Megyn Kelly had a major sad over criticisms of her McKinney coverage. Rather than own up to her biased coverage that promoted the account of a convicted felon over other eyewitnesses, Kelly lashed out at the “far left” for criticizing her. Even worse, Fox’s media critic Howard Kurtz came on to help defend the indefensible.
What set Kelly off, apparently, was this article by Scott Eric Kaufman in Salon.com that echoed much of what I wrote – that Kelly spent half her show Monday night justifying the shocking behavior of a McKinney, Texas police officer reacting to an unruly pool party by grounding an unarmed teenager’s face into dirt and pulling a gun on another one.
Without a trace of irony, Kelly complained that Salon “often descends into ugly, partisan hackery.” She added that Kaufman “repeated a Media Matters lie” and described them as “the website devoted to killing Fox News – how’s that goin’ for ya?”
“Here is what actually happened,” Kelly said. “We did two segments on McKinney. The first involved an eyewitness who defended the officer. The second involved two pundits, Mark Fuhrman and Richard Fowler, both of whom were against the cop. Two segments out of six on our show and two of the three guests against the cop.”
But here’s what Kelly didn’t say. Her “eyewitness” segment was 14:38 long and included only one such eyewitness, one who defended the cops. The news report before him quoted only two people, each depicting the African Americans complaining about the police treatment as thugs.
Even worse, the guest, Sean Toon is a convicted felon. His record includes torturing animals and a separate arrest for assault with a deadly weapon (he pleaded guilty to a lesser, unknown charge). Kelly presented Toon as a credible source, legitimately afraid to give his last name, presumably because he was afraid of repercussions by the thuggish teens. Yet she failed to mention his own criminal background!
Kelly’s second segment that night, with Fuhrman and Fowler, the cop critics, lasted 5:22, about a third as long.
“I took no position on the matter,” Kelly continued, “other than to acknowledge the brutality of the cops’ actions and the decision making of the young woman that brought her into his focus.”
Kelly was referring to her comment, “The girl was no saint, either. He (the police officer) had told her to leave, and she continued to linger. When a cop tells you to leave, get out.”
Kelly is correct that she repeatedly described the video of the officer attacking the girl as “brutal” and disturbing. But Kelly also failed to mention that the girl claimed she was in the process of complying with the order to leave when she was taken down by the officer.
And while I’ll give Kelly the benefit of the doubt that she did not mean to malign the girl by calling her “no saint,” she should have acknowledged that her choice of words suggested the girl had sinned.
The fact is, Kelly has a long record of promoting police actions and demonizing African Americans.
Kelly has made a big deal about how African Americans should take personal responsibility when things go wrong but that rule apparently does not apply to her. Instead, she went on a rant against her liberal critics.
KELLY: It’s almost pointless to respond to these kinds of smears and I almost never do it. But this one struck me as an example of how drastically, the press – really the blogs – distort innocuous comments to promote their own agendas. It is not just a left-wing thing, to be fair, but too often it is done by the far left with glee and with total impunity.
Distort innocuous comments to promote their own agendas? Why Fox News is the king of such malicious glee. I recall Kelly, distorting her own guest’s comments about the dangers of radical Islam vs. right-wing terrorism and then attacking him and refusing to let him clarify. I also remember Kelly coming up with fake victims of ObamaCare that she used to malign the Affordable Care Act. And how about that three-minute segment devoted to gleeful sneering about Hillary Clinton’s accent – while ignoring the substance of what she said?
KELLY: Over and over, we see this done where they take something, they distort it, it gets repeated by all these left-wing blogs and then people accept it as fact.
Funny, I don’t recally Kelly ever apologizing for her bogus racial attacks on Attorney General Eric Holder – where she spent 45 segments and 3.5 hours distorting his decision not to charge some African Americans with voter intimidation (where none had happened) with accusations that he did so out of racial preference. Before she dropped the issue like a hot potato, Kelly remarked on The O’Reilly Factor, “Now you’re going to have instances like this where Black Panthers and others can go to the polling stations and do this if they so choose. And they just basically are gonna get a pass…”
And, really, as we have proven over and over and over again, Kelly slyly telegraphs her bias, even as she continues to pretend to be a “straight news anchor.”
But somehow, Kurtz has missed it. He assured Kelly, “This is a classic case of a liberal writer with an agenda, who often rails against Fox, who’s taken some shots against you, trying to discredit the interviewer because he didn’t like what the guest said, the guy you talked to, Sean, who was an eyewitness.”
If Kurtz didn’t know that the “eyewitness” is a convicted felon and thug, he should have. And if he did know, he should have noted that.
“I pressed Sean on every issue,” Kelly dubiously claimed. But, she laughably complained, “There’s very little desire on the part of these folks to get to truth. There’s only a desire to get to agenda. And yet, there seems to be an audience for that.” Well, she should know, eh?
KELLY: We had the nerve to put somebody on who did defend the officer. That is what some – and I’m not talking about left-wing, I’m talking about far left – that is what they cannot stand. And the reason the Fox News Channel was born is because there was so many television channels out there who were telling only one side. And Roger Ailes had a vision, a different kind of vision, where we’d have a news station that would tell both sides, fair and balanced. We had the nerve to put a guy on who defended the cop. And then two guys on – including Mark Fuhrman, who always defends the cop – who we knew was not going to defend the cop here. So two guys who didn’t defend him. And that’s too much. If you do anything in defense of a cop, for example, in this situation, you must be a bigot, you must hate young women.
Watch it below, from the June 10 The Kelly File. You can read my post on the subject, with both the McKinney clips she used that night here.
One look at just the Title’s of that one person, Ann Coulter, informs me of everything I need to know about Fox News and it’s pretty news-readers.
“High Crimes and Misdemeanors”
“Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right”
“Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism”
“How to Talk to a Liberal: If You Must”
“Godless: The Church of Liberalism”
“If Democrats had any Brains, They’d be Republicans”
“Guilty: Liberal “victims” and Their Assault on America"
“Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America”
“Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama”
“Never Trust a Liberal Over 3 —-Especially a Republican”
When I see Mike Malloy plastered all over MSNBC and they are actively promoting EVERYTHING he says or writes, then I’ll start listening to her “grievances” about the so-called “Left.”
Perhaps you right-wingers reading this should consider that bit of wisdom.
Oh, and understand this Blackroots, O’Loofah has mastered the pity party on Faux. Try to upstage him, and I’d be pretty careful about walking near some staircases.
If distorting “innocuous comments to promote their own agendas” is “not just a left-wing thing to be fair”, Kelly, then why the hell don’t you and the rest of your fellow hosts at FOX “news” build whole segments around the instances when right-wingers distort innocuous comments to promote THEIR own agendas? What’s it take for a right-winger to be called out, ridiculed and denounced in a segment (or multiple segments) of their own on the “fair & balanced” FOX “news” network? We’re forever being treated to segments when left-wingers/Dems are raked over the coals, called out for their “outrageous” behavior, ridiculed for something they say, asked to step down from their positions, etc.
But, despite all the overwhelming evidence showing that it’s most definitely “not a left-wing thing”, FOX “news” and it’s talking heads just can’t seem to build segments around all the bad behavior and outrageous remarks that emanate fro the right. Kelly just pulled an O’Reilly there – admitting that sometimes the right does it too but never actually airing segments designed to let the folks know about these instances of right-wing distortions, agenda pushing and bad behavior. They would rather perhaps only mention it in a headline reading, as a passing quip or ignore it altogether. They seem to think that by just occasionally admitting that the right sometimes does it too makes them “fair & balanced”. Pffft.
This cry of victimization by Kelly (and others on the right – Palin, Limbaugh, FOX “news” in general but especially BOR) at the hands of the “liberal media” has become laughable. A well-known person makes stupid comments? Someone in the media/blogosphere just might call them out on it. Same goes if they make false statements. Or if they get caught making agenda-driven remarks and/or offering up biased coverage (no matter how slyly they may think they’ve catapulted their propaganda). Kelly got busted on a few things but she won’t own up to them and chose to spin it as the lib media is picking on her. Geez. But we really shouldn’t be surprised about these victimization claims as it and the “blacks behaving badly” meme (which has also come into play in this McKinney incident) are 2 very important narratives that FOX “news” and many on the right are heavily invested in – they need the folks to buy into these ideas (which they use to turn into political/cultural/financial power).
Btw, this tactic of claiming victimization by the “liberal media” and then bringing on Kurtz to agree with them/to reassure them has become completely ridiculous (this instance and the recent BOR mess immediately come to mind). Kurtz is not a media analyst/watchdog – he’s a paid toady who is there to provide back up whenever one of the FOX “news” talking heads or their network get called out for their bias, fibs and deceptive reporting. Anymore I just start laughing when I see that Kurtz is set to make an appearance on a FOX “news” because when that happens it means that a FOX “news” host has stepped in it again. LOL!