Keith Olbermann ended his program tonight with a reasonable request and expression of how we should quarantine Fox News!
CALL TO ACTION: Please send a link to the Video either at MSNBC or YouTube to your friends and family! And ask them to participate in the movement to Quarantine Fox News Channel in all public places!
I'm transcribing what Keith Olbermann said from my DVR, and will post the remainder when done, but this is the key part, where he suggests how we can all participate:
So, what to do? Viewer boycotts mean little. You are already here. You are not watching Fox News Channel. Advertiser Boycotts are of limited value. Most make barely a dent in a company. Besides which in this economy, an advertiser that found its sales boosted by association with malaria would start breading mosquitoes. If there is a solution, it is perhaps an indirect boycott. It is probably your experience, as it has been mine, that stores, bars, restaurants, waiting rooms, often show Fox News on their televisions. Don't write a letter. Don't make a threat. Just get up and explain if they will not change the channel, leave the place, and say calmly why it is you are taking your business elsewhere.
As soon as MSNBC posts the video I will add a link.
I think this is a powerful way we can all do our part! What do you think? I know it works because I remember reading a wonderful diary here last year by somebody who succeeded in having Fox News turned off the television in his company's break room.
Are you on board?
Update: Here's what followed the paragraph above, that darthstar mentions in the first comment of this diary:
If you know a viewer of that channel, show them this tape, or just the tape of the attacks on Doctor Tiller that set the stage for his assassination. Fox News Channel will never restrain itself from incitement to murder and terrorism. Not until its profits begin to decline; when its growth stops. So, not so much a boycott here as a quarantine. Because this has got to stop.
That I have a commercial conflict of interest here is obvious, so I'll make the first symbolic contribution to this quarantine. One of my pleasures, obviously, is constantly criticizing him in that Ted Baxter voice. It is the idea of laughter as a social sanction against inflexible behavior. But this is no time for laughter. This is serious. Serious as death. Serious as George Tiller's death. So as of this show's end I will retire the name, the photograph and the caricature. The words may still be quoted in the future as developments dictate, but the goal here is to get this blindly irresponsible man and his ilk off the air. We are only in the television news business, a profession that is at times about two inches up from carnival barking. We must again separate it, television, from terrorism! And we must again make the world safe for people condemned by the Fox News Channel.
Update 2: The video is now available at MSNBC: Olbermann: Fox News' Killer Complicity. MSNBC uses iframes, so I can't embed the video here, but thanks to Scarce in the comments it is already up on YouTube, where hopefully it will get millions of views:
Update 3: As secret38b brought up in the comments, following Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow had a powerful interview with Frank Schaeffer, which you can catch online at MSNBC. (Sorry, I can't find a Youtube of this to embed.) The interview was a follow-up to Mr. Schaeffer's post at Huffington Post this afternoon, apologizing for inciting hate in his past:
My late father and I share the blame (with many others) for the murder of Dr. George Tiller the abortion doctor gunned down on Sunday. Until I got out of the religious right (in the mid-1980s) and repented of my former hate-filled rhetoric I was both a leader of the so-called pro-life movement and a part of a Republican Party hate machine masquerading as the moral conscience of America.
(snip)
The same hate machine I was part of is still attacking all abortionists as "murderers." And today once again the "pro-life" leaders are busy ducking their personal responsibility for people acting on their words. The people who stir up the fringe never take responsibility. But I'd like to say on this day after a man was murdered in cold blood for preforming abortions that I -- and the people I worked with in the religious right, the Republican Party, the pro-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church, all contributed to this killing by our foolish and incendiary words.
I am very sorry.
How I (and Other "Pro-Life" Leaders) Contributed to Dr. Tiller's Murder
Keith Olbermann is correct. Fox News Channel gives people a platform to incite hate that result in terrorist acts. All this fear and hate stoking produces other consequences that are not reported on the 24/7 news. A case in point, this comment posted here:
Ironically, I forced myself to watch Bill/Hannity
Just to see how they would respond. I can't find the words to express the outrage, fury and disgust I feel for these people and their supporters.
I will happily pledge to adhere to the diarist's request. This channel is so blatantly hateful - it's bash Obama and those evil libruls 24/7.
So many lies - it's breathtaking. My husband is obsessed/possessed by right wing BS that he has IMHO become delusional - seriously. This has been building since Clinton's days and his time in a car listening to Radio HATE. The verbal abuse I've received as a result has finally reached maximum impact - I'm out of here. I wish I could make these people understand that they affect real people, with real lives, and that there are consequences, however, it would no doubt be like arguing with a barb wire fence.
They should be glad that I personally do not feel that murdering those with whom I do not agree is an act of heroism.
by smythy on Mon Jun 01, 2009 at 09:52:28 PM EDT
CALL TO ACTION: Please send a link to the Video either at MSNBC or YouTube to your friends and family! And ask them to participate in the movement to Quarantine Fox News Channel in all public places!