Sometimes Reality is stranger than Fiction. Sometimes Fox News forgets the "Balanced part" of their equation.
Election Night 2012 -- was one of times ....
Karl Rove and Fox News: A 'civil war' over election results?
by David Bauder, Associated Press, csmonitor.com -- Nov 8, 2012
The on-air spectacle of Fox News analyst Karl Rove publicly questioning his network's call of the election for Barack Obama happened because Rove and Fox's decision desk both had pieces to a puzzle that the other wasn't aware of, a network executive said Wednesday.
Far from an embarrassment, the incident proved Rove's value to the network as more than an analyst, said Michael Clemente, Fox News Channel executive vice president of news editorial.
[...]
It led to Fox anchor Megyn Kelly getting up from her desk and marching down a hallway to question the off-air analysts responsible for the network's election calls.
The incident was "an odd civil war," noted Tampa Bay Times news analyst Eric Deggans.
[...]
Sometimes Fox
so-called News Analysts find themselves looking for someone --
anyone -- to blame. And sometimes
a has-been GOP Political Operative finds himself desperately trying to CYA -- with his
"Investors."
The post-Election spin of today -- is one of times ....
Conservatives Struggle To Explain How Mitt Romney Lost 2012 Presidential Election
by Sabrina Siddiqui, HuffingtonPost -- 11/09/2012
[...]
GOP strategist Karl Rove, who was one of the first to pin Romney’s loss on Hurricane Sandy, concluded that Obama actually “succeeded by suppressing the vote” -- in other words, the president somehow prevented voters from casting their ballots. Rove did not fully explain his claim, perhaps because there is literally no evidence to support it, but instead insisted that the Obama campaign engaged in the sort of character assassination from which Romney never fully recovered. But the best was yet to come: Rove said the Romney campaign did not adequately defend itself against the attacks on the GOP nominee’s business record, prompting Rove’s super PAC to give it a shot. “We don't do defense all that well,” Rove concluded, somehow failing to mention that his two groups, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, spent a combined $300 million on the 2012 race.
[...]
"News" Agencies really should start to question the value of employing "commentators" who so obviously have a personal stake in the results they are trying to create -- on their air time.
That or remove the word "News" from their Network logos.
Karl Rove rejects reality
by Howard Kurtz, CNN -- Nov 9, 2012
[...]
But Rove occupies a rather unique perch at Fox, and not just because he jumped from the Bush White House to the role of conservative cable commentator.
Rove, who also has a Wall Street Journal column, helped create two political action committees, American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Political Strategies, that raised and spent about $175 million in this campaign, most of it on television ads promoting Mitt Romney or attacking Obama. He was, in every sense of the word, a full-fledged political player.
But he was also Fox's most visible contributor, appearing far more often than Sarah Palin, delivering his political insights on shows from morning to night.
[...]
Still, Rove undoubtedly wants to preserve his reputation as a political seer, which is why it was so stunning when he went rogue on Tuesday night.
[...]
May the
Karl Rove effect, teach us a vital lesson about the quaint theory that:
Money = Speech ...
Election Watch: Karl Rove Vs. the Arithmetic
by James Poniewozik, Media Critic, Time.com -- Nov. 07, 2012
[...]
It was an earlier night than expected even by many who thought Obama would win, as NBC and Fox called his re-election at about 11:15 p.m. ET. But after Fox called Ohio and thus the US for the President, Rove immediately began complaining, on Fox’s air, that Fox had called the election too early. “Do you believe that Ohio has been settled?” Chris Wallace asked him. “No, I don’t,” Rove said, adding that he had the director of the Romney Ohio campaign on the phone. “I would be very cautious of intruding in this process.”
[...]
And yet apparently no one in Fox’s studio felt empowered to tell him that, just because he’d raised a squillion dollars for his Republican SuperPAC this election, he is not entitled to have the decision desk hauled out to answer to him like chefs who sent out an undercooked steak. It’s the sort of thing that might cause you to examine your mission as a journalistic network. I’m not waiting up for that to happen, though.
In the end, Rove is a numbers guy too, and he finally had to concede to the arithmetic -- but not before creating a defining image of a partisan, and a network, at war with the very reality it could not avoid reporting.
... and that lesson?
That Reality has a decidedly -- objective fact-based bias.
That, and that there is another theory that the Backers of Rove have yet to fathom:
Citizens = Voters
And as Citizens we actually value the democratic process, where all citizens get an equal Voice, and an equal Vote.
Democracy should not be "For Sale" to the highest, untrackable bidders. Maybe recent antics of Karl Rove can teach them that lesson?