Comments from Hartford Courant, Today Show, Denver Post - Garrison Keillor etc on FOX v Franken

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 17:23:33 -0400
> From: Deborah Alexander <dsalexan () optonline net>
> Subject: Comments from Hartford Courant, Today Show,
>  Denver Post - Garrison Keillor etc on FOX v Franken
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
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> Dave - of possible interest, the below excerpts commenting on the FOX suit
>
> You've probl read that when ruling, the judge said the suit was "totally 
> without merit either factually or legally"
>
> I decided to run a Lexis search on extent to which that short phrase has 
> been cut (to sound slightly less insulting to FOX? - and secondarily on 
> the coverage of the suit over the past month...
> (1)many news orgs remove the 'factually/legally' (BTW - this is 
> essentially terms used to describe frivolous suit, recently added to 
> the  sanctionanble elements under federal Code of Civil Procedure, makes 
> it clear that FOX could (should?) have been sanctioned ($$) by the judge 
> for filing a frivolous lawsuit (which Franken did not request);
> (2) some news orgs sliced off BOTh the fact/legally and ALSO slice off the 
> word "totally" - merely saying that the suit was declared 'without merit'
> (3) avery few sources either combine statements that FOX lost with a 
> mention that Franken had to apologize to Ashcroft for sending a letter on 
> Harvard letterhead that went out a few weeks after he left his position.
> (4) two sources - transcript of a FOX broadcast by someone (no 
> surprise)  and ALSO (!) UPI International (!!) mention  the Ashcroft 
> letter but somehow haven't mentioned that FOX lost its suit - at least, as 
> of last night. In fact, UPI mentioned the suit being FILED on earlier 
> dates, as well as the Ashcroft spology --Makes me wonder who is 
> controlling UPI...
> -Deborah Alexander
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: HArtford Courant, Today Show, Denver Post - Garrison Keillor etc
> Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 22:25:06 -0400
> From: Deborah Alexander <dsalexan () optonline net>
> To: dsalexan () optonline net
>
>
> Hartford Courant 8/21
>
> HEADLINE: WANTED: SOME FAIR AND BALANCED ADVICE;
>
>
> BYLINE: -- Jim Shea
>
> BODY:
> To: Al Franken, author of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A
> Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."
>
> Dear Al:
>
> First let me say I can't wait to read your book, which I hear goes on
> sale tomorrow. It sure must be a good book if you are being sued over it
> by a major media organization like Fox News.
>
> I've been in the news business myself for a while now, and this is the
> first time I can remember a news organization going to court to take
> away someone's right to free speech. I could be wrong, but I think it's
> usually the other way around.
>
> Anyway, the reason I am writing you is for a little advice. I'm working
> on a book myself, and I was hoping you could give me your opinion on
> whether or not you think Fox News will have a problem with it.
>
> Here's a brief synopsis:
>
> The book is called "Ox News, We Distort. You Decided: A Look at Fairly
> Unbalanced People."
>
> Basically, the book centers on a typical day at Ox News as the wacky
> staff works to shape local and world events to fit the foreign-born
> network owner's wacko ideological agenda.
>
> The main character is a lovable guy named Shrill O'Reilly, the host of a
> popular talk show called "Shut up."
>
> What do you think?
>
> GRAPHIC: PHOTO: color mug; Franken
> ---
> Aug 21 Denver Post
> . What's your take on the lawsuit filed by the Fox News Channel against
>   fellow Minnesotan and writer Al Franken  over his soon-to-be published
> book  'Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look
> at the  Right'?   A. It's a cheap lawsuit, brought by an enormous
> corporation to harass an  individual writer, and it's ridiculous on the
> face of it, to imagine that  you can copyright the concept of 'fair and
> balanced.' And the notion of  Fox News as being anything like fair and
> balanced is a joke to anybody who  lives in this country and understands
> English. Al Franken is going to make  Fox look even more ridiculous than
> they do now. Fox is a big fat man  lumbering around, breaking the
> crockery trying to hit a mosquito.
>
> GRAPHIC: PHOTO: KEILLOR: Creator of 'A Prairie Home Companion' takes
> show on the road.
> -----
> TODAY SHOW Aug 22
>
> Anchor Matt Lauer
> &
> Jonathan Alter (Newsweek)
>
>   LAUER: Why do you think Fox actually brought this lawsuit if legal
> experts don't think it's a very strong case?
>
> Mr. ALTER: Well, my first reaction was it was one of these elaborate
> publicity stunts where they have a fake feud, you know, the way Jack
> Benny did in the old radio days, or Jimmy Breslin used to do, where both
> sides win. Al Franken's book is already number one on Amazon, and it
> hasn't even been published yet. And, of course, the Fox people get to
> say to their own conservative base, 'Hey, look at us! We're beating up
> on the--the weenie with glasses, the liberal weenie.' Both sides win.
> But the more you think about it, it just seems like Fox is making itself
> look more ridiculous than Al Franken could do ...
>
> -even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page just says this
> is a ludicrous lawsuit. Here's a--a network that, you know, all day long
> that says 'Lawyers have too much power in society. Why is everybody
> always going into court?' And they beat up on the other side, the other
> side, you know, punches back. And like bully who's--who's kind of
> getting it in return they go and they complain to the teacher which is,
> in this case, a judge.
>
> LAUER: Well, even--there's even a bigger issue here.
>
> Mr. ALTER: It just seems like kind of a whiny--yep.
>
> LAUER: The bigger issue though, Jonathan, when's the last time you heard
> a news organization using a lawsuit to try to suppress free speech?
>
> Mr. ALTER: Well, of course. And--and, you know, you--you mention the
> words "free speech." Are we supposed to trademark that? Are we supposed
> to trademark the idea of objective journalism? "Fair and balanced" is a
> standard that you and I and--and everybody else finds an important idea
> in journalism. It shouldn't just be somebody's, you know, trademark,
> somebody's slogan. I think they've proved how seriously, or unseriously,
> they take the idea of "fair and balanced," that they--they just see it
> as a way to make money with brand identity.
>
> I mean, what do we want? Do we want a society where Tom Wolf calls a
> book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and Kool-Aid sues them? Or a
> woman writes a book, "The Devil Wears Prada" and Prada sues? I mean, get
> off it. These guys need to get a life, go back to duking it out on
> television, and stop going and whining to a judge.
>
>
> Copyright 2003 National Broadcasting Co. Inc.
> NBC News Transcripts
>
> SHOW: Today (7:00 AM ET) - NBC
>
> August 22, 2003 Friday
>
> ------
> Copyright 2003 Boston Herald Inc.
> The Boston Herald
>
> August 20, 2003 Wednesday ALL EDITIONS
>
> SECTION: THE EDGE; Pg. 056
>
> LENGTH: 434 words
>
> HEADLINE: NET LIFE; Net reacts to Fox suit in fair and balanced way
>
> BYLINE: By Stephanie Schorow
>
> BODY:
> Now THIS is a flash mob. A fair and balanced flash mob. Well, sort of.
>
> Across the Internet, spreading Web page to Web page, blog to blog, is
> the phrase "fair and balanced."
>
> A Skeptical Blog (home.houston.rr.com-skeptical-) has become A Skeptical
> Blog: Fair and balanced. No More Mr. Nice Blog is now No More Mr. Nice
> Blog: Fair and Balanced (nomoremister.blogspot.com-). Hundreds more have
> followed the formula.
>
> The cause of this mass action was the suit filed by the Fox News Channel
> against Al Franken, the former "Saturday Night Live" performer and his
> publisher, the Penguin Group, to remove the words "fair and balanced" in
> the title of his upcoming book. Franken's deliberately provocative title
> is "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at
> the Right."
>
> Fox registered "Fair & Balanced" as a trademark in 1998. The Net
> response has been:  We'll see about THAT.
>
> Dozens and dozens of sites and blogs - which are online Web logs or
> diaries - have decided to do a little trademark infringement protest by
> adding the words "fair and balanced" and calling  on others to do the
> same. For a list, go to:
> www.blah3.com-graymatter-archives-00000420.html. The site explains:
> "Who's Fair & Balanced? We Are!: The list of Fair & Balanced Sites
> contines to grow. Whatcha gonna do about it, Fox??"
>
> Of course, this kind of response was predictable. When I read about
> Fox's attempt to lay claim to "fair and balanced," my first response
> was, "The Net's gonna have a field day with this." Indeed, I Googled
> "fair and balanced" and sure enough, the field day had begun.
>
> The reaction is not entirely political, although "fair and balanced"
> banner is being borne by those favorable to Franken's left-wing
> take-no-prisoners broadside against popular Fox host Bill O'Reilly and
> other commentators.
>
> The Internet and Web have always thumbed their collective nose at
> trademark issues. Within years of the emergence of the World Wide Web,
> legal action was being taken against Web pages that used common names -
> which also happened to be a business - in their URLs. A famous case
> revolved around the use of the word "Ajax," which might be a household
> cleaning product but which is also the name of a mythical Greek warrior.
>
> It's an ongoing issue, particularly for common words that wind up as
> being identified with a product. Still, if Fox can trademark "fair &
> balanced," then a certain online bookstore has trademark rights to parts
> of South America. Oral arguments are scheduled Friday in the case in
> U.S. District Court. Let's hope the proceedings are fair and balanced.
>
> LOAD-DATE: August 20, 2003
>
>
> FUN BOOKS
> Molly Ivins-
> She's the co-author with Lou Dubose of "Bushwhacked: Life in George W.
> Bush's America" (Random House, $24.95), which will reach stores
> Thursday. Ivins and Dubose examine the domestic effects of Bush's
> policies on Middle America.
>
> Another Texan, Jim Hightower, onetime state official and now political
> pundit, expands his scope with "Thieves in High Places" (Viking,
> $24.95), out this month. Hightower includes Democrats in his bashing of
> corporate-political alliances including Wal-Mart.
>
> Franken caught the mood of Bush critics with his liar motif, which has
> been picked up by authors Joe Conason and David Corn.
>
> A writer for the New York Observer and Salon.com, Conason blasts away in
> "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the
> Truth" (St. Martin's Press, $24.95). Conason rips into Coulter and her
> ilk while gleefully listing the lack of military service by "chicken
> hawks" in the administration.
>
> Corn, a regular on the cable TV talk circuit, including Fox, is the
> author of "The Lies of George Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception"
> (Crown, $23). This book, coming out in September, concludes that Bush is
> no different from most politicians in his reluctance to tell the truth
> by listing a series of his promises and claims, then discrediting them.
>
> The administration's foreign policy, chiefly its occupation of Iraq,
> comes in for attack in "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of
> Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq" by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
> (Tarcher/Penguin, $11.95) and "Imperial America: The Bush Assault on the
> World Order" by John Newhouse (Viking, $23).
>
> "Weapons of Mass Deception" is a paperback by a writing team that charts
> media performance through Stauber's Center for Media & Democracy. It
> concentrates on the official pronouncements of the administration in its
> promotion of the reasons to invade Iraq.
>
> Newhouse is a former New Yorker correspondent and U.S. State Department
> official. His book, which argues that the administration fumbled
> opportunities after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, will be published
> next month.
>
> Fans of Moore, Oscar-winning documentary film maker ("Bowling for
> Columbine"), must wait until October for his latest take in print,
> "Dude, Where's My Country? (Warner, $24.95).
>
> BOOKS by PUBLISHERS TO AVOID:
> "Treason" (Crown, $24) by Ann Coulter, a "legal affairs correspondent"
> for Fox  News. In it, she indicts nearly every registered Democrat as a
> traitor and confesses her passion for Joe McCarthy, the disgraced
> alcoholic witch hunter.
>
> Coulter has moved up to the mainstream from what is called the
> "right-wing ghetto" of publishers, the small Regnery Publishing Co. in
> Washington, D.C., whose fortunes were boosted in the 1990s by the
> Clinton scandal industry.
>
> In its latest catalogue are such works as "Persecution: How Liberals Are
> Waging Political War Against Christianity," "Losing Bin Laden: How Bill
> Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror" and "Shut Up and Sing: How
> Elites From Hollywood, Politics and the U.N. Are Subverting America."
>
> The most touching is an upcoming novel, "Getting It Right," by the right
> wing's eminence grise, William F. Buckley. Its characters include such
> real life icons as Ayn Rand and Robert Welch.
>
> Thanks to the name recognition of television, Coulter and her coterie of
> putative authors have caught the attention of the big New York
> publishers. Crown, a division of Random House, Penguin Putnam and the
> Book-of-the-Month Club this year set up operations to market
> conservative titles.

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