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Nas raps on Obama
24/07/2008 10:04 - (SA)
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| Fox has come in for criticism in its coverage of Barack Obama. (AP) |
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New York - Hip-hop artist Nas is protesting Fox News's coverage of Barack Obama.
The rapper joined members of the activist groups MoveOn.org and ColorofChange.org to deliver more than 600 000 petitions on Wednesday to the network's New York City headquarters.
Nas, whose new album Untitled was released last week, said in a statement, "Fox poisons the country with racist propaganda and tries to call it news."
The network responded by saying, "Fox News believes in all protesters exercising their right to free speech including Nas who has an album to promote."
Network apologised
Last month, Fox News referred in a graphic to Michelle Obama, the wife of the Democratic presidential candidate, as "Obama's baby mama." Later, the network said a producer "exercised poor judgment" during the segment.
Earlier, two other Fox personalities apologised for referring to an affectionate onstage fist bump shared by the couple as a "terrorist fist jab" and, in another case, for joking about an Obama assassination.
Nas' new song, Sly Fox, takes direct aim at Fox. "Watch what you watchin', Fox keeps feeding us toxins ... I pledge allegiance to the fair and balanced truth, not the biased truth, not the liar's truth," the song says.
MoveOn.org, a liberal public advocacy group, and ColorofChange.org, an online group of black activists, said the petition signatures were gathered online in the past month.
Andre Banks, a spokesman for ColorofChange.org, said that after Fox refused to accept the petitions on Wednesday afternoon, Nas took them to Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. Fox couldn't immediately say whether security guards at their midtown building accepted the petitions.
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