Soaring and cratering

As you might have imagined, the Fair 'n' Balanced Network lost no time making sure we know who won the confrontation in the Persian Gulf -- and, of course, who got us there. (Hint: OBAMA!!!!1!11!1!!11!1!!!) But it's worth spending some time to tease out the different sorts of lies that Fox employs; more specifically, the proportion of lies to bullshit needed to achieve a properly balanced Fox page.

In the lead position, even though the president is (in the words of one critic) "lying relentlessly," the transitive property of journalism means Fox is telling the truth: it's passing along an authoritative figure says. Fox's job then is to show that it's done its due diligence in assessing the claim:

It’s unclear exactly how the missiles used in the attacks were funded. But other Republicans have connected the Iran settlement money to the attacks, with GOP Texas Sen. Ted Cruz saying on Fox News' "Hannity" on Tuesday night, “In a very real sense, the missiles that we saw fired at U.S. servicemen and women tonight were paid for by the billions that the Obama administration flooded the Ayatollah with."

 Well, that settles that. 
 
The second story also appears to be a reasonably faithful reproduction of what was said, though it runs into hat pesky maxim of relevance: Is this assertion relevant to the discourse in the way its positioning suggests? You make the call:

After President Trump declared that Iran “appears to be standing down” in the wake of Tuesday's missile strikes on Iraqi airbases, Fox News senior strategic analyst Gen. Jack Keane said that Trump had executed a diplomatic strategy that could enable the U.S. to negotiate with Iran without further military action.

The story is as much Trump as Keane, but it least it allows for promoting another Fox personality without having to support his assertions:

“It changed from the strategy of appeasement under the Obama administration to confrontation using economic pressure to do that,” Keane told “The Daily Briefing” Wednesday.

But the pick of the litter is the No. 3 story, "Oil craters." If you're a sportsball fan,

you're probably comfortable with the idea that whether a 2-point difference means the winning team "squeaks" or "breezes" past its foe is largely a matter of Zip code. So it is here (timelines from CNN). Light crude seems to have cratered back to about a dollar below where it was at the beginning of the month and Trump's bumbling foray into global strategery, and over the past year, it's up more than 20 percent.


It's been a pretty busy few days at Fox, having to pivot from the Impeachment Hoax to the #RegimeOfTerror while still keeping an eye on the socialist menace and those pesky Democrats. Indeed, for a network that's basically been ignoring substate political violence since Trump vanquished ISIL in single combat, it must have taken some effort to dust off all the terror tropes. Good to see that the starting lineup is back in the game here.