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Fox News Chief Jokes About Obama As A Terrorist
Video: Fox News' Repeated Attempts To Discredit Obama
The Huffington Post Melinda Henneberger Posted March 9, 2007 05:32 PMContact/tips: melinda@huffingtonpost.com
READ MORE: Nevada, Harry Reid
The Huffington Post can confirm that the Nevada Democratic Party has decided to back out of a Fox News-sponsored presidential debate in August following Fox President Roger Ailes's recent remarks comparing Democratic Senator Barack Obama to al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
Adam Green, a spokesman for MoveOn.org, said the Nevada Democratic Party had informed them of the decision: "Earlier today, a representative of the Nevada party called us and said that Fox was being dropped and that they were in the process of notifying their allies and Fox."
Neither Fox News nor a spokeswoman for the Nevada Democratic Party returned calls seeking comment.
David Rhodes, vice president of Fox News, said that he had received no such notification: "We have not received official word from the Nevada State Democratic Party disclosing a change in debate plans," he said in a statement posted on the Drudge Report.
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had already announced that he would not participate in the Fox debate. His party has faced pressure from the more than 265,000 people who signed a petition calling Fox "a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, not a legitimate news channel" and urging Nevada officials to cancel.
Danny Coyle, a MoveOn.org member who serves on the Executive Board of the Carson City Democratic Central Committee, yesterday offered a resolution calling on the state party to drop Fox, and it passed overwhelmingly among the grassroots Democrats in attendance.
"I am glad and relieved that the Nevada Democratic leadership has come to its senses," Coyle said. "Any kind of relationship with Fox is bad for the party."
At first, Senator Reid defended the decision to work with Fox, reasoning that it might help Democratic candidates reach out to right-leaning Fox viewers. But party activists argued from the start that any connection with Fox was a mistake.
Robert Greenwald, director of the movie Outfoxed, called the final decision a "victory for truth and journalism." Some 280,000 people have viewed Greenwald's new YouTube film "Fox Attacks: Obama" - located with the petition at http://www.foxattacks.com/. "By standing up to Fox's right-wing smears," Greenwald said, "the patriotic grassroots, Netroots, Senator Reid, Senator Edwards, and the Nevada Democrats have all worked together to protect one of the most important elements of a free society - the press."
And Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn.org Civic Action, said he hoped the decision would "set a precedent within the party that Fox should be treated as a right-wing mis-information network, not legitimized as a neutral source of news."
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 8:25 PM
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