Jim Hinton – 8/3/10

This page was last updated on August 3, 2010.

Conservative media manufactures issues; Jim Hinton; Beaver County Times; August 3, 2010.

I believe Mr. Hinton began his letter-writing in March 2009 with “We should keep an eye on Limbaugh.” Subsequent letters were entitled “AP article got health care right,” “Put the blame where it belongs,” “Fox News shows its real priorities,” “Get facts straight before criticizing,” “Tax dollars can’t be used for abortion,” “Making money while hurting nation,” “Will marriage change Limbaugh?”, and “Don’t know much about history.”

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Shirley Sherrod’s story is an example of the conservative media’s assault on the president and his administration.

“They are constantly bombarding the Obama administration with negative, manufactured issues. The president has many important issues to handle rather than spending time dealing with bogus ones.”

[RWC] Even if this were true, Mr. Hinton didn’t appear to have a problem with this during the Bush administration.

“It’s obvious the conservative media are trying to deceive us with half-truths and misleading information. The Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly lineup on Fox and Limbaugh on radio are all laughing all the way to the bank. All of them have become millionaires by inflaming their audiences with misleading information. When checking their facts on Politico or Google, they are hardly ever accurate. CNN was the only network to get all the facts about the Sherrod issue. Yet, Fox News is the network leader.”

[RWC] If you’re familiar with Mr. Hinton’s letter-writing body of work, you know he appears obsessed with Fox News Channel and Messrs. Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and O’Reilly. Of his at least 10 letters since March 2009, six of them addressed conservative pundits and/or FNC.

Mr. Hinton asserts, “When checking their facts on Politico or Google, they are hardly ever accurate.” If you read any of my critiques of Mr. Hinton’s letters, you know he has a history of fact problems. I suspect Mr. Hinton believes a fact is accurate when he wants it to be true and inaccurate when he wants it to be false. Mr. Hinton could also be like another local lefty who treats his opinions as fact. I don’t know why Mr. Hinton appears to believe The Politico is an impartial arbiter of what’s true; it’s just another mainstream media outlet. My personal experience with fact-checking Messrs. Beck and Limbaugh (I don’t follow Messrs. Hannity and O’Reilly.) is pretty good, though not perfect. As for FNC news stories, I don’t recall any errors of substance. Before I pass along facts, I always check them regardless of the source.

As for the comment “CNN was the only network to get all the facts about the Sherrod issue,” I don’t know this to be true and Mr. Hinton presented no evidence to support the assertion. According to the lefty MediaMatters.org, “10:39 p.m. [on Monday, July 19th]: On CNN, Johns reports on Sherrod’s resignation. In the network’s first report on the matter, Joe Johns said that Sherrod ‘has resigned after a YouTube video surfaced showing her describing to an NAACP audience how she withheld help to a white farmer,’ then aired a portion of her comments from the Breitbart clip.” If accurate, this accounting would tend to refute Mr. Hinton’s assertion. Remember, everyone eventually got the story right after the NAACP produced the entire video.

As for FNC, Mr. Hinton failed to note the video wasn’t shown - and Ms. Sherrod wasn’t even mentioned - on FNC until hours after the Obama administration forced Ms. Sherrod to resign. When Mr. Beck eventually mentioned Ms. Sherrod the day following her firing, he took her side and said we shouldn’t jump to conclusions based on the video because we didn’t then know the context.

“We should get all the facts before forming an opinion. CNN is one place to do that. The Sherrod story proved that.”

[RWC] “We should get all the facts before forming an opinion?” Given the letters he’s written, I have to give Mr. Hinton “credit” for chutzpah.