Unsurprising: Another study shows Fox News has the most balanced news coverage.
The CMPA study compares ABC, CBS ( CBS – news – people ) and NBC evening news shows and the first half hour of Fox News Channel’s Special Report, which most closely resembles its broadcast news counterparts. (CNN and MSNBC have no comparable flagship evening news show; more on Fox’s polarizing talk shows momentarily.)
So how could Fox have both the most balanced and the most anti-Obama coverage? Simple. It’s because the other networks were all so pro-Obama. CMPA analyzed every soundbite by reporters and nonpartisan sources (excluding representative of the political parties) that evaluated the candidates and their policies. On the three broadcast networks combined, evaluations of Obama were 68% positive and 32% negative, compared to the only 36% positive and 64% negative evaluations of his GOP opponent John McCain.
Again, this isn’t at all unsurprising to people that actually watch Fox News. The opinion shows may be hard on Obama, maybe even anti-Obama if that keeps you warm at night, but those opinion shows are not, and never have been, straight news coverage. O’Reilly, Beck, Hannity say so over and over.
The White House’s war isn’t so much a war on Fox News, but a war on, specifically, Glenn Beck. But it seem like the White House feels it might be a little ridiculous to admit it. But going after Fox News as it has is equally ridiculous.
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Tell Me Something I Don’t Know
I’m smarter than Rachel Maddow.
The author of the article you linked to, however, almost completely falls on his face because he keeps saying “Fox News” when all he’s referencing is a study of one specific 1/2 hour of news every day: the first half of Special Report, which has for years been acknowledged by countless people (including myself, numerous times) to be a sterling example of superb news reporting and analysis.
That 1/2 hour is rebroadcast once or twice a day, so in a 24 hour news cycle, you’re talking, what? Less than 5% of the network’s air time?
Other studies on Fox News have reached similar conclusions: when they’re doing straight news reporting they do a fine job. The problem is, as anyone who watches Fox News can tell you, the vast majority of their on-air broadcast is not straight news reporting. So it is not particularly relevant if the 10-15% or so of their air time that’s actually devoted to news coverage is fair and balanced: you have to answer for the 85-90% which is not news coverage at all, but bloviating opinionating, almost all skewed in one general direction.
And honestly, I myself cannot take seriously any news network that even has Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity on as regular hosts of their own shows. Guys like that debase the network about as badly as Keith Olbermann or the likes of Michael Moore would another network.
Also, just for the record? I don’t blame the Obama White House for refusing to deal with a network that has people like this on it hosting their own hour-long shows. I also would not have blamed the White House in the Bush years if they had boycotted the New York Times or a host of other left-wing shill “news” outlets that were so outrageously slanted against them. Indeed, I seem to recall more than once, on this very blog, recommending that exact course.
McK,
I did not know that.
It was a struggle of a decision. Minor pejorative removed.
This is sort of like Michael Savage calling someone obnoxious though, isn’t it?
Dean does have a good point.
I really don’t understand how anyone could listen to Savage. No only is the man an ass, he’s an ass to the people that like him! WTF? And his little nicknames for everyone he doesn’t like, because, I suppose, he’s too cool to use their real names, makes me feel like I need to be a cryptographer to even attempt to listen to him.
Mark Lavin does the same thing but he’s not as bad.
While there’s no doubt that Fox’s opinion shows lean far to the right, I think you could argue that much of the prime time programming on the traditional networks has been leaning more and more to the left. The various sitcoms and dramas are becoming soap boxes for the left as much as O’Reilly or Hannity (whom I consider a hack) are for the right. I freely admit that I don’t watch anything on those networks, instead spending most of my time on news or documentary channels. Incidentally, many of those documentary channels are themselves left leaning.
“the vast majority of their on-air broadcast is not straight news reporting”
Actually, no. Looking at tomorrow’s schedule, 12 hours out of 24 are “opinion” shows, and that’s including Fox Report. The rest straight news or their morning show.
“you have to answer for the 85-90% which is not news coverage at all, but bloviating opinionating, almost all skewed in one general direction”
Tell us what 85-90% you’re talking about. I’d call Cavuto, Beck, O’Reilly, Hannity and Van Susteren, opinion and throw in Red Eye and Fox Report just to be safe. That leaves 10 hours a day of straight news and a two hour morning show. And I’m not sure I’d call Van Susteren conservative.
Moreover, Fox’s regular reporting suffers from many of the flaws conservatives denounce as liberal bias but that are more realistically attributable to the fact that people who go into journalism have zero grasp of math and science, tend to accept as truth virtually anything they see in print, and have an abnormally high susceptiblity to confirmation bias and appeals to authority.
Fox is without question the closest network to the political center, but in a left wing business, a centrist looks right wing.
For the President to have a pissing contest with a Rush Limbaugh or Fox News is third grader, childish behavior at best. You might say he had a Richard Nixon moment with the New York Times.
Fox News’ morning show, “Fox and Friends,” which runs for a few hours, also generally skews right. Not as overtly so as, let’s say, Beck or Hannity, but it does. (And yes, I know, there’s the fig leaf of Beck and O’Reilly claiming not to be movement conservatives, which they aren’t, but it’s clear who they’re for and who they’re agin’.)
I do not deny them the right to do this. I don’t even dismiss the argument that they’re a counterweight to other programming elsewhere. But it’s what they do. The entire network is skewed rightward in most of its schedule. That’s not a crime, there’s nothing wrong with it, it just is what it is. But it does mess with their “fair and balanced” claim when so much of their stuff skews rightward.
Now mind you, this doesn’t make everything bad. I actually think Cavuto is one of the better financial reporters out there, for example. And Shep Smith, well, he’s actually pretty good at switching between his commentator and news reporter roles, from what I’ve seen. I don’t hate the network. But it is what it is.
“Fox News’ morning show, “Fox and Friends,” which runs for a few hours, also generally skews right”
Could you give an example? I don’t watch the morning show much, mainly because it seemed to have the standard mix of pop culture and novelty acts.
Maybe there is no objective measure of fairness, but balance-wise Fox is no where near as far to the right of this country’s political center as CNN and network outlets are to the left (MSNBC is, of course, off the scale). It’s pretty far to the right of most media outlets, but most media outlets in this country have an extreme left wing slant.
No, I can’t give you examples, it’s been more than a year since I watched the show. Usually it’s visible in the guests they bring on and the questions they ask them. They aren’t overt, but it’s clear where they skew. Just watch it for a few days, it’s pretty obvious in the same way that NPR is pretty obvious after you listen to it for a while.
I think FOX is confused. It has a core of genuine journalists doing actual journalism. The problem is that FOX is owned by an entertainment conglomerate – disclosure, who also own Beliefnet – which sees the right-wing bias as a marketing point. Thus the journalists there are essentially under siege, they do what they can but they are working alongside people who were hired to generate bias and who systematically undermine the profession – and there are numerous specific examples of FOX’s failures in that regard.
I greatly respect FX news as an organization and there are people working for FOX, like Greta van Susteren, who I think are just superb journalists. Unfortunately, in the same newsroom you have people like this:
I should hope so, and I am not so cynical about FOX News that I dont expect it to be so. Here’s Silva’s report, which also mentions that this isnt the first time FOX hosts have used misleading video to inflate crowds – Hannity actually was forced to apologize after Stewart called him out on air over it. FOX management clearly are on the defensive here and I expect them to make a example of Jarrett.
But the attempt to paint FOX as more accurate than other news orgs – when it actually performs worst among its peers in educating its listeners – is a pathetic fig leaf for the mindset among some of FOX’s personnel like Jarrett who treat news as just another entertainment product, to be packaged for an audience’s consumption.
As far as NPR’s alleged bias goes, its long been a target of lefties and righties alike. I find NPR to be solidly center and they are scrupulous in their upholding of Edward Morrow-esque ideals – and numerous journalistic assessments agree. Ther ombudsman office even has a blog.
As I’ve mentioned, in study after study of balanced coverage in news, the two sources that come up the least biased most of the time are: NPR and Fox News.
The issue with both is that they are filled with programming that is NOT news coverage, and so is not considered in such things. Thus, its totally unsurprising if a Sean Hannity is a right-wing zealot and Glenn Beck is a whackjob pseudoscholar who spouts insane drivel and factually false “history” and “facts” on a daily basis: since they aren’t counted as news, then four hours of their ridiculous hackery is not counted when analyzing news coverage.
Sean Hannity’s program is not a news program. Therefore, any study of news bias simply skips his show.
Similarly with NPR: when they are doing straight ahead news, there’s simply no question that they do a sterling job. However, they have these shows on, see, with these hosts, see, and when those shows are on, it’s NOT NEWS, it’s opinion or entertainment and thus they can say whatever they want. And that’s where the bias so often begins to show. Not with all hosts mind you, but anyone who listens to it regularly (as I do) knows the score.
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