It’s like beating a dead horse to
say that Fox News is many times over what it accuses the “mainstream” media of
being: a propaganda organ for a particularly political ideology. The difference
is that Fox News traffics more in opinion rather than actual facts, and it is
other way around with the “mainstream” media. To say that Fox News has
deliberately become Donald Trump’s “unofficial” Ministry of Propaganda is
probably giving it too much credit; outside of “outliers” like Chris Wallace,
who is like an adult sitting at one end of a seesaw, and 100 juveniles piled on
the other—“balance” is hardly to be expected Sean Hannity, of course, gleefully
confesses to being “unfair and unbalanced” when it comes to offering opinion as
fact, and his viewers naturally approve, because of their lack of interest in
anything other than their own provincial worldview.
This tendency to be “unbalanced” was on display on a Fox News web post. The headline announces that former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates “confirmed” to the Senate Judiciary Committee that former FBI Director James Comey had gone “rogue” when he interviewed Michael Flynn, in which Flynn apparently lied about his contacts with Russian officials. What she meant—or accepting the terms that Sen. Lindsay Graham used in order to cover her own fundament—was that Comey acted “unilaterally,” meaning not first consulting with her personally, and that she was “upset” about it. But hardly a “crime.”
According to Fox News' initial spin on the story, Yates seemed
more perturbed by the fact that she was not in the loop than for the reason for the Flynn interview, having only been
informed that Comey had questioned Flynn on his suspicions interactions with
then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during an Oval Office meeting. Others
have pointed out that this claim was a bit odd; if she was the deputy attorney
general, why wouldn’t she be aware of Flynn’s activities with the Russians, and
why wouldn’t she believe that those activities would be subject to question?
Beyond Yates claims of ignorance, the Fox News piece seemed to dwell inordinately on the Republicans insinuation of the “nefarious” nature of the Russian investigation, and Barack Obama’s alleged role in it. Graham had “great interest” in the Oval Office meeting, although apparently not with Flynn’s interactions with the Russian ambassador. The first seven paragraphs of the piece (several of them one sentence) attempted to insinuate that there was some sinister shenanigans going on, to “justify” the accusation made at the top. Context was completely absent.
The problem, of course, is that this was all “speculation” and far from the “whole” story, or even close to being the most important part of it. It isn't until the eighth paragraph that we are suddenly introduced to the facts of the case: “Yates said that after Obama placed sanctions on Russia, the Kremlin vowed to take retaliatory action, only to suddenly change course. She said Obama wanted to find out why, which led to the Justice Department discovering Flynn's talks with Kislyak. Those discussions included a conversation about sanctions that Obama had placed on Russia, with Flynn encouraging Russia not to retaliate too harshly because the incoming Trump administration would be different from Obama's.”
Certainly suspicious enough to warrant a question or two. We’ve certainly heard stories like this before, when Ronald Reagan’s campaign were alleged to have been secretly dealing with the Iranians not to release the American hostages until—what was it, on the day of Reagan’s inauguration—in exchange for a “deal,” which we would learn would be “arms for hostages.” Yates when on to say that she “supported” the probe regardless of the “rogue” element, and backed Flynn’s prosecution for lying to the FBI, saying it was “absolutely material” to the investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russians. She also claimed that she had never seen anything like the Justice Department dismissing charges of the like against Flynn, which was “highly irregular.”
The unbalanced nature of the Fox News piece, in which petty complaints about the “process” was given far greater emphasis over the actual crimes committed by Trump officials and the apparent effort to make a “deal” with the Russians in exchange for “help” in getting Trump elected. This is how Fox News operates, and this is how its viewers and readers are steered toward what Fox News is selling. Of course, when you are dealing with the printed word, it is kind of hard to get away with making simple-minded insinuations while ignoring context or facts, because that would make for a very short story; that is where Fox News is forced to be “fair.” But on Fox News broadcasts, it’s a different story, where blah, blah, blah partisan propaganda and yadda, yadda, yadda misinformation sufficiently fills the void.
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