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Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them:
A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right

Author	Al Franken
Language	English
Subject	American politics/Conservatism
Genre	Political satire
Publisher	E.P. Dutton
Publication date	2003
Media type	Hardcover/paperback
Preceded by	Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations
Followed by	The Truth (with jokes)

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right is a book of political commentary and satire by comedian and political commentator Al Franken, published in 2003 by Dutton, a subsidiary in the Penguin Group. It was written with the help of a volunteer group of fourteen Harvard students known as "Team Franken." The book's subtitle is an ironic parody of Fox News' tagline "Fair and Balanced". Fox sued Franken over the use of the phrase in a short-lived lawsuit that is frequently credited with increasing the sales of the book.

Summary

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is one of several books published in 2003 written by American liberals challenging the viewpoints of American conservatives such as Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Bill O'Reilly. These liberal-oriented books by Franken and fellow authors such as Joe Conason, Michael Moore and Jim Hightower have been described by columnist Molly Ivins as the Great Liberal Backlash of 2003.

Lies largely targets prominent Republicans and conservatives, highlighting documentable inaccuracies in their claims. A significant portion of the book is devoted to comparisons between President George W. Bush and former President Bill Clinton regarding their economic, environmental, and military policies. Franken also criticizes several pundits, especially those he believes to be the most dishonest, including Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

In Lies, Franken divides American media into two groups: the mainstream media, which attempts to be objective, and the right-wing media, which does not.

In his book, Franken writes that "The mainstream media does not have a liberal bias, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Newsweek, and the rest at least try to be fair." Franken notes that the mainstream media do have biases, including towards sensationalism, the easy story, and soft news.

However, Franken asserts, the right-wing media, which includes FOX News, The Washington Times, New York Post, The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, and talk radio, are biased beacuse they have a political agenda. They are "not interested in conveying the truth" and instead "concoct an inflammatory story that serves their political goals."

Franken makes this distinction in an effort to debunk the claim that the mainstream American media are liberally biased. Franken believe that the claim of media "liberal bias" is a myth used by conservative politicians. Propagating this myth, Franken asserts, serves three functions. First, it serves to create fear in the part of mainstream media outlets that they will be accused of having a liberal bias if they discuss issues that conservatives don't want them to. Second, it allows conservatives to deny or dismiss reports in the mainstream media, regardless of whether they are true, because they have discredited the source already. Third, attacking the liberal media can be effective at increasing conservative voter turnout.

The book criticizes several conservative authors and pundits by pointing out factual inaccuracies and deceptive statements they have made. Franken criticizes Ann Coulter on a number of points related to what Franken alleges as abuses or violations of journalistic ethics in her book Slander. In addition to accusing her of lying, Franken accuses Coulter of deliberately misusing citations in order to further a misleading political agenda. Coulter frequently said that Slander has "720 footnotes" when she was challenged on the accuracy of statements within the book. Franken points out that merely having 720 citations makes readers less likely to actually check them. He also notes that Coulter's citations are not footnotes in a literal sense, but rather endnotes, which are located at the end of the book rather than the foot of the page, which he says, readers are far less likely to refer to. Franken also cites examples where Coulter misuses her citations to attribute offensive our outlandish statements to people who did not make them.

Franken also criticizes former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg for what he claims is selective decontextualized quoting, and allegedly dishonest material in his book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. Franken recounts an incident on Phil Donahue's talk show on MSNBC when he confronted Goldberg about a misleading quote attributed to NBC anchor and commentator John Chancellor.

The book also criticizes Bill O'Reilly, with whom Al Franken has a public feud. Franken accuses O'Reilly of being a serial and pathological liar, recounting multiple controversies relating to O'Reilly, including O'Reilly's inaccurate statements regarding Peabody awards, his heated interview with Jeremy Glick, and his successful boycott of Pepsi for hiring rap artist Ludacris. Franken pokes fun at O'Reilly for moralizing about the sexually explicit and violent themes of Ludacris's songs despite having himself written a book, Those Who Trespass, which contains violent and sexual imagery and profanity. Franken also recounts his heated confrontation with O'Reilly at BookExpo America 2003, seen on C-SPAN.

Publicity

Main article: Fox v. Franken

FOX News sought damages from Franken, claiming in its lawsuit that the book's subtitle violated its alleged trademark rights in the phrase "Fair and Balanced". The lawsuit was dismissed, and the attempt backfired on FOX News in that it provided Franken with free publicity just as the book was launched. "The book was originally scheduled to be released Sept. 22 but made available Aug. 21," according to its publisher. "We sped up the release because of tremendous demand for the book, generated by recent events."

In the lawsuit, Fox described Franken as "intoxicated or deranged" as well as "shrill and unstable." In response, Franken joked that he had trademarked the word "funny", and that Fox had infringed his intellectual property rights by characterizing him as "unfunny." The publicity resulting from the lawsuit propelled Franken's as-of-then-unreleased book to the #1 sales position on Amazon.com's best-seller list.

On August 22, 2003, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin denied Fox's request for an injunction to block the publication of Franken's book, characterizing the network's claim as "wholly without merit, both factually and legally." During the judge's questioning, spectators in the court's gallery frequently laughed at Fox's case. Franken later joked, "Usually when you say someone was literally laughed out of court, you mean they were figuratively laughed out of court, but Fox was literally laughed out of court." Three days later, Fox filed papers to drop its lawsuit.

The lawsuit is described by Franken in a paperback-only chapter of Lies entitled "I Win".

Criticisms

The book has drawn a number of criticisms, many of them from Franken's political adversaries. The web site Frankenlies.com, (operated by Dave Pierre, a contributor to NewsBusters, operated by the conservative Media Research Center) compiles and sources many of these criticisms. Some examples are:

On pages 110-111 of the book (hardcover, 1st edition), Franken wrote that President Clinton "thwarted" "plots to kill the Pope and blow up twelve U.S. jetliners simultaneously." On page 121, Franken wrote that Clinton thwarted a plot "to hijack an American commercial plane and crash it into CIA headquarters." A Congressional joint inquiry, partially declassified in 2003, declared these plots "were thwarted by Philippine police when a fire erupted in an apartment where was preparing explosives." Portions of that section of the report remain classified, so any findings relating to Clinton administration involvement would be unknown to the public (or to Franken.) The actions by Philippine police are detailed and accounted over a number of chapters in a book by former ABC reporter Peter Lance, ‘’1000 Years For Revenge.’‘ In the book, Lance interviews members of the Philippine police responsible for thwarting the plots. The work by Philippine police in stopping the plots was also researched and written about by investigator Gerald Posner in a book called, Why America Slept.

In passages about reported vandalism at the White House complex during the transition of the Clinton and Bush administrations in 2000-2001, Franken wrote, "Of course, none of this horrible vandalism actually occurred" (page 153). However, a 217-page report by the General Accounting Office concluded the opposite: "Damage, theft, vandalism, and pranks occurred in the White House complex during the 2001 presidential transition. Incidents such as the removal of keys from computer keyboards; the theft of various items; the leaving of certain voice mail messages, signs, and written messages; and the placing of glue on desk drawers clearly were intentional acts."

In a book review of Franken's book in the Washington newspaper The Hill, reviewer Mary Lynn F. Jones opined, "Franken's tendency to mix fact with fiction left me wondering sometimes what was true and what wasn't." As an example, she cited a passage in Franken's book in which he wrote that former Bush foreign policy advisor Richard Armitage "bolted" from a Senate hearing and " over veteran reporter Helen Thomas, breaking her hip and jaw" (page 218). In the paperback version of Lies, Franken clarified the passage with a footnote saying, "the Helen Thomas thing is a joke" (page 227 of the paperback).

A 2004 article by pundit Rich Lowry, of the conservative National Review, challenged Franken's book on one of its facts. . Lowry noted that Franken had written on page 115 of his book that the Clinton administration had "far-reaching plan" to eliminate al Qaeda and that the Clinton team "decided to turn over the plan to the Bush administration to carry out." However, Lowry wrote that Sandy Berger testified in front of Congress on September 19, 2002, and stated, "here was no war plan that we turned over to the Bush administration during the transition. And the reports of that are just incorrect." Berger did, however, testify that the administration was executing a plan to detect bin Laden and disrupt Al Qaida, and that he personally ensured that the importance of terrorism and Al Qaida was communicated to his successor.

Alleged Plagiarism

In a 2005 book called Pants on Fire, released by the conservative organization World Net Daily, writer Alan Skorski claimed that Franken plagiarized portions of Lies and the Lying Liars from a 2001 report on the Fox News Channel by the media watchdog group FAIR. An example by Skorski:

FAIR, July/August 2001: " The Most Biased Name in News" by Seth Ackerman, writing about Hannity & Colmes:

Even Fox's "left-right" debate show, Hannity & Colmes--whose Crossfire-style format virtually imposes numerical equality between conservatives and "liberals"--can't shake the impression of resembling a Harlem Globetrotters game ...

Al Franken, page 63 (hardcover, 1st edition):

For those of you unfamiliar with the Hannity and Colmes dynamic, it's a conservative-versus-liberal talking head show, kind of a combination between Crossfire and a Harlem Globetrotters game.

According to Pants on Fire, the passage in Franken's book does not have footnotes, and FAIR's report is not cited in the "Notes and Sources" section at the back of the book.

Editions

• ISBN 0-525-94764-7 (hardcover, 2003)
• ISBN 0-452-28521-6

See also

• Media bias
• Hostile media effect

References

1. "A GUTTER RUNS THROUGH IT (PART 2)! It might be true, Frank Rich wanly said. Incomparably, we ask: Where's the outrage?". THE DAILY HOWLER.
2. Saulny, Susan (August 23, 2003). "In Courtroom, Laughter at Fox and a Victory for Al Franken". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2005-10-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
3. http://progressive.stanford.edu/2003.11_franken.html
4. ]
5. Report of the Joint Inquiry Into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 - By the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (page 310) page 61 of pdf) Retrieved February 25, 2007.
6. Frankenlies.com: Franken and the Pope and 12 airplanes
7. United States General Accounting Office, "The White House: Allegations of Damage During the 2001 Presidential Transition," June 2002, p. 19 (page 22 of the pdf file).] Retrieved February 25, 2007.
8. Frankenlies.com: We Are Discouraged, Al ... By Your Facts
9. Mary Lynn F. Jones, "Franken's Humor Overpowered by Cynical Look At the Right," The Hill, September 9, 2003 Retieved February25, 2007.
10. Frankenlies.com: No Broken Bones!
11. Rich Lowry on Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
12. Documents From Congress' Joint Inquiry into 9/11: Transcript of hearing : 19 Sept 2002, part two

External links

Rebuttals

• Frankenlies.com: A rebuttal to Al Franken
• "Lying liar" -- General criticism of Franken

Counter-rebuttals

• Franken Smear - Challenges purported smears and criticism of Franken

Franken is a fagot, nigger loving sack of shit just like all slack jawed cicksucker faoogt ass fucking libs. May you all go suck Rosies O' Donnell fat stinky cunt.

• 2003 books
• Media books
• Books about United States politics
• Books about George W. Bush
• Satirical books