Tag: Fox News acting as Trump propaganda outlet

Fox News to pay a fine for ‘a pattern of violating’ human rights laws: report

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In 2021, Fox News’ legal troubles have included not only a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, but also, a human rights lawsuit. And Fox News, journalist Lloyd Grove reports in the Daily Beast, has agreed to pay a $1 million fine to settle that lawsuit.

Grove explains, “Despite Fox News’ claims to have repaired the company’s toxic workplace culture since the firing of founder and chairman Roger Ailes in July 2016, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has effectively admitted to ongoing misconduct that includes sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation against victimized employees, and has agreed to pay a million-dollar fine for what New York City’s Commission on Human Rights called ‘a pattern of violating of the NYC Human Rights Law.'”

According to Grove, “The settlement agreement, reached last week with the Human Rights Commission, contains the largest-ever financial penalty assessed in the agency’s six-decade history, and also requires Fox News to remove mandatory confidential arbitration clauses from the contracts of on-air talent along with other employees and contributors for a period of four years when they file legal claims under the city’s human-rights law outside of the company’s internal process.” Continue reading.

Fox News Personalities Who Promoted Bolton Now Scorn Him

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade offered up a novel and deeply ironic retort to The New York Times’ Sunday night bombshell that President Donald Trump told then-national security adviser John Bolton military aid to Ukraine was conditioned on officials there aiding “investigations into Democrats including the Bidens,” which the paper reported based on descriptions by multiple sources of an unpublished manuscript of a forthcoming Bolton book.

“The one thing the president should take from this,” he said on Monday morning’s Fox & Friends, is that “he’s got to do a better job vetting his staff to find out if they actually want to work for him or not, or they actually want to leak out information about him.”

But if anyone could be said to have vetted Bolton for a top position in Trump’s administration, it was Fox. Continue reading.

While Withholding Aid, Trump Pushed Ukraine Conspiracy On Fox

A senior budget official learned on June 19 that President Donald Trump had inquired about U.S. military aid to Ukraine after seeing a media report, according to his newly released testimony in the House impeachment inquiry.  And in an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity that same night, the president linked Ukraine to a conspiracy theory involving the Democratic National Committee’s hacked server, demonstrating his state of mind about the country at that time.

Mark Sandy, a career official in the Office of Management and Budget, told the House impeachment inquiry into Trump’s abuses of power that on June 19 he was informed by OMB political appointee Michael Duffey that Trump “had seen a media report” and “had questions” about the military aid package to Ukraine.” Sandy did not recall the specific article, but some have speculated it was a June 19 report on U.S. plans to send $250 million in military equipment to Ukraine.

Other testimonies before the inquiry indicate that OMB illegally froze the aid at the president’s order on July 25, that Ukrainian officials inquired about the hold on the aid the same day, and that the package became conditioned on Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky publicly announcing investigations that would benefit Trump politically. The aid was reportedly released only after Trump became aware of a whistleblower complaint about his dealings with Ukraine.

View the complete November 28 article by Matt Gertz from MediaMatters on the National Memo website here.

Fox News uses bizarre graphics to smear impeachment witnesses in real time

AlterNet logoSaying that Fox News is a mouthpiece for right-wing disinformation is not a revelatory statement. But the depth of the network’s entanglement with conservative forces cannot be understated. As the first public impeachment hearings take place Wednesday, Fox News has made it clear that, as much as possible, it will lean on the scales to present damning testimony against Donald Trump in a perverse light.

It might seem like satire but as Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff opened the proceedings, Fox News put up graphics alongside Schiff’s face with “information” like: “House GOP has supported censuring Schiff for actions during inquiry;” “9/26: Schiff publicly exaggerated substance of Trump-Zelensky call; “10/13: Schiff admitted to not being clear about contact w/ whistleblower.” If Fox News could, it would likely play ominous music beneath the proceedings any time a Democratic official spoke.

The same treatment was afforded to acting Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor during his opening statement. Similar graphics presented “factoids” like: “Oct 23: President Trump dismissed Taylor as a ‘Never Trumper;’ “WH called Taylor’s closed-door testimony ‘Triple hearsay;’ “GOP says Taylor had no first-hand knowledge about Ukraine aid.”

View the complete November 13 article by Walter Einenkel from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.