Media Matters for America is doing a victory lap over their story about Fox News exec Bill Sammon supposedly lying repeatedly on air during the 2008 election after audio they have released shows Sammon saying he found the idea of Barack Obama being a socialist to be ‘far fetched’. But not so fast.
The watchdog group has actually produced a video about the story with blatantly deceptive editing, using trick editing that is so blatant that one wonders why they have such contempt for their fan base. Of course, that fan base includes Howie Kurtz and Greg Sargent. (Is it coincidence that these are the two reporters who were carrying water for Arianna Huffington on the recent Breitbart / Huffington story?)
I’ve done a video showing exactly how MMfA uses editing trickery to lie and frankly, every time I watch the original video I’m stunned with what they try to get away with. They do such a botch job of literally making Sammon say something he never said that repeated viewing make me almost admire their cajones. You’ll see.
But before you watch the video, let’s make clear the real goal of the exercise beyond trying to make Fox look bad. MMfA, Kurtz, Sargent and the rest of the pile-on blogs want to undercut the idea that Barack Obama is socialist by discrediting those claims as crazy lies. Again, they don’t just argue against the idea on the merits of the evidence – they need to discredit completely all sources that say it.
Here’s Sagent:
Now, Sammon is also claiming here that Obama’s behavior in office ultimately persuaded him that the original diagnosis of Obama as a socialist turned out to be correct after all. That in itself, of course, is also a ridiculous falsehood. (Emphasis added.)
Once again, Media Matters goal isn’t the truth – it’s discrediting ideas.
Here’s the original Media Matters piece.
And here’s part one of my analysis.