The Media Attacks Obama

Fox spews it, and the rest of the media picks it up and runs with it.

MoveOn (via email):

Media watchdog group Media Matters has chronicled how FOX spent months trying to smear Obama by associating him with Reverend Wright's words. Greenwald's new video shows how the attacks successfully migrated to the mass media—Tim Russert repeated Sean Hannity's smears virtually word-for-word!

Meanwhile, the big networks all but ignored Pastor John Hagee, whose endorsement John McCain was "honored" and "proud" to receive. Hagee says Katrina was God's punishment for homosexuality, Jews are to blame for anti-Semitism, and Catholicism is the "Whore of Babylon" and "a cult."

It gets worse. At the same time they relentlessly reported on Obama's pastor, most network journalists also ignored Rick Parsley, a televangelist who McCain called his "spiritual guide" when accepting his endorsement last month. Parsley has said:

I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed...

Ignoring McCain's spiritual advisers while going after Obama's is what we expect from FOX, which is more a Republican mouthpiece than a real news organization. But when real news outlets follow FOX's lead, we have to hold them accountable. Otherwise, FOX will continue to elevate smear after smear against Democrats into the mass media in 2008. Click here to see the new video and sign the petition.

The attacks on Obama are so bad that this morning Fox anchor Chris Wallace called the network out and Brian Kilmeade even stormed off the set (in part) because of it. Just take a look at this unedited version of a sermon by Obama's pastor Wright and compare it to what all of the networks have been playing over and over:

There's a war going on, our current administration is corrupt and drunk with power, the future of the planet is being ignored, our economy is teetering, and all that's on the tv is what Obama's pastor said. Our media is corrupting the entire electoral process. Enough is enough.