Thought some of this was interesting on the history of Fox News:
Criticism of media coverage
- Outfoxed, a documentary film on Fox News by liberal activist Robert Greenwald, makes allegations of bias in Fox News by interviewing a number of former employees who discuss the network's practices. For example, Frank O'Donnell, identified as a Fox News producer, says: "We were stunned, because up until that point, we were allowed to do legitimate news. Suddenly, we were ordered from the top to carry [...] Republican, right-wing propaganda", including being told what to say about Ronald Reagan. The network made an official response[137] and claimed that four of the individuals identified as employees of Fox News either were not employees (O'Donnell, e.g., worked for an affiliate over which Fox News claims to have no editorial authority) or had their titles inflated.[138]
- CNN founder Ted Turner accused Fox News of being "dumbed down" and "propaganda" and equated the network's popularity to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1930's Germany, during a speech to the National Association of Television Program Executives.[139] In response, a Fox News spokesperson said "Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network, and now his mind. We wish him well." The Anti-Defamation League, to whom Turner had apologized in the past for a similar comparison, said Turner is "a recidivist who hasn't learned from his past mistakes."[140]
Media watchdogs
Progressive media watch dog groups such as
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)
[16] and
Media Matters for America,
[17] have argued that Fox News reporting contains conservative editorializing within news stories. Others have referred to the network as "
Faux News",
[18] "
GOP-TV",
[19] "Fox Noise Channel",
[20] "Fox Nothing Channel", "Fixed News"
[21] and "
Cluster Fox."
[22] FAIR also asserted that in a study of a 19 week period from January 2001 to May 2001 the ratio of conservative guests to liberals on
Special Report with Brit Hume was 50:6, and obtained similar data from other Fox shows.
[23] Accuracy in Media has claimed that there was a conflict of interest in Fox News' co-sponsorship of the
May 15, 2007, Republican presidential candidates debate, pointing out that candidate and former New York city mayor
Rudolph Giuliani's law firm had tackled copyright protection and legislation on the purchase of cable TV lineups for
News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, and suggesting that Fox might be biased in favor of Giuliani's candidacy for the Republican Party presidential nomination.
[24]
Polls and surveys
A poll conducted by
Rasmussen Reports during September 2004 found that Fox News was seen as second to
CBS as the most politically biased network in the public view. 37% of respondents thought
CBS, in the wake of the
Memogate scandal, was trying to help elect
John Kerry, while 34% of respondents said they believed that Fox's goal was to "help elect Bush."
[37] However, a poll conducted by
Public Policy Polling in January 2010 found Fox News to be the only US television news network to receive a positive rating by the public for trustworthiness with results strongly split depending on the political affiliation of the respondents
[38] A survey by the
Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed "a striking rise in the politicization of cable TV news audiences . . . This pattern is most apparent with the fast-growing Fox News Channel."
[39] Another Pew survey of news consumption found that Fox News has not suffered a decline in credibility with its audience, with one in four (25%) saying they believe all or most of what they see on Fox News Channel, virtually unchanged since Fox was first tested in 2000.
[40]
According to the results of a 2006 study by the
Project for Excellence in Journalism a survey of 547 journalists, found that Fox was most frequently cited by surveyed journalists as an outlet taking an ideological stance in its coverage, and most identified as advocating
conservative political positions,
[41] with 56% of national journalists citing Fox News as being especially conservative in its coverage of news. Additionally Fox was viewed as having the highest profile as a conservative news organization; it was cited unprompted by 69% of national journalists.
[42]
[edit] Studies and reports
The “2011 State of the News Media” Report by the Pew Center on Excellence in Journalism found that in 2010, Fox News Channel had average daytime audience of 1.2 million and nighttime viewership of 1.1 million, higher than its cable competitors but down 11% and 9% respectively from 2009. Fox's cumulative audience (unique viewers who watched at least 60 minutes in an average month) was 41.1 million, coming in second to CNN with 41.7 million. For 2010, CNN's digital network continued to lead Fox's digital network online; CNN with 35.7 million unique visitors per month, compared to Fox's 15.5 million. For the first time Fox outspent its competitors, with a total news investment of $686 million. 72% of this investment went to program costs, reflecting their focus on high profile hosts. They also increased their revenues 17% over 2009 to $1.5 billion, well ahead of second-place CNN at $1.2 billion.
[43][44]
[edit] Content analysis studies
The Project on Excellence in Journalism report in 2006
[41] showed that 68 percent of Fox cable stories contained personal opinions, as compared to MSNBC at 27 percent and CNN at 4 percent. The "content analysis" portion of their 2005 report also concluded that "Fox was measurably more one-sided than the other networks, and Fox journalists were more opinionated on the air."
[45]
The documentary
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism claims that Fox reporters and anchors, rather than citing an
anonymous source in order to advance a storyline, use the phrase "some people say" to include unattributed conservative opinion and commentary into reports. In the film, Media Matters for America president
David Brock noted that some shows, like Fox's evening news program,
Special Report with Brit Hume, tend to exhibit editorializing attitudes and behavior when on the air.
A 2006 University of California, Berkeley study cited that there was a correlation between the presence of the Fox News Channel in cable markets and increases in Republican votes in those markets.
[46]
[edit] Studies of reporting bias
In a 2006 academic content analysis of election news, Rasmussen Reports showed that coverage at ABC, CBS, and NBC was more favorable toward Kerry than Bush, while coverage at Fox News Channel were more favorable toward Bush.
[47]
A study published in November 2005 by Tim Groseclose, a professor of
political science at
UCLA, comparing political bias from such news outlets as the
New York Times,
USA Today, the
Drudge Report, the
Los Angeles Times, and Fox News’
Special Report, concluded "all of the news outlets we examine, except Fox News’ Special Report and the
Washington Times, received scores to the left of the average member of Congress." In particular, Fox News'
Special Report with Brit Hume had an
Americans for Democratic Action rating that was right of the political center. Groseclose used the number of times a host cited a particular
think tank on his or her program and compared it with the number of times a member of the
U.S. Congress cited a think tank, correlating that with the politician's Americans for Democratic Action rating.
[48][49]
Geoff Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley and a
National Public Radio commentator, criticized the methodology of the study and labeled its conclusions invalid.
[50] He pointed to what he saw as a Groseclose's reliance on interpretations of facts and data that were taken from sources that were not, in his view, credible. Groseclose and Professor Jeff Milyo rebutted, saying Nunberg "shows a gross misunderstanding [of] our statistical method and the actual assumptions upon which it relies."
[51] Mark Liberman (a professor of Computer Science and the Director of Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania), who helped post Groseclose and Milyo's rebuttal, later posted how the statistical methods used to calculate this bias pose faults.
[52][53] Mark concluded "that many if not most of the complaints directed against G&M are motivated in part by ideological disagreement — just as much of the praise for their work is motivated by ideological agreement. It would be nice if there were a less politically fraught body of data on which such modeling exercises could be explored."
[52]
A December 2007 study/examination by
Robert Lichter of a self-described
nonpartisan media watchdog group, the
Center for Media and Public Affairs found that Fox News's evaluations of all of the 2008
Democratic presidential candidates combined was 51% positive and 49% negative, while the network's evaluations of the
Republican presidential candidates 51% negative and 49% positive. The study, however, did find that Fox's coverage was less negative toward Republican candidates than the coverage of broadcast networks.
[54]
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