Fox Bashes Hillary Clinton While Looking Innocently "Fair & Balanced"
Reported by Melanie - August 7, 2007 -
One would assume that a business news program would open today (August 7, 2007) with news about what the Fed did (or didn't do) with regard to interest rates and the subprime mortgage crisis when it met this morning. That's a logical assumption but we're talking Fox "business news" here and that didn't happen. First up on Fox's "premiere business news" show was an anti-Clinton segment.
Cavuto opened, as he has for months and months, with a FOX NEWS ALERT and video of Hillary Clinton saying:
We need to help those facing the pain of foreclosure and we need to secure the marketplace and put reform in action right now.
Cavuto then introduced the topic with:
Alright. Helping hand or government bailout? Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton calling on our government today to shell out a billion bucks to keep at-risk home buyers from going belly up, but should you have to pay for their mistakes?
Cavuto's guests were Jim Carr of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and Ann Trenolone of the Independent Women's Forum. The chyron at the bottom of the screen throughout the segment read, "Hillary Clinton Seeks Taxpayer Aid for 'At-Risk' Homeowners."
Comment: The discussion was very "fair and balanced." It was civil. It was polite. There was no yelling or screaming. If one was unfamiliar with Fox, one wouldn't find anything amiss. However, yesterday, Fox ran a poll on its website asking viewers whether they thought it was time to start the bailouts and 91% said no. So what better way to bash Hillary Clinton than to show her -- even though there has been a lot of talk about it -- calling for just that? Fox put the knife in and twisted it without saying one bad thing about her.
Oh, and did you notice that Cavuto pointed out that Clinton proposed "shelling out a billion bucks," and he asked if "you" should have to pay for the mistakes of homeowners? I am absolutely positive that his audience has no idea whatsoever that it looks like "you" ("your tax dollars") will end up "shelling out" "well over" one trillion bucks -- $12 billion per month -- for George Bush's Iraq war.
