How Fox News Uses Weak Democrats And News Corp Synergy To Play Pretend
Reported by Aunty Em - October 19, 2011 -
Nothing demonstrates how frightened The Right Wing Establishment™ is of the Occupy movement than the continuing, and seemingly never-ending, Fox “News” effort to smear the world-wide protests. The Fox tele-prompter readers have used every trick in the book, to the point where the so-called news network is actually touting the Nazi Party’s endorsement of OWS. Leave it to Doug Schoen—a so-called Democratic Pollster who was awarded “Democratic Wanker of the Decade” in these pages—to take Fox’s side. Yesterday he used the pages of the Wall Street Journal (owned by News Corp, not coincidentally the parent company of Fox News), to publish an absolutely stupid column titled “Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd.” And, leave it to Stewart Varney to appear with the Foxy Friends on Fox and Friends to pretend that Doug Schoen is onto something when he’s really full of crap.
News Hounds has on many occasions reported on what a horrible Democrat Doug Schoen is. His web site claims ”Douglas E. Schoen has been one of the most influential Democratic campaign consultants for over thirty years.” However, he sounds an awful lot like a Republican when he appears on Fox “News,” which is why they use him of course. And, not just a garden-variety, run-of-the-mill Republican, but a far-Right Republican. He’s echoed Glenn Beck, urged President Obama not run for re-election while he predicted Obama would be a one-term president, and has even raised funds for Republicans. With friends like that, who needs enemies? It’s a joke to call him a Democrat. And, based on his WSJ article, it’s a joke to call him a pollster. Media Matters’ Simon Maloy points out:
Schoen writes that the Occupy Wall Street movement "reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people." And he knows this because he conducted a survey of the protesters, saying the findings "probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion."Here's his methodology:
The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park.That's it. He sent a colleague down to one protest location in New York to interview a vanishingly small sample of protesters.
First off, this is not "random." The selection pool was extremely localized, and governed by one person picking and choosing subjects to interview. How did Schoen's associate select interviewees, eeny-meeny-miny-moe? What was the gender breakdown? Race? Income? Were other protesters present for the interviews? Did they hear the questions asked before being asked themselves?
Maloy listed many other reasons why Schoen’s “systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion” is a crock. However, Varney either didn’t get the memo or he’s as dishonest as the rest of the network he works for. He appeared on The Curvy Couch this morning and, after linking OWS to both the unions and the president, he went on to treat Doug Schoen as if he had any credibility at all, as opposed to being a laughable hack. Varney said, “As you saw there, from that poll you were quoting, Doug Schoen’s poll of the protesters, this is a very dangerous game for Labor and the Administration, to be playing because you put yourself firmly on the side of the EXTREME [emphasis his] Left. [Gretch jumps in helpfully with, “Right.”] Doug Poll Scho—Doug Schoen’s poll shows that they are indeed extremely, way out there, on the left for Occupy Wall Street.” Watch as The Foxy Friends and Varney repeat every anti-OWS meme they’ve used before, while rolling in Doug Schoen’s latest grotesquery:
Video courtesy Media Matters
This is very different from Ellen’s recent News Hound article “Hannity And Guests Use Unscientific “Survey” To Attack Occupy Wall Street Protesters And Democrats.” In that case (and that of Bill O’Reilly hosting Glenn Beck last week) Fox had to pretend a New York Magazine article of 100 protesters qualified as a scientific poll. However, Pretend Democrat™ Doug Schoen pretended this was a “systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.” Therefore, Fox “News” was able to honestly pretend it was as well. Think about it: A pretend Democratic Pollster is the perfect metaphor for a pretend news network.
