Media Responsibility and Politics: Fox News “Assassination Humor”

[Bunz]

So you REALLY think Liz Trotta is trying to encourage assassination??! A whole movie is not as bad as a slip of the tongue? And someone nuts enough to assassinate someone would be all fired up by someone mispeaking, and then laughing about her mistake, but not by a whole MOVIE?? Now you aren't debating seriously.

Did you miss the part in my most where I said:
I slammed this movie when it came out
That movie was irresponsible, moreso than what Trotta said, but it is important and necessary we examine the differences. This woman was a political pundit. That movie was a fictional piece. But by your assertion movies like The Sum Of All Fears is out of line as well.

 

[Libsmasher]

Did you miss the part in my most where I said:
I slammed this movie when it came out
That movie was irresponsible, moreso than what Trotta said, but it is important and necessary we examine the differences. This woman was a political pundit. That movie was a fictional piece. But by your assertion movies like The Sum Of All Fears is out of line as well.

Uh, just a second - YOU are the one pontificating on what is "out of line" --- I support free speech.

Trotta made a mistake. She obviously misspoke. If you think political pundits never misspeak, you're just wrong.

So the movie was a "fictional piece".

Misspeaking for 2.3 seconds trumps a 90 minute fictional piece???

 

[Bunz]

Uh, just a second - YOU are the one pontificating on what is "out of line" --- I support free speech.

Trotta made a mistake. She obviously misspoke. If you think political pundits never misspeak, you're just wrong.

So the movie was a "fictional piece".

Misspeaking for 2.3 seconds trumps a 90 minute fictional piece???

In an earlier post I mentioned that I have said both of those names probably thousands of times, Obama and Osama, a difference of a single letter. How many times have you misspoken and mixed up those names?
I havent and I doubt the far majority have.

 

[top gun]

As citizen consumers, we are limited in scope with regard to both the sources and types of political information available to us. In fact, certain demographic populations unbelievably receive the majority of their political information from political campaign advertisements and attack ads. While younger demographics get their “news” almost entirely from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.

Yet, an astounding trend has been appearing lately with regard to the credibility of media. Liz Trotta, a paid Fox News contributor, recently joked about killing not only Osama, but also Obama too. Keith Olbermann already ripped Hilary a new one for mentioning the RFK assassination as a reason for staying in the race, but Liz Trotta took it to a whole new level. The humor she displays completely fails in the eyes of the public due to the real death threats that Obama has already been receiving.

What do you do with influential pundits that excessively run their mouths and cross bounds that shouldn’t be crossed? There is a growing petition that calls for the firing of Liz Trotta, while others think a minor fine would be appropriate.

NY Times article on it: http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/assassination-humor-fox-crosses-a-line/#comment-60263

Assassination joke: http://youtube.com/watch?v=BjYpkvcmog0
Response: http://youtube.com/watch?v=MEIdj8jQOlc&feature=related

Liz Trotta “apology”: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZvjRv3Xhy-s&feature=related

What should the role of media be in politics: to entertain the ignorant through crude humor or to actually inform people of the thematic facts with the goal of producing informed citizens?

The Liz Trotta rant was FOX at it's best... and of course that means it's usual worst.

Hillary tired from "fighting windmills" let her real intentions be known. Not that she wishes assassination on Senator Obama but that she just wants to hang around hurting the Party long after she has the math on her side to win anything.

Unfortunately when you're this desperate and grasping for straws that aren't really there often insensitive comments appear... although it's not the first time she's bounced around the subject.

Hopefully after this weekend we can really crank it up and get this head to head between Senator Obama and John McSame started!

 

[pocketfullofshells]

Forget about it - the last thing this country needs is leftwing Speech Police to tell people what they can joke about. You obamabots joke for months about McCain having alzheimers or dying, and someone cracks one about your precious cult leader and you whimper like babies. Why don't you go to Cuba? Nobody can joke about politicians there.

Funny thing...the Secret Service tends to not find jokes like this funny...and I guess they must be all libs.

 

[pocketfullofshells]

I almost forgot about this - in 2006 they made a MOVIE about Bush getting assassinated! Talk about "media responsibility"!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0853096/

Now, which is worse, a slip of the tongue, or a WHOLE MOVIE??

As I recall, the Right Bashed it and yelled about it as well as many Liberal Groups. Also I don't think it was even a US movie, but I may be mistaken on that.

 

[Libsmasher]

In an earlier post I mentioned that I have said both of those names probably thousands of times, Obama and Osama, a difference of a single letter. How many times have you misspoken and mixed up those names?
I havent and I doubt the far majority have.

Oh, so you think Liz Trotta deliberately did this? That's absurd - and I HAVE heard news/pundit people make the same mistake, but I don't remember who they were now. I'll see if I can research that. And it's easy to see how they would - the names differ by one letter, both are in the news all the time - no dark mystery at all.

Incidentally, here's excerpts from the movie review of Death of a President from the el primo super-lib movie reviewer, Roger Ebert:

TORONTO -- "Death of a President," the documentary-style speculative fiction about the assassination of the 43rd President of the United States, is seamless, intelligent and maybe even necessary to an understanding of George W. Bush's role in the world today, and his place in the wider scope of history. Especially when public awareness of the facts about his administration lags so far behind what has already been documented.

We all know that four U.S. presidents have been assassinated, and that every president faces that threat every day. Gerald Ford, one of our most benign chief executives, survived two murder attempts in the month of September 1975 alone -- and he was never as divisive and generally reviled as Bush Jr., whose methods and ideology have been vilified as Hitlerian in real-life speeches and demonstrations that we've all seen already. (I'm speaking only about the real-life hatred the man has evoked worldwide, not the aptness of the Nazi comparison or whether such virulence is justified by his words and actions in office.)

There's no reason to be threatened by this film, any more than there was to be by "United 93" or "World Trade Center." It's responsible and observant about the world we live in -- and it's certainly not going to give anybody any ideas they haven't had already. In its use of real or fictionalized narratives to examine recent political events -- especially the aftermath of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq -- "Death of a President" isn't all that different from innumerable other films in this year's festival, from "The Host" to "Pan's Labyrinth" to "Rescue Dawn."

He lavishly praises the film, compares Bush to Hitler, implicitly rejects the idea that it could give some nut "ideas", and even calls it RESPONSIBLE!

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060912/EDITOR/60912001

The hysteria over Liz Trotta's slip-up remains brazenly hypocritical, and yet another omen of the probable PC regime of no criticism, slips of the tongue, jokes or anything else about the Holy Kult Leader if Obama gets elected.

Really, give it up.