RNC 2008: Fox News. They Report (To Make) You Decide (A Certain Way)

Photos By John Hoff, Top To Bottom, September 1, 2, 1.

So there was a Fox News camera crew at the State Capitol grounds as the anti-war march wrapped up, and a group of protesters were pretty much sitting around TAUNTING the Fox News guys...

Fox wanted to interview somebody but the protesters kept saying stuff like, "No way. You're Fox News. You'll distort what I say, take it out of context, take ten seconds of something I said and go off for ten minutes of commentary...(expletive) you, Fox News."

They turned toward me and I said, "I've DECIDED...I don't like Fox News."

They said, "Well, tell us that. Tell us why you don't like Fox News."

And I thought, "Yeah, like that's the part of the tape you'll use. Bull(expletive)."

I pointed to the yellow sign and said something like, "You see that yellow sign? That's why I'm here, because of what's behind that sign. I've seen how the mortgage crisis has messed up my North Side neighborhood. And what is behind that? Two Bush administrations, letting the mortgage industry go hog wild, letting their rich buddies rake in profits..and the whole time Fox News is like, rah rah rah."

They thanked me for taking the time to comment. I said something like, "Yeah, my 2.5 seconds of fame. I could give you 20 minutes of substantive comments, but if I said, 'We're mad as (expletive) and we're not going to take it anymore,' that's all you'd use."

I'm not kidding about that. This happened to me, once, in Seattle when I was interviewed by a news crew about an effort to overturn the No-Sitting-On-The-Sidewalk law. I said a bunch of stuff. They kept nodding, nodding...finally a senior activist said to me, "Look, just tell 'em you're mad as (expletive) and you're not going to take it anymore."

Bingo. That was the footage they used. All ten seconds of it.

Click here for an outstanding example of television distortion of reality.

(Yet somehow the reality leaks through in the images. The commentary in the video above appears to bear little relation to the images in the video)

Protesters who encountered Fox News signs in bus stops COULD NOT LEAVE THEM ALONE. Really, it's no wonder.

But I will confess: I am a regular reader of Fox News Dot Com. I click to CNN first, then I contrast with Fox News. It's just the screaming back-and-forth so-called "opinion and commentary" I can't freaking stand on Fox News; it sounds less like political discourse than a domestic abuse situation in need of a call to 911.