A New Low for Fox News

Media Matters reports that Fox News anchor Heather Childers today used her Twitter account to promote a bizarre birther conspiracy theory that, during the 2008 presidential election, then-candidate Barack Obama’s campaign threatened to have Chelsea Clinton murdered. The “threat” to have Chelsea rubbed out was allegedly part of an effort to keep Bill and Hillary Clinton from “going public” with information showing that Obama wasn’t born in the United States.

You might recall how Fox News helped far-right activists hijack the revision of curriculum standards in Texas in 2009-10. The so-called “fair and balanced” network actually attacked Texas Freedom Network Kathy Miller at the time, broadcasting photographs of her and two others under the caption “Textbook Troublemakers.” One right-wing Texas State Board of Education member made a public point of treating Fox News reporters with cookies at one meeting during the curriculum debate.

UPDATE: Gadfly Donna “Jeffrey Dahmer Believed in Evolution” Garner, who supported the right-wing hijacking of the Texas curriculum standards, is promoting this same kooky Obama-threatened-to-kill-Chelsea conspiracy. Birds of a feather…

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Requiem for a Rodeo Clown

Good news: Glenn Beck’s FOX News show goes off the air today. Bad news: Beck is considering moving to Texas. Really horrible news if Beck’s serious: he told Gov. Rick Perry he may run for governor if he moves to Texas.

As America’s most beloved tin foil hatter departs from FOX News, the watchdog group Media Matters has prepared a YouTube video of Beck’s greatest hits, including this one:

“Do you really believe that I could, or anybody here at FOX News, could just make things up and remain on the air?”

Well, I guess not, but they gave you waaaaay more than three strikes. Enjoy:

How Fox News Helped Hijack TX Curriculum

The Austin  American-Statesman has published a list of PolitiFact Texas articles that drew the most reader interest in 2010. Number Five on the list is a piece early in the year about Fox News co-anchor Gretchen Carlson telling viewers that the Texas State Board of Education was considering the removal of Christmas and the Constitution from social studies textbooks. PolitiFact rated that claim as a Pants on Fire lie. And it was.

TFN Insider reported about the grossly inaccurate and biased coverage Fox News gave to the state board’s debate over new social studies curriculum standards. In fact, Fox’s coverage was so riddled with mistruths that the Texas Education Agency — headed by an appointee of Republican Gov. Rick Perry — issued a sharply worded press release criticizing the network’s “reporting.” The so-called “fair and balanced” network even aired a graphic labeling Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller a “textbook troublemaker.”

Fox, Schools and the Anti-Muslim Campaign

The Texas State Board of Education debate over social studies curriculum standards last spring drew unprecedented coverage from the national media, most of it reasonably balanced. The exception was coverage from Fox News, including commentator Tucker Carlson. Carlson and his Fox colleagues made so many false and misleading statements on-air about the debate that we lost count. Even the Texas Education Agency issued a press release sharply criticizing Fox’s distorted coverage. The coverage was so biased that Fox aired a photograph of Kathy Miller — Texas Freedom Network’s president — and two other critics of the state board under the heading “Textbook Troublemakers.” Fair and balanced? What a joke.

Among the most absurd charges aired on Fox was that “multicultural groups” were distorting public school curricula around the country by undermining Christianity and promoting Islam instead. Well, Carlson is at it again.

Fox News: ‘Fair and Balanced’?

We’re not sure when Fox News used this graphic, but we saw it for the first time yesterday. We had heard Fox commentators referred to Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller — on the air — as a “troublemaker” back in March. Fox sent three news teams to Austin that month to cover the State Board of Education’s debate over proposed social studies curriculum standards.

Kathy and the two other people in the graphic — Steven Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science and Steven Green, a law professor and director of the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy at Willamette University in Oregon — have been outspoken critics of the state board’s politicized revision of the curriculum standards.

Distorting what’s really happening in the Texas curriculum debate, Fox regularly features — and fawns over — spokespeople from far-right pressure groups that support the board’s shredding of standards that teachers and scholars spent nearly a year carefully crafting. The resulting standards are ridiculously bloated and heavily politicized. But Fox labels critics of the board as “troublemakers.”

Fox also bills its news as “fair and balanced.”

Really?

UPDATE: Yep, it’s a real Fox News graphic. It appeared in a piece that aired March 9.

FOX Coverage of Texas Debate: FAIL

UPDATE: The Texas Education Agency has now posted the press release on its Web site.

In a highly unusual move, the Texas Education Agency has just distributed a press release sharply criticizing the grossly inaccurate coverage of the debate over social studies curriculum standards in Texas. Three cheers to TEA’s press office for calling out FOX for its outrageously misleading reporting. Perhaps if FOX relied less on far-right pressure groups for information about what’s going on in Texas, the network would do a better job informing its viewers instead of promoting lies and propaganda.

We are publishing the press release here:

‘Anti-Christian Bigotry’

So now FOX News anchor Brit Hume is saying that criticism of his call last Sunday for golfer Tiger Woods to dump Buddhism and convert to Christianity is just another form of “anti-Christian bigotry.” Hume told CNSNews.com yesterday:

“It is certainly true in secular America today that the most controversial two words you can ever utter in a public space are ‘Jesus Christ.’”

That’s absurd. He really thinks that’s true in a country in which the vast majority of people are Christians? But it’s typical of the way religious-righters today portray themselves as victims.

Hume’s statement reminds us of what supporters of Don McLeroy were saying last spring when the Texas Senate refused to approve his renomination as chair of the State Board of Education. Some dishonestly said opponents of McLeroy’s renomination were attacking “his personal religious beliefs” and his “Biblical worldview of creation.” State Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, outrageously suggested that McLeroy opponents wanted to establish a “religious test” for office. They all conveniently ignored how the state board under McLeroy’s chairmanship had become a dysfunctional, deeply divided mess in which board members — including McLeroy — spent much of their time promoting personal political agendas rather than focusing on making sure Texas students get a sound education.

Talking Points

From today’s TFN News Clips:

“The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.'”

— Brit Hume, a Fox News anchor, urging golfer Tiger Woods to convert to Christianity to receive forgiveness for his extra-martial affairs.

Stay informed with TFN News Clips, a daily digest of news about politics and the religious right. Subscribe here.

FOX Gets It Wrong on Texas Curriculum Battle

Efforts to politicize our kids’ social studies classrooms got a hand from FOX News on Wednesday.

FOX aired a piece on the growing controversy over revising social studies curriculum standards in Texas. Publishers, of course, will use the revised standards to write new history, government, geography and other social studies textbooks. The two commentators on FOX accurately discussed the huge influence of Texas on the national textbook market — but then things went downhill fast.