Can we stop pretending that Fox is news ?

[hal2kilo]

Negotiations will be broadcast on CSPAN! Transparency!

So now your are equating the word of a politician with a journalist?

 

[nick1985]

So now your are equating the word of a politician with a journalist?

Nope. Just doing some trolling while I install some updates on a computer next to me.

 

[Fern]

So when are they going to drop their "Fair and Balanced" slogan.

Sometimes I too question their use of the phrase "Fair and Balanced" because I recognize that they are putting out the conservative side.

However, they do make an effort to line up people from from both sides when discussing issues. Fox News has many Democrats consultants (or whatever they call them) regularly appearing on their network such as Susan Estrich, Lanny Davis, Bob Beckel, Patrick Caddel and Doug Shoen to give to other side. Juan Williams and Mara Liasson from NPR are regulars and host shows. They also have a split panel on their "News watch" program.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091101/pl_politico/28999

Aso when they are discussing an issue they always invite a Dem pol involved to appear, many do.

So while they are slanted to the right, they seem to provide a platform for the left to appear and argue their side as well. The same cannot always be said for some of the programs on the other channels. (Chris Matthews will often have both sides appear on his show. Shulz, Olberman and maddow not so much.)

So, if "Fair and Balanced" is meant to refer to the practice of bringing in both sides to discuss and issue they have a point in making that claim IMO.

In any case I would encourage people to watch programs from both sides to get a better picture.

Fern

 

[hal2kilo]

Nope. Just doing some trolling while I install some updates on a computer next to me.

Honesty is the best policy.

 

[ayabe]

Chris Matthews, the former Carter staffer, who hosts "hardball" is a "straight up reporters who always lend credibility to right-wing talking points"? You're saying Hardball is a straight up news show?

And the same for Rachel Maddow etc?

You are unfamiliar with MSNBC programming.

MSNBC has no nightly "staright up" news show. It's all political commentary beginning at 4pm est (perhaps earlier) when Matthews first airs and continues on through the night.

But some here need to drop the pretense that the MSM is 'objective', they aren't and I don't care what studies show; I watch all the d@mn programs. There are a few shows here and there that are straight up news, but the vast majority are political commentary and are up front about it.

Fern

I am very familiar with every name on that list, unlike the person who posted them.

Never made that claim about Maddow, and Matthews gets hardon's thinking about Fred Thompson's Aqua Velva smell and has carried the water for republican talking points for many years, he is no liberal.

Yes everything after 4pm is opinion but during the day it's just news, I didn't claim otherwise.

 

[Fern]

I am very familiar with every name on that list, unlike the person who posted them.

Never made that claim about Maddow, and Matthews gets hardon's thinking about Fred Thompson's Aqua Velva smell and has carried the water for republican talking points for many years, he is no liberal.

Yes everything after 4pm is opinion but during the day it's just news, I didn't claim otherwise.

You're claiming that Matthews, a former Carter staffer, is no liberal/progressive? He's one that got a 'thrill up his leg' listening to Obama and claims it's his job to make the Obama presidency a success. Etc.

Matthews is a die-hard Democrat.

(BTW: I might be wrong about the 4pm time slot, it may be Dylan Ratigan. I'm rarely home that early so could be wrong, my point stands however about their straight-up news programming, or lack thereof, in the early evening until well past midnight.)

Fern

 

[nick1985]

I am very familiar with every name on that list

We know. You get brainwashed by them every single day

 

[Vette73]

Fox News Comes Out of the Closet
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/fox-news-comes-out-of-the-closet

Haha... funny headline



Fox News finally made it official. They are part and parcel of the Republican Party. They are now the largest donors to the Republican Governors Association, having given them $1 million dollars. They also employ three out of the top four Republicans in the Iowa Caucus Poll for GOP presidential candidates.

 

[Steeplerot]

Not that anyone who watches the pro-wrestling news entertainment channel is going to care. They have hyped up us against them for so long being conservative is a cult mindset now.

 

[Craig234]

You're claiming that Matthews, a former Carter staffer, is no liberal/progressive? He's one that got a 'thrill up his leg' listening to Obama and claims it's his job to make the Obama presidency a success. Etc.

Matthews is a die-hard Democrat.

(BTW: I might be wrong about the 4pm time slot, it may be Dylan Ratigan. I'm rarely home that early so could be wrong, my point stands however about their straight-up news programming, or lack thereof, in the early evening until well past midnight.)

Fern

Matthews is far from that. He doesn't fit cleanly on left-right - he shifts his statements a lot - but he's more the 'Washington insider culture' than anything.

He regularly bashes people on the left, and has attacked the liberals side strongly, while another time said he's a liberal. This 'strong liberal' voted for Bush.

I have little use for him, he's all yours. He made sychophantic statements about Bush as well as Obama.

He seems to grab a line he likes and go with it, even if it's false.

For example, he was one of people who repeatedly repeated the lies about Gore in the 2000 campaign, claiming Gore 'said he invented the internet', that he 'lied about he and Tipper being models for the Love Story' and made broad accusations of Gore being dishonest based on these things.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Nope. Just doing some trolling while I install some updates on a computer next to me.

LOL...at least he is honest now.

 

[Craig234]

Craig, a better analogy for Fox would be if all the news media had spent decades telling you, in increasingly strident tone, that the sky is actually orange even though you believe it to be blue. Then a news outlet comes along that says the sky is blue. Consumers immediately cry "Yes! I thought that all along!" and transfer their trust, for better or worse, to the news outlet that agrees with everything they personally observe. Note that this in and of itself does not determine the color of the sky, but it does explain Fox's skyrocketing appeal.

No, but that's what someone duped by Fox would claim.

There is some truth to it - there has always been a fringe group - but my comments were correct about Fox creating their own market with the big lie technique.

Since the sky color is not too useful for you, let's say Rupert Murdoch made a KKK network to push the White Supremacist viewpoint. After years of not getting an audience, he spend and spends buying it a place on the airwaves until finally, their propaganda begins to win over more and more people using the big lie, and you find a big part of America embracing the view and being loyal to 'the only network who speaks for them'. They have 'two sides', the pro-KKK and anti-KKK views, and point to the lack of pro-KKK speakers on other networks as the bias they have. The people who are sucked into this will sound a lot like you.

To be fair, your scenario could describe if society and networks did have some 'liberal bias' and Fox came along and provided a legitimate alternative; the thing is, whether Fox is 'the KKK network' or 'the accurate network' is a matter of opinion, and we aren't likely to agree on that.

But it's a matter of record that Fox and similar attempts preceding it did badly - hardly the 'welcoming' from the people you claim, and Fox only got a larger audience after being the first cable channel in history to pay the cable providers to provide it - it bought its market, that it now admittedly has.

Similarly, if I understand correctly, right-wing attempts like the New York Post, Murdoch's pet right-wing paper, or the far right attempt to provide a Fox-like 'fair and balanced' counter to the Washington Post (already on the right IMO), the Washington Times, have to be subsidized with low readership (the Republicans have been quite deferential to Rev. Moon in exchange). The right tried to make their version of things like The Daily Show that bombed.

Not exactly how they should do if you were were people wanted it so much.

But Fox has got itself a base - as I said, good for their profits, bad for the country.

It's a matter of opinion whether a group is good or bad. You can have mobs for and against civil rights - some will say each is good or bad.

 

[werepossum]

You're good at putting words into my mouth, not so much at forming a well-reasoned argument.


Turns out we linked the same article. I just linked the first page while you linked a later page.


I said no such thing. I repeated exactly what the study found, that Fox and MSNBC are roughly equally biased, in opposite directions.


This is where your reasoning fails. You presume that negative stories should somehow directly correlate with election results. That is a non sequitur. News stories should be positive or negative according to what is actually happening with each candidate and his campaign. There will be a mix of both positive and negative developments.

Those developments are at most only loosely connected to ultimate election results. People vote for many reasons, and there are substantial entrenched groups on both ends of the political spectrum who will vote for their party no matter how badly their candidate blows it. Your argument presumes coverage and results have a direct correlation, and that's simply not true.



And here you've just refuted your own presumption. You've shown how your argument fails the reason test.


Indeed, but that's the position YOU took. Physician, heal thyself.


LOL. Even the vast majority of right wingers acknowledge Fox is substantially biased to the right. For you to suggest they are the least biased shows either you're deluded or you're too entrenched in defending your own failed reasoning. Either way, your argument fails.


The bottom line remains that in spite of various nutters screeching about all the studies proving how leftist the MSM is, the one and only study of media reporting presented so far in this thread says just the opposite. If anyone has credible studies showing contrary results, they should provide them instead of continuing the knee-jerk huffing and puffing about something they want to believe. Otherwise, "by any fair reasoning," the "evil liberal media" remains yet another mythical bogeyman the RNC propaganda machine uses to keep the sheeple properly outraged while they vote against their self-interests.

Again, the STUDY (whose results I linked) found a 3 percent advantage for Obama with Fox News, a 50 percent advantage for Obama with the television news media as a whole, and a whopping 96 percent advantage for Obama with MSNBC. The journalists then wrote an ARTICLE (which you linked) opining (as do you) that a 3 percent advantage for Obama with Fox News is a far right "mirror image" to the 96 percent advantage for Obama displayed by MSNBC - or in other words, that the 50 percent advantage for Obama with the television news media as a whole is "fair and balanced". For that to be true as it repeats more or less every election, every Democrat candidate must be roughly 50 percent better than every Republican candidate. Of the last seventeen (post-war) presidential elections, nine terms have been won by Republicans and eight by Democrats if my mental math is correct, suggesting that with respect to America as a whole the two parties are relatively equally regarded (as they must be; if one party is non-competitive than it will morph until it is once again competitive.) Thus by the standards of America as a whole, the mainstream television news media is biased strongly toward the left, Fox is biased weakly to the right (assuming that the 2008 campaign's slight leftward tilt resulted from Obama being the better candidate), and MSNBC is biased incredibly to the left.

Falling back to "everybody knows" is simply circular reasoning. If "fair and balanced" reportage was truly a 50 percent advantage for the Democrat, then our elections would lean roughly 50 percent Democrat. If you do not accept elections as indicative of America's average political landscape, then you have absolutely nothing on which to base fairness or bias other than to either accept that a fair and unbiased media would on average have an equal number of positive and negative stories about each candidate (in which case Fox is far and away the least biased), or to simply squeal that "everybody knows" Fox News is the most biased, if not the only biased, television news station and no basis is needed. Again, the only possible exception to this dichotomy is that EVERY Democrat candidate is a prince among men and EVERY Republican candidate is a base villein so that fair reportage will always have a large advantage to the Democrat - and yet somehow the vast majority of Americans not coming from journalism school are too dense to see this. Are you seriously going to make this case?

The very fact that the journalists would write an article positing that a 3 percent leftward tilt is the far right mirror image of a 96 percent leftward tilt shows the incredible leftward tilt of journalism schools today. You simply can't say that a 50% advantage for the left is unbiased toward the left and expect to be taken seriously.

 

[Steeplerot]

Foxnews made out Obama to be a evil nefarious plot to take all the whites monies and convert the world to shiria law all the while indoctrinating the youth into stalinism.

Now how the hell does that make the other media outlets who took a more moderate less...umm sensationalist bullshit position leftist for not demonizing a candidate and just making shit up to drum up fear?

Fox does this crap every cycle. And all year every year.

Are you guys really this dumb/brainwashed to have such fail critical thinking skills?

It's like idiocracy, the working class gleefully dumbed down and farmed by big industry with flashy bibmos and pretty lights, with a giant dose of creepy right-wing fascistic elements of nationalism, xenophobia, racism and such to scare the old whites and anyone willing to be misinformed, since its us against them.
Ahh, Foxnews.

 

[werepossum]

No, but that's what someone duped by Fox would claim.

There is some truth to it - there has always been a fringe group - but my comments were correct about Fox creating their own market with the big lie technique.

Since the sky color is not too useful for you, let's say Rupert Murdoch made a KKK network to push the White Supremacist viewpoint. After years of not getting an audience, he spend and spends buying it a place on the airwaves until finally, their propaganda begins to win over more and more people using the big lie, and you find a big part of America embracing the view and being loyal to 'the only network who speaks for them'. They have 'two sides', the pro-KKK and anti-KKK views, and point to the lack of pro-KKK speakers on other networks as the bias they have. The people who are sucked into this will sound a lot like you.

To be fair, your scenario could describe if society and networks did have some 'liberal bias' and Fox came along and provided a legitimate alternative; the thing is, whether Fox is 'the KKK network' or 'the accurate network' is a matter of opinion, and we aren't likely to agree on that.

But it's a matter of record that Fox and similar attempts preceding it did badly - hardly the 'welcoming' from the people you claim, and Fox only got a larger audience after being the first cable channel in history to pay the cable providers to provide it - it bought its market, that it now admittedly has.

Similarly, if I understand correctly, right-wing attempts like the New York Post, Murdoch's pet right-wing paper, or the far right attempt to provide a Fox-like 'fair and balanced' counter to the Washington Post (already on the right IMO), the Washington Times, have to be subsidized with low readership (the Republicans have been quite deferential to Rev. Moon in exchange). The right tried to make their version of things like The Daily Show that bombed.

Not exactly how they should do if you were were people wanted it so much.

But Fox has got itself a base - as I said, good for their profits, bad for the country.

It's a matter of opinion whether a group is good or bad. You can have mobs for and against civil rights - some will say each is good or bad.

I agree that we're not likely to agree on which network is the most accurate, but surely we can agree on the tone of stories. The Pew study (remember, this study by journalists was brought up by a liberal, not a conservative, who had obviously read only the spin and not the actual results) found that Fox News had a 3 percent advantage for Obama in positive stories over negative stories, the television news media as a whole had a 50 percent advantage for Obama, and Moonbat Central MSNBC ran a whopping 96 percent advantage for Obama in positive versus negative stories. You can certainly argue that Obama should have had more positive stories as he did win, but arguing that Obama (and EVERY Democrat to run) should have a 50 percent advantage in positive over negative stories - and yet that America somehow doesn't recognize the Democrat Party's status as saints - is beyond ridiculous. A left/right bias only has meaning within the context of a society, as each society has a different concept of left and right.

Fox did indeed have to pay to get on the air until they had proved themselves - cable and satellite companies want to make money, not (Ted Turner aside) push an agenda. Air America had to do the same and failed miserably. And yes, the conservative-slanted versions of "The Daily Show have mostly been failures (although Gutfield does pretty well.) Obviously conservatives do facts better and liberals do humor better.

 

[sandorski]

Foxnews made out Obama to be a evil nefarious plot to take all the whites monies and convert the world to shiria law all the while indoctrinating the youth into stalinism.

Now how the hell does that make the other media outlets who took a more moderate less...umm sensationalist bullshit position leftist for not demonizing a candidate and just making shit up to drum up fear?

Fox does this crap every cycle. And all year every year.

Are you guys really this dumb/brainwashed to have such fail critical thinking skills?

It's like idiocracy, the working class gleefully dumbed down and farmed by big industry with flashy bibmos and pretty lights, with a giant dose of creepy right-wing fascistic elements of nationalism, xenophobia, racism and such to scare the old whites and anyone willing to be misinformed, since its us against them.
Ahh, Foxnews.

That's been the state of such discussions for Decades. Balanced Media became "Liberal" for the mere act of covering stories the Conservatives did not like. Abortion, Women's Rights, Gay Rights, etc. Conservatives were absolutely appalled that such issues were given the time of day and decided it must have been a conspiracy against them. It didn't even matter How those stories were covered, just the fact that they were.

 

[dmcowen674]

Quote:
Originally Posted by nick1985
Nope. Just doing some trolling while I install some updates on a computer next to me.

LOL...at least he is honest now.

Having him on the ignore list has reduced his existence to that.

So sad.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Having him on the ignore list has reduced his existence to that.

So sad.

You're just too cowardly to engage anyone in discussion. Everyone knows it.

 

[hal2kilo]

You're claiming that Matthews, a former Carter staffer, is no liberal/progressive? He's one that got a 'thrill up his leg' listening to Obama and claims it's his job to make the Obama presidency a success. Etc.

Matthews is a die-hard Democrat.

(BTW: I might be wrong about the 4pm time slot, it may be Dylan Ratigan. I'm rarely home that early so could be wrong, my point stands however about their straight-up news programming, or lack thereof, in the early evening until well past midnight.)

Fern

I think he's just bi-polar lol.

Seriously though. Chris Matthews used to be a somewhat centrist O'neil democrat and in many ways still is. I think though as he and MSNBC in general has observed, the other side (FOX) has no shame. So he's definately swung more to the left as has MSNBC. He took what at the time was a contrary stance about the Iraq war, even when several wimp democrats ran for cover as they got alot of flak for being against Bush senior's "successful" war in Iraq. Many people forget that MSNBC canceled a Phil Donahue show about the time the invasion of Iraq started due to it being perceived as too liberal when everybody was rah rah rah about getting even for 9/11.

 

[Craig234]

I agree that we're not likely to agree on which network is the most accurate, but surely we can agree on the tone of stories. The Pew study (remember, this study by journalists was brought up by a liberal, not a conservative, who had obviously read only the spin and not the actual results) found that Fox News had a 3 percent advantage for Obama in positive stories over negative stories, the television news media as a whole had a 50 percent advantage for Obama, and Moonbat Central MSNBC ran a whopping 96 percent advantage for Obama in positive versus negative stories. You can certainly argue that Obama should have had more positive stories as he did win, but arguing that Obama (and EVERY Democrat to run) should have a 50 percent advantage in positive over negative stories - and yet that America somehow doesn't recognize the Democrat Party's status as saints - is beyond ridiculous. A left/right bias only has meaning within the context of a society, as each society has a different concept of left and right.

Fox did indeed have to pay to get on the air until they had proved themselves - cable and satellite companies want to make money, not (Ted Turner aside) push an agenda. Air America had to do the same and failed miserably. And yes, the conservative-slanted versions of "The Daily Show have mostly been failures (although Gutfield does pretty well.) Obviously conservatives do facts better and liberals do humor better.

I think you're twisting it a bit, not that you mean to but not understanding the business.

Not many products come along and are simply bought by people who say 'wow I like that!'

People in marketing could tell you how markets are developed.

It's done with consumables and with politicians and with an ideology.

So it wasn't that 'Fox and Air America came along and the people picked one'.

It's more an issue of which had the deep pockets to spend the time and create its market, as opposed to one on a lower budget.

Now, Ted Turner - there was a combination, he did stumble across an 'unmet need' for 24 hours news that became feasible with the introduction of Cable TV - and he had the deep pockets to get the people wanting it. But he was out to make money with news, not to make money by having to create an audience with warped politics.

The mainstream media has a corporate bias - it's owned by some of our biggest corporations. It'll cover exception stories like the BP oil spill, but you won't see a narrative on its coverage questioning the corporate system much, quite the opposite. This has an effect people don't notice too, but note the lack of real citizen outrage and movements where there might otherwise be.

I do think that Fox's first priority is simple to have its own market of viewers, rather than to be an ideological mouthpiece - but that because there is a market available in the far right, and a supporting structure of one of the two major parties, that it works for them to be allied with the ideological right. That's the point I was making that they could care less what harm they do to society and our political culture, it if makes a buck.

On the study, it mainly shows Fox is more negative about Obama, not who's right. Coverage should vary in how positive it is based on the president's actions; one president should get more positive coverage than another when he's a better president. There's no right ratio for each president.

 

[sportage]

I never have considered fox a news network.
Fox calling itself news would be like Hitler calling himself
a compassionate conservative.

 

[manimal]

Im still waiting for links to Fox's apology for the acorn faurage....


Anyone remember what the pew numbers were for the percentage of americans that believe Obama won the election because of acorn fraud?

 

[nick1985]

I never have considered fox a news network.

Do you consider MSNBC a news network?

 

[Kappo]

No one is close to being as Biased as Fox, no one.

Depends on what ideology you have. People inherently want to hear things that coincide with their beliefs.

Here's a tip from a former CNN employee : none of them are unbiased or even close. You will think that they are more unbiased than Fox, but it's because of your ideology, but I can tell you that after working on the digital archives there, it is a joke between what is actually captured footage vs what they report and the outtakes + comments made to refine they view they are pushing.

Is it right? Nope. Are they all guilty? Probably. I've only worked for two media outlets and both were the same. I assume all of them are just as guilty.

It IS funny to hear libs complain, though. "They are unbiased as long as they agree with me!"

 

[hal2kilo]

Do you consider MSNBC a news network?

For the most part no, although they do have a few hours of straight news programming that doen't seem to have, uh em, the "mistakes" that Fox news has during its "straight" news spots. I can stand Studio B, but thats about it.

I make a point of watching the Fox News Sunday show just to see what the spin is for the week.

All of their business shows are just another excuse to bash Obama and other Democratic policy. As soon as I see Cavuto's face I hit the remote.

At least CNBC limits it to about 50% of the time. I'm not sure why Kudlow is not on Fox.