Fox News - neither fair nor balanced
July 1, 2001 7:12 PM Subscribe
posted by gyc at 8:21 PM on July 1, 2001
posted by gyc at 8:22 PM on July 1, 2001
It was only when the small dailies started dying and the number of newspapers dwindled that the idea that objective journalism came into vogue.
posted by UncleFes at 8:36 PM on July 1, 2001
In any case, Fox's hard news coverage is indiscernible from any other networks' coverage. It's only the commentary that skews conservative. And whenever you're doing live interviews with politicians, you're in commentary mode AFAIC.
posted by aaron at 9:11 PM on July 1, 2001
You're right. I think most of the New York papers that still exist would make claims for objectivity.
What's funny is that, in practice, here in NYC the paper you read still says a lot about you. There's a reason why some folks read the Times, the Post, the Daily News, Newsday or even the Observer or the Village Voice.
posted by bilco at 10:05 PM on July 1, 2001
Not to mention the softball tag team of Hume and Snow whenever someone from the Bush Whitehouse shows up.
Then O'Reilly. Commentary from him is fine, it's why I watch. But for him to say he's impartial is ridiculous.
posted by owillis at 10:32 PM on July 1, 2001
posted by dong_resin at 11:00 PM on July 1, 2001
He says he is fair, which is not the same thing to me as impartial. Being fair is giving both sides time to air their thoughts, which he does. He is not impartial because he does have an opinion and he does usually agree with one side over the other.
posted by gyc at 11:02 PM on July 1, 2001
Regarding UncleFes, he's right- it wasn't until Adolph Ochs bought the NYT in 1896 that the notion of an "objective" mode of reporting was embraced, and that combined with the later Walter Lippman fulfilling the role of national pundit led to the standard we see today: a sort of bicameral news organization, objective reporting on one side and pure speculation and gossip on the other. The problem has arisen, though, that striving for too much objectivity in reporting has led to a vacuousness devoid of context, meaning, or reasonable investigation even on the objective level (i.e., is such and such a figure that a public official quoted actually accurate?). Meanwhile, the "punditocracy" that dominates much of FOX- and for that matter MNSBC, et al- is not only biased but has come to dominate the tone of the news and even define the "issues" which the politicians, reading same newspapers and appearing on same programs- mistake to be equivalent to the truly "popular" consensus. An unseemly echo chamber that corrupts the root of our democracy, and of which Fox is a growing part...
Stop me before I rant again!
posted by hincandenza at 11:18 PM on July 1, 2001
posted by hincandenza at 11:26 PM on July 1, 2001
We have the same debate here in Australia. Everyone claims the mantle of objectivity, who wouldn't? The reality however is obvious to everyone, the corporate owned media is right wing and conservative, the government owned media is centrist or perhaps slightly left leaning.
By Australian standards, the "liberal-biased media" or "objective journalism" of the United States would be considered uniformly right-wing.
posted by lagado at 11:51 PM on July 1, 2001
It’s true there was a drastic change in people’s understanding of journalism in the late-1800s. That basically happened when publishers figured news could be sold like a commodity, instead of strictly being a public service created by editor/publishers with agendas. The publishers wanted an affluent, mobile readership they could sell to advertisers. To get the rich readers, they weeded out the obvious editorializing, and sold their products as strictly fact-based. Objectivity isn’t that easily achieved.
In the modern age news is all about business: how natural events effects business (Seattle earthquake will cost $Xb), how labor organization effects business (American Airlines strike averted), how politics effects business (Bush is good for stocks). That formula worked. AP, The Times Company, Dow Jones, Knight-Ridder, Gannet, FOX, AOLTW (I’m missing a few): these are the corporate behomeths most people get their news from. There is hardly any political or cultural difference between them. A story on one is damn near exactly the same on another.
FAIR does good work — the media needs to be scrutinized. Counting the ratio of Republicans to Democrats on a network owned by a wealthy Republican donor is below them. They should concentrate on diverisifying the opinions available to us.
posted by capt.crackpipe at 1:06 AM on July 2, 2001
Isn't everything about business in the modern age? Whether you're pro or con, employed by it or hate it - business would be the one thing I think touches all our lives. So the media would report on it. When something like that is the basis for your entire economy you can bet people care about how much a hurricane/earthquake costs in damage (insurance increases, increased taxes, etc.).
posted by owillis at 1:19 AM on July 2, 2001
The Associated Press came into being in the 19th century as a way of leveraging that Internet of its own era, the telegraph. The AP was a news service -- literally a "wire service," it was so tied to telegraphy -- that supplied news from out of town to newspapers all over America and the world. As a business (the AP was paid only for those stories actually used by its member papers), the wire service had to maximize the popularity of its content. This was done in two very different fashions. First, the AP invented objectivity. The concept that the press was unbiased came from nothing so much as the AP's need to sell the same story to both Republican and Democratic newspapers. An objective story being the least objectionable was the easiest sell. This is, interestingly enough, the sole reason why papers today even claim objectivity. Certainly, there was no particular tradition of fairness in the news from Ben Franklin right into the 20th century.And the AP was founded in 1848.
posted by NortonDC at 4:36 AM on July 2, 2001
posted by FPN at 4:49 AM on July 2, 2001
The AP version of objectivity ensures that the news is bland and that there is little passion involved. Outrage is not a measure of objectivity, but the lack of it surely obscures what is really happening in the world. If you think the world is as equal and sterile as AP wires reveal, then you're probably fine with it. I am not.
posted by FPN at 5:26 AM on July 2, 2001
Rupert Murdoch certainly has no intention of allowing any of his media properties present viewpoints contradictory to his pubicly stated political views. His appointing Ailes to head FAUX shows that intent. For those unaware, Ailes served as chair of which political party? Yup, the GHP. And he served this term under which President(s)? Now for the final question: whose close cousin called the election at Fox last November for Bush (while keeping close phone contact with him)?
Could a more partisan choice have been made? Probably. There's always Ollie North and we can't forget Abrams.
As far as their 'political pundits', Hannity should work for David Duke, not a "news" organization.
posted by nofundy at 6:04 AM on July 2, 2001
The conservative tilt of Fox News also shows itself in coverage of events such as the debates, inauguration and state of the union. The Bush inauguration and Clinton departure speech was anchored by Brit Hume with only two guests: Peggy Noonan and William Kristol, and all three spent the two hours heaping praise on Bush and bile on Clinton.
It was the most amazing demonstration of unprofessionalism I've ever seen from Hume, who used to know how to report a story without using it as an excuse to display his own political views.
posted by rcade at 6:11 AM on July 2, 2001
posted by davidmsc at 7:02 AM on July 2, 2001
Well, the BBC's royal charter makes it obligatory, although one could justifiably argue that the BBC's status as a national broadcaster funded out of an obligatory licence fee (de facto taxation) imposes its own political ideology.
posted by holgate at 8:28 AM on July 2, 2001
I have a question, then: If you were given a chance to run your own newspaper or news source of any kind, to what principles would it adhere? And how would you make it financially viable?
I'm serious about this. I believe that journalism serves, or at least should serve, to provide a valuable function in our society. However, as a journalist, I'm often shamed by what I see and wonder how it could be done to provide the service, be commercially successful, and not turn into a pile of crap.
posted by keith at 9:28 AM on July 2, 2001
posted by owillis at 10:41 AM on July 2, 2001
Yes. Perhaps you didn't quite understand the sentence I wrote, which you quoted just before your comment: And whenever you're doing live interviews with politicians, you're in commentary mode AFAIC. The debates, inauguration and State of the Union coverage pretty much consisted of talking head politicians. And the inauguration in particular, which you focused on, was a Boorsteinian non-event, as they always are. Meaningless speeches and a parade. I certainly didn't tune into that expecting to get hard news-style coverage. (And Clinton deserved to be attacked for giving a post-inauguration speech at all. It went against decades (centuries, maybe?) of tradition that says the honorable thing for an ex-president to do is immediately exit the spotlight at 12:01 pm and stay out. His actions were sleazy.)
In all honesty, I don't see what FAIR - or any other liberal group (or individual) - thinks they're accomplishing by making these attacks on Fox News, other than creating the sort of meaningless self-satisfying rationalizations that people love to conjure up in their own minds when they're on the losing side of something (such as Gore supporters trying to take solace in the fact that Gore won the popular vote). People aren't turning to Fox News Channel in droves because they think it's 100% fair and balanced 100% of the time; they're switching to Fox because they believe (rightly) that the other news outlets always give the conservatives short shrift. They usually pay lip service, sure, but everything about news coverage elsewhere, from the newsroom discussions of what to cover at all to the angles taken when stories make the air, are based in a deep, all-pervasive liberal POV. Fox is the only one that even treats conservative viewpoints as legitimate in their own right, instead of merely as "the opposition," which only need to be put on the air in order to appear objective. In short: You can get smugly self-satisfied about presenting supposed evidence that FNC isn't totally fair and balanced, but the joke's on you, because the viewing public has always understood that none of the other networks have ever been fair and balanced either, and now that they have a choice, they're making one.
And regardless of what anyone tries to say about network news outlets being conservative because they're owned by companies (should they all be run by socialist work collectives or something?), I know better, because I've worked there, making the sausage. These places are run by liberals and staffed by liberals, and they are allowed free reign 99.5% of the time. And the other .5% of the time when the corporation does interfere (almost invariably WRT coverage of the company itself), all the other news organizations cover the story anyway, so it still gets out.
posted by aaron at 11:16 AM on July 2, 2001
Come on, it's not like he did anything really repugnant, like going to Japan to pocket a $2,000,000 speaking fee or something.
posted by NortonDC at 11:30 AM on July 2, 2001
Speaking as an ex-APer ... There are several possibilites as to what happened here, and unsurprisingly, Buzzflash's hyperbolic claim is the least likely of them. (I find it amusing how the headline doesn't even correspond to the story. The headlines says the truth - it MAY be a fabricated account - whereas the article itself blatantly says the White House is in cahoots with Big Media to make things up out of whole cloth.
Here's what is almost certainly the actual sequence of events: Lindlaw had a deadline. He called Cheney's spokeswoman Weiss and asked, "What's the Vice-President's schedule for tomorrow?" Weiss replied, "Well, he'll have his usual morning meeting with the President, then he's scheduled to do a bunch of radio interviews about the energy mess, and then more meetings with White House staff, as usual." In other words, he shows up for a regular day at work, plus a few chats with reporters. (You ever watch Prime Minister's Question Time? You ever notice how the first thing Tony Blair has to do is tell what he did that morning? He almost always says, "This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleages and others. In addition to my duties in this house, I shall be having further meetings later today." The all-purpose response. This is the same deal.)
Armed with that information, Lindlaw threw together a quick paragraph and tacked it onto the same Cheney pacemaker story that probably had already been on the wires for hours. And he wrote it in past tense so that it could be easily pasted up by afternoon newspapers (whose deadlines are pretty early in the AM) and posted by online services later on that day. This is done with hundreds of AP wire service stories every day. It is standard accepted journalistic practice. (Obviously, if something had occurred later in the morning that would have changed Cheney's schedule, the story would have been killed on the wire and immediately replaced with a corrected version.) The only problem here is that those past-tense versions of stories are supposed to be electronically embargoed so that they don't get accidentally published ahead of time. Someone at the AP simply miscoded the file, and it slipped out.
In other words, no conspiracy. Sorry.
posted by aaron at 11:44 AM on July 2, 2001
posted by aaron at 11:46 AM on July 2, 2001
Within minutes? Perfectly timed so as to interfere with coverage of the new president's inauguration? Please, provide pointers.
Come on, it's not like he did anything really repugnant, like going to Japan to pocket a $2,000,000 speaking fee or something.
First, you're wrong. It was $1 million. Second, since Clinton's been giving speeches for cash like crazy, I can only presume that what you find repugnant is the fact that Clinton generally can't command more than about 1/10th what Reagan could. I can live with that.
posted by aaron at 11:54 AM on July 2, 2001
Also, never said there was an AP conspiracy - just thought someone was asleep at the wheel and it showed shoddy journalism (liberal, conservative or otherwise).
sort of meaningless self-satisfying rationalizations that people love to conjure up in their own minds when they're on the losing side of something
Sort of like Republicans questioning Clinton's legitimacy because Perot split the vote, huh?
posted by owillis at 12:17 PM on July 2, 2001
If you're some dittohead drone who believes everything that Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly says, than Fox News is the channel for you. I prefer to think for myself (and no, I don't really trust any mainstream media).
posted by dr. zoidberg at 12:17 PM on July 2, 2001
posted by davidmsc at 2:09 PM on July 2, 2001
From the preface to a book by Lou Cannon about Reagan:
They used their home as a base camp from which to sally out to the world for celebratory events, among them a controversial October 1989 trip to Japan for which Reagan was paid two million dollars for two twenty-minute speeches and a few public appearances.And it may even have been much more than that, as Mike Royko asserts that "Actually, the take is higher than that, since another $2 million will be given to the Reagan Library, and much will be spent on the couple's transportation, accommodations and the various shindigs."
And regarding precedent, Truman addressed the press at Dean Acheson's house immediately following the inauguration, and again later in the evening he met with friends, supporters, associates and, yes, the press at Union Station before heading west. Sounds reminiscent of addressing supporters at an airport in the presence of the press to me.
posted by NortonDC at 2:56 PM on July 2, 2001
I just can't resist an opportunity to bash Coulter. Ugh! What a bi-
posted by hincandenza at 6:59 PM on July 2, 2001
Sorry for the delay.
I don't buy this redrawing of the political poles, Capt. Libertarians are right wing and Anarchists are left wing.
You may disagree.
posted by lagado at 10:17 PM on July 2, 2001
And the Truman thing is nowhere near the same thing as intentionally scheduling what was essentially a political party rally so that it would cut into live television coverage of his successors' inauguration. If you can't see the difference, you're intentionally not looking.
posted by aaron at 10:53 PM on July 2, 2001
Up to a point, I agree with you. They're certainly not perfect, and all other things being equal, they'll probably go out of their way to make sure the conservative side is represented before they worry about the liberal side. I don't think they do this that often, though. I have to sit through annoying liberal talking head sessions on there all the time. But since the other networks all do the same thing but in the opposite direction, it's obvious that all the conservatives are going to switch to the one choice that swings their way.
We can argue over the "fair and balanced" tagline, sure. I think it's a bad idea for any news organization to make such a brazen claim, because there's no way they can adhere to true objectivity 100% of the time even if they tried like hell to do so. They would still slip up, and often, and someone would eventually call them on it. But in the end, you have to understand that the viewers aren't switching because of that tagline. They know what they're getting into with FNC, and they very much want to get into it.
(that liberal media sure gave Clinton an easy time, didn't they?)
Yes, overall, they did. They gave overwhelmingly positive coverage to his policy initiatives and overall administration activities; it was only his personal life that they nailed him on. And as someone that was stuck in the newsroom throughout the Lewinsky mess, I can assure you they did not want to be covering it, at least not at first ... they only did it out of fear of looking like total Clinton sycophants if they didn't. (Once impeachment became likely, of course, they went after him happily, as they always do when they smell blood regardless of their political persuasion.)
Also, never said there was an AP conspiracy - just thought someone was asleep at the wheel and it showed shoddy journalism (liberal, conservative or otherwise).
No, I know you didn't. I was just aiming my comment into the wind, hoping perhaps someone at Buzzflash may notice the referral link sometime soon, check out this thread and gain a Clue.
Sort of like Republicans questioning Clinton's legitimacy because Perot split the vote, huh?
In all honesty, I don't recall any Republicans - at least not any sane ones - questioning the legitimacy of Clinton's presidency. Millions of us were furious that Perot handed the election to him on a silver platter, but we never questioned the legitimacy of the election results. More people voted for Clinton - in states with enough electoral votes, as it's supposed to be - and thus he won. The end. (A Google search would easily pull up writings from the small band of people convinced that Clinton won because, they claim, Serpenthead's War Room tactics went beyond sleazy and into pure Nixonian illegal activity, and because of Arkancides. But these are usually the same people that built Y2K shelters and get all their news and talk radio from ultra-right-wing shortwave stations because they believe Rush Limbaugh is a tool of the socialists.)
posted by aaron at 11:21 PM on July 2, 2001
That's why clump them together, and say there really isn't a media outlet for them.
posted by capt.crackpipe at 11:42 PM on July 2, 2001
I dunno, I watch it a lot but besides the very, very, very wimpy Alan Colmes - I don't see many liberals on there.
But these are usually the same people that built Y2K shelters and get all their news and talk radio from ultra-right-wing shortwave stations because they believe Rush Limbaugh is a tool of the socialists
I highly recommend this book for a look at those radio shows. And this guy, he's just crazy.
Maybe I don't see liberal media bias because I'm listening and watching right-wingers all day? :)
posted by owillis at 12:51 AM on July 3, 2001
Come on, what's two or four million dollars between friends who used to have a regulated trade relationship the man who set those policies?
And the Truman thing is nowhere near the same thing as intentionally scheduling what was essentially a political party rally so that it would cut into live television coverage of his successors' inauguration. If you can't see the difference, you're intentionally not looking.
Ah, I see, Clinton was sleazy because he talked in front of television reporters while Truman had the taste to only address newspaper reporters. Clearly a night and day difference.
Hey, aaron, you're not Aaron Brown from World News Now, are you? How's Lisa? Still do the polka? What's the weather like in Aurora, Ill.?
posted by NortonDC at 4:17 AM on July 3, 2001
posted by crasspastor at 4:31 AM on July 3, 2001
posted by dong_resin at 5:01 AM on July 3, 2001
Both the Democratic and Republican parties are parties of the Rich. The way I see it, they both sit on the center right (what in America passes for the center) and are kept in power by pandering to corporate interests that pay their bills. Both parties stand for rule of Government and for rule by the Rich, they may just quibble over the details and the rhetoric.
See authoritarianism isn't your problem here. These guys are elected by people, nobody's holding a proverbial gun to the electorate's head. The real mechanisms for the maintenance of power by the elite are far more subtle than authoritarians like Adolf or Stalin could ever have imagined.
I agree with you that there's no media outlet for ordinary people, they get their news feeds from the folks in charge.
posted by lagado at 5:29 AM on July 3, 2001
As Fox & Friends (which sounds like a kiddie cartoon show) and "E.D." Donahey, she loses much of her allure when you recall that her real name is Edye Tarbox and prior to her morning yuck-it-up on FNC she was a VJ on VH1 in the Rosie O'Donnell era. (Prior to that she was a failed/fired anchorwoman for the Pittsburgh NBC affiliate.) She is not a serious news person, even among the typically vapid morning infobabe race. The worst of the big three morning yacker chicks, Katie Couric, could eat her for breakfast without blinking.
posted by Dreama at 9:46 AM on July 3, 2001
However, I do think there are American socialists — what Americans consider “the Left” — but they are incredibly few and far between. Paul Wellstone, for one. Perhaps Gore as a young man. There was a massive turn around in American conservativism in the 50s. Today, the most important part in considering oneself a conservative is the allegiance to the wealthy and their freedom. Which is at the base of FOX’s or any other conservative media outlet’s bias.
posted by capt.crackpipe at 10:44 AM on July 3, 2001
posted by NortonDC at 11:11 AM on July 3, 2001
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Fifty of 56 partisan guests interviewed on Brit Hume's daily news show over a five-month period earlier this year were Republican, and only six were Democrats, the liberal group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting said.
In an admittedly more subjective analysis, FAIR said 65 of the show's 92 total guests were conservative politically.
Speaks for itself, really. Give me Fox anyday.
posted by ebarker at 7:40 PM on July 1, 2001