L. J. Siden

To the editor,

I was disappointed in reading Mr. Meade's letter last week — not so much as to the content, but by the fact that he has stooped to using school-yard name calling. Apparently the name of the week for conservatives is "sycophant". Not only does Mr. Meade us the term on a number of occasions, but also contributing editorial writer Michelle Malkin uses term in the same edition.

In his letter, Mr. Meade was concerned that White House Communications Director Anita Dunn stated that "Fox News is opinion journalism masquerading as news" and that it has become a "communications arm for the Republican Party". He would have us believe that all legitimate news agencies are being "targeted" by the White House. The truth is, Fox engages in practices that a legitimate news network would never do, regularly promoting GOP talking points and misinforming its audience on key policy debates.

Since President Barack Obama's election, Fox News has dropped all but the barest pretense of objectivity. It has become George Orwell's "Ministry of Truth" by promoting "Tea Parties" and other political demonstrations; it portrays every perceived White House defeat, such as Chicago's failure to secure the 2016 Olympic Games, as a victory for something called "Fox Nation". While I have nothing against the "Tea Party Movement" or demonstrations — it's the American way, I do believe that if Fox is going to bill itself as "fair and balanced" it should be "reporting" news and not "creating" news. This is further demonstrated by Fox News chief executive Bill Shine, who has proudly boasted that his network aims to be "the voice of opposition". What happened to "fair and balanced"?

In his letter, Mr. Meade ironically refers to Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda under the Hitler regime. I say ironic because Fox News has become the heir of Joseph Goebbels — either knowingly or unknowingly. There isn't really any significant difference between the propaganda of Goebbels in the 30s and 40s and the propaganda of people like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. The principals outlined by Goebbels and followed by these correspondents are relatively simple: Don't publish all the news, just make every item of news serve a certain purpose; confine yourself to a few points, even false or misleading points, and repeat them over and over; if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it.

Not long after the terror attacks of 9/11, the propaganda machine at Fox News began repeating the lie that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. There was absolutely no evidence but "news" anchors and guests at Fox repeated the Big Lie over and over again and millions of Americans believed it. Goebbels' Big Lie technique was put into practice by Fox "News" and it worked. They conditioned millions of Americans to swallow lies that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, biological weapons, chemical weapons and that Iraq had the capacity to launch an air attack o the United States with weapons of mass destruction — all claims that were pure fiction. But Fox "News" and right-wing radio DJs kept repeating these lies and millions of Americans believed. People who questioned the lies told were attacked as being "Saddam lovers", traitors, anti-American and they almost certainly wanted the terrorists to win!

Fox repeatedly deceives its audience. A 2003 study found that 80-percent of those who primarily relied on Fox News believed falsehoods about why the U.S. invaded Iraq. A recent poll found that 72-percent of self-identified Fox News viewers believe the false claim that health care reform will provide insurance to undocumented immigrants; 79-percent believe it will use taxpayer dollars for abortions (it won't); and 75-percent believe that it will allow the government to put the elderly to death. Almost needless to say, all of these things are categorically false. The "death panels" falsehood, for example, was invented by serial misinformer Betsy McCaughey, amplified by Sarah Palin, and then broadcast day and night by Fox News. And so it goes, day after day.

While Fox claims to be outraged over the White House pointing our that Fox News network is blatantly partisan, the fact is that it was singing a different tune under the Bush administration. In 2008, White House counselor Ed Gillespie was claiming that NBC was guilty of deceptive editing and blurring the lines between the "news" and "opinion", a charge not unlike the one the Obama White House has leveled against Fox News — and that's hypocrisy at its finest.

In an unrelated observation, Mr. Meade points out that Mr. Kundra, the administration's information officer, had been arrested as a youth. I wonder if Mr. Meade knows that George W. Bush was the first president in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record?

L. J. Siden

Gilmanton