John Gibson (media host)

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John Gibson

Born: 1946
Flag of United States California, USA
Occupation: Commentator, Author, Journalist, television and talk radio personality
Website: [8]

John Gibson is a conservative American television talk show host, hosting the weekday edition of The Big Story and The John Gibson Show on Fox News Radio. He has also filled in for Bill O'Reilly on both The Radio Factor and The O'Reilly Factor.

Prior to joining Fox News, Gibson hosted news talk programs on MSNBC and covered the Lewinsky scandal at length. He began his career in the late 1960's as a staff reporter for the entertainment gossip magazine, the Hollywood Reporter, and was a reporter and weekend anchorman at KCRA, the NBC affiliate in Sacramento, during the 1980's. He later joined NBC News as a correspondent before moving to MSNBC.

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[edit] Books

Gibson is the author of Hating America: The New World Sport (2004), and The War on Christmas (2005). The War on Christmas argues that "a cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists and liberal, guilt-racked Christians, not just Jewish people..." are trying to secularize Christmas.

[edit] Controversial statements

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Media pundit John Gibson's controversial statements brought criticism when he referred to religions, other than his own, as "wrong". [1] He is also known for making similarly bombastic statements with regard to race. [2]

  • January 2006 comments when the Iraqi elections were held Gibson said, "We've Won" despite continued American military presence in Iraq to this day.[citation needed]
  • When London was chosen to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, Gibson said that he regretted that Paris had not been chosen because it would have subjected that city to the threat of terrorism.[3] He also has stated that no one would care if France was a victim of a terrorist attack. [4]
  • Following the positive HIV test of porn star Darren James on April 13, 2004, a new HIV scare led to a search for all potentially infected partners of the actor, as well as a two-month shut down of adult movie production in Los Angeles. Commenting on this on April 29, 2004, Gibson said that the actors "should not be surprised, considering what they do" and noted that "this was bound to happen to them sooner or later". [5]
  • On the July 12, 2005 and January 25, 2007 edition of Fox News's The Big Story, host John Gibson said that White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove should be given "a medal" for outing covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, adding that Plame "should have been outed by somebody." [6]
  • On the January 19, 2006, edition of Fox News's The Big Story, after the release of a tape by militant Osama Bin Laden, Gibson stated, "(Bin Laden) is talking to America's far left and saying, 'You know what. We're on the same side. So why don't you work on that hardhead George W. Bush? Bin Laden told us Thursday that our far left has been working for him. It's their poll results he quotes.'" [7]
  • In his defense of Ambassador John Bolton and repudiation of the United Nations and the Third World, referring to the Third World, "That latter group includes a huge number of so-called nations, little more than spots on the map that would get invaded, taken over, subsumed, eliminated, except no-one wants to get stuck with their problems of poverty, disease and corruption."[8]
  • On the May 10, 2006, edition of Fox New's The Big Story, after the release of a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to U.S. President George W. Bush, Gibson compared the letter from the Iranian President to talking points and positions by Democrats. Gibson said, "Terry McAuliffe and the other Democrats should pay close attention to their talking points these days. That nut job running Iran, President — let's see if I can pronounce it — Ahmadinejad, sent President Bush a letter, and if it weren't postmarked Tehran, it might have been mistaken for a crank letter from an angry leftist in L.A. or Boulder or Cambridge, Massachusetts. Christians are not acting like Christians, says the Iranian president. Democrat talking point. WMD lies, says the Iranian president. Democrat talking point. Human-rights abuses in Gitmo. Another Democrat talking point. The gap between haves and have-nots. The Iranian president and the Dems in lockstep on that one, too." [9]
  • On the May 11, 2006 broadcast of The Big Story, Gibson called for caucasians to have more children. His reasoning appeared to be in part to prevent Hispanics from ever being the racial majority in America. It is projected by the U.S. Census Bureau that persons of Hispanic descent will make up well over one-third of the U.S. population by the year 2050. The next day he said that he meant all Americans should have more children.[10][11][12]
  • On the January 18th, 2007 broadcast of The Big Story, Gibson highlighted a right-wing report alleging that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) attended an Islamic “madrassa” school as a 6-year-old child. In a memo released January 24th, Obama’s office specifically called out Fox News host John Gibson for discussing the story “without any attempt to independently confirm the charges.” On his radio show that week, Gibson refused to back down. He claimed the CNN reporter who debunked the false report “probably went to the very madrassa” as Obama. Gibson implied that CNN’s report had covered up religious extremism at the school:

GIBSON: What did they see when they went to the madrassa where Barack Obama went to school?

HOST: Kids playing volleyball.

GIBSON: Playing volleyball, right. They didn’t see them in any terrorist training camps?

HOST: No.

GIBSON: No. Um, but they probably didn’t show them in their little lessons where they’re bobbing their heads and memorizing the Koran.

HOST: I didn’t see any tape of that, no.

[edit] Gibson vs. the BBC

An outspoken critic of the BBC, Gibson claims that the British Broadcasting Corporation is anti-American, accusing the BBC of having "a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Americanism that was obsessive, irrational and dishonest"[15][16]. He also claimed that reporter Andrew Gilligan, who was covering the 2003 Iraq War for BBC Radio 4 in Baghdad, had, "insisted on air that the Iraqi Army was heroically repulsing an incompetent American military". [17]

Gibson's criticisms were rejected by Ofcom when it investigated viewer complaints of Gibson's item. [18] It was found that the words he attributed to Gilligan were false, and "the manner in which John Gibson delivered these lines and the fact that he indicated that Gilligan said it "on-air" gave the distinct impression that he was quoting Gilligan directly. It did not appear that he was summarising Gilligan’s reporting. Furthermore, Fox News failed to provide any evidence, except that it felt that Gilligan’s reporting of the U.S. advance into Baghdad was incorrect, that supported this statement."

[edit] John Gibson and Muslims

On John Gibsons show My Word, John Gibson quotes the The Deputy Lead of the United States General Attorney, James Coney, "The United States Government has excellent relations with the American Muslims. They help law enforcement to a degree they don't get credit for, and it is owing to the help of the American Muslims that US law enforcement has been able to keep track of potential terrorists here." John Gibson replies to the statement by saying "So thanks to our US Muslim Community."[19] [20]

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

Cover of John Gibson's The War on Christmas
Cover of John Gibson's The War on Christmas

[edit] External links

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