I had hoped that with the arrest of Scott Orton, who openly plotted murder on Fox Nation's threads, that the website would have improved its moderation of comments. But no.
Yesterday, Fox Nation posted an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article that was titled, "U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress." But Fox gave it a more inflammatory title to make it sound as though Obama was spying on Congress deliberately: "Report: Obama's NSA Spied on Netanyahu, Members of Congress During Iran Nuclear Deal Negotiations."
And then Fox allowed the following comments to remain on its site for at least five hours:
Does somebody have to get killed by one of these Fox News thugs before Fox does something about this? Or would the network still allow this kind of talk?
(H/T reader Jason)
He’s always making the claim that only left-wing websites engage in violent rhetoric, while insisting that right-wing ones never do, but he would strongly condemn them if they ever did.
I think it’s time “America’s Daddy” got the opportunity to wag his fat finger at, and scold The FoKKKsNotion.com, don’t you?
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That written, allow me to remind you that the SCOTUS case involved an ordinary man’s use of violent lyrics in relation to his ex-wife (the Court noted that the man included “disclaimers”—not unlike certain crime dramas that pull the old “we took this story from the headlines but we’ve changed things to prevent our asses from being sued for defamation among other things” routine). Now, the man was fired from his job (as an amusement park security guard!) because his boss thought the posts were potentially threatening to his fellow employees and possibly customers (employers are actually exempt from many aspects of the First Amendment). (I’ll also throw in the fact that several years ago, an anti-abortion website posted the names and home addresses of abortion providers. A pro-choice group tried to get the site banned for promoting violence but the courts ruled for the website under First Amendment rules. The thing was, though, there was only one reason the site existed—to terrorize abortion providers. Now, compare that to the outrage from FoxNoise and other right-wing sites when that New York newspaper printed the names and addresses of people who owned lots of guns. Right-wingers claimed that was an invasion of privacy—but they’d stood squarely on the side of the anti-abortion group’s “right to inform the public.”)
BUT. Here’s the real difference: There ARE laws against making threats against the President of the United States. They applied under Reagan; they applied under GHW Bush; they applied under Clinton; they applied under W; they apply under Obama. The most telling difference is that the number of FoxNation comments making such threats has exploded since Obama took office with the FBI having to play a very cautious game because the right-wing nutjobs will scream that they’re being “persecuted” for their “political opinions” (even though, those same right-wing nutjobs wouldn’t hesitate to call for the arrest and full prosecution of any “left-wingers” who’d made such threats against W).
The other thing is that THIS site has responsible monitors who will pull a comment that they believe crosses the line of acceptable commenting (I’ve had a few of my own comments deleted—even though I’ve been clear in the very hypothetical nature of any actions discussed; but this isn’t my “home” so I don’t get to make the rules). FoxNation doesn’t monitor their commenters—or even warn them that certain language won’t be tolerated. FoxNation needs to post specific rules that ban users who routinely post violent comments against the President. And, as much as I can tell from the very brief bits I found on the above-mentioned web search, the “death threats” came from ONE man. Compare that to the screen shot of the FoxNation piece. That’s NOT one man—that’s a lot of people. (Okay—there’s a possibility that it is one person using multiple screen names but that’s actually MORE disturbing than the alternative that there are a lot of different people making these deplorable comments.)
And, one last thing: Congrats on trying the equivalency card. Too bad you failed, epically.
My prediction is that if one of these lunatics twisted visions come to materialize, Faux will backpedal like crazy.
“The nation’s highest court ruled a death threat on a Facebook wall might not legally be considered one.”
<a href=“”http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/12/Narry-Mercury-Twitter-Trump.jpg">http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/12/Narry-Mercury-Twitter-Trump.jpg">See Example</a>