Fox News Hosts Breitbart's Shapiro Days After "Friends Of Hamas" Story Implodes

MATT GERTZ/Media Matters For America

Fox News rewarded Breitbart.com editor at large Ben Shapiro with an appearance less than a week after Shapiro publicly embarrassed himself over a fraudulent story linking Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel to the apparently nonexistent group "Friends of Hamas." 

Over the past few weeks, Shapiro has been skewered for attempting to smear Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel by reporting that (according to "Senate sources") he had received money from a shady group called "Friends of Hamas." 

After Shapiro's story imploded when it came to light that there's no evidence that "Friends of Hamas" actually exists, some in the conservative media suggested that their movement needed to police its own to maintain credibility. That accountability will not come from Fox News, which hosted him today and did not ask him about his failed smear.

Shapiro appeared for a discussion of the recent exchange between Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and the White House over the sequester - a topic that countless other pundits could have discussed. During the segment, Shapiro attacked the media for allegedly being too soft on the Obama White House. From the February 25 America Live segment, hosted by Megyn Kelly:

Shapiro's initial February 7 report spread quickly through the conservative media, even showing up on Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight, until Slate's David Weigel pointed out that there was no evidence that "Friends of Hamas" actually existed. New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman added to Shapiro's humiliation when he claimed in a February 19 column that a joke Friedman shared with a GOP source was possibly the provenance of "Friends of Hamas."

The Breitbart.com blogger has come in from widespread criticism from all quarters, with many pointing out that it was his responsibility to determine the plausibility of the "Friends of Hamas" claim rather than simply publishing it as an allegation. For their part, Shapiro and Breitbart.com have denied any failing and lashed out at their critics.

In a February 21 article for TheAtlantic.com, conservative writer Conor Friedersdorf wrote that the conservative media "need to self-police for their own sake." Citing the Shapiro affair, he wrote that other conservative reporters need to be willing to criticize their peers when they get stories wrong and punish those who repeatedly fail to provide accurate information. But he warned that this was unlikely to happen:

Yet inside conservative media, he'll likely maintain his standing. National Review contributors might be more careful when touting his stories. But there won't be public blowback. It won't seem like his peers are outraged or angered that someone is spending down the credibility of conservative media. And Breitbart presumably won't issue an apology, or hire a public editor, or take any other significant step to bolster its credibility among the people who mistrust it.

Fox, at least, appears to have no interest in enforcing standards with regard to who they book. As Friedersdorf notes, among the right-wing media "Only loyalty is vocally enforced."

REPORT: Fox Spends Over 43 Minutes Smearing Elizabeth Warren

THOMAS BISHOP & ANDY NEWBOLD/Media Matters for America

Over three days, Fox News spent at least 17 segments and over 43 minutes of airtime smearing Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren over benign comments she made about infrastructure spending and the success of the wealthy.

On July 30, Democrats announced that Warren will be given a key speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina in September.

In response to that announcement, Fox, over the following three days, seized on benign remarks Warren had previously made in an effort to smear her. Warren's opponent is Sen. Scott Brown, whom Fox relentlessly campaigned for in 2010.

One of the comments Fox fixated on came from a recent ad released by Warren's campaign. Fox claimed that in the ad, Warren said she wanted the United States to be "like China" and that she may have "call[ed] for America to go communist." In fact, the Senate candidate said that the U.S. should increase its infrastructure spending in order to compete with countries like China. Warren's comment -- which is supported by studies showing that U.S. infrastructure is deteriorating and needs significant investment -- echoed a similar observation from former Fox contributor Newt Gingrich.

Fox also attacked Warren over a comment she made during a campaign stop in August 2011 that "[t]here is nobody in this country who got rich on his own." But Warren was merely making the unremarkable observation that the private sector success of the wealthy is driven by government investments funded by the public -- an observation Fox itself has made.

Fox Devotes At Least 17 Segments And Over 43 Minutes To Smearing Warren

Fox began their attacks on Warren on July 31, following the announcement that she will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention.

Among the attacks over Warren's proposal to spend more on infrastructure projects like roads and bridges was Fox Business host Stuart Varney calling Warren a "collectivist" and "anti-private enterprise." Among the attacks over Warren's unremarkable observation on private sector success was Fox's Sean Hannity calling Warren and Obama -- who made similar remarks that were distorted by Fox -- "clueless."

Fox's Sarah Palin, commenting on Warren speaking at the convention, said that Warren has "almost confessed to her Marxist views."    

Media Matters monitored Fox's coverage of Warren on July 31, August 1, and August 2 -- the three days following the announcement that she would be speaking at the Democratic National Convention -- and found that Fox News devoted at least 17 segments, including teases, and over 43 minutes to attacking Warren over her comments.

How low will the campaigning go?

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Mitt Romney On His Reverend Wright Attack: ‘I Stand By What I Said, Whatever It Was’

By Alex Seitz-Wald/Think Progress

Mitt Romney’s campaign is apparently worried about being associated with a Republican proposal, first reported by the New York Times today, to run $10 million worth of racially-tinged ads attacking President Obama for his connection to Reverend Jerimiah Wright. Depsite criticizing Obama for “listening to reverend Wright” in an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show in February, the presumed GOP nominee twice slammed the proposal today, after his campaign manager did the same earlier.

At a press conference in Florida today, Romney repeated that he “repudiated” the Wright attack. But when asked about his comments on Hannity’s show, Romney said he stood by them, even though he said he couldn’t remember them:

ROMNEY: I’m actually gonna — I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was. I’ll go back and take a look at what was said there.

Watch it:

How The Right Deals With A Problem Like Trayvon Martin

by Solange Uwimana/Media Matters

The right-wing media response to the killing of black teenager Trayvon Martin has veered into even uglier territory. Following initial silence on the story, conservative media began to weigh in when President Obama addressed Martin's shooting by saying that if he'd "had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." It was their perfect opportunity to wade into the conversation -- not by focusing on the issues raised by the incident, but by smearing Martin and attacking the president, while ignoring the inconvenient fact that the man who killed Martin has so far avoided arrest.

Lurking in the background of this conversation has been the right's fixation with the New Black Panther Party, a hate group "whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The conservative Daily Caller and Glenn Beck's website The Blaze have lavished attention on this fringe group in their coverage of the Martin tragedy. Today, CNN's Dana Loesch tried to paint them as a mainstream "progressive" group, while Rush Limbaugh tried to link Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL), a former Black Panther, to these extremists.

Today, Rush donned a hoodie on the House floor, in violation of its dress code, to demonstrate that "just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum." (Martin was wearing a hooded sweatshirt the night he was killed.) Discussing the incident, Limbaugh stated:

LIMBAUGH: He showed up wearing a hoodie. Well, he got what he wanted. He got all the attention. And tried to make a case now the hoodie is a fashion statement. Now, Bobby Rush is a former Black Panther. You should know that. He's a former Black Panther.

Limbaugh then transitioned to talking about an appearance on Fox News by J. Christian Adams, of whom he stated: "J. Christian Adams worked in the Obama Justice Department. He was handling the case against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation in Philadelphia, when Eric Holder basically shut down the case." He added that Adams "wrote a book and explained what was going on. And he basically said that the Obama Justice Department had determined they were not going to pursue black defendants. Just weren't gonna do it. It was payback time now." (No, that's not what happenedat all.)

But throughout his subsequent discussion of Adams' appearance on Fox & Friends, Limbaugh never once made the distinction that Rush's Black Panthers are not the same as and are in no way connected to the so-called New Black Panther Party.

In its profile of the "anti-Semitic" and "racist" New Black Panther Party, the Anti-Defamation Leagueexplained:

The NBPP's divisive positions have been condemned by members of the original Black Panthers. Co-founder Bobby Seale believes that the NBPP has "hijacked our name and are hijacking our history." David Hilliard, a former Panther and executive director of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, has said that the racism that the group "espouse(s) flies directly in the face of the Black Panthers' multicultural ideology and purpose." The NBPP continues to use the Panther name and logo in spite of a permanent injunction prohibiting them from using either, which the original Panthers obtained in May 1997.

The League has further stated that the "group's demonstrations, conferences, and other events often blend inflammatory bigotry with calls for violence, tarnishing its efforts to promote black pride and consciousness."

The Newton Foundation also issued a public statement condemning the organization for exploiting the Black Panther Party's "name and history":

Firstly, the people in the New Black Panthers were never members of the Black Panther Party and have no legitimate claim on the Party's name. On the contrary, they would steal the names and pretend to walk in the footsteps of the Party's true heroes, such as Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton, George Jackson and Jonathan Jackson, Bunchy Carter, John Huggins, Fred Hampton, Mark Cark, and so many others who gave their very lives to the black liberation struggle under the Party's banner.

Secondly, they denigrate the Party's name by promoting concepts absolutely counter to the revolutionary principles on which the Party was founded. Their alleged media assault on the Ku Klux Klan serves to incite hatred rather than resolve it.

[...]

The Black Panthers were never a group of angry young militants full of fury toward the "white establishment." The Party operated on love for black people, not hatred of white people.

As Eric Boehlert explained, right-wing media have responded to the Martin killing by studiously sticking to their preferred narrative of white America as the oppressed in a "race war" beingperpetrated thanks to a Barack Obama presidency. This is the storyline Limbaugh has been pushingfor close to three years -- and it's the one he continues to return to. Today, he even went so far as to advance the spurious smear that Obama is a "supporter of the New Black Panther Party."

Confounded: How The Trayvon Martin Story Has Baffled The Conservative Press

by Eric Boehlert/Media Matters

Addressing the unfolding story of an unarmed, 17-year-old Florida teen recently killed by a neighborhood watch activist who has not been charged with a crime, Fox News host Jon Scott recently wonderedout loud whether the Trayvon Martin case really deserved the national media attention it was receiving. While Fox colleague Jim Pinkerton explained that the coverage stemmed from the fact that the press is "always interested in the cute child that gets murdered" and the "black victim of racism," Scott's query captured the larger Fox News feeling about the mushrooming Martin report, which was to view the story with a mixture of uncertainty and bafflement.  

It seemed the Martin story simply did not fit the right-wing's preferred narrative about guns and minorities and how white America is allegedly under physical assault from Obama's violent African-American base. Or, as Rush Limbaugh famously put it, "[I]n Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering."

The conservative media have spent the last three years utterly obsessed with the topic of race in America, but only when they can frame that issue dishonestly; only when conservatives can use news events for race baiting purposes.  So as the Martin story morphed into a national conversation about race and guns and the law, many conservative media voices remained silent early on. (A silence later replaced by attempts to smear the young victim.)

For a snapshot, TVeyes.com indicates that between March 15 and 25, "Trayvon Martin" was mentioned nearly 500 times on CNN, 350 times on MSNBC, but less than 100 times on Fox News. Through the end of last week, for instance, Fox's late afternoon round table discussion show, The Five, had never discussed the Martin shooting, according to a Nexis review. 

Never.

Last week on Bill O'Reilly's primetime show there were more on-air mentions of "Media Matters" than there were "Trayvon Martin." O'Reilly devoted a Talking Points Memo segment to each. 

And when Fox News did wade into the controversy last week the results were somewhat disastrous, like when Geraldo Rivera suggested it was the sweatshirt hoodie the Florida teen was wearing that was responsible for his death; a comment that was widely ridiculed. (His later suggestion that Martin was dressed like a "wannabe gangster" didn't help matters.)

Fox's initial muted response, especially from it's nighttime opinion shows, stood in stark contrast to the channel's previous cheerleading for the "Stand Your Ground" law, which remains at the center of the Martin controversy. Backed by gun advocates, the Florida law puts the burden on prosecutors to disprove claims of self-defense from shooters who use deadly force. When the law was passed in 2005, critics warned about looming citizen confrontations like the one that ended Martin's life.

Yet rather than vigorously defend the law in the wake of the teen's killing, and rather than offering up coherent analysis of the story, Fox opinion makers mostly preferred to look away, reluctant to engage in the debate. Perhaps, as Orlando Sentinel columnist Beth Kassab wrote last week, that's because "There is no good way for gun proponents to spin the death of an unarmed teenager."

Without Fox News to show the way, much of the conservative press seemed adrift and unsure with how to proceed last week.

From the Moderate Voice, March 23:

There was a lot of buzz about Fox News initially ignoring the Trayvon Martin killing. What most people haven't noted is that nearly every major conservative blog is completely ignoring the story. If you search for the word "Trayvon" on Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, Power Line, and Instapundit, you come up with zilch. There's not a single mention on Drudge.

Most of the blogs did eventually weigh in on the Martin story -- in order to condemn Obama for respectfully acknowledging the controversy. ("If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.") Malkin lashed out at the president for being "all too willing to pour gas on the fire." In fact, it was Obama's comments regarding Martin that seemed to free up conservatives and prompt them to treat the story of a dead teenager as a purely partisan one; a contest between the left and right. That's the terrain they feel most comfortable on.

In retrospect, the conservative press would have been better off maintaining its distance from the story since in recent days more and more far-right outlets have veered into the ugly territory of trying to smear a dead teenager in an effort to defuse the story and to shift the blame away from the gunman, George Zimmerman.

Those wholesale attacks on Martin, sadly reminiscent of the right-wing media's sex-based assaults on Sandra Fluke's reputation, have revolved around loaded innuendos about the boy's past, posting bogus photos of him online, retrieving tweets from the slain teenager's closed Twitter account, and pretending the Martin story revolves around a small band of irrelevant New Black Panther Party members. (That's been the Daily Caller specialty.)

Just look at  Breitbart blogger Dan Riehl who over the weekend posted a foolish and offensive piece that claimed a photo of Martin widely used by the press has been "altered" and lightened to make him appear less threatening.  (It hadn't been altered.)

Riehl also went searching for old Facebook photos of Martin. He suggested he found one that featured a young boy posing in his underwear flashing an obscene hand gesture. He later took the photo down because he could not confirm it was the Martin who was murdered (it wasn't), never bothering to explain what relevance old Facebook pictures had to do with the Florida killing.  

Still, Michelle Malkin's new site Twitchy followed the misguided lead and also posted the same Facebook picture, suggesting the press had been hiding it because it made Martin look more menacing.

Malkin's site was then forced to post a correction and apology: 

Unable to engage the Martin story on the facts, large portions of the conservative press simply ignored the details until they felt comfortable actively smearing the dead teen. Neither approach reflected well on the movement.

Trayvon Martin’s father: ‘They are still disrespecting my son’ after death

By Andrew Jones/Raw Story

The parents of Trayvon Martin strongly condemned new reports that negatively reflect their son in an emotional press conference in Sanford, Florida Monday afternoon.

Both parents responded to two reports released Monday, where Martin’s shooter George Zimmerman claimed the teenager was the aggressor during the incident and an Associated Press report that found Martin was suspended from school for possessing marijuana.

“Even in death, Trayvon is gone and will not be returning to us,” said Tracy Martin, the slain teenager’s father. “Even in death, they are still disrespecting my son. And I feel that’s a shame.”

Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton added, “They’ve killed my son, and now they’re trying to kill his reputation.”

WATCH: Video from NBC, from March 26, 2012.