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Well done Gibbs, well done.

I don't think I'd call Hannity a fringe hack. He's an ideologue to be sure, but the guys who call Art Bell are fringe hacks. Hannity has a nationally televised and watched show.

Piece of paper with opponent previous actions: 20 cents

Plane ticket to Fox headquarters: 500$

6 minutes live on Fox: 30,000$

Embarrasing a Spin Master at his own game: Priceless.

For everything else Eldar Express Card can be used at most craftworlds.

M.

I'm a big fan of anybody who sticks it to those right-wing witch-hunters at FOX news. Granted, I also believe that unbiased news is an extinct species in the U.S., but they are the worst.

Hannity is certainly a hack ideologue. Another merchant of self-aggrandizing anger and disingenuous outrage. The fact that he has a large audience doesn’t make him more mainstream, it just makes him more scary.

How can you think this guy is scary Manny?

* Without the appropriate talking points he’s a babbling idiot. With the talking points he’s just an idiot. Sorry I’m insulting idiots again.

* He’s the right wing version of Olberman. Neither can argue with any cogency for more than 7.5 seconds. My nine year old would clean both their clocks in a debate. I swear if you actually pay attention, you lose IQ points at a minutely rate. I use their Hannity/Combs show on the road to Austin on Friday for a few minutes because its so hilarious it wakes me up.

*Actually you have to have sympathy for the guy. Like Edwards he probably can never go outside for fear that the wind will tussle his carefully coifed blow-dried hair.

Have you read one of his books? Or even picked it up in the bookstore? I have never had hypertension in my life, and I could feel my blood pressure rising.

Olbermann's moderately better. But not a whole lot. A lot of the stuff he rants about is actually worth ranting about. His piece on 9/11/06, for example, about the WTC site, was really, really good.

No Manny my man I have not read one of his books. I didn't know Hannity had written any. My first thought is: Hannity can read?

I was kind of underwhelmed by the link, Gibbs point was a stretch at best. When the best and most coherent point is put forward by Colmes, I think you're in trouble.

Frazzled wrote:How can you think this guy is scary Manny?

* Without the appropriate talking points he’s a babbling idiot. With the talking points he’s just an idiot. Sorry I’m insulting idiots again.

* He’s the right wing version of Olberman. Neither can argue with any cogency for more than 7.5 seconds. My nine year old would clean both their clocks in a debate. I swear if you actually pay attention, you lose IQ points at a minutely rate. I use their Hannity/Combs show on the road to Austin on Friday for a few minutes because its so hilarious it wakes me up.

I don't think that's particularly fair on Olberman. Olberman obviously doesn't like the Republicans and uses his editorials largely as a platform to demonstrate their failings... but that doesn't make it bad journalism. He constructs his arguments pretty well and bases them around facts.

Hannity doesn't do that at all. He spouts Republican talking points, often word for word, and never builds an argument beyond one or two lines. When people try to raise the obvious counter arguments he shouts over them.

They both have bias, but bias is not the only measure of journalism... it isn't even one of the big ones.

The fact that someone as poorly read as Hannity is successful at 'discussing' political arguments.....says a great deal about this country.


If you like watching Hannity losing his cool;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doKkOSMaTk4

Who better than Hitchens?

Your bias is showing Sebster. A supporter could make the same arguments about Hannity. You just don't have any Hannity supporters about.

Someone like myself is going to argue they are both vomiting up talking points. I'd cite lots of examples, but again, I can't watch Olberman either and I'm not going to melt my few remaining brain cells looking either of these guys up on the internet. Thats probably at least a misdemeanor battery on my brain cells.

Frazzled wrote:Your bias is showing Sebster. A supporter could make the same arguments about Hannity. You just don't have any Hannity supporters about.

Someone like myself is going to argue they are both vomiting up talking points. I'd cite lots of examples, but again, I can't watch Olberman either and I'm not going to melt my few remaining brain cells looking either of these guys up on the internet. Thats probably at least a misdemeanor battery on my brain cells.

They could make that argument. That doesn't mean the argument would hold water, but it could be made.

Unbiased journalism is very much like the Holy Grail. Maybe it existed once, but you certainly aren't going to find it today. True, the information age has made the dissemination of opinion far easier than its ever been. You'd be hard pressed to find a reporter who doesn't have a stake in the blogo-sphere or editorial pages. But that same ubiquity of information has also given us the capacity to fact check like never before. Was news unbiased in the past, or was it simply that we didn't have the necessary data to question it?

Truthfully I suspect that it was some combination of the two. News was more reliable in the past. It had to be. With the slower flow of events the emphasis for any successful journalist was on getting the 'scoop'. So much effort had to go into simply getting to print that deadlines made the construction of any opinion practically impossible. Now that information moves at the speed of light being first really doesn't matter because being second is determined by a matter of...seconds.

Frazzled wrote:Your bias is showing Sebster. A supporter could make the same arguments about Hannity. You just don't have any Hannity supporters about.

Someone like myself is going to argue they are both vomiting up talking points. I'd cite lots of examples, but again, I can't watch Olberman either and I'm not going to melt my few remaining brain cells looking either of these guys up on the internet. Thats probably at least a misdemeanor battery on my brain cells.

Nah, there's plenty of dodgy lefties floating around out there, making arguments based on emotive one liners. There's an annoying guy called Franken who's made a whole career out of it. Michael Moore's the classic example.

But there's this assumption that any bias makes the source as unreliable as any other bias and it just doesn't hold up. Olberman gives more substantive arguments than Hannity, people just can't argue otherwise.

I'd agree in part, disagree in part.

1750s - 1905ish: disagree, at least in the US. The 17 and 1800s were marked by biased reporting. Indeed the Spanish American war was pretty much started by Hurst ("yellow journalism")using sensationalism to stoke papers.

1930s - 1970s I'll give you the benefit of the doubt there. But thats the Golden era of reporting-Murrow and the other greats. Papers prided themselves on fact checking.

After: No we're just uncovering how badly reporters actually report, and how biased they really are. Is it escalating might be the interesting question.

dogma wrote:Unbiased journalism is very much like the Holy Grail. Maybe it existed once, but you certainly aren't going to find it today.

Being unbiased doesn't make it good, and having bias doesn't make it bad. Good journalism simply attempts to express a story in an open, honest way, and asks the reader to view the journalist's story with a critical mind.

Truthfully I suspect that it was some combination of the two. News was more reliable in the past. It had to be. With the slower flow of events the emphasis for any successful journalist was on getting the 'scoop'. So much effort had to go into simply getting to print that deadlines made the construction of any opinion practically impossible. Now that information moves at the speed of light being first really doesn't matter because being second is determined by a matter of...seconds.

Just type 'yellow journalism' into wiki and see what it comes up with. Journalism has always been about this good.

sebster wrote:
Being unbiased doesn't make it good, and having bias doesn't make it bad. Good journalism simply attempts to express a story in an open, honest way, and asks the reader to view the journalist's story with a critical mind.

I agree wholeheartedly.

sebster wrote:
Just type 'yellow journalism' into wiki and see what it comes up with. Journalism has always been about this good.

I was thinking about as far back as the Cronkite era. You are certainly right that earlier periods were marked by major factual distortions. Though in that era it was a function of general public ignorance; as opposed to false credibility established through the dilution of the vetting process we see in modern times.

Agreed there Dogma. I would note though I don't think anyone bills these two as journalists. Fox doesn't for hannity, and I believe after some dustup olberman was removed from "reporting" or something. So they're both at the Air America/Limbaugh commentary stage.

Olbermann was taken off the election coverage team, because his bias got a bit over the top. He's still got his show. Both he and Hannity are put forth as journalists and commentators.

I like Rachel Maddow better.

Do they really call themselves journalists Manny? You can have a talk show without being a journalist. if you are correct though, that’s almost embarrassing.

Maybe I’m wrong about Hannity being portrayed as a journalist. I’m not entirely clear of the distinction when you have a TV show on a news channel talking about current events.

Here are the bio pages from their TV shows’ websites:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,1242,00.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080446/

PS: If you want to type something shorter than Mannahnin (and I don't blame you), my first name's okay. I know a couple of guys named Manny IRL and it just feels a little funny, even though it is a logical contraction of my handle.

Sorry I missed your first name my man. I misstype Mannahnin 5 times out of 6.

EDIT: I want the 30 seconds of my life back where my eyes shut down on seeing the Hannity bio pic in an emergency effort to prevent damage to my brain

He is awful. It's Ragnar.

Excellent Ragnar, if I slip don't hold it against me, Frazzled is not just a place, its a state of mind.

While both Olbermann and Hannity are propagandists. I think the only real difference between the two is Olbermann knows himself to be crazy and Hannity has no clue he is.

Edit: I hate spelling

Crimson Devil wrote:While both Olbermann and Hannity are propagandists. I think the only real difference between the two is Olbermann knows himself to be crazy and Hannity has no clue he is.

Edit: I hate spelling

See, I've got a a real problem with 'propagandists'. Hannity takes the talking points of the GOP and parrots them, in some cases word for word. Calling him a propagandist is fine. Olberman doesn't copy the Democrat press releases. He argues his own view and it will differ from the Democrats.

There's a clear difference between the two, and if you can't see it then I doubt you're really able to assess any story that comes your way.

I stand by my statement. While I enjoy Olbermann's sense of humor, I'm not blind to his agenda.

Most Republicans use the exact wording of the talking points because they either lack imagination or thesauruses.

I hate Hannity, I hate him so much. Yet everyday when I get off of work at 4 here in Atlanta my radio is tuned to WSB 750 and who should be coming on other than Mr. Sean Hannity! I listen to 30 minutes of his show sometimes, other times I just can't bare how slowed that man is and I change it to oldies or something. If there is anything that I can add to this discussion is that his listeners are probably partially brain dead. He is also the master of taking clips of Obama speeches out of context.

Edit: Just watched Christopher Hitchens, that was pure gold.

Hannity is awful; Colmes is worse, because he claims to be a liberal (you lying right-centrist dog) and he lets this raving idiot run off at the mouth... oh, and he works at Fox.