Monday, April 13, 2009

Fox host: ‘It’s now my great duty to promote the tea parties. Here we go!’

Fox News host Neil Cavuto regularly claims that when he aggressively advocates for the anti-Obama “tea party” protests on air, he is simply covering them as a journalist. But Stuart Varney, Cavuto’s fill-in host, admitted this afternoon that the the network is actually promoting the right-wing protests. After telling a guest that the tea parties were in protest to President Obama’s policies, Varney closed a segment by saying, “It’s now my great duty to promote the tea parties. Here we go!” Watch it:

In a Washington Post online chat today, media critic Howard Kurtz said that “it makes me a bit uncomfortable the way the channel has turned these April 15 protests into something of a crusade, complete with the drumbeat of advance publicity and the above-named hosts planning to attend various tea parties. But it’s not fair to say that Fox’s reporters are jumping on this bandwagon.” Fox News bills Varney as a “business journalist.”

2 comments:

Communications guru said...

So much for the BS that this is a grassroots effort, or that Faux News is “fair and balanced.” I keep hearing right-wingers crying about how the “liberal media” is ignoring the “tea parties,” but that is simply not true; for the one in February or for this one. I have seen reports in numerous Michigan newspapers. But the job of journalists is not to promote a partisan political event or a fundraiser, and that is what this is.

Motor City Liberal Returns said...

Most progressive and regular news outlets have pretty much confirmed what I knew when I first heard about these tea baggers. These guys are funded by right wing think tanks and right wing corporate interest. But speaking of the media I hope someone grab one of these tea baggers and ask them do they make over 250,000 a year?