Sunday, June 18, 2017

Former Executive producer for the 700 Club explain how they were Fox News before Fox News and how "Liberal" became a dirty word.

Boo! Run, the Liberals are coming!
This HuffPo piece was written by Terry Heaton, a former 700 Club executive producer, who worked with Pat Robertson to manufacture the fake news that has now become a hallmark of the conservative media.

Here is an excerpt from his piece: 

Before Fox News, there was The 700 Club with CBN News and “TV Journalism With A Different Spirit.” We knew what we were doing in the exploitation of the word “liberal,” and truth-telling demands its deconstruction today. The all-or-nothing split between conflicting political narratives has reached its pinnacle with the election of Donald Trump, and it needs to be hacked into a million pieces.

William F. Buckley was among the first to give the word “liberal” a pejorative interpretation, but it was the wordsmith William Safire writing for Spiro Agnew who in 1969 elevated it to a political talking point in his famous speech that opened the war against the press during Richard Nixon’s secret battles in Vietnam. The word became the central weapon in a strategy that involved attacking the messenger instead of changing the message. 

That political strategy has been so effective to date that it has given birth to the idea that mainstream news is actually “fake news” and not to be believed in the administration of President Donald Trump. The number of people who now believe this falsehood is staggering, and it poses a real threat to our democracy. 

At The 700 Club, we exploited attacking the press in order to insert ourselves to the right of everybody else in presenting a Biblical, a.k.a. Republican perspective on current events. We offered a daily news program that expressed Republican party talking points that we marketed as a Christian worldview. Thus began the shifting of evangelicals to the GOP and the shifting of the GOP to the right. We served as the intellectual wing of the Moral Majority, although there was no theological love lost between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. 

So let’s look at these events closely, because it has a direct bearing on the conflict today. Let me be very clear: the right-wing “news” that we created was a political response to the progressive nature of news and information. It’s important to understand this, because “right-wing news” is oxymoronic. There is no such thing, because the right represents olds, not news. By definition, news is new, and new is progressive. That conservatives view this as a bias is fine, but elevating that to some evil command-and-control mechanism for political liberals is a false narrative. Rush Limbaugh has made a living off of this phony hegemony, as well as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and whole host of mostly broadcasting personalities. Why? Because it sells and has been selling for almost 50 years. 

But it’s entirely false, for the press is not the purveyor of fake news. That title belongs with those who create stories for political gain and clickthroughs. It may be politically expedient to label the mainstream as fake, but in order to do so, one’s source must be propaganda and nothing else. 

This is the model that was embraced, and promoted by Roger Ailes on Fox News.

He, like the 700 Club, recognized that there was a whole segment of the population who did not like hearing news stories that made them feel left behind by progress or marginalized because they lacked the education to understand the complexities of the world they were describing.

Instead they wanted conservative feel good stories that painted folks like themselves as heroes, and vilified the liberal "elites" who seemed like alien life forms to their rural sensibilities.

So today we are faced with open attacks on education, and educators, a dismissal of actual facts, and a deep mistrust for any media that is not Fox News, the Christian Broadcasting Network, or Right Wing talk radio.

And what happens when these folks are pandered to, and made to feel empowered?

Yep, that is exactly what you get.

13 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:40 AM

    "Intellectual" wing??

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4:48 AM

    And what happens when these folks are pandered to, and made to feel empowered?
    ----------
    Any right wing site I've ever visited, they are some of the nastiest people around. If that's their definition of "chtistianity," count me out!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous5:29 AM

    Jesus was a liberal.
    Read The Sermon On The Mount -- Matthew 5.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous5:39 AM

    Religion is personal and should be treated as separate and personal. And if that religion collects funds they should report it and be accountable as how spent. Corporations, Religion, Healthcare must stay out of our elections. Reverse Citizen United. Demand separation of church and state. Demand that the Supreme Court reverse Citizen United ruling. A Healthcare System, Research and Pharma owned by the American people. And Religious/cult organizations registered and regulated.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous6:00 AM

    Well isn’t that special!!!

    What does he want a Pulitzer for telling us they have been lying to the American public for years? Like we didn’t know, it is their loony following that needs to hear it.

    They need to clean up their act and tell their viewing audience they have sinned and are LIARS, although I am sure their audience has been so brain washed they will say it is all a plot by the liberals.

    They only way to start solving this problem is to get rid of the LIAR in the WH.

    By the way I am also sick and tired of them telling us that we are the problem, that we are causing the divide in the country. That getting rid of trump is only going to make things worse because his supporters will be unhappy.

    Yea right, the so-called president has told us many times he is only “working” for his supporters. Get over it, he is a traitor.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous7:14 AM

    nuG “I have alway been civil. Again, during the outrage of a rock and roll performance, machine gun references have been made but nobody could possibly think I want anybody’s lips near my machine gun.”
    "Nugent complained that there had been no signs of civility from “the left.”
    “They’re still going to burn down buildings if they disagree with your speech, and turn over cars and attack people if they don’t agree with you,”
    “I think that’s all something we needed to hear right now,”
    Fox News host Abby Huntsman concluded."
    "INSIGHTING"!?

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Insighting

    http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/i-am-reaching-out-across-the-aisle-ted-nugent-says-he-doesnt-want-obamas-lips-near-my-machine-gun/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous12:10 PM

      Always been civil, Ted? I beg to differ.
      Saw you in the 70s.

      Delete
  7. Anonymous7:27 AM

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-im-under-investigation-firing-fbi-director

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gingrich-trump-tweet-no-idea

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous8:09 AM

    This explains a lot to me and why Sarah Palin gained popularity repeating ill sentiments about people from urban areas including splitting they are not patriotic. How people who claim extreme Christianity quickly accept and praise illegitimate births, dropping out of high school to even elevate those choices to be ideal Christian role models confounds me! Humans are suckers for poor choices being distorted to extreme positives to feel good.

    I know a woman who in the last several years believes IMO a lot of crazy shit from listening to right wing radio and a Christian Scientist Church. Splitting is effective to program her and has taken root effecting her former rational thinking. She was ripe for candidate Trump and has become paranoid the government is ripping them off even if it is in reality Medicare drug deductible she is convinced it is fraud.

    She may be an example of what has become widespread fueling extreme anger and believing off the wall extreme lies.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:52 AM

      A lot of money to be made off the fearful, else how would $arah make her $$? Esther II has no hotline to God.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous1:53 PM

      Let alone live the screed she pushes.

      Delete
  9. Anonymous10:18 AM

    jeez..I wonder how many people robertson has personally managed to induce to convert to atheism.

    By now he is toxic as a voice of Christianity and an embarrassment to mankind

    ReplyDelete

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