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Yesterday we reported on Fox "News" outragously contriving Kerry quotes and publishing them as though they were real in a news story on their web site. Now as reported by Atrios, we find that Fox has pulled its second stunt for Bush in two days. After first trying to portray Kerry as "metrosexual" Fox is now trying to plant the idea that Kerry is a communist.
In a debate followup article Fox claims to have interviewed a member of the group Communists for Kerry, which on their About Page clearly states that they are a 527 organization sponsored by the "Hellgate Republican Club."
Here's the relevant section of the Fox News article:
Of course, there were some Kerry supporters in attendance who had no doubts whatever about their candidate.
"We're trying to get Comrade Kerry elected and get that capitalist enabler George Bush out of office," said 17-year-old Komoselutes Rob of Communists for Kerry.
"Even though he, too, is a capitalist, he supports my socialist values more than President Bush," Rob said, before assuring FOXNews.com that his organization was not a parody group. When asked his thoughts on Washington's policy toward Communist holdout North Korea, Rob said: "The North Koreans are my comrades to a point, and I'm sure they support Comrade Kerry, too."
It is unclear whether the Kerry campaign has welcomed the Communists' endorsement.
I guess clicking on the "about" link was far too much fact checking for Fox News. Surely nothing at all that Rob said (or indeed his name itself) could possibly have lead anyone at Fox News to begin to suspect that he was disingenuous.
To their credit, Fox also interviewed someone from Billionaires for Bush, but in a glaring example of their right-wing bias, Fox quoted the word "supporter" and did not editorialize by saying "It is unclear whether the Bush campaign has welcomed the Billionaires' endorsement."
As a number of people have compared these recent Fox outrages with CBS's sloppy reporting, I'd like to point out a few important differences while stating very clearly that CBS absolutely was wrong to do what they did as well.
CBS got its information from a source outside of CBS. Fox made things up.
CBS believed its information source to be credible. Fox would have to be stupid to believe "Komoselutes Rob" credible.
CBS did make some attempt to authenticate its documents and to check its facts. Fox made no attempt.
CBS apologized loudly and publically, then launched an independent investigation into why such a shaky report was allowed to reach the air. Fox inserted a 2-line excuse into yesterday's article and has yet to correct today's.
CBS is guilty of incredibly sloppy reporting and incomplete fact checking and then running a story based upon questionable evidence. Fox is guilty of completely making things up (yesterday) or performing no fact checking whatsoever (today).
