Salon: The "Fox" of War

[kskiska]

The Bush administration's case for invading Iraq may have been riddled with unreliable claims, but that didn't stop White House-friendly Fox News from pumping it into America's living rooms.

Before the Iraq invasion, the Bush administration made many declarations to build its case for war: There was "no doubt," as the president said, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, making it an imminent threat to America; Saddam Hussein was working closely with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida; and the invasion would minimize civilian casualties.

While many intelligence and military experts knew how hollow these claims were, there was one place where the Bush administration was given an open microphone: Fox News. By the time U.S. soldiers were headed across the desert to Baghdad, the "fair and balanced" network, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, looked like a caricature of state-run television, parroting the White House's daily talking points, no matter how unsubstantiated.

Of course, Fox and the White House had forged their nexus well before Iraq. Immediately after 9/11, for instance, Fox chief Roger Ailes (a former Republican Party media consultant) wrote a confidential memo to President Bush saying that America wanted him to "use the harshest measures possible" in the war on terrorism. On the eve of the Iraq invasion, the Washington Post reported that neoconservative Fox contributors, such as Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, were "well wired" into the White House, meeting periodically with top administration national security officials and "huddling privately" every three months with Karl Rove, who was urging Republicans to seek maximum political advantage from a war in Iraq. Fox News became the White House's most reliable amplifier -- claims went from the podium, into the news scripts, and out to the American public as fact.

Fox News began by broadcasting the Bush administration's line that there was "no doubt" Iraq had WMD, despite repeated warnings by the intelligence community that the WMD case for war was weak and dubious. As early as August 2002, Fox News contributor Fred Barnes said, "We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that has been pursuing aggressively weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons." He was refuted a month later by UPI, which reported that "a growing number of experts say that the administration has not presented convincing evidence" that Iraq was pursuing WMD or nuclear weapons. (UPI is owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who also publishes the conservative Washington Times.)

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/30/fox_news/index.html

[Skittles]

1. Fox news is a well-known joke now

their employees have no credibility whatsoever.

[cclark401]

2. I certainly hope that's true.

I know it, my family knows it, but so many people continue to watch the faux station.