, from Bret Baier's interview on Fox News with Obama, might just be one of the biggest 'WTF?!' moments from Obama's presidency yet. Obama is either completely making things up, living in an alternate reality, or really, really confused."

Malkin links to HotAir post. At 12:15 a.m. on March 18, Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin linked to HotAir's post on the Hawaiian earthquake in her blog, posting the following passage from HotAir:

Cassy Fiano and Allahpundit intrepidly attempt to decipher:

Apparently, there was a devastating earthquake in Hawaii that we all somehow missed.

Oh, wait, no. That's right. There was no earthquake, and Obama is just totally clueless, as usual. In fact, the last earthquake in Hawaii to cause any deaths at all was in 1975, and two people died.

In any case, why is he using this argument, anyways? He's turned this health care bill into a one-size-fits-all solution for everything. Not only will it fix our health care, but it will apparently create jobs and give disaster relief around the country!

...Update (AP): ...My guess is Obama meant to say that Hawaii went through a tsunami caused by the quake in Chile and got distracted in his irritation at Baier. But who knows what goes on in his mind at this point? This is a guy who thinks universal health care is going to reduce the deficit.

Internet's earthquake falsehood spreads to Fox News

Doocy follows talking points from right-wing blogs. During the March 18 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy played the quote in question from Obama's interview and responded: "Hold it. What Hawaiian earthquake? There was an earthquake in 1868 that killed 77. There was an earthquake in 1975 that killed two."

Ex-FNC VP for news Moody: "Seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right." Fox News has a documented pattern of news reports based on Internet rumors that turn out to be false. In January 2007, after Doocy retracted his false assertion that Obama "was educated in a madrassa," then-Fox News' vice president for news, John Moody, reportedly said in a memo to Fox News staff: "For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC. The urgent queue is our way of communicating information that is air-worthy. Please adhere to this."
— Z.P.

Now, here's the best part. Literally all this empty suits and his vacuous cohorts had to do was look it up in Wikipedia. Just one fucking search for "Hawaii earthquakes" would have given them the relevant information.

But of course that's not the point of this at all. The point is to make the claim that Obama lied about an earthquake, have sane people point out they are lying, and in the process gin up enough controversy so that the 'mainstream media' has to cover it. So I'm sure we'll be seeing some variation of "Right Claims Obama Lied About Earthquake" on CNN any day now. So no matter that the actual article will confirm there was in fact an Earthquake in both 2006 and 2010, most people will just see the headline. Then the conservatards will claim that yes, the quakes happened, but Obama was exaggerating the damage caused by them, which will then be the headline.

[open_sketchbook]

Isn't there some sort of law against news agencies brazenly lying that Faux News should have tripped over like, eighty million years ago? And if there isn't, why not?

[Flagg]

Isn't there some sort of law against news agencies brazenly lying that Faux News should have tripped over like, eighty million years ago? And if there isn't, why not?

Nope. There was a court case and the obvious happened, Faux won. Turns out the first amendment gives everyone the right to lie. Yet for some reason it's not considered false advertising (Which is highly illegal) to use the term "Fair and Balanced" when they so clearly are not. My guess is that they used the argument in court (if they have been brought to it based on their slogan) is that it was simply "puffery" which is an actual legal term essentially meaning "bullshit".

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Didn't Fox News buy the rights to the phrase "fair and balanced" so they could define it however they wanted?

This may just be a figment of my tortured imagination though.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Didn't Fox News buy the rights to the phrase "fair and balanced" so they could define it however they wanted?

This may just be a figment of my tortured imagination though.

They couldn't trademark the term.

[irishmick79]

Fucking assholes. This drivel makes it damn near impossible to have a real conversation with someone claiming to be a true conservative. You have to fight through a giant, heaping pile of vitriol and lies before you can even get to the particulars of an issue, and even then it's not any easier. I mean, how do you rationally talk to somebody who is foaming at the mouth and screaming about how the evils of socialism and tyranny are coming to America?

[ShadowDragon8685]

Fucking assholes. This drivel makes it damn near impossible to have a real conversation with someone claiming to be a true conservative. You have to fight through a giant, heaping pile of vitriol and lies before you can even get to the particulars of an issue, and even then it's not any easier. I mean, how do you rationally talk to somebody who is foaming at the mouth and screaming about how the evils of socialism and tyranny are coming to America?

Over a cup of coffee and a hot branding iron?

More seriously... You don't. That kind of lunatic is absolutely mindlessly set in his way. He'd believe Faux Noise if they broadcast that the Rapture was happening and that Satan was personally leading the forces of the European Union in a great satanic antichristian athiest unholy war against the God-fearing United States and the only way to save themselves was to purge the country of the faggots and the abortionists and the nigger-in-chief.

And yes, I know how many contradictions I just said. It doesn't matter; these people are used to mindlessly accepting contradictions. They have a seemingly limitless supply of tolerance for cognitive dissonance.

[Patrick Degan]

If a "news" network is actually down to denying that an earthquake occurred, in the face of recorded data and archived news stories to the contrary, then you're down to a situation in which that network's loyal audience, who rely upon it as their only source of information, is steadily, purposely being detached from reality altogether. And that spells trouble.

[Eframepilot]

To paraphrase Douglas Adams: Fox News is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Actually that's barely a joke. Conservatives live outside the reality-based community and think that they can create their own reality, literally.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Fox News is just taking this attitude to the next level.