Right-wing bloggers misled by dishonest Fox News video editing are attacking Teamsters President James Hoffa for supposedly urging violence against Tea Party activists during a Labor Day speech. Conservatives are also attacking President Obama, who appeared at the event, for "sanctioning violence against fellow Americans" by failing to denounce Hoffa. But fuller context included in other Fox segments makes clear that Hoffa wasn't calling for violence but was actually urging the crowd to vote out Republican members of Congress.
During the segment that the bloggers have latched onto, Fox edited out the bolded portion of Hoffa's comments:
HOFFA: Everybody here's got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize,let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong! Thank you very much!
In an initial report on Hoffa's speech at 1 p.m. on Fox News, Ed Henry reported that Hoffa said that "we'll remember in November who's with the working people" and "said of the Tea Party and of Republicans, 'let's take these sons of bitches out.'"
Henry made clear during that segment that Hoffa's comments were references to voting out Republican members of Congress, not to violence. And roughly 20 minutes later, he explained on Twitter that the "full quote" of the "take these son of a bitches out" comment is "Everybody here's got to vote. If we go back & keep the eye on the prize, let's take these sons of bitches out":
But in a second segment that ran at roughly the same time as Henry's tweet, Fox News dishonestly edited the speech in the manner seen above. Andrew Breitbart's Bigsites, Real Clear Politics, The Daily Caller, the Media Research Center, and the Drudge Report have all highlighted that footage, using it to condemn "the violence emanating from union thug bosses" and demand that Obama "denounce" the comments.
In the Fox News segment that included the dishonestly cropped video, Republican consultant Brad Blakeman decried the comments as "thuggery at its best" and "the kind of remarks you'd expect out of Tony Soprano," and commented that "when a union president says 'let's take these sons of bitches out,' that usually means someone's legs are going to get broken, somebody's going to disappear." Meanwhile, anchor Megyn Kelly somehow did not mention Henry's previous explanation that the comments were references to voting Republicans out of office.
Andrew Breitbart operative and CNN contributor Dana Loesch quickly followed up the attack on Twitter, claiming soon after the Fox segment and Henry tweet that Hoffa "threatens tea party voters" and that if Obama "doesn't condemn then he is sanctioning violence against fellow Americans by silence":
Breitbart's websites also jumped onboard, circulating the cropped Fox News video of the Hoffa speech and describing it as a "threat of violence." Other right-wing media outlets soon followed.
Loesch's comments in particular were already way over the top. But they became truly embarrassing at around 3 p.m., when the whole story collapsed after Fox finally got around to airing what Henry had called the "full quote" of Hoffa's "take these son of a bitches out" comment:
As Henry noted, Hoffa was actually referencing "what he thinks unions are going to do to take Republicans out of office." We'll see if that puts a stop to the ongoing right-wing freakout over the comments.
UPDATE: Hours after Fox News aired the full context of the "take these son of a bitches out" comment, the network reverted to form. In the first segment on The Five, Fox again aired a dishonestly edited version of Hoffa's remarks that cropped out his references to voting. Watch:
Andrew Breitbart, who sponsored the heavily edited "pimp" videos that destroyed the anti-poverty group ACORN, is now using the same technique to go after two college professors for statements they allegedly made while teaching a course at the University of Missouri on Labor, Politics and Society.
According to MediaMatters, Breitbart's BigGovernment website has started running a series of videos from the class, claiming that they "instruct students on how fear, intimidation, and, even, industrial sabotage are important and, often, necessary tools."
MediaMatters' analysis of the videos, however, reveals that they have been edited to make it seem that the professors were endorsing the kind of "thuggish" tactics that they were actually rejecting.
In the edited version, lecturer Don Giljum appears to be saying, "Because I think if you look at labor's history over the years, you'll find that, you know, we've had a very violent history with violent protests-- [CUT] ...in certain instances, strategically played out, and for certain purposes, that industrial sabotage doesn't have its place. I think it certainly does."
The unedited video, however, shows that Giljum was actually saying, "I think if you look at labor's history over the years, you'll find that, you know, we've had a very violent history with violent protests and reaction to suppression. ... It certainly makes you feel a hell of a lot better sometimes, but beyond that I'm not sure as a tactic today, the type of violence or reaction to the violence we had back then would be called for here, and I think it would do more harm than good."
Even more deceptively, Professor Judy Ancel is shown saying, "Violence is a tactic, and it's to be used when it's appropriate-- the appropriate tactic." But the full clip makes it clear that she was quoting a 1960s student radical in a documentary film that her class had just watched.
In a statement reprinted by Crooks and Liars, Ancel further explained, "After students had watched a film on the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King, they were discussing nonviolence. I said, “One guy in the film. . . said ‘violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.’ . . . “ The class proceeded to discuss and debate this. Thus Mr. Breitbart’s editing has literally put words in my mouth that were not mine, and they never were mine."
Officials at the University of Missouri-Kansas City arestanding behind Ancel and have also raised questions about whether the privacy rights of the students in the videos were violated by Breitbart's unauthorized use of their images.
However, Giljum -- who was already planning to retire on May 1 -- was forced to resign prematurely. He says that he was told to do so by a dean, who was being pressured by her superiors.
M.C.L Comment: Still don't understand why media outlets(outside of Fox News) keeps booking this guy, all Andrew Breitbart does is whine and make shit up.
National Public Radio (NPR) is pushing back against video released last week that led to the resignation of their CEO.
The video, created by conservative prankster James O'Keefe's "Project Veritas," showed activists Shaughn Adeleye and Simon Templar posing as members of the fictional Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) and meeting with NPR Foundation President Ron Schiller and NPR Senior Director of Institutional Giving Betsey Liley.
The heavily edited video seemed to indicate that Schiller laughed when he was told that the fake Muslim group advocated for sharia law. He also allegedly said the tea party was filled with racists, and that NPR would be better off without federal funding.
"The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept," Dana Davis Rehm, NPR's senior vice president of marketing, communications and external relations, said in a statement the day the video was released.
After reviewing an mostly unedited copy of the video several days later, Rehm came to the conclusion that many of the claims were distortions.
O'Keefe "inappropriately edited the videos with an intent to discredit" NPR, she said, but added that Schiller still made some "egregious statements."Al Tompkins, a senior faculty member for broadcasting and online at the Poynter Institute, told NPR's David Folkenflik that there are two ways to lie: "One is to tell me something that didn't happen. And the other is not to tell me something that did happen."
"I think that they employed both techniques in this," he concluded after watching the raw video.
The edited tape completely ignores that "six times ... over and over and over again" the pranksters were told that donors cannot buy favorable coverage on NPR, Tompkins noted.
Even Glenn Beck's The Blaze website observed Thursday that O'Keefe used "editing tactics that seem designed to intentionally lie or mislead about the material being presented."
"The clip in the edited video implies [Ron] Schiller is giving simply his own analysis of the Tea Party. He does do that in part, but the raw video reveals that he is largely recounting the views expressed to him by two top Republicans, one a former ambassador, who admitted to him that they voted for Obama," they wrote.
Fox News' Chris Wallace ignored that many of the tape's claims had been debunked when he made O'Keefe "Power Player of the Week" for a second time Sunday.
In the midst of widespread anti-union sentiment among conservatives, right-wing media figures are using a cropped portion of a July 2009 speech by Bob Chanin, former general counsel of the National Education Association, to suggest Chanin admitted that the union does not "care about the children." In fact a fuller transcript of Chanin's remarks show that this is a blatant distortion.
Hannity, Limbaugh Use Cropped Quote To Suggest Former NEA Official Said He Does Not "Care About The Children"
Hannity Airs Cropped Video, Suggests Chanin Does Not "Care About The Children." From the February 24 edition of Fox News' Hannity:
HANNITY: Let me show both of you. This is the former National Education Association General Counsel on why the NEA is so effective. I'm playing this because it is my belief that rank and file are often abused. Rank and file money goes to the unions. Unions support Democratic candidates. Democratic candidates funnel exorbitant benefits to them that they kick the can down the road and can't afford. But do they care about the children? You decide. We will roll this tape.
CHANIN (video clip): It is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children. And it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year, because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them.
HANNITY: Not because we care about children. Not because we have creative ideas. Not because of the merits of our position. Mike, do you find that as offensive as I do?
MIKE LANGYEL, MILWAUKEE TEACHERS ASSOCIATION: Well, you know what, what we're saying is that --
HANNITY: I asked you a question. Is that offensive to you?
LANGYEL: It is not the question that we have to face today. Today, the question is what are we doing to improve education? --
HANNITY: Wait a minute, I find -- This is about unions. Do you find what the head of the NEA said about children, do you find that offensive?
LANGYEL: You took that out of context. You really did --
HANNITY: But I played it in its entirety.
LANGYEL: I know this person. But it is taken out of context. He did not say that we don't care about kids --
HANNITY: It is not about our creative, it is not the merit of our positions, it is not because we care about children.
LANGYEL: But we do care about children. We care about children and that is exactly the point he was making. If you just give me a second. He said this that we care about children but it is our collective bargaining rights that gives us the power to represent the children --
HANNITY: He said it's not because we care about children. [Fox News' Hannity, 2/24/11]
Rush Limbaugh Also Ran With Cropped Quote. From the February 23 edition of Limbaugh's radio show:
LIMBAUGH: All of this involving the public sector unions is an attack on the rich, or is an attack on the middle class. It's the middle class and their taxes that are paying for all of this. Let me give you a quote here.
This is Bob Chanin. Bob Chanin, the general counsel to the National Education Association, in his farewell address to the NEA convention last summer, here's what he said. This is the head of the teachers union. Well, the legal counsel, the lawyer to the union. He said, "Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas; it is not because of the merit of our positions; it is not because we care about children; and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. The NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power."
It's not that we're doing it for the kids, it's not that we have greater ideas, it's none of that stuff. "We have power." That's why we are effective. And that's what Obama knows. So you've got an effort here to beat down the middle class. They want to talk about class warfare all they want, but, see, collective bargaining for state and public sector unions falls apart. Collective bargaining is against the people. The people, the vast majority of 'em, are middle class. The rich are not getting soaked here to pay for public sector union people. It's not the rich getting' soaked. It's that simple. [RushLimbaugh.com, 2/23/11]
In Fact Chanin Did Not Say NEA Doesn't "Care About Children"
Chanin: Caring For Children And Creative Ideas Are Not Enough To Make NEA An "Effective Advocate." In his closing remarks in his farewell address former NEA General Counsel, Bob Chanin said NEA's creative ideas, vision, and care for children are not enough to ensure that NEA is an "effective advocate." Rather, he said that ensuring the power of the NEA will "enable us to achieve our vision of a great public school for every child." Chanin further stated that "closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality" are "the goals that guide the work we do."
From Chanin's speech (the portions in bold show the misleadingly cropped quote used by Hannity and Limbaugh):
CHANIN: At first glance, some of you may find these attacks troubling. But you would be wrong. They are, in fact, really a good thing. When I first came to NEA in the early '60s it had few enemies, and was almost never criticized, attacked, or even mentioned in the media. This was because no one really gave a damn about what NEA did, or what NEA said. It was the proverbial sleeping giant: a conservative, apolitical, do-nothing organization.
But then, NEA began to change. It embraced collective bargaining. It supported teacher strikes. It established a political action committee. It spoke out for affirmative action, and it defended gay and lesbian rights. What NEA said and did began to matter. And the more we said and did, the more we pissed people off. And, in turn, the more enemies we made.
So the bad news, or depending on your point of view, the good news, is that NEA and its affiliates will continue to be attacked by conservative and right-wing groups as long as we continue to be effective advocates for public education, for education employees, and for human and civil rights.
And that brings me to my final, and most important point. Which is why, at least in my opinion, NEA and its affiliates are such effective advocates. Despite what some among us would like to believe, it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children. And it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.
This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality, and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary, these are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights, and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.
When all is said and done, NEA and its affiliates must never lose sight of the fact that they are unions, and what unions do first and foremost is represent their members. If we do that. If we do that and if we do it well, the rest will fall into place. NEA and its affiliates will remain powerful and that power will in turn enable us to achieve our vision of a great public school for every child.
Today, NEA has thanked me for some of the things that I have done. But this is in a sense, backwards. It is I who should thank NEA for giving me the opportunity to spend almost 50 years of my working life for causes that I truly believe in and to be part of an organization that has made a difference in the lives of children and education employees and has led the defense of public education. [NEA, 7/6/09]
M.C.L Comment: Sean Hannity and Fox News using doctor videos to smear people that they hate? I'm shocked, shocked I tell ya.
Rose is now releasing video that actually shows Planned Parenthood employees telling people who claim to be sex workers that they are required to report statutory rape.
The video shows a Planned Parenthood employee alone in a room with a man who claims to be a sex worker who is looking for advice on obtaining testing and abortion for girls he manages, some of whom are as young as 13. The Planned Parenthood employee advises him that "teens can obviously be a separate issue. I mean, there's parental consent in the state of Virginia, and there's obviously statutory rape as far as that goes." Later, she reiterates the point:
For abortion, they need a photo ID, and if they are minors, they need parental consent. And, like I said, if you bring them to any clinic and they're, like you said, 13 or 14, there's laws, you know, that some things have to be reported.
Having been exposed as a fraud at her effort, Rose is now limping into the weekend by releasing anything - anything at all - to keep her bogus smear alive.
M.C.L Comment: The right wing media motto: When in doubt fake it.
When the anti-abortion rights propagandists at Live Action began releasing their Planned Parenthood smear videos earlier this week, we explained that their claim that Planned Parenthood was covering-up "child sex trafficking" was clearly a lie.
That's because way back on January 18, Planned Parenthood's president wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder about the incidents and requested an FBI investigation into the possibility that "an individual or individuals are engaged in activities that violate several federal criminal statutes relating to sex trafficking involving minors."
So Planned Parenthood obviously wasn't covering up anything; they were fulfilling their obligation to keep children safe.
We also warned that media should be skeptical about the heavily edited video footage released by Live Action.
As it turns out, we were right to raise concerns.
Yesterday, Live Action released a video that it claimed showed a Richmond, Virginia, Planned Parenthood's supposed "willingness to aid and abet sexual exploitation of minors."
In reality, it showed nothing of the sort. ABC News reported that the Planned Parenthood employee "appears to act professionally and appropriately" and that "[l]egal experts ... said the clinic worker's advice on how a minor could obtain an abortion without her parents' consent is consistent with state law." According to Planned Parenthood, the employee "immediately notified her supervisor, who subsequently notified members of Planned Parenthood's national security team, who are working with the FBI, which is investigating these visits."
But Live Action also appears to have doctored the audio of its Richmond "sting," moving audio from one portion of their video to a different portion.
Take a look at the 7-minute, heavily edited video that Live Action promoted. Go to the portion of the video where the camera's timestamp reads "10:32:58" (frame number 21125). The "pimp" asks how they could "set up" an abortion for a "15 year old." From off-screen, the employee apparently asks, "Well, I mean the judicial bypass?" The employee apparently goes on to explain the process. (I say "apparently," because you can't actually see the employee talking; it's just a video of the wall.)
Now look at what Live Action says is the "full" 14-minute video of the Richmond encounter. Again, go to the portion of the video where the camera's timestamp reads "10:32:58" (frame number 21125). This time, the audio is different; the employee appears to be discussing the cost of birth control and STD screenings.
In the "full" video, the portion of the exchange about the judicial bypass process discussed above begins when the camera's timestamp reads "10:34:28" (frame number 22604) -- a minute-and-a-half later than in the heavily edited video.
The only explanation is that someone at Live Action moved around the audio in one of the versions of the video.
All of which leads to this question: If Live Action is doctoring audio of their Richmond sting, what else are they lying about?
