Fox’s James Rosen promotes a list of "town hall battles" to be hosted by Democrats, neglecting to mention a single town hall being held by a Republican.
Rosen, who describes these town halls as "battles" of a "gladitorial" nature, offered a laughable excuse for targeting Democrats: he claimed the location of Republican town halls was secret because he hadn't been given "the spreadsheet" disclosing the schedule. Of course, there is no such "spreadsheet." All it would take to find out the schedule for Republican town halls would be picking up the phone and placing a few calls to the press secretaries of members of Congress.
Transcript:
JON SCOTT: These town hall battles, I guess they're going to be going on as long as Congress is in summer recess, huh?
JAMES ROSEN: That's right, and in fact Fox News has obtained a large Excel spreadsheet showing the schedule of town halls for Democratic members of Congress. Believe me viewers, if we had the spreadsheet for the Republican members as well, we would share that with you, but here's just a little look at what's going to be going on town hall-wise next week.
Senator Claire McCaskill, the Democrat of Missouri, is going to be hosting two town halls in August 10 in her home state. Senator Arlen Specterr, the recent convert to the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania has a couple as well. The next day, on the following day, Pete DeFazio, the Democrat of Oregon will be in Cave Junction.
As I say, who knew, Jon, that town halls were really so gladitorial?
SCOTT: That's for sure. All kinds of battles going on there.
h/t: ThinkProgress.
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Update (4:15PM): In an e-mail to Daily Kos, Rosen defends himself:
Subject: Did you...
...watch my next live report, in the 1 pm hour, in which I alerted viewers only to town halls coming up for Republicans, namely Sen. Grassley and Rep. Joe Barton? Where’s your sense of fair and balanced?
In the interests of "fair and balanced," it is true that a bit over two hours after his original report, Rosen did report on two Republicans holding town halls over the August recess, Chuck Grassley and Joe Barton. Unlike in his first report (which used words like "gladitorial" and "battle"), Rosen's second report on upcoming town halls emphasized that in some town halls, cooler heads were prevailing.