November 20, 2009 12:32 am ET
Quick Fact: Beck advanced dubious claim that "[n]owhere in the Constitution can you find" authority for health reform legislation
During his Fox News show, Glenn Beck claimed that "[n]owhere in the Constitution can you find any of this" while he pointed to two stacks of paper representing the Senate and House health care bills. Contrary to Beck's suggestion that Congress does not have the authority to enact health care reform legislation and the implication that health reform is unconstitutional, numerous legal experts have disputed these claims, including University of California, Irvine law professor and Constitutional expert Erwin Chemerinsky, who explained that "there is no doubt that bills passed by House and Senate committees are constitutional."
November 19, 2009 8:33 pm ET
Quick Fact: Beck falsely claims that under the Senate health care bill, "You don't get a single benefit until 2014"
During his November 19 Fox News program, Glenn Beck falsely claimed that under the Senate health care bill, "All of the benefits of this bill don't kick in until when? You don't get a single benefit until 2014." He later added: "[G]uess what, you're not going to get jack for five whole years" after the bill is passed.
November 19, 2009 7:42 pm ET
Conservative media frequently accuse progressives of "raping" Americans
Conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage frequently employ rape metaphors when discussing progressives or progressive policies. For example, Beck said that New Yorkers are "being raped by [their] government," while Limbaugh, during a discussion of health care, told his listeners: "Get ready to get gang-raped again.
November 19, 2009 5:54 pm ET
Fox News' year in apologies: fake videos, false info, cutting and pasting from GOP
On November 19, co-host Jane Skinner apologized for Happening Now "mistakenly" airing a fake video of Sarah Palin's book tour "crowds." This was not the first time Fox News has apologized for airing fake videos and false information.
November 19, 2009 5:41 pm ET
Quick Fact: Limbaugh falsely claims undocumented immigrants "are covered" under House health care bill
On his November 19 radio show, Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants "are covered" under the recently passed House health care bill. In fact, the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962) stipulates that those "not lawfully present" may not receive subsidies to purchase insurance.
November 19, 2009 4:56 pm ET
Quick Fact: Dr. Limbaugh promotes false notion that abortion is linked to breast cancer
On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh told a caller that "there are studies that say abortions increase the chances of breast cancer." In fact, the American Cancer Society says that "research studies have not found a cause-and-effect relationship between abortion and breast cancer," and the National Cancer Institute states that it found that "having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman's subsequent risk of developing breast cancer."
November 19, 2009 4:25 pm ET
WSJ falsely claimed task force recommended cutting off mammograms for grandma
In a November 19 editorial, The Wall Street Journal falsely claimed that recent task force recommendations for breast cancer screenings advises doctors to "cut off all screening in woman over 75" in order to fearmonger that the recommendations are a form of government rationing of care to the elderly -- that "grandma is probably going to die anyway, so why waste the money?" In fact, the task force made no recommendation related to women older than 75, stating that "the current evidence is insufficient to assess the additional benefits and harms of screening mammography in women 75 years or older."
November 19, 2009 2:34 pm ET
Quick Fact: Media repeat conservative claim that nonbinding health guidelines foreshadow rationing
In recent days, several media outlets have repeated the conservative claim that a task force recommending that fewer women younger than 50 receive regular mammograms is a precursor to government rationing under health care reform. In fact, the recommendations are not legally binding on health care providers or insurers.
November 19, 2009 2:22 pm ET
Fox & Friends repeatedly equates Senate bill's deficit reduction with "taxes"
During its November 19 broadcast, Fox & Friends described the amount by which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the Senate's health care bill would reduce the federal deficit as a tax, and co-host Gretchen Carlson later suggested that the projected $127 billion net reduction in the 10-year deficit would come entirely from tax revenues. In fact, the CBO estimate shows that the bill also reduces the deficit through significant changes in spending.
November 19, 2009 2:09 pm ET
Fox & Friends misleadingly inflates cost of Senate bill by adding doctor pay fix
Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Gretchen Carlson misleadingly inflated the cost of the Senate health care reform bill by adding the cost of a separate measure repealing scheduled cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. However, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculates the cost of the doctor pay fix from a baseline that assumes, under a do-nothing scenario, Congress would allow scheduled cuts to take place when, as Fox News' Caroline Shively noted during the program, they have not in the past; so with or without the passage of a comprehensive health care reform bill or a permanent repeal of the cuts, the doctor pay costs are likely to be incurred.
November 19, 2009 1:40 pm ET
Quick Fact: Scarborough baselessly claims criminal terror trials "extraordinarily unpopular in New York"
On the November 19 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough baselessly claimed that Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to hold criminal trials for Guantánamo Bay detainees in New York's Southern District "is extraordinarily unpopular in New York."
November 19, 2009 10:30 am ET
Quick Fact: Doocy advances misleading claim that "an enemy combatant" has "never" been "tried in a civil court"
On the November 19 Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy advanced the misleading claim that there has "never" been "an enemy combatant" who "was tried in a civil court." In fact, Jose Padilla was a U.S. citizen who was held as an enemy combatant for three years before being tried in a civilian court.
November 19, 2009 7:52 am ET
Quick Fact: Doocy claimed Senate bill adds tax that "you" pay "every time you get your paycheck"
Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy stated of the Senate health care reform bill released on November 18, "they're gonna add payroll taxes on your Medicare that you pay for every time you get your paycheck."
November 19, 2009 12:00 am ET
Ignoring several prior Hardball guests, Matthews let Stupak falsely call his amendment consistent with "current law"
Chris Matthews allowed Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) to repeatedly falsely claim that his amendment to the House health care reform bill is consistent with "current law" with regard to abortion coverage and simply extends the Hyde Amendment's prohibition on government money from being used to pay for most abortions. In doing so, Matthews ignored several guests who had previously explained to him that the Stupak Amendment effectively bans policies that cover most abortions from inclusion in the exchanges even if people purchase the policies entirely with their own funds, including Cynthia Tucker, whose explanation that the amendment "goes much farther" than current law under the Hyde Amendment Matthews praised for its clarity.
November 18, 2009 10:09 pm ET
Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity link nonbinding mammogram guidelines to "death panels"
Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity have linked a task force's recommendation that fewer women younger than 50 receive regular mammograms to the widely debunked smear that Democratic health reform bills include "death panels." Right-wing media figures have repeatedly raised the specter of these purported panels in their discussions of health care; in this case, their fearmongering is undermined by the fact that the recommendations are not legally binding on health care providers or insurers.
November 18, 2009 7:20 pm ET
Quick Fact: Beck falsely claims Holdren supported "force[d] abortions"
Glenn Beck again falsely claimed that White House science and technology adviser John Holdren proposed "steriliz[ing] the drinking water to stop overpopulation" and "forc[ing] abortions so we don't have too many kids."
November 18, 2009 5:12 pm ET
NBC and ABC cite conservative criticism of criminal terror trials but ignore conservative endorsements
Following Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to hold criminal trials for five Guantánamo detainees, nightly news broadcasts on NBC and ABC have reported on conservative criticism of the move but ignored the endorsement of numerous conservative scholars and officials, including Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist, American Conservative Union chairman David Keene, and former Reps. Barry Goldwater Jr. (R-CA) and Bob Barr (R-GA). Indeed, a Media Matters for America review of nightly news broadcasts from November 13 through 17 found that neither network reported on the prominent conservatives that support criminal trials for terror suspects.
November 18, 2009 3:59 pm ET
MSNBC graphic misleads on senators' support for KSM trial
MSNBC's Morning Meeting ran the misleading on-screen graphic "Holder Faces Senators Skeptical of 9/11 Trials" while showing Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) questioning Attorney General Eric Holder. In fact, Leahy and several other senators on the committee have voiced support for bringing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9-11 terror suspects to New York to face a criminal trial.
November 18, 2009 3:31 pm ET
Media conservatives fearmonger that nonbinding health guidelines foreshadow government rationing
Responding to a task force recommending that fewer women younger than 50 receive regular mammograms, media conservatives have relentlessly fearmongered that the recommendations represent a precursor to government rationing under health care reform, with Rush Limbaugh claiming, "You might even say that we've got death panels going on here." But their fearmongering is undermined by the fact that the recommendations are not legally binding on health care providers or insurers; moreover, the fact that the task force has previously issued recommendations against certain preventive screenings during the Bush administration belies the claim that this is in any way related to health care reform.
November 18, 2009 3:25 pm ET
Hannity promotes his "Conservative Victory 2010" voting guide
Sean Hannity has repeatedly promoted "Conservative Victory 2010" -- a map on his website that is part of his project to "get people to do what I think the Republican Party should be doing, which is, you know, going back to the very simple, basic promises of conservatism." Hannity has promised to use the map to support candidates who stand on conservative principles, thus following Fox News' pattern of aggressive promotion of conservative causes.
