Yesterday, we released news of the Department of Defense restricting access to Fox News at military installations. Our source, like most news reporting services will not be unveiled. But, we will say this, in general: an active duty, military member who has been stationed abroad.
At every installation (we were told), particularly those overseas, this news outlet was always available. However, now, it is considered, restricted material. Periodically, the military does reviews and restricts material they feel is inappropriate for military personnel morale. We are extremely happy Fox made the list. Thank you, for your support and inquiries. We were able to obtain a copy of the letter sent to the Department of Defense.
Our military community is a close knit family, they value their privacy. We ask that you do too. We thank them for their service to this nation and for their, continous, commitment, to keeping peace which goes beyond fighting in wars.
A Copy of The Letter to the DOD
As military families we are disturbed by your choice to advertise on the Fox News website, and, to air the Fox TV Network at military installations, worldwide. The approach taken by this media outlet, with shows showcasing Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly; all supporting Rush Limbaugh’s views. And, their choice of attack methods, in regards to our Commander and Chief, the 44th President of the United States, referencing race.
It started with the magic Negroe song, then email circulars, the most disturbing being, the one with the watermelon patch. Calling our first lady names, such as, angry black woman, and, only, God knows what other ugly names she has been called. We cringe when we think about it. In addition to, referring to the White House, as the Black House. The assaults, seem to continue on and on. Escalating to the point of, dropping all respect, and calling the President of the United States of America, a racist. And, without shame, openly promoting the teabagger and birther movements; which are ongoing, long running, assault campaigns.
We would like to see the United States become more united, and, American people working together towards the betterment of all citizens. Continously exposing us to these divisive, racially motivated campaigns, only serve to divide the military community and our families, when we rely on each other, while, stationed overseas.
This line of assault simply must change, along with your sponsorship.
With the racial rhetoric and the consistent assaults on our Commander and Chief, how long do you think, we, the military community, will continue to support each other, when we see the department of defense sponsoring shows and campaigns that promote hate? Please, pull your advertising and support from these types of shows, websites and media outlets, therefore, stopping all patronage.
Thank you,
-Military Families, United
Hit em in the Wallet 
This is good. When people get fed up, they fight for what’s right. Maybe, this network’s reign of terror is, slowly, coming to a end.
I don’t doubt it will take some time. This is a start to sending a message to Fox–that we don’t like what you do.
This community is a huge audience for Fox. I wouldn’t doubt they are tuning it a home, but not if they are overseas. You have limited choices for cable or tv services.
In the states, of course, while at home you can watch what you want, when you want. The main point I see happening with this is, service members won’t be able to talk disrespectfully about Obama at work for fear of reprimand.
I am a veteran and mom of an active duty Marine. I am also close to active duty personnel in the Army Ranger program, the Navy and the Air Force. Please let me clear up a couple of points for you:
1. Fox wasn’t shown at all military installations until Bush took office and outsourced all food services to KBR, at which point Fox began to be shown 24/7 at all chow halls. So, all over the world, our military has had eight years of propaganda shoved down their throats with their meals.
Anyone who complained was labeled unpatriotic.
I’m thrilled this has been stopped. Our troops don’t need that.
2. Service members already speak disrespectfully of President Obama – some so disrespectfully that they should face charges. Unfortunately, the atmosphere in the military today, especially the Marines, is virulently anti-Democratic among the middle ranks of the leadership. No surprise considering #1.
3. There is also a concurrent issue with the evangelization of the military. Our young troops in several of the branches are being force-fed a violent form of religious propaganda, even to the point of being told by high ranking officers that we are in a holy war, and that Islam must be destroyed for Christianity to survive.
4. Our military kids are regularly subjected to bizarre conspiracy theories. My neighbor’s son, an Army Ranger, bought several guns before he deployed to Afghanistan because his leadership told him unofficialy but repeatedly that Obama was going to repeal the 2nd amendment while he was overseas.
I thought this was an aberration until I heard it from other military personnel from other bases and branches of the military.
While you and I may realize how absurd and dangerous that is, these young kids are hearing it from their leaders, the very people training them to survive, making it hard for them to question them. I have gotten many calls from these young members of the military who grew up around my neighborhood, asking me about the various rumors their hearing, sometimes from their commands.
Some of them are pretty shocking: Obama is going to cut all our benefits. Obama is going to make us pay for our own medical care if we are injured. Plus all the Birther/Deather/Tenther nonsense.
The military today is not like it was when I was in during the 80’s. Religion was never forced on us the way it is now, certainly not such a backward violent perversion of Christianity as is being forced on soldiers today.
And we were not fed a constant stream of conspiracy theories about how our Commander in Chief was illegitimate, or out to get us, or any of this garbage.
We here at home have to be the voice to stand up for our troops overseas. We can complain loudly and forcefully about these things, they can’t. They need us to be their advocates.
One final note – we have never had a military forced to serve with mercenaries, as our troops have under Bush. And, make no mistake, the mercenaries hired by the Bush Administration were from Blackwater, a corrupt, virulently Right-wing extremist group that openly pushed for the elimination of all Muslims, openly slaughtered people in Iraq, and endangered our troops over there.
When Paul Wolfowitz was in charge of the Iraqi Reconstruction, it was not American military who provided his security, it was Blackwater mercenaries.
I only mention that to point out the position it put our military in. Their leadership was not surrounded and protected by our military, but by right-wing mercenaries. What message did that send to the ranks?
What message does all of this send to the ranks?
Sorry this was so long.
you are ignorant of the miliary as my sons cannot buy weapons to take to war only certain officers as generals.They are issued weapons and that is that.The 2nd admendment does not cover the miliary arms as those are owned by the govt. also my sons and preston who guards the pres all treat him with respect,I have never seen active show disrespect.Once out of the military one is allowed to disagree with policy
Thanks for your post, Roooth. That was very informative and contained points I long suspected.
Roooth – We retired in 1991 after more than 20 years in the Army, serving all over the US, as well as Korea and Germany. I could not agree with you more on how things have changed and why.
kyril jarrett – I think you misunderstood Roooth’s comment regarding soldiers buying weapons. We who have been active duty KNOW that soldiers don’t carry personal weapons into combat duty arenas. I believe Roooth was stating that they were purchasing them for personal/HOME possession. Count yourself lucky if you haven’t seen active duty service people be disrespectful to President Obama – I’ve seen it far too often as we still live near an Army post, and I daughter works at the post hospital and frequently tells us of her dismay with the attitudes of soldiers and civilian employees.
There is a very large contingent of religious zealots who feel that anything goes, as long as their goal of total theocracy within our government is met. One has only to look at this past weekend’s Value Voters Summit. An excellent website to follow the workings of religious groups that are insinuating themselves into all levels of our political scene is this one:
http://godsownparty.com/blog/
Rupert Murdoch owns Fox, along with Wall Street Journal, and countless other media outlets, and has a piece of nearly every pie in the business and financial sectors. Just google his name for long lists and scary stories about him. I’m currently reading a biography on him by Michael Wolff and I highly recommend it.
Murdoch will do anything he can to take down Obama and the Democrats, and put his own puppet-president in place. He is an absolute control freak and his current project is the re-making of Sarah Palin. Although more than 60 advertisers have bailed out on Glenn Beck’s show, most have stayed with the Fox network so Murdoch isn’t losing much revenue. However, I expect he’d be willing to lose a tidy chunk of what is mere pocket change to someone of his wealth, if his goals are achieved.
Bush/Cheney have a lot to atone for with their war-mongering and crusading. It is so obvious, as Roooth pointed out, how they pushed religion onto our soldiers – again, something that was never done in the past. IMHO, the damage done to our soldiers and their families is the biggest crime of all.
Finally, a blemish on this network’s “all american” image.
Perhaps, once it hits mainstream, the damage this network does, while staging its own self promotional hate campaigns; sensible people may just back away.
I like the part about Fox News loosing credibility; as if they had any to begin with.
Thanks, military community for fighting for peace at home!
If we keep calling them on the rug for their participation in keeping these movements going, we might be able to chip away at some who are on the fringe, of the fringe, in their base.
Aren’t the southern fractions pro-military? Not, saying any of them might be swayed.
Why is there such a bad thing towards the Tea Party movement? TEA stands for Taced Enough Already. Why are we not allowed to voice our opionions, but it is ok for anti-war protest? There were zero arrest at the 912 march on Washington…can you same the same for anti-war protest or pro-abortion protest?? Yes, I would agree there is probably 5% that are extreme, but the rest of us just want government to stop spending our money like crazy. Quit with the double standards
good for you,I went to 2 teaparties and none of us arrested,but an illegal who attacked an older adult got lead away.
How does it translate into effective control over government? Only one way. We must
start at the community level and demand that the state and federal legislators and
administrators devolve power, functions and dollars to local governments. The model we
should use is the ’96 Welfare Reform Act (developed by our late, great NTLC director
Bob Carleson, who was Reagan’s welfare director in California), which we finally forced
Clinton to sign into law.
It sent unrestricted welfare block grants to the states. Welfare is
the only federal program in which costs have declined over the past decade … and
precisely because we let the states manage the program and gave them an incentive to
control costs.
How did you know he was an illegal? Did he or she, not look like the rest of the crowd?
Amy – I think we all agree that we would like to pay less taxes. However, the only people who got taxes LOWERED during the 8 years under Bush were those in the upper 1% who already have so many tax shelters and write-offs that the average folks don’t have.
Since Obama took office, all of us making less than $250,000 have had our taxes LOWERED.
As to the current government spending, it MUST be done to try to clean-up the economic mess that Bush left us with – from all the Republican spending that was out of control, the de-regulation of so many businesses, and the highest spending being the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The stimulus money is getting down to the lower levels of government and is actually starting to work. If you read and watch enough RELIABLE news sources, you will see the statistics that prove we are recovering – slowly, but surely.
If people want continued services provided by the government (at all levels) such as highways, fire, police, parks, sidewalks, schools, libraries, public colleges and universities, public hospitals, military, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, VA medical facilities – the list goes on and on – people like these benefits and forget that they must be paid for and our taxes pays for them. Providing services such as we have had for decades are termed SOCIAL programs, so that means we have been a SOCIALIST society for a very long time.
I think the teabagger movement has gotten the negative publicity because of the ones you mention as fringe – who carried signs with obvious racism and hateful spewing. Those who use terms like socialist, marxist, fascists, etc., do not even understand what any of those terms really mean and if they looked up the definitions and read a little history, they would see that we/Obama/US are NOT any of those, nor are we heading in that direction.
What we saw all summer with the town hall meetings is that the teabaggers, rightwing, conservatives, and so forth were very vocal and those who were for health reform were heckled and those were the ones who were denied their rights to free speech. From all that I observed and read, the rightwing held the *floor* and received excellent coverage at nearly every event.
Just as you feel there is a double standard happening (and I agree with you there is in many respects), there are two sides to every issues and we must all slow down, take some deep breaths and hope that no tragic violence erupts.
Church and state must stay separate and people need to do their own research and reading and stop believing the lies and distortions spewed by those who are no longer in power and won’t accept that our president is black…….yes, I agree with Carter….. there are a number of those enciting the hostility because they are racist.
PEACE
“Why are we not allowed to voice our opionions, but it is ok for anti-war protest? ”
Why were anti-war protesters who were against the war in Iraq talked about as if they were traitors, and you could have counterprotests to those, yet so many people think that the Tea Party movement should go with no opposition response?
That? That thing where you tell someone they can’t do something that you used to do to them all the time? That’s called “hypocrisy”.
Also, the idea that the Tea Parties are about anything like high taxes any more, is laughable. I went to a Tea Party in my area on 9/12… less than maybe a third of the signs were about “taxes”; the rest was a hodgepodge of anti-healthcare reform signs, generic anti-socialism or accuse-Obama-of-being-the-next-Hitler signs, pro-lifer signs, 2nd Amendment signs… basically any “conservative” issue under the sun, and one person was even passing around an anti-Federal Reserve petition with, let’s just say, a questionable understanding of what the Fed even is.
There ARE, on occasion, people who are actually pretty cool and not total idiots who attend Tea Parties in seriousness. I met at least one at the one in our area – it was great, he actually bought my buddies some beer and we had a great conversation, and he really never said anything extreme, just wonderfully snarky-but-reasonable statements like how members of the House and Senate should be “required to read the Constitution once a month and the bill of rights once a week”.
But people like that, as well as folks who only focus on the tax issue, are still vastly outnumbered by the totally crazy or not-all-there people running around in “Obama in diapers” costumes or waving anti-abortion signs or, as at least one sign in the DC 9/12 rally read, “We Came Unarmed [This Time]” which, gee, doesn’t read as at all psychotic or threatening.
Sorry, but if you want to argue that the Tea Parties are still just anti-tax protests, you’re out of luck, because the truth is no longer on your side.
What must our military be thinking when they hear their commander and chief being disrespected? Don’t think MSM ever addressed that question.
Fox News, its only been 8 months, halfway into the 9th. Do you plan on assaulting this man for his entire presidency?
As the letter stated the assaults are vicious. If they are this vicious, now, how much lower can they go? Don’t answer that please. It’s good to start slowing them down now. Like a child just keep slapping hands until they realize it is inappropriate behavior.
AlternNet had an excellent (and sad) article recently where they likened the events leading up to the assasination of JFK to that of the atmosphere we’ve been experiencing since Obama was elected.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/142726/the_last_time_right-wing_hatred_ran_wild_like_this_a_president_was_killed_/
Just bring back the fairness doctrine, and this $hit will stop finally. I feel that it borders on sedition, and to hear it repeated by congress critters and senators is just a shame, send them to gitmo, or let them secede and move all the military bases off their southern states, put up a big fence around their countries, require them to try and get a passport etc etc and see how they like it then
This letter must be carried by every media outlet in the world. We civilian Americans never think how this negative rhetoric impacts the lives of our military at home as well as abroad. One of the worst offenders of this mis-information on a daily basis is Hannity. Hannity professes to support our troops by staging annual music shows to fund educational scholarships.
The triades he dispurses against President Obama are atrocious, and does not place your commander-in-chief in a position to be respected or taken seriously by anyone.
If we, Americans, fail to take a firm stand on removing the Becks, Hannitys, Limbaughs, Boortzs, Coulters, FOX TV, etc. from the airways irreparable harm may be brought on us for an indeterminate amount of time.
To the authors; I respectfully request permission to spearhead an action to send this letter to as many news agencies as my budget and time would allow.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Juanita
Lithinoa, GA
Thank you all so much for acting on this! My husband is a VietNam veteran. It is upseting to him to see veterans being disrespectful to our President. I keep trying to find out why this was happening. It seems President Obama has done a lot for the military–both active and veterans. I couldn’t understand the attitude. Now I know !! Please keep us posted and let us know what we can do to help !!!
there is nothing wrong with fox news they report just like the others and just so happens 99% is truth
Marsha – I must respectfully disagree with you. First off, there are few channels/networks left who should even have the word NEWS as part of their title. Most are commentators and depending on what show you watch, each is almost exclusively either progressive/liberal or conservative. There seems to be no middle ground anymore, and most *reporters* put their personal slant on whatever they are discussing.
As for Fox being truthful 99% of the time, I think you must be missing out on the websites that have repeatedly called them out on their lies and distortions, along with the hate-mongering. You might want to do a bit of reading at some of the non-partisan/neutral sites. A couple of reliable ones are MediaMatters and FactCheck – you can google those names for their URLs.
Sorry to disappoint you concerning FOX . They are a direct mouthpiece for the Heritage Foundation. They spew out right wing propaganda by giving daily talking points to Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly, etc. These guys couldn’t come up with a coherent thought on their own if their lives depended on it. They’re making a lot of money spewing out misinformation for the corporate reactionaries. It’s a pity the average viewer can’t see how they’re playing up to their basest emotions and taking advantage of them for their own political gains. WAKE UP!
Pingback: Open Call for American Citizens to Take Action Against Fox News Network, Mark Williams and Rush Limbaugh « Hit em in the Wallet
Wow! A lot of meat and potatoes on this site. Filed my complaint today. Lou Dobbs has been a thorn in my side for quite sometime.
How many times this year alone did we have to complain about him to CNN. While he reports his news of the day, with that snarky grin on his face. Glad someone is showing us how to complain about the media to get results. One person complaining may not get the results we so desperately need, but millions complaining, and it is a different story altogether. What happened to non bias news reporting?
This type of behavior from Rush Limbaugh, from Sean Hannity, Bill O-Reilly and the rest of those who continue to make our nation look like a bunch of backwards living, red neck bums, who run around with prejudge written all over our foreheads! I cannot fathom in this world we live in, where our own nation has always invited all welcome to come to America to be “free” could possibly allow these racist, hate mongering, radical racists bunch of ignorant idiots to speak a word from their TV stations or radio stations! It is a sad day in this country to hear some of the horrible lies, accusations, and down right bigotry remarks made over the air waves in America! Every one of us in this land of the United States should be mad as heck at Fox 4, and the entire bunch they say the nasty things, and/or the ones that go along with what has been said. It is time for all of us to stand up, or sit down, walk over and turn Fox 4 off, or sit and turn it off with your remote, and change your radio station permanently, to show you refuse to listen to a word of their crap, and all of us should completely boycott anyone that advertises on the network!!! These people do not deserve the publicity they are getting. But, they are a bunch of jackasses that do not give a darned about our country or they would not say the things they do. They are greedy, self-centered, non respecting fools!