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.

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:

Fox News host Gregg Jarrett told viewers that Sarah Palin is “continuing to draw huge crowds while she’s promoting her brand new book.” He then showed old file footage of Palin rallies from the 2008 presidential campaign. Mark Silva hears this will result in “serious disciplinary action.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.