Out of Context

Taking things out of context has become one of the most popular habits of the Right Wing Media. Rush does it, Fox does it, Drudge does it, and the king of it is O'Reilly. Luckily we have Media Matters for America to point it out to us. It's hard to spot sometimes, and it can be sneaky. They are good at it, making an art of it. The Bush Administration has used these outlets from day one by taking so much out of context themselves (see John Kerry flip-flopper from the election, Al Gore claiming he invented the Internet, etc.). Now everyone knows Gore never said that and Kerry wasn't any more of a flip-flopper than Bush. So everyone knows about this Cindy Sheehan camping out at Bush's ranch waiting to talk to him. She recently got taken extremely out of context by the media mentioned above. I will link you directly to the story at Media Matters.

The most blatant out of context report I've ever seen occurred on the O'Reilly Factor. I wasn't actually watching it, but I saw it on the Al Franken Show (televised on Sundance 10:30 PM to 11:30 PM CST weeknights, on Air America Radio or AirAmericaradio.com from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM CST weekdays). Senator Joe Biden (possibly, and the way I feel now, hopefully our next President) was on ABC with George Stephanapolous. George asked him what he thought about Abu Ghraib. Biden answered that an independent committee, similar to the 9/11 Commission, should be appointed to look into everything that happened at the prison and advise accordingly. Then George asked if the prison should be shut down, and Biden answered that yes, he thinks it should be shut down, but he would like a committee to be formed to make sure that is the necessary action.

Well, O'Reilly had better ideas. On his show he blasted Biden for saying the prison should be shut down - O'Reilly went on to play the video of Stephanopolous asking what Biden thought about Abu Ghraib - and used the answer that Abu Ghraib should be shut down. Nothing about the committee, just that it should be shut down. O'Reilly said, Mr. Biden, you are wrong. What I think is that an independent committee, similar to the 9/11 Commission, should be appointed to look into everything that happened at the prison and advise accordingly. Seriously. It was word for word. He took Biden's words and made them his own! I laughed for 5 minutes at that one. But you know what? He got away with it. Every viewer thought it was O'Reilly's idea and that Biden is calling for Abu Ghraib to be shut down. I have to hand it to them - it works. But it's just low down and dirty.