Fox News: We make the news

At the gym, while running my virtual marathon, I was watching Fox News which should really be renamed Fox Fantasy News. It's absolutely incredible how much crap they make up. In terms of politics, we all know the trash Fox spews out. But why lie or exaggerate the news? Just as I'm nearing mile 17, they head into a commercial break with the captivating headline: July 7th mastermind arrested in Zambia. Now, given that I had checked the news before I left for the gym, I found it odd that I had missed this juicy bit of news. So I continued running, still riveted to the screen during the absolutely awful commercials that followed (anyone want to buy a 5 dollar coin for the bargain price of $29.95!?).

When the news started up again, the anchor went into the story that the "mastermind" of the July 7th attacks had been arrested in Zambia. Not suspected or alleged. The ACTUAL "mastermind" had been caught, according to Fox. I kept listening through the rest of the segment until the terrorism "expert" they had on insisted that Iraq and Al-Qaeda were connected before the Iraqi war (without providing evidence other than saying that the 9/11 comission had concluded this very thing, which of course they didn't).

Anyway, so I went home and checked online for ANY news about Zambia and the "mastermind". I checked my trusty Google News and found all of 4 links which had the works Zambia and mastermind, meaning one of two things: Or the "mastermind" wasn't arrested in Zambia, or he wasn't the "mastermind". (We can't also discount that there is some other "mastermind" in Zambia who had nothing to do with the July 7th attacks). The stories did mention that someone was arrested in Zambia and that it was possible he had links to July 7th. Primarily, he made about 20 cell phone calls to the bombers, which may or not prove anything, though Scotland Yard didn't comment on the report that the "mastermind" was indeed in custody.

So, who cares? Why did Fox lie about the NEWS (not even political news!)? Well, the story on CNN made some sense of this. Seems this guy was going to be arrested in Zambia months ago by the US, but he was a British citizen and the Brits didn't want to give him up (or arrest him themselves). In other words, all of a sudden our security services (which I REALLY can't imagine doing the job Scotland Yard has done over in the UK) had the "mastermind" all this time and if it weren't for some squabbling, the US could have prevented the July 7th attacks (and people in Podunk, Kansas think that they have some super-elite team of investigators protecting them here at home).

Unless of course the "mastermind" did nothing other than make a few phone calls, and that's not illegal...just ask Karl Rove.