The worst part of Fox News’ incessant yammering on about the Benghazi attack is that they have been so transparently partisan and gotten their facts so terribly wrong, that it has made it virtually impossible to have a real investigation into the death of the US Ambassador to Libya, either in the US or in Libya.
Why is Fox News helping the terrorists?
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His earpiece must have been blowing up! Cut the interview! cut it now!
Owned
How does such a cut-off get implemented? Is the producer telling the anchor so quickly what to do, or did they agree ahead of time to stop the interview if the interviewee says something specific?
This one definitely sounds like his producer told him to cut the interview. Otherwise the interviewer would have tried to make more of a transition, or make something of a rebuttal before cutting him off.
I say this based on when I worked in TV, but of course it is hard to tell for sure. Given that this is Fox News and reality always seems to fluster them, he may have just been a poor interviewer and didn’t know what to say, resulting in the stunned cut-off.
Now, I hate FOX as much as the next semi-right thinking human being, but a few things stick out at me.
First, the gentleman being interviewed didn’t really make the most reasonable transition into attacking FOX. Was he right? Sure. But if the goal (if it’s even possible) is to reach through the haze to FOX’s viewers, you can’t really go at it that way. They understand strength (or perceived strength) and like when anchors go after people they are supposed to disagree with. But this guy didn’t really have much tact in trying to expose FOX as peddling propaganda. He made a good point with the contractors, but beyond that he just looked like a FOX anchor’s reflection, trying to be the loudest one in the room.
Second, while I see FOX as being horribly detrimental to having a civilized discussion on the realities of security at a “diplomatic” post in what is basically a failed or at least broken state, I’m not sure how they are hindering the investigation or helping the terrorists, unless you mean they are doing so by muddying the waters and dividing the nation. I’ve been reading this blog long enough to know you have a reason IK, just wondering if you could expand upon that a little if you have time.
Having almost played devil’s advocate for FOX, I will now be taking a very, very cold shower.
Almost?
I didn’t do a very good job of making my point about them hindering a real investigation, but I linked to two articles about it. But it is actually quite simple. The point is that Fox News and the Republicans started attacking Obama immediately even when they had absolutely no idea what happened. Romney even sent out a press release on 9/11 about the attack, criticizing the response from the Egyptian embassy — which turned out was released *before* the attack, so it wasn’t a response at all. They weren’t interested in finding out what actually happened, they were interested only in attacking the president. So now Obama is in the position of defending himself against attacks that PolitiFact has rated outright lies. And Fox keeps repeating those lies, even after they are exposed as lies. So how are we supposed to have an actual investigation, when it has become so politicized?
When things become completely politicized, the first casualty is the truth. Certainly the Republicans understand this. After all, Romney refused to release his tax returns because he said that Democrats would politicize what was in them and use it against him (even though, as he claimed, he did nothing wrong). So why would Obama say anything about what happened in Benghazi when he knows that everything he says will be twisted and used against him?