Fox News gave GOP presidential candidates $55 million in free advertising

By David Edwards - Monday, January 24th, 2011 

Being on the Fox News payroll has its advantages.

Not only did five potential Republican candidates get regular paychecks from the network last year, but they also got something even more valuable: airtime.

Liberal watchdog group Media Matters found that the five received about $55 million in free advertising over the course of more than 85 hours of appearances in 2010.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee appeared for almost 48 hours. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had nearly 14 hours of appearances.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was given close to 12 hours. Former senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum and former UN Ambassador under George W. Bush John Bolton both received about six hours.

Because Huckabee hosted a show on the network, Media Matters estimated that he received the bulk of Fox News' donation at $31 million.

Advertisers would have spent about $7.5 million each for Palin and Gingrich to appear.
Santorum and Bolton received less than $5 million each in ad-value equivalency.

Each of the five has hinted at a possible presidential run in 2012.

"I'm engaged in the internal deliberations candidly," the November 21 issue of New York Times Magazine quoted Palin as saying.

The Des Moines Register reported in November that Gingrich said he was "making personal arrangements that would allow him to launch a campaign."

On November 15, Huckabee told Fox News' Alan Colmes, "The one nice thing, whether I should decide to run or not, is that more people at least would know me by what I actually believe and say, as opposed to what some opponent has defined me to be, and that's kind of encouraging."

"If I were to get into this, I would certainly not be one of the favorites, so doing well out of the box would be much more important to me than to some of the more well-known candidates," Santorum told National Review Online in October.

In September, Bolton told Fox Business Network, "I'm thinking about it."

Chris Wallace, the network's lead news anchor, revealed late last year that the network plans to turn the Republican Party's 2012 primary elections into a "production of Fox News," similar to American Idol.

That may be good news for GOP financiers but not so much for voter awareness. A University of Maryland study published last month found that extended exposure to Fox News had the tendency to confuse voters, making them more likely to believe a number of pervasive untruths.

Neocon John Bolton: "Israel Has '8 Days' to Hit Iran Nuclear Site"

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 by Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON – Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former US envoy to the UN has said.

Neocon John Bolton in this file photo. Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, the former US envoy to the UN has said.Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia's help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant's core.

At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians.

"Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they're in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it," Bolton told Fox Business Network.

"So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days."

Absent an Israeli strike, Bolton said, "Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor."

But when asked whether he expected Israel to actually launch strikes against Iran within the next eight days, Bolton was skeptical.

"I don't think so, I'm afraid that they've lost this opportunity," he said.

The controversial former envoy to the United Nations criticized Russia's role in the development of the plant, saying "the Russians are, as they often do, playing both sides against the middle."

"The idea of being able to stick a thumb in America's eye always figures prominently in Moscow," he added.

Iran dismissed the possibilities of such an attack from its archfoes.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday that "these threats of attacks had become repetitive and lost their meaning."

"According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences," he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran.

Iranian officials say Iran has stepped up defensive measures at the Bushehr plant to protect it from any attacks.

Russia has been building the Bushehr plant since the mid-1990s but the project was marred by delays, and the issue is hugely sensitive amid Tehran's standoff with the West and Israel over its nuclear ambitions.

The UN Security Council hit Tehran with a fourth set of sanctions on June 9 over its nuclear programme, and the United States and European Union followed up with tougher punitive measures targeting Iran's banking and energy sectors.

The Bushehr project was first launched by the late shah in the 1970s using contractors from German firm Siemens. But it was shelved when he was deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

It was revived after the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, as Iran's new supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his first president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, backed the project.

In 1995, Iran won the support of Russia which agreed to finish building the plant and fuel it.