skin the fox

ANDY SCHUB

Andrew Schub is our Newsletter Contributing Editor. He will be posting weekly stories on things Bush and Fox News you may not know about but should, may know about but do not know enough about, or may know about but dagnabbit you just need to know more.

JOURNALISM 101
by Andrew Schub

Somewhere around the fifth grade I had to start writing reports. One of the first rules I learned about writing reports was I had to accurately quote a source.

Accurately quoting a source means just that: accurately quoting a source. Taking the exact words someone said and repeating them verbatim so the source's meaning is not lost or altered.

I knew misquoting was wrong way back in elementary school.

You can bet professional journalists learn this too -- probably in Journalism 101.

What could possibly explain Brit Hume, Fox News' managing editor and lead anchor, not knowing this?

W Bush is pushing hard to "fix" Social Security by allowing people to put their money into "private investment accounts." (There isn't room to go into that plan here, let's just say accountants across the nation are freaked.)

Brit Hume pushed Bush's case for private accounts Feb. 3, 2005 on his Fox News Special Report with Brit Hume:

"In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, 'Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age,' adding that government funding, quote, 'ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.'"

That FDR "quote" supports Bush's argument for private accounts, and hell, if Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man who invented Social Security was in favor of private accounts, the accounts must be a good idea, right?

The problem is --

FDR never said that.

What FDR actually said was:

"In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

FDR was proposing three separate things: 1) An "old-age" pension that older Americans, who wouldn't have the time to pay into a pension before needing to take money out of it, could take money out of immediately; 2) "Compulsory contributory annuities," which is the Social Security system we have today; and 3) Voluntary individual accounts.

As Ben Wikler explains on Air America:

"Hume turns this completely on its head. He pulls two unrelated bits out of the FDR quote, and adds the words "government funding" between them. Because it's so carefully done, it's clear that it's deliberate."

AIR AMERICA: HUME, RESIGN

What's worse, the lie was immediately picked up and repeated by other Fox News anchors. On the very same night, William Bennett went on Fox's Hannity & Colmes and said "Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the guy who established Social Security, said that it would be good to have it replaced by private investment over time. Private investment would be the way to really carry this thing through."

MEDIA MATTERS : DISTORTING FDR

Wikler compares Hume's lie to Dan Rather losing his job for relying on a possibly forged document [not actually forged, possibly forged] in a report about Bush's never-completed National Guard service:

"Although it won't be as explosive politically, this is worse than Dan Rather's memo scandal. First of all, it's deliberate. Secondly, it's untrue. Dan Rather was guilty of being insufficiently skeptical of forged, true documents. But Brit Hume, Fox News Channel's #1 anchor -- not commentator, not editorialist, anchor - -is deliberately perverting the words of a hero to destroy the hero's legacy."

What did Fox News do when its managing editor and lead anchor fabricated a false FDR quote?

The same thing the Bush administration does when it gets caught in a lie:

Not a damn thing.

Actually, considering recent cabinet appointments Bush has made and the fact many of those appointments have only a passing familiarity with the truth (I'm talking about you, Condi, and you Alberto), we're probably lucky Brit Hume wasn't rewarded with a cabinet appointment.

Past Boycotts : go see boycotts you missed and write them too or else your nose will fall off. No kidding. It will fall off. GO DO IT.