at99 has been posting voluminous praise for Fox News. A number of us have disagreed with this, in one or another. Recently, he asked the following of me:
(if you want) kindly show me of the unbelievable bias that you have deemed unwatchable.
Articles follow.
Unfair at Any Volume: Fox News Channels' Unbalancing Act
by Shaun Richman (from The Torch, Spring 2001)
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel is the current buzz in TV journalism. Riding high in the news ratings and unsettling the venerated CNN and the more established MSNBC, Fox News has established a reputation for brash and exciting, in-your-face conservative news. Murdoch’s experiment in openly biased TV journalism has been rewarded with a loyal fan base and surprising clout in Washington. But the success of this right-wing news media organization, which cloaks itself in buzzwords like "fair and balanced", raises some troubling questions about meaningful political balance and diversity in television journalism.
Rupert Murdoch was very specific about his picks for his Fox News team, and it shows in their credentials. His choice of network president was Roger Ailes, a veteran of CNBC and MSNBC, who spent his earlier career as advisor to Presidents Nixon, Reagan and the senior President Bush. The network’s high-profile anchors, Brit Hume, Catherine Crier and Neil Cavuto were well-known conservatives at the major news networks. Crier, in fact, began her career as a Republican judge in Texas, a job description that impossibly inspires less faith in "fairness" than "Fox News Anchor."
The network’s clear star, Bill O’Reilly, is an arch-conservative who made his career on the sleazy tabloid show Inside Edition. Murdoch also found room for Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol, the gruesome twosome of McLaughlin Group-ers who hail from Murdoch’s own conservative journal, The Weekly Standard. Other hires include Tony Snow, a syndicated columnist and former chief speechwriter for Bush the elder; syndicated columnist Monica Crowley, a former assistant to President Nixon; Newsday columnist Jim Pinkerton, a former staffer for Presidents Reagan and Bush; John Podhoretz, editorial page editor of the New York Post and a former Reagan speechwriter. Notice a pattern? And, oh yes, the network hired Bush cousin John Ellis as an election analyst and "number cruncher," who spent much of election night on the phone with his cousins, the governors of Texas and Florida, and was responsible for Fox News Channel’s being the first to declare George W. Bush winner of Florida’s electoral votes.
The slogan, "We report. You Decide," is Fox News’ laughable effort to hide its right-wing agenda. Rupert Murdoch "has never been known for giving balanced news in his newspapers or broadcasts," counters author Ben Bagdikian, whose book, The Media Monopoly, was the first to call attention to the troubling trend of media mergers — nearly twenty years ago! "If he has had a religious experience, we have yet to see the results."
Actually, Fox News doesn’t claim to be balanced in itself. They insist that they’re simply a counter-balance to the rest of the industry’s obvious liberal bias. "Bias + bias = balance" goes the defense, and it’s one that socialists should subscribe to. Better an open bias than a covert agenda. Europe excels at this, with a diverse ideological media that covers the spectrum from socialist to liberal to moderate to conservative to fascist!
But exactly what bias does Fox claim to balance? The mainstream media’s own neo-liberal, pro-business politics? Hey, what a coincidence! That’s Fox’s bias too! Give them credit. Fox sure does a good job of fostering the impression of a vast difference. "Finally both sides are being presented," gloated Fox News chief, Roger Ailes to the Washington Post, "Al Gore liked the old system where only side was presented."
Thank goodness for that Punch and Judy show we call the two-party system! Without it’s cheap Democrat-bashing, what would make Fox News Channel special? No wonder Fox’s "balancing act" has won a fan in Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, who proclaimed after the election controversy, "During the past two months, if it hadn’t been for Fox, I don’t know what I would have done for the news."
The problem with Fox, however, is the political unbalance it manages to achieve in the media. The simple truth is that the "liberal media establishment" is a myth. Partisan politics aside, where Fox supporters may indeed have a point that most reporters lean Democratic, most mainstream media organizations share Fox’s outlook.
ABC News’ coverage of Africa’s AIDS epidemic has centered on the prescription drug company’s right to charge exorbitant amounts of money to poor and dying people, and has prominently featured talking heads from the Cato Institute, with no left response. All the major news networks portrayed the protestors who poured into Seattle, DC, Philadelphia and Los Angeles last year as violent, backwards boobs, and gave no substantive coverage to their message. Can you recall a serious discussion of the US military’s role in the Colombian civil war?
These issues do not reach the mainstream because the corporate media in effect censor them. Left, or even liberal, voices and viewpoints are routinely shut out of TV news and Sunday morning chat, while Fox is allowed to be unapologetically right-wing in the interest of balance.
A look at Fox’s sorry excuse for liberal counterpoints on its talking head shows (McLaughlin Group whipping boy Morton Kondracke and NPR’s Juan Williams for example) is a clear example of this trend. "They might as well have a scarecrow in the liberal seat," quips left media critic and professor at University of Illinois, Robert McChesney. But CNN and MSNBC are no better! There is no left-wing equivalent of the slimy Robert Novak, no liberal David Gergen. What happens when the center is substituted for the left and the far-right is deemed "mainstream?" Political discourse makes a sharp turn to the right, and it’s entirely the result of television, and the mega maniacal machinations of a reactionary globalist billionaire!
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp spent an estimated $475 million to launch Fox News Channel in 1996. Only that amount of money could buy the kind of infrastructure a 24-hour news channel needs, and only the clout of a media organization that controls several other powerful networks, and has politicians like FCC appointees and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in its pocket, could muscle its way onto the cable dial in the vast majority of markets in such a short time. In fact, Murdoch turned cable convention on its ear by offering to pay cable carriers $10 per household in order to get the Fox News Channel carried in its first year. The norm is for cable carriers to pay the networks for broadcasting rights.
Obviously, Fox News Channel is more important than the usual business venture for Rupert Murdoch. Yes, the channel will prove to be a money-maker for News Corp, but, more importantly, it serves as a mouthpiece for Rupert Murdoch. As at the New York Post, former staffers at Fox News report management’s strong hand interfering in coverage.
When a news network is so clearly the product of one man’s money and ego, how well can it claim to represent any supposedly-ignored segment of the viewing audience?
While bias plus bias might equal balance, how on earth is Murdoch’s unbalancing act supposed to be equaled by the left. The estimated sticker price for launching a 24-hour news network has climbed to $500 million in the five years since NewsCorp spawned Fox News Channel, and that’s without bribing cable carriers to add the network.
Under the current broadcasting deregulation rules of free speech to the highest bidder (established thanks largely to Rupert Murdoch’s lobbying), no left-wing media organization could ever be established to rival Fox.
In principle, not one but many conservative news media organizations should contribute to the diversity of public discourse. None of them, however, should be the puppet of the rich and powerful.
To open up the media to more voices, Robert McChesney proposes increased regulation and, more importantly, public ownership of the media. There are already left-wing television networks in existence, such as Boulder’s Free Speech TV, that could lend true balance to the news media as well as the mainstream news channels, if the TV dial was opened to them. Until that happens, there is nothing fair or balanced in Murdoch’s con of a conservative counterweight to the rest of the corporate media.
Fox News Bias (no spam)
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Fox News Bias (no spam)
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
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From Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting:
The Most Biased Name in News, part 1
by Seth Ackerman
Years ago, Republican party chair Rich Bond explained that conservatives' frequent denunciations of "liberal bias" in the media were part of "a strategy" (Washington Post, 8/20/92). Comparing journalists to referees in a sports match, Bond explained: "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time."
But when Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour cable network, debuted in 1996, a curious thing happened: Instead of denouncing it, conservative politicians and activists lavished praise on the network. "If it hadn't been for Fox, I don't know what I'd have done for the news," Trent Lott gushed after the Florida election recount (Washington Post, 2/5/01). George W. Bush extolled Fox News Channel anchor Tony Snow--a former speechwriter for Bush's father--and his "impressive transition to journalism" in a specially taped April 2001 tribute to Snow's Sunday-morning show on its five-year anniversary (Washington Post, 5/7/01). The right-wing Heritage Foundation had to warn its staffers not to watch so much Fox News on their computers, because it was causing the think tank's system to crash.
When it comes to Fox News Channel, conservatives don't feel the need to "work the ref." The ref is already on their side. Since its 1996 launch, Fox has become a central hub of the conservative movement's well-oiled media machine. Together with the GOP organization and its satellite think tanks and advocacy groups, this network of fiercely partisan outlets--such as the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative talk-radio shows like Rush Limbaugh's--forms a highly effective right-wing echo chamber where GOP-friendly news stories can be promoted, repeated and amplified. Fox knows how to play this game better than anyone.
Yet, at the same time, the network bristles at the slightest suggestion of a conservative tilt. In fact, wrapping itself in slogans like "Fair and balanced" and "We report, you decide," Fox argues precisely the opposite: Far from being a biased network, Fox argues, it is the only unbiased network. So far, Fox's strategy of aggressive denial has worked surprisingly well; faced with its unblinking refusal to admit any conservative tilt at all, some commentators have simply acquiesced to the network's own self-assessment. FAIR has decided to take a closer look.
"Coming next, drug addicted pregnant women no longer have anything to fear from the authorities thanks to the Supreme Court. Both sides on this in a moment."
--Bill O'Reilly (O'Reilly Factor, 3/23/01)
Fox's founder and president, Roger Ailes, was for decades one of the savviest and most pugnacious Republican political operatives in Washington, a veteran of the Nixon and Reagan campaigns. Ailes is most famous for his role in crafting the elder Bush's media strategy in the bruising 1988 presidential race. With Ailes' help, Bush turned a double-digit deficit in the polls into a resounding win by targeting the GOP's base of white male voters in the South and West, using red-meat themes like Michael Dukakis' "card-carrying" membership in the ACLU, his laissez-faire attitude toward flag-burning, his alleged indifference to the pledge of allegiance--and, of course, paroled felon Willie Horton.
Described by fellow Bush aide Lee A****er as having "two speeds--attack and destroy," Ailes once jocularly told a Time reporter (8/22/88): "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it." Later, as a producer for Rush Limbaugh's short-lived TV show, he was fond of calling Bill Clinton the "hippie president" and lashing out at "liberal bigots" (Washington Times, 5/11/93). It is these two sensibilities above all--right-wing talk radio and below-the-belt political campaigning--that Ailes brought with him to Fox, and his stamp is evident in all aspects of the network's programming.
Fox daytime anchor David Asman is formerly of the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page and the conservative Manhattan Institute. The host of Fox News Sunday is Tony Snow, a conservative columnist and former chief speechwriter for the first Bush administration. Eric Breindel, previously the editorial-page editor of the right-wing New York Post, was senior vice president of Fox's parent company, News Corporation, until his death in 1998; Fox News Channel's senior vice president is John Moody, a long-time journalist known for his staunch conservative views.
Fox's managing editor is Brit Hume, a veteran TV journalist and contributor to the conservative American Spectator and Weekly Standard magazines. Its top-rated talkshow is hosted by Bill O'Reilly, a columnist for the conservative WorldNetDaily.com and a registered Republican (that is, until a week before the Washington Post published an article revealing his party registration--12/13/00).
The abundance of conservatives and Republicans at Fox News Channel does not seem to be a coincidence. In 1996, Andrew Kirtzman, a respected New York City cable news reporter, was interviewed for a job with Fox and says that management wanted to know what his political affiliation was. "They were afraid I was a Democrat," he told the Village Voice (10/15/96). When Kirtzman refused to tell Fox his party ID, "all employment discussion ended," according to the Voice.
Catherine Crier, who was perceived as one of Fox's most prestigious and credible early hires, was an elected Republican judge before starting a career in journalism. (Crier has since moved on to Court TV.) Pundit Mara Liasson--who is touted as an on-air "liberal" by Fox executives--sits on the board of the conservative human-rights group Freedom House; New York magazine (11/17/97) cited a Fox insider as saying that Liasson assured president Roger Ailes before being hired that she was a Republican.
"Who would be the most likely to cheat at cards-- Bill Clinton or Al Gore?"
--Fox News Channel/Opinion Dynamics poll (5/00)
The most obvious sign of Fox's slant is its heavily right-leaning punditry. Each episode of Special Report with Brit Hume, for example, features a three-person panel of pundits who chat about the day's political news at the end of the show. The most frequent panelist is Fred Barnes, the evangelical Christian supply-sider who edits the Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. He sits proudly on the rightward flank of the Republican party (and often scolds it for slouching leftwards).
The next most frequent guest is Mort Kondrake, who sits in the middle of the panel. Politically, Kondrake falls at the very rightward edge of the Democratic party-- if not beyond it. As he famously explained in a 1988 New Republic essay (8/29/88), he is a Democrat who is "disgusted with the Democratic Party" and whose main reason for not defecting to the Republicans is that they "have failed to be true to themselves as conservatives." (He was referring to Reagan's deficit spending.)
Rounding out the panel is its third-most-frequent pundit, Mara Liasson, who sits on the opposite side of the table from the conservative Barnes, implicitly identifying her as a liberal. But her liberalism consists of little more than being a woman who works for National Public Radio; she has proposed that "one of the roots of the problem with education today is feminism" (Talk of the Nation, 5/3/01); she declares that "Jesse Jackson gets away with a lot of things that other people don't" (Special Report, 6/21/00); she calls George W. Bush's reversal on carbon dioxide emissions "a small thing" (3/14/01), campaign finance reform "an issue that . . . only 200 people in America care about" (3/19/01) and slavery reparations "pretty much of a non-issue" (3/19/01).
Less frequent Special Report panelists include conservative Washington Times reporter Bill Sammon, centrist Fortune writer Jeff Birnbaum and NPR host Juan Williams. Williams, the only guest who could plausibly claim to be a liberal, was so outraged over attacks on his friend Clarence Thomas that he declared that "liberals have become monsters" (Washington Post, 10/10/91), denouncing the "so-called champions of fairness: liberal politicians, unions, civil rights groups and women's organizations." Indeed, Fox's crew of "liberal" pundits seems almost calculated to be either ineffective left-of-center advocates or conciliatory moderates. Ironically, perhaps the only Fox commentator who consistently presents a strong progressive perspective--that is, critical of corporate power and militarism, and sympathetic to progressive social movements--is FAIR founder Jeff Cohen, a weekly panelist on the weekend media show Fox News Watch.
Meanwhile, Barnes and Kondracke --the conservative Republican and conservative Democrat--make up the entire political spectrum on Fox's weekend political show, The Beltway Boys, where they are generally in agreement as they discuss the week's news.
The Most Biased Name in News, part 1
by Seth Ackerman
Years ago, Republican party chair Rich Bond explained that conservatives' frequent denunciations of "liberal bias" in the media were part of "a strategy" (Washington Post, 8/20/92). Comparing journalists to referees in a sports match, Bond explained: "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time."
But when Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour cable network, debuted in 1996, a curious thing happened: Instead of denouncing it, conservative politicians and activists lavished praise on the network. "If it hadn't been for Fox, I don't know what I'd have done for the news," Trent Lott gushed after the Florida election recount (Washington Post, 2/5/01). George W. Bush extolled Fox News Channel anchor Tony Snow--a former speechwriter for Bush's father--and his "impressive transition to journalism" in a specially taped April 2001 tribute to Snow's Sunday-morning show on its five-year anniversary (Washington Post, 5/7/01). The right-wing Heritage Foundation had to warn its staffers not to watch so much Fox News on their computers, because it was causing the think tank's system to crash.
When it comes to Fox News Channel, conservatives don't feel the need to "work the ref." The ref is already on their side. Since its 1996 launch, Fox has become a central hub of the conservative movement's well-oiled media machine. Together with the GOP organization and its satellite think tanks and advocacy groups, this network of fiercely partisan outlets--such as the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative talk-radio shows like Rush Limbaugh's--forms a highly effective right-wing echo chamber where GOP-friendly news stories can be promoted, repeated and amplified. Fox knows how to play this game better than anyone.
Yet, at the same time, the network bristles at the slightest suggestion of a conservative tilt. In fact, wrapping itself in slogans like "Fair and balanced" and "We report, you decide," Fox argues precisely the opposite: Far from being a biased network, Fox argues, it is the only unbiased network. So far, Fox's strategy of aggressive denial has worked surprisingly well; faced with its unblinking refusal to admit any conservative tilt at all, some commentators have simply acquiesced to the network's own self-assessment. FAIR has decided to take a closer look.
"Coming next, drug addicted pregnant women no longer have anything to fear from the authorities thanks to the Supreme Court. Both sides on this in a moment."
--Bill O'Reilly (O'Reilly Factor, 3/23/01)
Fox's founder and president, Roger Ailes, was for decades one of the savviest and most pugnacious Republican political operatives in Washington, a veteran of the Nixon and Reagan campaigns. Ailes is most famous for his role in crafting the elder Bush's media strategy in the bruising 1988 presidential race. With Ailes' help, Bush turned a double-digit deficit in the polls into a resounding win by targeting the GOP's base of white male voters in the South and West, using red-meat themes like Michael Dukakis' "card-carrying" membership in the ACLU, his laissez-faire attitude toward flag-burning, his alleged indifference to the pledge of allegiance--and, of course, paroled felon Willie Horton.
Described by fellow Bush aide Lee A****er as having "two speeds--attack and destroy," Ailes once jocularly told a Time reporter (8/22/88): "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it." Later, as a producer for Rush Limbaugh's short-lived TV show, he was fond of calling Bill Clinton the "hippie president" and lashing out at "liberal bigots" (Washington Times, 5/11/93). It is these two sensibilities above all--right-wing talk radio and below-the-belt political campaigning--that Ailes brought with him to Fox, and his stamp is evident in all aspects of the network's programming.
Fox daytime anchor David Asman is formerly of the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page and the conservative Manhattan Institute. The host of Fox News Sunday is Tony Snow, a conservative columnist and former chief speechwriter for the first Bush administration. Eric Breindel, previously the editorial-page editor of the right-wing New York Post, was senior vice president of Fox's parent company, News Corporation, until his death in 1998; Fox News Channel's senior vice president is John Moody, a long-time journalist known for his staunch conservative views.
Fox's managing editor is Brit Hume, a veteran TV journalist and contributor to the conservative American Spectator and Weekly Standard magazines. Its top-rated talkshow is hosted by Bill O'Reilly, a columnist for the conservative WorldNetDaily.com and a registered Republican (that is, until a week before the Washington Post published an article revealing his party registration--12/13/00).
The abundance of conservatives and Republicans at Fox News Channel does not seem to be a coincidence. In 1996, Andrew Kirtzman, a respected New York City cable news reporter, was interviewed for a job with Fox and says that management wanted to know what his political affiliation was. "They were afraid I was a Democrat," he told the Village Voice (10/15/96). When Kirtzman refused to tell Fox his party ID, "all employment discussion ended," according to the Voice.
Catherine Crier, who was perceived as one of Fox's most prestigious and credible early hires, was an elected Republican judge before starting a career in journalism. (Crier has since moved on to Court TV.) Pundit Mara Liasson--who is touted as an on-air "liberal" by Fox executives--sits on the board of the conservative human-rights group Freedom House; New York magazine (11/17/97) cited a Fox insider as saying that Liasson assured president Roger Ailes before being hired that she was a Republican.
"Who would be the most likely to cheat at cards-- Bill Clinton or Al Gore?"
--Fox News Channel/Opinion Dynamics poll (5/00)
The most obvious sign of Fox's slant is its heavily right-leaning punditry. Each episode of Special Report with Brit Hume, for example, features a three-person panel of pundits who chat about the day's political news at the end of the show. The most frequent panelist is Fred Barnes, the evangelical Christian supply-sider who edits the Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. He sits proudly on the rightward flank of the Republican party (and often scolds it for slouching leftwards).
The next most frequent guest is Mort Kondrake, who sits in the middle of the panel. Politically, Kondrake falls at the very rightward edge of the Democratic party-- if not beyond it. As he famously explained in a 1988 New Republic essay (8/29/88), he is a Democrat who is "disgusted with the Democratic Party" and whose main reason for not defecting to the Republicans is that they "have failed to be true to themselves as conservatives." (He was referring to Reagan's deficit spending.)
Rounding out the panel is its third-most-frequent pundit, Mara Liasson, who sits on the opposite side of the table from the conservative Barnes, implicitly identifying her as a liberal. But her liberalism consists of little more than being a woman who works for National Public Radio; she has proposed that "one of the roots of the problem with education today is feminism" (Talk of the Nation, 5/3/01); she declares that "Jesse Jackson gets away with a lot of things that other people don't" (Special Report, 6/21/00); she calls George W. Bush's reversal on carbon dioxide emissions "a small thing" (3/14/01), campaign finance reform "an issue that . . . only 200 people in America care about" (3/19/01) and slavery reparations "pretty much of a non-issue" (3/19/01).
Less frequent Special Report panelists include conservative Washington Times reporter Bill Sammon, centrist Fortune writer Jeff Birnbaum and NPR host Juan Williams. Williams, the only guest who could plausibly claim to be a liberal, was so outraged over attacks on his friend Clarence Thomas that he declared that "liberals have become monsters" (Washington Post, 10/10/91), denouncing the "so-called champions of fairness: liberal politicians, unions, civil rights groups and women's organizations." Indeed, Fox's crew of "liberal" pundits seems almost calculated to be either ineffective left-of-center advocates or conciliatory moderates. Ironically, perhaps the only Fox commentator who consistently presents a strong progressive perspective--that is, critical of corporate power and militarism, and sympathetic to progressive social movements--is FAIR founder Jeff Cohen, a weekly panelist on the weekend media show Fox News Watch.
Meanwhile, Barnes and Kondracke --the conservative Republican and conservative Democrat--make up the entire political spectrum on Fox's weekend political show, The Beltway Boys, where they are generally in agreement as they discuss the week's news.
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
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The Most Biased Name in News, part 2
Even Fox's "left-right" debate show, Hannity & Colmes--whose Crossfire-style format virtually imposes numerical equality between conservatives and "liberals"--can't shake the impression of resembling a Harlem Globetrotters game in which everyone knows which side is supposed to win.
On the right, co-host Sean Hannity is an effective and telegenic ideologue, a protégé of Newt Gingrich and a rising star of conservative talk radio who is perhaps more plugged into the GOP leadership than any media figure besides Rush Limbaugh. (Hannity reportedly received "thunderous applause" when he spoke at a recent closed-door House Republican Conference meeting that is usually closed to the media--U.S. News & World Report, 5/7/01.)
On the left is Alan Colmes, a rather less telegenic former stand-up comic and radio host whose views are slightly left-of-center but who, as a personality, is completely off the radar screen of liberal politics. "I'm quite moderate," he told a reporter when asked to describe his politics (USA Today, 2/1/95). Hannity, a self-described "arch-conservative" (Electronic Media, 8/26/96), joined Fox when the network was started, and personally nominated Colmes to be his on-screen debating opponent (New York Times, 3/1/98). Before the selection was made, the show's working title was Hannity & Liberal to Be Determined--giving some idea of the relative weight each host carries, both on-screen and within the network. Fox sometimes sends a camera down to Hannity's radio studio during the network's daytime news programming, from which he holds forth on the news of the day. Needless to say, Colmes does not receive similar treatment.
"I think what's going on is the Democratic lawyers have flooded Florida. They are afraid of George W. Bush becoming president and instituting tort reform and their gravy train will be over. This is the trial association's full court press to make sure Bush does not win."
--Fox News Channel anchor John Gibson (12/9/00)
Fox has had trouble at times hiding the partisanship of its main news personalities. In 1996, while already a Fox anchor, Tony Snow endorsed Bob Dole for president in the Republican National Committee magazine Rising Tide (New York, 11/17/97). A former speech-writer for the elder Bush, Snow often guest-hosts the Rush Limbaugh show and wrote an unabashedly conservative weekly newspaper column until Fox management recently pressured him to drop it to avoid the appearance of bias (Washington Post, 5/29/01).
At the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia, Snow--ostensibly present as a journalist covering a news event--jumped onstage to give a speech to the Republican Youth Caucus after organizers asked him to fill in for a speaker who couldn't make it. (He was later reprimanded by his bosses.) Trent Lott, whose speech directly followed Snow's, began with a cheer of "How about Tony Snow in 2008?" (New York Daily News 8/2/00; Federal News Service, 8/1/00).
Just three days earlier, near the GOP convention, Bill O'Reilly gave the keynote speech at David Horowitz's conservative "Restoration Weekend" event, where he was introduced by Republican congressmember Jack Quinn. Fox's Sean Hannity also spoke at the gathering, described by the Washington Times (6/30/00) as the "premiere political event for conservative thinkers." O'Reilly has had Horowitz on his show six times--to talk about everything from National Public Radio's "left" bias (12/20/00) to Hillary Clinton's "sense of entitlement" (6/22/00) to Horowitz's book on race relations, Hating Whitey (10/4/99).
"There's a certain sameness to the news on the Big Three [networks] and CNN. . . . America is bad, corporations are bad, animal species should be protected, and every cop is a racist killer. That's where 'fair and balanced' [Fox's slogan] comes in. We don't think all corporations are bad, every forest should be saved, every government spending program is good. We're going to be more inquisitive."
--John Moody, Fox News Channel's senior vice-president for news and editorial (Brill's Content, 10/99)
Some mainstream journalists have suggested that Fox's "straight news" is more or less balanced, however slanted its commentary might be. "A close monitoring of the channel over several weeks indicates that the news segments tend to be straightforward, with little hint of political subtext except for stories the news editors feel the 'mainstream' press has either downplayed or ignored," wrote Columbia Journalism Review's Neil Hickey (3-4/98). The fact that Fox's "chat consistently tilts to the conservative side," wrote the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz (2/5/01), "may cast an unwarranted cloud on the news reporting, which tends to be straightforward."
When a New York Times profile of Fox News ran with a headline calling it a "conservative cable channel" (9/18/00), the paper quickly corrected their "error" the following day, explaining that in "attributing a general political viewpoint to the network, the headline exceeded the facts in the article."
Putting aside the question of what genuine "balance" means, there are undoubtedly a few reporters in Fox's Washington bureau--such as White House correspondent Jim Angle--whose stories are more or less indistinguishable from those of their counterparts at the mainstream networks.
But an attentive viewer will notice that there are entire blocks of the network's programming schedule that are set aside for conservative stories. Fox's website offers a regular feature on "political correctness" entitled "Tongue-Tied: A Report From the Front Lines of the Culture Wars," whose logo is a scowling "PC Patrol" officer peering testily through a magnifying glass. It invites readers to write in and "keep us up on examples of PC excess you come across."
Recently the network debuted a weekly half-hour series--Only on Fox--devoted explicitly to right-wing stories. The concept of the show was explained by host Trace Gallagher in the premier episode (5/26/01):
Five years ago, Fox News Channel was launched on the idea that something was wrong with news media--that somehow, somewhere bias found its way into reporting. . . . And it's not just the way you tell a story that can get in the way of the truth. It's the stories you choose to tell. . . . Fox News Channel is committed to being fair and balanced in the coverage of the stories everybody is reporting--and to reporting stories you won't hear anywhere else. Stories you will see only on Fox.
Gallagher then introduced a series of stories about one conservative cause after another: from white firefighters suing Boston's fire department for discrimination, to sawmill workers endangered by Clinton-Gore environmental regulations (without comment from a single supporter of the rules), to property owners who feel threatened by an environmental agreement "signed by President Clinton in 1992." (The agreement was actually signed by George Bush the elder, who was president in 1992--though that didn't stop Fox from using news footage of a smiling Bill Clinton proudly signing an official document that was supposed to be, but wasn't, the environmental pact in question.)
Fox's news specials are equally slanted: Dangerous Places (3/25/01), a special about foreign policy hosted by Newt Gingrich; Heroes, an irregular series hosted by former Republican congressmember John Kasich; and The Real Reagan (11/25/99), a panel discussion on Ronald Reagan, hosted by Tony Snow, in which all six guests were Reagan friends and political aides. Vanishing Freedoms 2: Who Owns America (5/19/01) wandered off into militia-style paranoia, suggesting that the U.N. was "taking over" private property.
There is a formula to Fox's news agenda. "A lot of the people we have hired," Fox executive John Moody explained (Inside Media, 12/11/96) when the network was launched, "have come without the preconceptions of must-do news. There are stories we will sometimes forego in order to do stories we think are more significant. The biggest strength that we have is that Roger Ailes has allowed me to do that; to forego stores that would be 'duty' stories in order to focus on other things."
These "other" stories that Moody has in mind are what make up much of Fox's programming: An embarrassing story about Jesse Jackson's sex life. The latest political-correctness outrage on campus. A one-day mini-scandal about a Democratic senator. Much like talk radio, Fox picks up these tidbits from right-wing outlets like the Washington Times or the Drudge Report and runs with them.
Even Fox's "left-right" debate show, Hannity & Colmes--whose Crossfire-style format virtually imposes numerical equality between conservatives and "liberals"--can't shake the impression of resembling a Harlem Globetrotters game in which everyone knows which side is supposed to win.
On the right, co-host Sean Hannity is an effective and telegenic ideologue, a protégé of Newt Gingrich and a rising star of conservative talk radio who is perhaps more plugged into the GOP leadership than any media figure besides Rush Limbaugh. (Hannity reportedly received "thunderous applause" when he spoke at a recent closed-door House Republican Conference meeting that is usually closed to the media--U.S. News & World Report, 5/7/01.)
On the left is Alan Colmes, a rather less telegenic former stand-up comic and radio host whose views are slightly left-of-center but who, as a personality, is completely off the radar screen of liberal politics. "I'm quite moderate," he told a reporter when asked to describe his politics (USA Today, 2/1/95). Hannity, a self-described "arch-conservative" (Electronic Media, 8/26/96), joined Fox when the network was started, and personally nominated Colmes to be his on-screen debating opponent (New York Times, 3/1/98). Before the selection was made, the show's working title was Hannity & Liberal to Be Determined--giving some idea of the relative weight each host carries, both on-screen and within the network. Fox sometimes sends a camera down to Hannity's radio studio during the network's daytime news programming, from which he holds forth on the news of the day. Needless to say, Colmes does not receive similar treatment.
"I think what's going on is the Democratic lawyers have flooded Florida. They are afraid of George W. Bush becoming president and instituting tort reform and their gravy train will be over. This is the trial association's full court press to make sure Bush does not win."
--Fox News Channel anchor John Gibson (12/9/00)
Fox has had trouble at times hiding the partisanship of its main news personalities. In 1996, while already a Fox anchor, Tony Snow endorsed Bob Dole for president in the Republican National Committee magazine Rising Tide (New York, 11/17/97). A former speech-writer for the elder Bush, Snow often guest-hosts the Rush Limbaugh show and wrote an unabashedly conservative weekly newspaper column until Fox management recently pressured him to drop it to avoid the appearance of bias (Washington Post, 5/29/01).
At the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia, Snow--ostensibly present as a journalist covering a news event--jumped onstage to give a speech to the Republican Youth Caucus after organizers asked him to fill in for a speaker who couldn't make it. (He was later reprimanded by his bosses.) Trent Lott, whose speech directly followed Snow's, began with a cheer of "How about Tony Snow in 2008?" (New York Daily News 8/2/00; Federal News Service, 8/1/00).
Just three days earlier, near the GOP convention, Bill O'Reilly gave the keynote speech at David Horowitz's conservative "Restoration Weekend" event, where he was introduced by Republican congressmember Jack Quinn. Fox's Sean Hannity also spoke at the gathering, described by the Washington Times (6/30/00) as the "premiere political event for conservative thinkers." O'Reilly has had Horowitz on his show six times--to talk about everything from National Public Radio's "left" bias (12/20/00) to Hillary Clinton's "sense of entitlement" (6/22/00) to Horowitz's book on race relations, Hating Whitey (10/4/99).
"There's a certain sameness to the news on the Big Three [networks] and CNN. . . . America is bad, corporations are bad, animal species should be protected, and every cop is a racist killer. That's where 'fair and balanced' [Fox's slogan] comes in. We don't think all corporations are bad, every forest should be saved, every government spending program is good. We're going to be more inquisitive."
--John Moody, Fox News Channel's senior vice-president for news and editorial (Brill's Content, 10/99)
Some mainstream journalists have suggested that Fox's "straight news" is more or less balanced, however slanted its commentary might be. "A close monitoring of the channel over several weeks indicates that the news segments tend to be straightforward, with little hint of political subtext except for stories the news editors feel the 'mainstream' press has either downplayed or ignored," wrote Columbia Journalism Review's Neil Hickey (3-4/98). The fact that Fox's "chat consistently tilts to the conservative side," wrote the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz (2/5/01), "may cast an unwarranted cloud on the news reporting, which tends to be straightforward."
When a New York Times profile of Fox News ran with a headline calling it a "conservative cable channel" (9/18/00), the paper quickly corrected their "error" the following day, explaining that in "attributing a general political viewpoint to the network, the headline exceeded the facts in the article."
Putting aside the question of what genuine "balance" means, there are undoubtedly a few reporters in Fox's Washington bureau--such as White House correspondent Jim Angle--whose stories are more or less indistinguishable from those of their counterparts at the mainstream networks.
But an attentive viewer will notice that there are entire blocks of the network's programming schedule that are set aside for conservative stories. Fox's website offers a regular feature on "political correctness" entitled "Tongue-Tied: A Report From the Front Lines of the Culture Wars," whose logo is a scowling "PC Patrol" officer peering testily through a magnifying glass. It invites readers to write in and "keep us up on examples of PC excess you come across."
Recently the network debuted a weekly half-hour series--Only on Fox--devoted explicitly to right-wing stories. The concept of the show was explained by host Trace Gallagher in the premier episode (5/26/01):
Five years ago, Fox News Channel was launched on the idea that something was wrong with news media--that somehow, somewhere bias found its way into reporting. . . . And it's not just the way you tell a story that can get in the way of the truth. It's the stories you choose to tell. . . . Fox News Channel is committed to being fair and balanced in the coverage of the stories everybody is reporting--and to reporting stories you won't hear anywhere else. Stories you will see only on Fox.
Gallagher then introduced a series of stories about one conservative cause after another: from white firefighters suing Boston's fire department for discrimination, to sawmill workers endangered by Clinton-Gore environmental regulations (without comment from a single supporter of the rules), to property owners who feel threatened by an environmental agreement "signed by President Clinton in 1992." (The agreement was actually signed by George Bush the elder, who was president in 1992--though that didn't stop Fox from using news footage of a smiling Bill Clinton proudly signing an official document that was supposed to be, but wasn't, the environmental pact in question.)
Fox's news specials are equally slanted: Dangerous Places (3/25/01), a special about foreign policy hosted by Newt Gingrich; Heroes, an irregular series hosted by former Republican congressmember John Kasich; and The Real Reagan (11/25/99), a panel discussion on Ronald Reagan, hosted by Tony Snow, in which all six guests were Reagan friends and political aides. Vanishing Freedoms 2: Who Owns America (5/19/01) wandered off into militia-style paranoia, suggesting that the U.N. was "taking over" private property.
There is a formula to Fox's news agenda. "A lot of the people we have hired," Fox executive John Moody explained (Inside Media, 12/11/96) when the network was launched, "have come without the preconceptions of must-do news. There are stories we will sometimes forego in order to do stories we think are more significant. The biggest strength that we have is that Roger Ailes has allowed me to do that; to forego stores that would be 'duty' stories in order to focus on other things."
These "other" stories that Moody has in mind are what make up much of Fox's programming: An embarrassing story about Jesse Jackson's sex life. The latest political-correctness outrage on campus. A one-day mini-scandal about a Democratic senator. Much like talk radio, Fox picks up these tidbits from right-wing outlets like the Washington Times or the Drudge Report and runs with them.
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
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The Most Biased Name in News, part 3
To see how the formula works, consider the recent saga of right-wing activist David Horowitz and his "censored" anti-slavery reparations ad. When some college newspapers refused to carry the ad, and some campuses saw protests against it, the case instantly became a cause celebre on the right. It was the perfect story for Fox: The liberal academic establishment trampling on the free speech of a conservative who merely asked that his views be heard. Within less than a month, Horowitz was on nearly every major Fox show to discuss the issue. (See sidebar.)
Former CBS producer Don Dahler resigned from Fox after executive John Moody ordered him to change a story to play down statistics showing a lack of social progress among blacks. (Moody says the change was journalistically justified--New York, 11/17/97.) According to the Columbia Journalism Review (3-4/98), "several" former Fox employees "complained of 'management sticking their fingers' in the writing and editing of stories to cook the facts to make a story more palatable to right-of-center tastes." Said one: "I've worked at a lot of news organizations and never found that kind of manipulation."
Jed Duvall, a former veteran ABC reporter who left Fox after a year, told New York (11/17/97): "I'll never forget the morning that one producer came up to me, and, rubbing her hands like Uriah Heep, said, 'Let's have something on Whitewater today.' That sort of thing doesn't happen at a professional news organization." Indeed, Fox's signature political news show, Special Report with Brit Hume, was originally created as a daily one-hour update devoted to the 1998 Clinton sex scandal.
"In the D.C. bureau [at ABC], we always had to worry what the lead story would be in the New York Times, and God forbid if we didn't have that story. Now we don't care if we have that story." Stories favored by the journalistic establishment, Kim Hume says, are "all mushy, like AIDS, or all silly, like Head Start. They want to give publicity to people they think are doing good."
--New York magazine(11/17/97) quoting Kim Hume, Fox News Channel Washington bureau chief
One of the most partisan features on Fox is a daily segment on Special Report called "The Political Grapevine." Billed as "the most scintillating two minutes in television," the Grapevine is a kind of right-wing hot-sheet. It features Brit Hume at the anchor's desk reading off a series of gossipy items culled from other, often right-wing, news outlets.
The key to the Grapevine is its story selection, and there is nothing subtle about it. Almost every item carries an unmistakable partisan message: Democrats, environmentalists and Hollywood liberals are the perennial villains (or the butts of the joke), while Republicans are shown either as targets of unfair attacks or heroes who can do no wrong. Political correctness run amok, the "liberal bias" of the mainstream media and the chicanery of civil rights groups all figure prominently.
When Rep. Patrick Kennedy tussled with airport security (3/21/01), Democrat Pete Stark used intemperate language (4/18/01) and California Gov. Gray Davis uttered a string of curse words (4/18/01), it made it onto the Grapevine. When the Sacramento Bee ran a series on the shortcomings of the big environmental groups, its findings earned a mention on the Grapevine (4/21/01). When it emerged that Al Gore booster Ben Affleck didn't bother to vote in last year's election, you heard about it on the Grapevine (4/25/01).
Republicans are treated differently. "Since [New York's] Rudolph Giuliani became the mayor," one item cheered (4/24/01), "the streets are cleaner and safer, and tourism reigns supreme in Times Square." When George W. Bush ordered men to wear a coat and tie to enter the Oval Office, Grapevine (5/14/01) noted that "his father had a similar reverence for the office," while "President Clinton used to come into the Oval Office in running shorts . . . and sometimes he did not remain fully clothed while he was there."
The success of the Grapevine has apparently inspired a spin-off on Fox's Sunday morning show. Fox News Sunday anchor Tony Snow recently inaugurated "Below the Fold," a weekly roundup of "unheralded political stories" that is basically identical to Grapevine, including the conservative spin. When one Below the Fold item (4/15/01) mentioned that Barbra Streisand was reportedly thinking of starting up "a cable TV network devoted exclusively to Democratic viewpoints," Snow couldn't resist adding that the singer came up with the idea "apparently believing such a thing doesn't exist already."
Fox News Channel is "not a conservative network!" roars Fox News Channel chairman Ailes. "I absolutely, totally deny it. . . . The fact is that Rupert [Murdoch] and I and, by the way, the vast majority of the American people, believe that most of the news tilts to the left," he says. Fox's mission is "to provide a little more balance to the news" and "to go cover some stories that the mainstream media won't cover."
--Brill's Content (10/99) quoting Roger Ailes
To hear the network's bigwigs tell it, it's not Fox that's being biased when it puts conservative fare on heavy rotation. It's the "liberal media" that are biased when they fail to do so. Fox's entire editorial philosophy revolves around the idea that the mainstream media have a liberal bias that Fox is obligated to rectify.
In interviews, Ailes and other Fox executives often expound this philosophy, sometimes with bizarre results. Ailes once told the New York Times (10/7/96) that he and Fox executive John Moody had both noticed a pattern in the weekly newsmagazines: They often cover religion, "but it's always a story that beats up on Jesus." "They call him a cult figure of his time, some kind of crazy fool," Ailes continued. "And it's as if they go out and try to find evidence to trash him." Moody added that two recent Time and Newsweek articles on Jesus "really bordered on the sacrilegious."
But the core of Fox's critique is the notion that the mainstream media just don't tell the conservative side of the story. This is the premise Fox executives start from when they defend their own network: If Fox appears conservative, they argue, it's only because the country has grown so accustomed to the left-leaning media that a truly balanced network seems to lean right. "The reason you may believe it tips to the right is you're stunned at seeing so many conservatives," Ailes once told a reporter (Washington Post, 2/5/01).
But Ailes and his colleagues have trouble backing up these claims with actual facts. He's fond of calling Bob Novak the only conservative on CNN--"that's the only guy they hired that was to the right!" (Charlie Rose, 5/22/01) --but he ignores Tucker Carlson, Kate O'Beirne and Mary Matalin (who recently left for the White House), not to mention past conservative stars such as Lynne Cheney, Mona Charen, John Sununu and, of course, Pat Buchanan, perhaps the most right-wing figure in national politics and an 18-year veteran of Crossfire (minus the occasional hiatus to run for president).
According to Bill O'Reilly, Fox "gives voice to people who can't get on other networks. When was the last time you saw pro-life people [on other networks] unless they shot somebody?" (Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/10/01). O'Reilly's question is easily answered; in the last three years, the National Right to Life Committee's spokespeople have appeared on CNN 21 times (compared with 16 appearances for their main counterpart, the National Abortion Rights Action League).
In a 1999 Washington Post profile (3/26/99), Ailes offered another example. He said he was particularly proud of a three-part series on education that Fox had recently aired, which reported that "many educators believe self-esteem teaching is harmful" to students. "The mainstream media will never cover that story," Ailes told the Post. "I've seen 10,000 stories on education and I've never seen one that didn't say the federal government needed to spend more money on education."
But just weeks prior to Ailes' interview, CNN's weekly Newsstand series (2/28/99) aired a glowing profile of an upstate New York business executive who had turned around a troubled inner-city elementary school "by bringing the lessons of the boardroom into the classroom." CNN's report came complete with soundbites from a conservative education advocate ("the unions are a major impediment to education reform") and lines from host Jeff Greenfield like, "Critics have said that for decades, the public education system has behaved like an entrenched monopoly with little or no incentive to improve its performance." The piece would have warmed the heart of any conservative education reformer.
The difference between the two networks is that while such conservative-friendly fare airs on CNN some of the time, Fox has oriented its whole network around it. Contrary to what Ailes and other right-wing media critics say, the agenda of CNN and its fellow mainstream outlets is not liberal or conservative, but staunchly centrist...It's politicians who stake out centrist, pro-business positions within their parties who win the adulation of the Washington press corps, like John McCain and Joe Lieberman during the 2000 campaign. Both parties are constantly urged by the media to "move to the center."
To see how the formula works, consider the recent saga of right-wing activist David Horowitz and his "censored" anti-slavery reparations ad. When some college newspapers refused to carry the ad, and some campuses saw protests against it, the case instantly became a cause celebre on the right. It was the perfect story for Fox: The liberal academic establishment trampling on the free speech of a conservative who merely asked that his views be heard. Within less than a month, Horowitz was on nearly every major Fox show to discuss the issue. (See sidebar.)
Former CBS producer Don Dahler resigned from Fox after executive John Moody ordered him to change a story to play down statistics showing a lack of social progress among blacks. (Moody says the change was journalistically justified--New York, 11/17/97.) According to the Columbia Journalism Review (3-4/98), "several" former Fox employees "complained of 'management sticking their fingers' in the writing and editing of stories to cook the facts to make a story more palatable to right-of-center tastes." Said one: "I've worked at a lot of news organizations and never found that kind of manipulation."
Jed Duvall, a former veteran ABC reporter who left Fox after a year, told New York (11/17/97): "I'll never forget the morning that one producer came up to me, and, rubbing her hands like Uriah Heep, said, 'Let's have something on Whitewater today.' That sort of thing doesn't happen at a professional news organization." Indeed, Fox's signature political news show, Special Report with Brit Hume, was originally created as a daily one-hour update devoted to the 1998 Clinton sex scandal.
"In the D.C. bureau [at ABC], we always had to worry what the lead story would be in the New York Times, and God forbid if we didn't have that story. Now we don't care if we have that story." Stories favored by the journalistic establishment, Kim Hume says, are "all mushy, like AIDS, or all silly, like Head Start. They want to give publicity to people they think are doing good."
--New York magazine(11/17/97) quoting Kim Hume, Fox News Channel Washington bureau chief
One of the most partisan features on Fox is a daily segment on Special Report called "The Political Grapevine." Billed as "the most scintillating two minutes in television," the Grapevine is a kind of right-wing hot-sheet. It features Brit Hume at the anchor's desk reading off a series of gossipy items culled from other, often right-wing, news outlets.
The key to the Grapevine is its story selection, and there is nothing subtle about it. Almost every item carries an unmistakable partisan message: Democrats, environmentalists and Hollywood liberals are the perennial villains (or the butts of the joke), while Republicans are shown either as targets of unfair attacks or heroes who can do no wrong. Political correctness run amok, the "liberal bias" of the mainstream media and the chicanery of civil rights groups all figure prominently.
When Rep. Patrick Kennedy tussled with airport security (3/21/01), Democrat Pete Stark used intemperate language (4/18/01) and California Gov. Gray Davis uttered a string of curse words (4/18/01), it made it onto the Grapevine. When the Sacramento Bee ran a series on the shortcomings of the big environmental groups, its findings earned a mention on the Grapevine (4/21/01). When it emerged that Al Gore booster Ben Affleck didn't bother to vote in last year's election, you heard about it on the Grapevine (4/25/01).
Republicans are treated differently. "Since [New York's] Rudolph Giuliani became the mayor," one item cheered (4/24/01), "the streets are cleaner and safer, and tourism reigns supreme in Times Square." When George W. Bush ordered men to wear a coat and tie to enter the Oval Office, Grapevine (5/14/01) noted that "his father had a similar reverence for the office," while "President Clinton used to come into the Oval Office in running shorts . . . and sometimes he did not remain fully clothed while he was there."
The success of the Grapevine has apparently inspired a spin-off on Fox's Sunday morning show. Fox News Sunday anchor Tony Snow recently inaugurated "Below the Fold," a weekly roundup of "unheralded political stories" that is basically identical to Grapevine, including the conservative spin. When one Below the Fold item (4/15/01) mentioned that Barbra Streisand was reportedly thinking of starting up "a cable TV network devoted exclusively to Democratic viewpoints," Snow couldn't resist adding that the singer came up with the idea "apparently believing such a thing doesn't exist already."
Fox News Channel is "not a conservative network!" roars Fox News Channel chairman Ailes. "I absolutely, totally deny it. . . . The fact is that Rupert [Murdoch] and I and, by the way, the vast majority of the American people, believe that most of the news tilts to the left," he says. Fox's mission is "to provide a little more balance to the news" and "to go cover some stories that the mainstream media won't cover."
--Brill's Content (10/99) quoting Roger Ailes
To hear the network's bigwigs tell it, it's not Fox that's being biased when it puts conservative fare on heavy rotation. It's the "liberal media" that are biased when they fail to do so. Fox's entire editorial philosophy revolves around the idea that the mainstream media have a liberal bias that Fox is obligated to rectify.
In interviews, Ailes and other Fox executives often expound this philosophy, sometimes with bizarre results. Ailes once told the New York Times (10/7/96) that he and Fox executive John Moody had both noticed a pattern in the weekly newsmagazines: They often cover religion, "but it's always a story that beats up on Jesus." "They call him a cult figure of his time, some kind of crazy fool," Ailes continued. "And it's as if they go out and try to find evidence to trash him." Moody added that two recent Time and Newsweek articles on Jesus "really bordered on the sacrilegious."
But the core of Fox's critique is the notion that the mainstream media just don't tell the conservative side of the story. This is the premise Fox executives start from when they defend their own network: If Fox appears conservative, they argue, it's only because the country has grown so accustomed to the left-leaning media that a truly balanced network seems to lean right. "The reason you may believe it tips to the right is you're stunned at seeing so many conservatives," Ailes once told a reporter (Washington Post, 2/5/01).
But Ailes and his colleagues have trouble backing up these claims with actual facts. He's fond of calling Bob Novak the only conservative on CNN--"that's the only guy they hired that was to the right!" (Charlie Rose, 5/22/01) --but he ignores Tucker Carlson, Kate O'Beirne and Mary Matalin (who recently left for the White House), not to mention past conservative stars such as Lynne Cheney, Mona Charen, John Sununu and, of course, Pat Buchanan, perhaps the most right-wing figure in national politics and an 18-year veteran of Crossfire (minus the occasional hiatus to run for president).
According to Bill O'Reilly, Fox "gives voice to people who can't get on other networks. When was the last time you saw pro-life people [on other networks] unless they shot somebody?" (Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/10/01). O'Reilly's question is easily answered; in the last three years, the National Right to Life Committee's spokespeople have appeared on CNN 21 times (compared with 16 appearances for their main counterpart, the National Abortion Rights Action League).
In a 1999 Washington Post profile (3/26/99), Ailes offered another example. He said he was particularly proud of a three-part series on education that Fox had recently aired, which reported that "many educators believe self-esteem teaching is harmful" to students. "The mainstream media will never cover that story," Ailes told the Post. "I've seen 10,000 stories on education and I've never seen one that didn't say the federal government needed to spend more money on education."
But just weeks prior to Ailes' interview, CNN's weekly Newsstand series (2/28/99) aired a glowing profile of an upstate New York business executive who had turned around a troubled inner-city elementary school "by bringing the lessons of the boardroom into the classroom." CNN's report came complete with soundbites from a conservative education advocate ("the unions are a major impediment to education reform") and lines from host Jeff Greenfield like, "Critics have said that for decades, the public education system has behaved like an entrenched monopoly with little or no incentive to improve its performance." The piece would have warmed the heart of any conservative education reformer.
The difference between the two networks is that while such conservative-friendly fare airs on CNN some of the time, Fox has oriented its whole network around it. Contrary to what Ailes and other right-wing media critics say, the agenda of CNN and its fellow mainstream outlets is not liberal or conservative, but staunchly centrist...It's politicians who stake out centrist, pro-business positions within their parties who win the adulation of the Washington press corps, like John McCain and Joe Lieberman during the 2000 campaign. Both parties are constantly urged by the media to "move to the center."
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
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The Most Biased Name in the News, part 4
Defenders of Fox might argue that its brand of conservative-tilted programming fills a void, since it represents a form of ideologically hard-edged news seldom seen in the centrist media. But the same point could be made on the other side of the spectrum: Just as conservative stories don't always make it onto CNN, neither do stories that matter to the left. A left-wing version of Fox might run frequent updates on the Mumia Abu-Jamal case, the dangers of depleted uranium weapons or the benefits of single-payer health care. That would contrast sharply with CNN--but it wouldn't justify calling CNN "right-wing" or "conservative." Fox's "leftist" accusations are equally unfounded.
At about the same time that Fox was taking a deep interest in the David Horowitz ad controversy, the Boston Globe refused to run an ad criticizing the office supply company Staples for its use of non-recycled paper. Though the Globe is arguably a more important venue for debate than any number of college papers, the case was not reported by either Fox or CNN. Indeed, until a FAIR letter-writing campaign forced the Globe ombudsman to address the issue (6/11/01), only one publication in the Nexis news database reported it at all (Sacramento Bee, 4/12/01).
"The media are not disposed toward Republican presidents--any Republican president--and really never have been."
--Brit Hume, Fox News Channel managing editor (Washington Post, 9/25/00)
Fox is sometimes forced to juggle two identities--Republican and conservative--that are not always the same. A recent example was the standoff over the downed American spy plane in China. Following appearances on Special Report by conservatives William Kristol (4/9/01) and Fred Barnes (4/11/01), who were critical of Bush for his unexpectedly conciliatory handling of the crisis, Fox (4/13/01) was quick to run a slew of letters from outraged Republican viewers accusing the pundits of trying to "undermine a president of their own party." They "never cut him a bit of slack," one viewer wrote. "Who needs Dan Rather when you have Mr. Kristol to bring down our president?"
Fox's sensitivity to Republican complaints came into the open during the 2000 presidential campaign when Tony Snow was the target of a barrage of criticism from posters to the far-right website FreeRepublic.com, who accused him of being too negative about the Bush campaign in his columns and on Fox News Channel.
Snow responded to the Freepers, as the site's conservative contributors call themselves, with a long and detailed apologia, highlighting every pro-Bush aspect of his work in excruciating detail. Discussing his syndicated conservative column, he wrote: 'I have found over the years that the best way to be friendly to any politician is to be honest. Having said that, I've hardly been hostile to Bush in recent columns. Yes, I have criticized him this year, but no serious reader could possibly believe Gore has gotten the best of the exchange.'
Just check out the two most recent columns. A piece on "specifics" notes that Gore offers virtually no specifics to voters and the few he mentions are nuts. There's plenty of grist there for Bush fans and the Bush campaign. The most recent defends Bush in the Adam Clymer affair.
In response to a writer who was irate at a video clip showing a Bush gaffe, Snow replied: "Yes, we carried a Bush gaffe at the end. It was funny, not damaging to the candidate."
Defenders of Fox might argue that its brand of conservative-tilted programming fills a void, since it represents a form of ideologically hard-edged news seldom seen in the centrist media. But the same point could be made on the other side of the spectrum: Just as conservative stories don't always make it onto CNN, neither do stories that matter to the left. A left-wing version of Fox might run frequent updates on the Mumia Abu-Jamal case, the dangers of depleted uranium weapons or the benefits of single-payer health care. That would contrast sharply with CNN--but it wouldn't justify calling CNN "right-wing" or "conservative." Fox's "leftist" accusations are equally unfounded.
At about the same time that Fox was taking a deep interest in the David Horowitz ad controversy, the Boston Globe refused to run an ad criticizing the office supply company Staples for its use of non-recycled paper. Though the Globe is arguably a more important venue for debate than any number of college papers, the case was not reported by either Fox or CNN. Indeed, until a FAIR letter-writing campaign forced the Globe ombudsman to address the issue (6/11/01), only one publication in the Nexis news database reported it at all (Sacramento Bee, 4/12/01).
"The media are not disposed toward Republican presidents--any Republican president--and really never have been."
--Brit Hume, Fox News Channel managing editor (Washington Post, 9/25/00)
Fox is sometimes forced to juggle two identities--Republican and conservative--that are not always the same. A recent example was the standoff over the downed American spy plane in China. Following appearances on Special Report by conservatives William Kristol (4/9/01) and Fred Barnes (4/11/01), who were critical of Bush for his unexpectedly conciliatory handling of the crisis, Fox (4/13/01) was quick to run a slew of letters from outraged Republican viewers accusing the pundits of trying to "undermine a president of their own party." They "never cut him a bit of slack," one viewer wrote. "Who needs Dan Rather when you have Mr. Kristol to bring down our president?"
Fox's sensitivity to Republican complaints came into the open during the 2000 presidential campaign when Tony Snow was the target of a barrage of criticism from posters to the far-right website FreeRepublic.com, who accused him of being too negative about the Bush campaign in his columns and on Fox News Channel.
Snow responded to the Freepers, as the site's conservative contributors call themselves, with a long and detailed apologia, highlighting every pro-Bush aspect of his work in excruciating detail. Discussing his syndicated conservative column, he wrote: 'I have found over the years that the best way to be friendly to any politician is to be honest. Having said that, I've hardly been hostile to Bush in recent columns. Yes, I have criticized him this year, but no serious reader could possibly believe Gore has gotten the best of the exchange.'
Just check out the two most recent columns. A piece on "specifics" notes that Gore offers virtually no specifics to voters and the few he mentions are nuts. There's plenty of grist there for Bush fans and the Bush campaign. The most recent defends Bush in the Adam Clymer affair.
In response to a writer who was irate at a video clip showing a Bush gaffe, Snow replied: "Yes, we carried a Bush gaffe at the end. It was funny, not damaging to the candidate."
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
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The Most Biased Name in the News, part 5
And perhaps most tellingly, he described the strategy he had recently used on Fox News Sunday (9/10/00) to interview a pair of guests about the presidential campaign-- the first an aide to Bill Clinton, the second the Republican governor of Pennsylvania:
1) We opened with a tough interview of John Podesta, taking Clinton to task for a series of things (including hate crimes legislation) and asking some tough questions about Gore's energy and health-care policies.
2) Tom Ridge came next. We tried to get him to fire away at Clinton/Gore corruption. He wouldn't do it. We tried to get him to urge a more openly conservative campaign by Bush. He wouldn't do it. If you have complaints about such matters, I suggest you write the Bush campaign, not Fox News Channel.
In other words, Snow admits he was trying to put the Democratic guest on the defensive about Clinton--while goading the Republican into playing offense against Clinton. (The episode is a perfect example of Fox's notion of balance: attacking Democrats and liberals on substance while challenging Repub-licans and conservatives only on tactics.) In closing the memo, Snow wrote, "Parting thoughts: I made fun of the United Nations." He concluded: "I have a hard time finding anything in that lineup that Freepers would consider treasonous."
"Fair and balanced, as always."
--Fox News slogan
Some have suggested that Fox's conservative point of view and its Republican leanings render the network inherently unworthy as a news outlet. FAIR believes that view is misguided. The United States is unusual, perhaps even unique, in having a journalistic culture so fiercely wedded to the elusive notion of "objective" news (an idea of relatively recent historical vintage even in the U.S.). In Great Britain, papers like the conservative Times of London and the left-leaning Guardian deliver consistently excellent coverage while making no secret of their respective points of view. There's nothing keeping American journalists from doing the same.
If anything, it is partly the disingenuous claim to objectivity that is corroding the integrity of the news business. American journalists claim to represent all political views with an open mind, yet in practice a narrow bipartisan centrism excludes dissenting points of view: No major newspaper editorial page opposed NAFTA; virtually all endorse U.S. airstrikes on Iraq; and single-payer health care proposals find almost no backers among them.
With the ascendance of Fox News Channel, we now have a national conservative TV network in addition to the established centrist outlets. But like the mainstream networks, Fox refuses to admit its political point of view. The result is a skewed center-to-right media spectrum made worse by the refusal to acknowledge any tilt at all.
Fox could potentially represent a valuable contribution to the journalistic mix if it admitted it had a conservative point of view, if it beefed up its hard news and investigative coverage (and cut back on the tabloid sensationalism), and if there were an openly left-leaning TV news channel capable of balancing both Fox's conservatism and CNN's centrism.
None of these three things appears likely to happen in the foreseeable future.
And perhaps most tellingly, he described the strategy he had recently used on Fox News Sunday (9/10/00) to interview a pair of guests about the presidential campaign-- the first an aide to Bill Clinton, the second the Republican governor of Pennsylvania:
1) We opened with a tough interview of John Podesta, taking Clinton to task for a series of things (including hate crimes legislation) and asking some tough questions about Gore's energy and health-care policies.
2) Tom Ridge came next. We tried to get him to fire away at Clinton/Gore corruption. He wouldn't do it. We tried to get him to urge a more openly conservative campaign by Bush. He wouldn't do it. If you have complaints about such matters, I suggest you write the Bush campaign, not Fox News Channel.
In other words, Snow admits he was trying to put the Democratic guest on the defensive about Clinton--while goading the Republican into playing offense against Clinton. (The episode is a perfect example of Fox's notion of balance: attacking Democrats and liberals on substance while challenging Repub-licans and conservatives only on tactics.) In closing the memo, Snow wrote, "Parting thoughts: I made fun of the United Nations." He concluded: "I have a hard time finding anything in that lineup that Freepers would consider treasonous."
"Fair and balanced, as always."
--Fox News slogan
Some have suggested that Fox's conservative point of view and its Republican leanings render the network inherently unworthy as a news outlet. FAIR believes that view is misguided. The United States is unusual, perhaps even unique, in having a journalistic culture so fiercely wedded to the elusive notion of "objective" news (an idea of relatively recent historical vintage even in the U.S.). In Great Britain, papers like the conservative Times of London and the left-leaning Guardian deliver consistently excellent coverage while making no secret of their respective points of view. There's nothing keeping American journalists from doing the same.
If anything, it is partly the disingenuous claim to objectivity that is corroding the integrity of the news business. American journalists claim to represent all political views with an open mind, yet in practice a narrow bipartisan centrism excludes dissenting points of view: No major newspaper editorial page opposed NAFTA; virtually all endorse U.S. airstrikes on Iraq; and single-payer health care proposals find almost no backers among them.
With the ascendance of Fox News Channel, we now have a national conservative TV network in addition to the established centrist outlets. But like the mainstream networks, Fox refuses to admit its political point of view. The result is a skewed center-to-right media spectrum made worse by the refusal to acknowledge any tilt at all.
Fox could potentially represent a valuable contribution to the journalistic mix if it admitted it had a conservative point of view, if it beefed up its hard news and investigative coverage (and cut back on the tabloid sensationalism), and if there were an openly left-leaning TV news channel capable of balancing both Fox's conservatism and CNN's centrism.
None of these three things appears likely to happen in the foreseeable future.
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
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fable
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From Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting:
An Obsession That Only Goes So Far
by Seth Ackerman
One of Fox News Channel's favorite recent stories involved a newspaper ad that claimed African-Americans benefited from slavery, and owed America for the favor. The ad's author, conservative activist David Horowitz, claimed to be a victim of censorship and "political correctness" because a number of college newspapers refused to publish his ad, which argued against the idea of slavery reparations. Fox saw this as a major issue: Horowitz and his ad were mentioned at least 21 times on the network between March 6 and April 3.
On Fox News Sunday (3/25/01), the network's Sunday-morning equivalent of Meet the Press, interviews with Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Sen. Joseph Lieberman were incongruously followed by a segment featuring a largely unknown reparations activist and David Horowitz, in a Crossfire-style debate about Horowitz's rejected ad.
On Special Report with Brit Hume, the Horowitz ad became the subject of at least nine "Grapevine" items in less than a month. The ad was also the subject of Hume's lead question to conservative columnist John Leo when he appeared for a one-on-one interview (3/23/01). Afterward, Hume put the Horowitz issue to the show's all-star panel of pundits; all three pundits agreed that campus liberals were squelching debate. Mara Liasson argued that reparations are "pretty much of a non-issue" and Horowitz's ad was not "nearly as bad as the kind of hate speech you hear about in other cases," while Mort Kondracke explained that "there's nothing racist in this."
On Hannity & Colmes (3/26/01), the issue was: "Has David Horowitz's freedom of speech become a victim of political correctness?" On The O'Reilly Factor (3/6/01), it was Horowitz and host Bill O'Reilly interrogating a reparations activist from Mobile, Alabama. ("That's my tax money!" O'Reilly exclaimed.) The Edge with Paula Zahn brought Horowitz on three times within a month to discuss the same subject.
But there was one twist to the Horowitz story that Fox couldn't be bothered to report. When Horowitz's ad was offered to the Daily Princetonian in April, the paper ran it--along with an editorial (4/4/01) describing its ideas as racist and promising to donate the ad's proceeds to the local chapter of the Urban League. Horowitz, the free-speech crusader, refused to pay his bill unless the paper's editors publicly apologized for their hurtful words: "Its slanders contribute to the atmosphere of intolerance and hate towards conservatives," a statement from his office read.
Suddenly Fox lost interest in the Horowitz case. After a month of running twice-weekly updates about college papers that were refusing the ad, Special Report with Brit Hume ignored the Princeton episode. None of the network's major shows transcribed in the Nexis database reported Horowitz's tiff with the paper. No editor from the Princetonian was invited on The O'Reilly Factor to debate whether or not Horowitz was being a hypocrite. When their favorite free-speech martyr suddenly looked like a censor, it was a story Fox just didn't want to pursue.
An Obsession That Only Goes So Far
by Seth Ackerman
One of Fox News Channel's favorite recent stories involved a newspaper ad that claimed African-Americans benefited from slavery, and owed America for the favor. The ad's author, conservative activist David Horowitz, claimed to be a victim of censorship and "political correctness" because a number of college newspapers refused to publish his ad, which argued against the idea of slavery reparations. Fox saw this as a major issue: Horowitz and his ad were mentioned at least 21 times on the network between March 6 and April 3.
On Fox News Sunday (3/25/01), the network's Sunday-morning equivalent of Meet the Press, interviews with Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Sen. Joseph Lieberman were incongruously followed by a segment featuring a largely unknown reparations activist and David Horowitz, in a Crossfire-style debate about Horowitz's rejected ad.
On Special Report with Brit Hume, the Horowitz ad became the subject of at least nine "Grapevine" items in less than a month. The ad was also the subject of Hume's lead question to conservative columnist John Leo when he appeared for a one-on-one interview (3/23/01). Afterward, Hume put the Horowitz issue to the show's all-star panel of pundits; all three pundits agreed that campus liberals were squelching debate. Mara Liasson argued that reparations are "pretty much of a non-issue" and Horowitz's ad was not "nearly as bad as the kind of hate speech you hear about in other cases," while Mort Kondracke explained that "there's nothing racist in this."
On Hannity & Colmes (3/26/01), the issue was: "Has David Horowitz's freedom of speech become a victim of political correctness?" On The O'Reilly Factor (3/6/01), it was Horowitz and host Bill O'Reilly interrogating a reparations activist from Mobile, Alabama. ("That's my tax money!" O'Reilly exclaimed.) The Edge with Paula Zahn brought Horowitz on three times within a month to discuss the same subject.
But there was one twist to the Horowitz story that Fox couldn't be bothered to report. When Horowitz's ad was offered to the Daily Princetonian in April, the paper ran it--along with an editorial (4/4/01) describing its ideas as racist and promising to donate the ad's proceeds to the local chapter of the Urban League. Horowitz, the free-speech crusader, refused to pay his bill unless the paper's editors publicly apologized for their hurtful words: "Its slanders contribute to the atmosphere of intolerance and hate towards conservatives," a statement from his office read.
Suddenly Fox lost interest in the Horowitz case. After a month of running twice-weekly updates about college papers that were refusing the ad, Special Report with Brit Hume ignored the Princeton episode. None of the network's major shows transcribed in the Nexis database reported Horowitz's tiff with the paper. No editor from the Princetonian was invited on The O'Reilly Factor to debate whether or not Horowitz was being a hypocrite. When their favorite free-speech martyr suddenly looked like a censor, it was a story Fox just didn't want to pursue.
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
Here you go , knock yourself out.
Looking at the other news services during the war I believe Fox was 1 of the best and its ratings will show this.
If you look at any media closely enough enough you find something you dont like
what about CNN admission of not showing how bad the Iraq regime really is?
what about 'another piece of vadalism' comment by BBC on the attacking of sadam statue or the pessimistic tone the BBC had on the war?
what about al-geezira claim 9/11 was a zionist plot?
I have my complaints about news services but that does not mean everything and anything they do is always rubbish. The war showed who was more 'on the money' on reporting the thing.
(if you want) kindly show me of the unbelievable bias that you have deemed unwatchable.
Have a look at todays reports on the Fox website and see if they are too biased to believe.
Fox news
I triple gurantee this and let history be my mark 100%
Looking at the other news services during the war I believe Fox was 1 of the best and its ratings will show this.
If you look at any media closely enough enough you find something you dont like
what about CNN admission of not showing how bad the Iraq regime really is?
what about 'another piece of vadalism' comment by BBC on the attacking of sadam statue or the pessimistic tone the BBC had on the war?
what about al-geezira claim 9/11 was a zionist plot?
I have my complaints about news services but that does not mean everything and anything they do is always rubbish. The war showed who was more 'on the money' on reporting the thing.
(if you want) kindly show me of the unbelievable bias that you have deemed unwatchable.
Have a look at todays reports on the Fox website and see if they are too biased to believe.
Fox news
I triple gurantee this and let history be my mark 100%
Hi y'all
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fable
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From Fairness & Accuracy in the Media:
From the Top: What are the Politics of the Network Bosses? (excerpt) by Jim Naureckas
While David Croteau's study demonstrates that Washington journalists are to the right of the general public on many economic issues, it needs to be stressed that the personal views of news reporters do not translate directly into the slant of news coverage. Reporters have editors or producers who play a key role in how the news is presented; these editors and producers in turn are overseen by higher-up news executives, part of a hierarchy that eventually culminates in the chief executive officer of the corporation that owns the news outlet.
But those who specialize in scrutinizing the private opinions and voting habits of reporters rarely talk about the personal views and political activities of the CEOs who run the corporations those reporters work for. This omission is somewhat puzzling: If anyone's biases are manifested in news coverage, it's more likely to be the person who has the power to hire and fire, not the underlings whose paychecks are dependent on their superiors' approval. Let's take a look at where the heads of the four major broadcast networks stand politically:
Rupert Murdoch, who heads News Corp. (which owns Fox Television), is well-known for his conservative politics, and is much more aggressive in promoting those politics than any of the other three network heads. The reporting in his New York Post crusades in a partisan fashion for or against politicians. (Typical headline: "Clinton Pulls a Fast One," 6/2/98.) He bankrolls the Weekly Standard so that the right can have a flagship magazine to replace the tired National Review and the half-baked American Spectator. Journalists interviewing for jobs with Fox News Channel were reportedly quizzed on whether they were registered Republicans or not (Village Voice, 10/15/96). During the '96 campaign, Murdoch personally donated $1 million to the California GOP.
Murdoch "is far more right-wing than is generally thought," according to Andrew Neil, who used to edit Murdoch's London Sunday Times. "In the 1988 American presidential election his favorite for the Republican nomination was Pat Robertson," Neil wrote in his book Full Disclosure. "Dole is far too moderate a conservative for his tastes..."
From the Top: What are the Politics of the Network Bosses? (excerpt) by Jim Naureckas
While David Croteau's study demonstrates that Washington journalists are to the right of the general public on many economic issues, it needs to be stressed that the personal views of news reporters do not translate directly into the slant of news coverage. Reporters have editors or producers who play a key role in how the news is presented; these editors and producers in turn are overseen by higher-up news executives, part of a hierarchy that eventually culminates in the chief executive officer of the corporation that owns the news outlet.
But those who specialize in scrutinizing the private opinions and voting habits of reporters rarely talk about the personal views and political activities of the CEOs who run the corporations those reporters work for. This omission is somewhat puzzling: If anyone's biases are manifested in news coverage, it's more likely to be the person who has the power to hire and fire, not the underlings whose paychecks are dependent on their superiors' approval. Let's take a look at where the heads of the four major broadcast networks stand politically:
Rupert Murdoch, who heads News Corp. (which owns Fox Television), is well-known for his conservative politics, and is much more aggressive in promoting those politics than any of the other three network heads. The reporting in his New York Post crusades in a partisan fashion for or against politicians. (Typical headline: "Clinton Pulls a Fast One," 6/2/98.) He bankrolls the Weekly Standard so that the right can have a flagship magazine to replace the tired National Review and the half-baked American Spectator. Journalists interviewing for jobs with Fox News Channel were reportedly quizzed on whether they were registered Republicans or not (Village Voice, 10/15/96). During the '96 campaign, Murdoch personally donated $1 million to the California GOP.
Murdoch "is far more right-wing than is generally thought," according to Andrew Neil, who used to edit Murdoch's London Sunday Times. "In the 1988 American presidential election his favorite for the Republican nomination was Pat Robertson," Neil wrote in his book Full Disclosure. "Dole is far too moderate a conservative for his tastes..."
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
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fable
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Originally posted by at99
Here you go , knock yourself out.
@at99, you're the one who claimed Fox news was "trustworthy," and then asked me, "(if you want) kindly show me of the unbelievable bias that you have deemed unwatchable." I've done just what you asked. Your post above is simply a copy of one you put in another thread within the last 24 hours, and I replied to it, there. Are you even going to read and reply to the articles that show so much incredible bias in both the personnel of Fox news, and their reporting of it? You challenged me to offer proof of this bias. I did; it's above. Why don't you review it, and reply specifically to the points raised?
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
I do remember showing someone this link before. It may of been in a PM but effectively there is an Australian independent news show called Media Watch and they take great joy in digging up controversy, bias and general stupidity in media outlets around the world. That bit and the next story, which has a fairly heated clip deal generally with Fox News.
Ok, the first one pokes fun at Fox News but the second one is genuinely biased. I could dig up more but I can't be bothered right now.
Ok, the first one pokes fun at Fox News but the second one is genuinely biased. I could dig up more but I can't be bothered right now.
!
Unfair at Any Volume: Fox News Channels' Unbalancing Act
I think this is a cynical look at the fox news which proves 'didly squat'
The Most Biased Name in News, part 1
The Most Biased Name in News, part 2
The Most Biased Name in News, part 3
The Most Biased Name in the News, part 4
The Most Biased Name in the News, part 5
(All further cynical views which again prove nothing)
The other articles were just little 'small' to worry about.
As for Murdoch (my dad was in journalism among his circles , here in Australia and the description they gave of him in the article was wrong) He votes for himself and everything else just gets in the way.
What Fox does do is argue hard against extremist (or perceived exteremist views), this is too hot for some. Also it may leave out stories eg Bali bombing if it cant get its people there or some other reason (or bogus reason)
There is much more meat against CNN, BBC, Al-geezira putting a spin on the facts.
Being biased is a strong word and this is no evidence to prove a general bias in Fox news reporting period. Biased reporting is distorting the facts and putting a spin on the facts is another issue (BBC does this quite well)
Fox's ratings have gone through the roof so its doing something right.
I triple gurantee it!
I think this is a cynical look at the fox news which proves 'didly squat'
The Most Biased Name in News, part 1
The Most Biased Name in News, part 2
The Most Biased Name in News, part 3
The Most Biased Name in the News, part 4
The Most Biased Name in the News, part 5
(All further cynical views which again prove nothing)
The other articles were just little 'small' to worry about.
As for Murdoch (my dad was in journalism among his circles , here in Australia and the description they gave of him in the article was wrong) He votes for himself and everything else just gets in the way.
What Fox does do is argue hard against extremist (or perceived exteremist views), this is too hot for some. Also it may leave out stories eg Bali bombing if it cant get its people there or some other reason (or bogus reason)
There is much more meat against CNN, BBC, Al-geezira putting a spin on the facts.
Being biased is a strong word and this is no evidence to prove a general bias in Fox news reporting period. Biased reporting is distorting the facts and putting a spin on the facts is another issue (BBC does this quite well)
Fox's ratings have gone through the roof so its doing something right.
I triple gurantee it!
Hi y'all
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fable
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If you can't acknowledge the bias after it's presented to you in extremely elaborate detail, and can only resort to flinging broad insults about fine investigative journalism being "cynicism" and long articles being "too short," that's fine. I have another eight pieces I could post, but I can see you haven't read what's already in this thread; so I won't bother. Only next time you claim the unprejudiced glories of Fox news, the contents of this thread will be raised again. The answers to your question of bias are here, just as you requested. Whether you want to read them or just toss out flames instead, is with all respect entirely up to you.
I have another eight pieces I could post, but I can see you haven't read what's already in this thread; so I won't bother. Only next time you claim the unprejudiced glories of Fox news, the contents of this thread will be raised again. The answers to your question of bias are here, just as you requested. Whether you want to read them or just toss out flames instead, is with all respect entirely up to you.To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
Originally posted by fable
If you can't acknowledge the bias after it's presented to you in extremely elaborate detail, and can only resort to flinging broad insults about fine investigative journalism being "cynicism" and long articles being "too short," that's fine.
No offence but I wasnt impressed with this. It was cynical, cold, hard to read and a little childish.
This type of thing is simply 'poor evidence' and really proves nothing. The claim that you can prove the Fox network biased with this is really not worth commenting on.
.
A better way to go is to look at the website and find the bias in every story, other than that I dont personally believe in the above approach to find a conclusion.
(here you go if you want)
Unless you can produce evidence directly from every story on the website I think this thread will go the way of the dodo
Fox news
(I did not intend to 'dish out flames' and I am sorry if you thought this, you asked for my opinion and I gave it)
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fable
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You asked for evidence of unbelievable bias. I gave you articles by journalists who had researched Fox news very thoroughly and accurately. Of course it's insulting, when you dismiss one as "short" without commenting on the dozens of facts it includes that show Fox bias; and as for the other, it gives plenty of evidence of Fox's conflicts of interest, manipulation of facts, and desire to tell their reporters what they're going to find out, and how it's going to be presented. That's not "cynicism."
And changing the goal post from seeking evidence of bias to--
Unless you can produce evidence directly from every story on the website I think this thread will go the way of the dodo
...is pretty transparent. You've got all the evidence you could want above, if you choose to read it, and comment specifically on it. Don't worry. This thread won't vanish. Like I wrote earlier, I have another eight articles I can post if you want to praise Fox, again. And I'm sure I can unearth at least another twenty or more, since Fox news is pretty thoroughly detested within the respected US journalistic community. Besides, you've given me the motivation to look for them.
As for flames: I asked for you to respond specifically to the points raised in the articles. Instead, you attacked one article as "short" and not deserving comment, and the other as "cynical." Yes, those are flames, not comments. I'm still seeking your informed, intelligent assessment of the various points raised thoughtfully within the three articles I've quoted.
And changing the goal post from seeking evidence of bias to--
Unless you can produce evidence directly from every story on the website I think this thread will go the way of the dodo
...is pretty transparent. You've got all the evidence you could want above, if you choose to read it, and comment specifically on it. Don't worry. This thread won't vanish. Like I wrote earlier, I have another eight articles I can post if you want to praise Fox, again. And I'm sure I can unearth at least another twenty or more, since Fox news is pretty thoroughly detested within the respected US journalistic community. Besides, you've given me the motivation to look for them.
As for flames: I asked for you to respond specifically to the points raised in the articles. Instead, you attacked one article as "short" and not deserving comment, and the other as "cynical." Yes, those are flames, not comments. I'm still seeking your informed, intelligent assessment of the various points raised thoughtfully within the three articles I've quoted.
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
Originally posted by fable
You asked for evidence of unbelievable bias. I gave you articles by journalists who had researched Fox news very thoroughly and accurately. Of course it's insulting, when you dismiss one as "short" without commenting on the dozens of facts it includes that show Fox bias; and as for the other, it gives plenty of evidence of Fox's conflicts of interest, manipulation of facts, and desire to tell their reporters what they're going to find out, and how it's going to be presented. That's not "cynicism."
And changing the goal post from seeking evidence of bias to--
Unless you can produce evidence directly from every story on the website I think this thread will go the way of the dodo
...is pretty transparent. You've got all the evidence you could want above, if you choose to read it, and comment specifically on it. Don't worry. This thread won't vanish. Like I wrote earlier, I have another eight articles I can post if you want to praise Fox, again. And I'm sure I can unearth at least another twenty or more, since Fox news is pretty thoroughly detested within the respected US journalistic community. Besides, you've given me the motivation to look for them.
As for flames: I asked for you to respond specifically to the points raised in the articles. Instead, you attacked one article as "short" and not deserving comment, and the other as "cynical." Yes, those are flames, not comments. I'm still seeking your informed, intelligent assessment of the various points raised thoughtfully within the three articles I've quoted.
This is not a friendly or thought provoking conversation but it has turned a childish game with taunts where you are trying to prove the near impossible with cynical snipes at fox news.
You can argue this with someone else!
Hi y'all
I have had a chance to watch fox news here in the US and i have one question. How broad is the base to which the channel caters to? If it is pretty large, i worried about the future of the us. I certainly dont hope Fox represents the views of mainstream america.
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"We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!" - Winston Churchill
"We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!" - Winston Churchill
@ at99...You are once again close to crossing the line with your posts. Fable has posted articles delineating his points and offered to post more. You've declined that offer and accused him of taunting you
Asking for sources/articles etc. to back someones point of view and then refusing to look at them or answer any of the arguments is trolling, as is accusing someone of being childish when they ask for your comment on the information provided.
You know the rules..no flaming, insults or trolling. Consider yourself warned.
T
This is not a friendly or thought provoking conversation but it has turned a childish game with taunts where you are trying to prove the near impossible with cynical snipes at fox news.
You can argue this with someone else!
Asking for sources/articles etc. to back someones point of view and then refusing to look at them or answer any of the arguments is trolling, as is accusing someone of being childish when they ask for your comment on the information provided.
You know the rules..no flaming, insults or trolling. Consider yourself warned.
T
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"Quiet time...no more whine"
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"I will only complicate you/Trust in me and fall as well"
"Quiet time...no more whine"
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fable
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Originally posted by at99
This is not a friendly or thought provoking conversation but it has turned a childish game with taunts where you are trying to prove the near impossible with cynical snipes at fox news.
You can argue this with someone else!
On the contrary, @at99. I've provided you with a ton of information to read and evaluate: it *is* thought-provoking material for conversation, with plenty of straight-forward facts. It also meets the criteria you initially demanded. You wanted plenty of bias; I've given you dozens of examples. I can give you plenty more, as well. There is nothing cynical above; nothing cynical in noting extreme conflict of interest and providing detailed examples, with names, dates, situations and content. Conflict of interest should never be allowed to interfere in a profession as concerned with the presence of information as news reporting. I am giving you the meat for discussion. Instead, you ask for my information; I research it; and then you treat me, and it, like dirt.
I do note that the last time I presented you with content that contradicted statements you made about UK polls regarding support for the Iraqi invasion, you also contemptuously thrust it aside, stating that it wasn't worth your time to reply. I hope you'll reconsider this kind of attitude, and deal with subjects from the same open perspective as the rest of us. For me, that's one of the things that makes GB special.
I have had a chance to watch fox news here in the US and i have one question. How broad is the base to which the channel caters to? If it is pretty large, i worried about the future of the us. I certainly dont hope Fox represents the views of mainstream america.
Fas, it certainly doesn't represent the views of most US citizens--just compare the extremely conservative views and backgrounds of the people both running and reporting on Fox news, to the voting records of US citizens. Typically, in national, state and regional elections, Americans vote centrist: they don't always pick the Republican candidate or the conservative viewpoint, as Fox always does. Fox's brief popularity spurt during its war coverage (which has now fallen back to normal) was in all likelihood due to the fact that Americans generally tend to coalesce behind a single leader in times of war. Thus, Fox gave the loudest, most aggressively biased coverage for a US-based news source, and some US citizens felt some comfort in watching that. Note, however, that if you combine all the news networks offering more centrist views, you have a clearer indication of what general tone in news people were watching for. And that's what you're seeking, after all: a sense of what ideological news bias, if any, the US public prefers.
To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe.
Fable, under other circumstances your tirade of posts would be considered trollish.
I feel sorry that at99 is demonised for simply feeding the trolls. Maybe we should ALL give this a rest. As a moderator inthis forum I would have thought your job, heaven forbid me telling you what your job is, was to monitor these kinds of posts, not cause them.
I feel sorry that at99 is demonised for simply feeding the trolls. Maybe we should ALL give this a rest. As a moderator inthis forum I would have thought your job, heaven forbid me telling you what your job is, was to monitor these kinds of posts, not cause them.
"Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his pants for his friends."
Enchantress is my Goddess.
Few survive in the Heart of Fury...
Gamebanshee: [url="http://www.gamebanshee.com/"]Make your gaming scream![/url]
Enchantress is my Goddess.
Few survive in the Heart of Fury...
Gamebanshee: [url="http://www.gamebanshee.com/"]Make your gaming scream![/url]