"We've got your back," Brian Kilmeade of Fox News assured "great guy" Tommy Robinson of the English Defence League, an organisation most certainly not dedicated to the defence of the English language. Tommy Robinson is a violent convict. He can presumably now expect a column on The Times, which would at least raise the tone from Oliver Kamm.
@kilmeade then tweeted the following: "Englishdefenseleague.org check out Tommy Robinson and his mission to rid
brit ian of muslim extremists @foxandfriends". Rather amusingly, his use of the American spelling of "defence" means that his link does not work.
Fox News ought never to have been granted a British broadcasting licence. And it is owned by a man whom no civilised country would permit to hold any media interest whatever, but who effectively controls even such remaining corners of the British media as he does not formally own.
There is now more than enough pretext to rectify the first. Leading, sooner rather than later, to the rectification of the second.
Some of us have been pointing out for years the ties binding the EDL, the Tea Party, the racist secular Far Right in Israel, the London neoconservative think tank circuit (with its array of parliamentary passes, of columns and blogs for nominally non-Murdoch titles, and so on), and Rupert Murdoch.
This was no conspiracy. It has always been entirely out in the open. It still is. It ought to be unbelievable, but of course it is not, that the Minister with direct responsibility for broadcasting is Ed Vaizey of the Henry Jackson Society.
Then there is the role of his HJS comrade, Michael Gove, as Murdoch's man in the Cabinet. On Gove's coming down from Oxford, the Conservative Research Department rejected him for employment on the grounds that it could find no evidence that he was political at all, still less a committed Conservative. Yet look at him now.
Oh, and then there is Jeremy Hunt. Not to mention David Cameron himself, who brought Andy Coulson into the heart of government, and who "even rode the horse" of Rebekah Brooks.
Update 23:47: I have just emailed tv.licensing@ofcom.org.uk to demand that Fox News be stripped of its British licence. Please do the same, and please spread the word.
Some of us have been pointing out for years the ties binding the EDL, the Tea Party, the racist secular Far Right in Israel, the London neoconservative think tank circuit (with its array of parliamentary passes, of columns and blogs for nominally non-Murdoch titles, and so on), and Rupert Murdoch.
This was no conspiracy. It has always been entirely out in the open. It still is. It ought to be unbelievable, but of course it is not, that the Minister with direct responsibility for broadcasting is Ed Vaizey of the Henry Jackson Society.
Then there is the role of his HJS comrade, Michael Gove, as Murdoch's man in the Cabinet. On Gove's coming down from Oxford, the Conservative Research Department rejected him for employment on the grounds that it could find no evidence that he was political at all, still less a committed Conservative. Yet look at him now.
Oh, and then there is Jeremy Hunt. Not to mention David Cameron himself, who brought Andy Coulson into the heart of government, and who "even rode the horse" of Rebekah Brooks.
Update 23:47: I have just emailed tv.licensing@ofcom.org.uk to demand that Fox News be stripped of its British licence. Please do the same, and please spread the word.
Extraordinary post coming from a Catholic.
ReplyDeleteDo you realise that Fox News is the only network in the US (whose media is otherwise completely liberal) that consistently gives sympathetic airtime to pro-life, pro-marriage Catholic voices?
Did you know that when Catholic institutions were threatened with a federal mandate for contraception, Fox News fought on the side of the Church and was publicly thanked by the Catholic League for helping expose Sandra Fluke's stage-managed Democrat PR campaign, and defeat this measure?
Do you realise that Fox alone broke the media blackout on "Doctor" Gosnell's slaughter of newborn babies, when the entire liberal media refused to cover it?
No surprise that the Catholic Church's Media Adviser is a Fox News journalist.
You clearly know nothing about the US media.
A bleedin' sight more than you do, obviously. I stopped reading after your absurd first point.
ReplyDeleteFox, which has always promoted economic and geopolitical views wildly contrary to Papal Teaching, and which is owned by Rupert Murdoch (enough said, really), is now also encouraging racist violence in the United Kingdom. Its British license simply has to be revoked.
You obviously stopped reading since you clearly haven't even understood any of what I wrote.
ReplyDeleteThe Sandra Fluke PR show (to push contraception on the Church) was exposed by Fox-the rest of the media took her at face value.
The Pope hired a Fox News journalist as his Media Adviser.
In the US, Catholic spokesmen and Catholic points of view (on abortion, marriage, contraception or anything else) can only get a fair hearing on Fox.
Drivel. I mean, where does one even begin? It is better not to bother.
ReplyDeleteAsk any of your socially-conservative US friends about the media over there.
ReplyDeleteAsk them about George "Baby killer" Tiller or Doctor Gosnell...and which network exposed their activities when nobody else would.
The whole US media is one liberal propaganda machine, apart from Fox.
Drivel?
ReplyDeleteThen why was Fox accused of causing George Tiller's murder?
Simply because it alone exposed his abortion of late-term babies, when nobody else would cover it?
My friends on the Right in America are proper conservatives, who therefore, by definition, despise Fox.
ReplyDeleteHilarious response-I'd like to know what rival media network your "proper conservative" friends prefer to Fox?
ReplyDeleteCNN perhaps, or ABC? Come on, make me laugh.
Those networks were REALLY interested in exposing George Tiller and Stuart Gosnell, weren't they?
No.
ReplyDeleteGo to bed. And when you wake up, try reading some paleocons on the subject of Fox.
Oh, they have a healthy contempt for all of them.
ReplyDeleteThough perhaps most of all for Fox. It's neocon, you see. As, of course, it is.
Now, go to bed. As I am about to do. Good night.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteFox News is also selective about which Catholic positions it airs. The network ignores, downplays, or distorts the Church's teachings on war and economic matters, which is pretty much standard practice on the American Catholic Right.
Liberal Catholics are the same with the difference that they choose to ignore, downplay or distort the Church's teachings on sexual, cultural, and bioethical matters.
I wasn't talking about its economic or foreign policy positions.
ReplyDeleteBut, on social issues, it stands alone against the "pro-choice" Rainbow coalition that is the rest of the US media.
Good night.
David is right about the neo-con dimension to Fox reporting.
ReplyDeleteThe situation in the USA is simple: in refusing to submit to the Catholic Church, the US has now submitted to another outside authority. This is the eventual fate of all countries who do similarly.
Freedom, don't ya just love it?