Fox News seems to have a real problem with cutting old footage into new stories. The liberal theory is that this is some sort of concerted conspiracy to imply that 80 million Americans turn out for every Tea Party or Sarah Palin appearance. The conservative line is that they were simply trying to punch up an otherwise dull segment, and/or somehow ran out of footage of the actual event. The latter story makes marginally more sense to me, but only because I cannot imagine that anyone at Fox News--indeed, anyone with a pulse--is stupid enough to imagine that a few shots of excess protesters are enough to marginally improve the chances of Republican victories in 2010 or 2012.
I'm not sure it really matters. Fox News was, I think, justifiably angry when the Obama administration declared that they were not a real news organization. But if you wanted to be treated like a real news organization, you have to abide by the rules that real news organizations follow. One of those rules is that you do not imply that images of one event actually come from an entirely different event. You don't do this for any reason.
It's entirely true that other news organizations have been caught in sleazy tactics, like the infamous habit of wiring cars to explode during auto safety stories. But they were righteously yelled at, and since the advent of the right-wing blogosphere, they seem to do a lot less of it. Now the left-wing blogosphere is fact-checking Fox with the same ferocity, and that's a good thing. We all have a vested interest in better news organizations.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Every news organization uses stock footage to some extent - it's always funny to see a story on technology that cuts to people sitting at green screens or a story on the auto industry that cuts to people assembling 1994 Oldsmobiles. I tend to catch those because those are things I know about, so I wonder how many I don't catch because they aren't my areas of expertise.
So I'm pretty willing to go with laziness here.
But they tell you it's stock footage. Usually with a line of text that says "file footage" or something similar.
No they don't.
Or the inevitable pipetting scene from any story about medical research.
As a bench scientist, I have always hated that, but there is something to it. When I think about what I actually physically do on a day to day basis, about 85% of my time is spent transferring tiny amounts of liquid between tiny little tubes and multi-well plates. At least they don't only show stock footage of people loading gels anymore.
They should not have done what they did, and are rightly being chastised for it, but come on. Fox does not pull a fraction of the manipulative shenanigans that MSNBC does (how about deliberately cutting out black men from tea party crowds so they can maintain their "angry white people narrative?).
Good point! And who was it that went on and on about white men bringing guns to an Obama event, while carefully editing the footage to avoid showing that it was one black man?
Not that any of this makes what Fox did acceptable. But we need to try to be 'fair and balanced' and not jump to conclusions from one careless mistake. If this becomes a pattern, that's different.
That was truly hilarious.
The Norah O'Donnell ambush of a 17-year-old girl the other day at a Palin book signing was also memorable.
13 year old girl.
On MSNBC Norah said that she wanted to set the record straight regarding the t-shirt the girl was wearing.
The t-shirt said "Wall Street got $700 billion and all i got was this crummy t-shirt"
Not really clear what Norah was setting straight.
This happened twice in one week (close enough together that they perhaps hadn't had time to investigate and fix the first incidence). The reaction: "Fox executives are promising “serious disciplinary action” for those responsible."
This deserves to be watched. We need to keep an eye out for bias in all mainstream media outlets. But by itself, this is too little, too soon to draw much of a conclusion.
For some reason, this reminds me of Al Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. The book was trumpeted on, for example, NPR for having such a huge team of Ivy League students exhaustively fact-checking the right to document all their lies. But what did they find? Pathetically little. Bill O'Reilly once accidentally said Peabody when he meant Polk (or maybe it was vice versa) and didn't correct the mistake until the next day. Oh, and he claims to be from a working class background, but they found his mother and asked her if she raised her family in a dump, and she said that she thought their home had been quite nice. After all Franken's research, he came up with practically nothing.
Again, all news organizations deserve scrutiny, and this choice by Fox was unacceptable. But it doesn't amount to much by itself. Let's see if it keeps happening.
Ann, you're grossly distorting the O'Reilly story, to be generous.
Not only there's a lot more about Bill O'Reilly (and others) in Franken's book, you're completely misrepresenting the Polka award episode, which illustrates the type of shameful behavior O'Reilly is capable of.
O'Reilly told he won the Peabody not once, but on several occasions. Then he was contacted by Franken, and admitted he had made a mistake: it was a Polka award, not a Peabody. The juicy part is what he said on the O'Reilly Factor after this:
Guy says about me, couple of weeks ago, 'O'Reilly said he won a Peabody Award.' Never said it. You can't find a transcript where I said it.
So, after admitting his 'honest mistake', he proceeded to deny on TV that he ever said he won a Peabody, in one of history's most baldfaced lies.
Oh, and after that he continued to used his program to slur whomever reported the story, accusing them of fabricating events.
It was a Polk Award. I can understand "Polka" as being a Freudian typo, but when you make the same mistake twice, I tend to question your own comprehension of the situation.
Whoopsidaisy. I stand corrected. That said:
- Freudian typo? Someone's trying too hard to sound cute and clever. If you're alluding to Freudian slips, in the words of Inigo Montoya, "I do not think it means what you think it means".
- more to the point, what I said is accurate.
In February, O'Reilly gave a speech seemingly taking credit for winning a coveted Peabody award while an anchor at the tabloid TV show Inside Edition. After comedian Al Franken pointed out that the show never won a Peabody, O'Reilly retorted, in Mamet-esque syntax (O'Reilly Factor, 3/13/01): "Guy says about me, couple of weeks ago, 'O'Reilly said he won a Peabody Award.' Never said it. You can't find a transcript where I said it."
But on his May 19, 2000 broadcast, he repeatedly told a guest who brought up his tabloid past: "We won Peabody Awards. . . . We won Peabody awards. . . . A program that wins a Peabody Award, the highest award in journalism, and you're going to denigrate it?" (Inside Edition won a Polk Award, not the better-known Peabody, for reporting that was done after O'Reilly left the show--Washington Post, 3/1/01.)
You have to admit, it would have been much more awesome if O'Reilly had won a polka award.
Mouse replies to comment. Finds typo (oh joy!). Snarks. Avoids dealing with claims in the comment.
(yawn)
The usual irony-for-fifth-graders post from blighter will follow shortly. Probably something about progressives closing Fox for the greater good.
Martin, I don't have the ability to verity Roberts' claims one way or the other, having no interest whatsoever in O'Reiley and even less in Franken, and therefore having read very little of their works. Therefore, when encountering a literal he-said-she-said debate, it's quite fair to observe that if one party makes a repeated mistake when criticizing someone else's alleged repeated mistake, he doesn't present himself as a good authority on the subject.
I also like how you responded to what you perceived to be an empty snark with another empty snark and a character assassination, then spread around some other general disdain for good measure. Stuff legends are made of.
You could easily google the O'Reilly story in under 2 minutes. You could also, since you claim you don't have any interest in it, simply, you know, not say anything. Instead, you opted to be smug, concentrating on a typo to smear the whole correction, which happens to be accurate, with a puerile argument (typo-->lost authority)
That's fine by me. It seems to be your thing. But I find it amusing that, as soon as you get a taste of your own medicine, you can't help but whine and hurl hyperbolic accusations of character assassination.
Oh, and meanwhile Sam acknowledged your correction and posted a link. Nothing to say about that. I suppose he can never regain his lost authority.
Grow up.
You realize O'Reilly isn't a newscaster and the O'Reilly Factor isn't the news right?
You realize that was a reply to Ann's false assertions, right?
"So, after admitting his 'honest mistake', he proceeded to deny on TV that he ever said he won a Peabody, in one of history's most baldfaced lies."
I looked into it, and you're right that O'Reilly made the same mistake on 3 occasions that Franken found, not just one. I remembered it incorrectly, and apologize. As you said, O'Reilly admitted the mistakes once confronted.
The part that you call "one of history's most baldfaced lies" is simply more quibbling over wording (like most of Franken's book). O'Reilly admitted that he had mistakenly claimed that Inside Edition, his former show, won two Peabodys when they were really two Polks. What he denied was that he personally claimed to have won a Peabody. There's no evidence that he ever claimed to have personally won either award, and thus his denial was not a lie.
Still no reply from Sam Roberts, who accused me of "grossly distorting the O'Reilly story, to be generous"? And he'll probably continue to claim that O'Reilly is slurring other people, without acknowledging that the real problem is Sam's failure to read carefully. But why let facts get in the way?
Don't you think that actively participating and rallying protesters you're supposedly covering is much more serious than the footage thing?
http://vodpod.com/watch/2213591-fox-news-producer-caught-rallying-912-protest-crowd
I don't watch Fox News, or CNN, MSNBC or any of the other cable shows. I watch the CBS Evening News when my wife has it on and every night I shout myself hoarse at perky Katie Couric. That's my background. Not having seen the spot in question I am forced to guess, but since when did crowd scenes mean anything anyway? I rule Fox News guilty of having a lazy production team. That is bad, but it's way different from the conspiracy theory being floated by the anti-Fox team. Is it news that Fox has a rightward drift? Hello? Where have you folks been?
The headline of this post reminds me of the old joke about outrunning the bear. If Newsweek continues its recent decision-making about cover art, Fox News has nothing to defend.
I agree that it's a bad tactic and I doubly agree that the instant-fact-check blogosphere is a positive innovation and should be applied across the board.
I agree with Holdfast that if you think this disqualifies Fox from being a news outlet, then the (I think it was MSNBC but don't recall exactly) incident where a show purposefully filmed the gun-toter at the tea party so you couldn't tell his race while the host opined about how he was probably a racist motivated to arm himself by hatred of Barack Obama for being black when other photos of the event showed the fellow was, in fact, a black man himself should probably disqualify them as well.
There's also the oddity of Dunn, the lady who apparently birthed the "exclude Fox as non-news" idea, recently applauding the excellent reporting of the Daily Show. I enjoy the Daily Show but if it counts as news, then Fox certainly does. (And I don't watch Fox or much of any news on TV, aside from the local when I'm getting dressed in the morning.)
I fear FOX will be a victim of its own success. Its true that they captured a market equaling roughyl 50% of the population, but they have no competition in that market. If you want your news with less liberal/conservative slant FOX is all you got. And monopolies always lead to bad behavior
That said, I doubt AP can say much given the crap they ran during the Israel/Lebanon conflict.
Not even close. Fox News dominates cable, but is behind every nightly news program.
Its true that they captured a market equaling roughyl 50% of the population, but they have no competition in that market
It's the journalism self-selection problem. It's just really hard to put together a center-right news channel, and it pisses off everyone else, especially when all these Fox personalities are getting rich off book sales.
Fox News dominates cable, but is behind every nightly news program.
Comparing them to broadcast networks is pretty dumb.
Comparing them to broadcast networks is pretty dumb.
No when refuting the "50% of the population" assertion. Taking a 2 line reply out of context is pretty dumb.
Okay, I'll bite. Which of the Big Four is actually running an enterprise that handles the use of footage, both actual or stock, with any lasting degree of professional standards, as opposed to alternately attempting to pander to, and mold the views of, a target viewer demographic?
I'm moderately hostile toward televised news generally, since I know the presentation is being manipulated from start to finish by the agenda of the producer, and don't really mind if People Of The Internet want to criticize the lack of standards on Fox. What I have noticed, though, is that many of these same people are absolutely blind regarding the lack of standards on the other networks.
This is somewhat off topic but incedent illustrates how TV manipulates coverage.
Everyone has seen the recent flap with Carrie Prejan, were she doesn't like a question that Larry King asked her and has a minor hissy fit, threatens to walk off the show but ultimately doesn't.
On Howie Kurtz's cnn show Reliable Sources they did a majjor segment on this saying what an idiot Prejan was, why won't she answer an legit question, her behaviour was indefensible yada yada yada.
It was only much later on a conservative program that played preceeding tape where Prejan told King 3 times that she couldn't answer his question because it was part of the confidentiality agreement of a legal settlement.
This relevant fact was never mentioned or aired in any of the CNN or other lamestream media coverage.
So Howie Kurtz is either ignorant or a liar.
I find it humorous that alot of mass-media folks consider this a case of institutional bias, when in reality you've got a few errors made every month by every major media outlet when they are pushed to report news in minutes or hours instead of days or weeks, and it relies on just a few people to put together a piece using whatever footage is available.
And you hope that the people putting it together in hours correlate the tone and slant of the script given to the on-air host.
And sometimes you don't.
What amazes me is how little crap Keith Olbermann gets from the mass media. He makes O'Reilly look almost sane.
Wrong. This is not "usage of stock footage," and it's not, after 2 cases in less than two weeks, "too little, too soon." The fact that other stations are doing it, or that the fact-checkers on Franken's last book found few "lies" does not matter. This is blatant disregard for the most fundamental rule of journalism, this is NEVER acceptable, and everyone who cares about a responsible, ideology-free press should call them on it.
This is no "mistake," either - the number of people a story has to pass through before airing makes "accidental" use of footage from a different event a virtual impossibility. This smacks of state-controlled media propaganda and is not worthy of a news organization in the United States. It makes you wonder what else Fox might have aired that was "augmented." Anyone who thinks this was carelessness or two aberrrant incidents is kidding themselves. They can no longer be considered to possess even a veneer of journalistic credibility.
And no, I am not excusing any of the other mainstream media mentioned above by other commenters (points taken!), on either side of the political spectrum, for doing similiar things. What has happened to journalism in this democracy is truly shameful. It's just shokcing to me that Fox here is so blatant about it. But yes, they are probably all guilty to some degree and people need to realize how much TV news is packaged as if it's another form of entertainment.
What has happened to journalism in this democracy is truly shameful.
Remember the Maine!
As someone or other once observed, "Men were deceivers ever".
I agree - I am glad they were called on it - my point related more to Megan's (deliberately incendiary) headline: if this disqualifies Fox as a "Real News Operation", then there are no real news operations. Which is a position that could be credibly argued.
"This smacks of state-controlled media propaganda and is not worthy of a news organization in the United States."
I don't approve of what FOX did. But this is a bizarre claim. You think our government is behind this decision? Our overwhelmingly Democratic government? This bears absolutely no resemblance to state-controled media propaganda.
Frankly, the stock images from rallies doesn't bother me too much - b-roll gets mixed up.
The real case against Fox News as an actual news operation goes far deeper. The network has a history of copying GOP talking points word for word (typos included) as its own "fair and balanced" take on the news. The amount of promotion and hoopla regarding the summers' protests, down to calling them "Fox News Tea Parties" on occasion, leads to the conclusion that it is an advocacy organization from morning through night and not a news source with a few opinion shows.
All this is fine. There is a lot of bandwidth out there and if they can make money shilling for a cause, more power to them. However, that doesn't mean that the White House has to play along and pretend they are a news organization. Nobody would be "silenced" by not granting interviews - does Obama give interviews to VDare or WorldNetDaily? Did Bush give interviews to Mother Jones or IndyMedia.
I say let a hundred flowers bloom, but don't let the ragweed convince you it's a tulip.
Bush gave interviews to CNN - a network that admittedly shilled for Iraq and literally ran a made up story about Bush's past on their flagship NEWS program.
Show me anything fox's NEWS programs have done that approaches the TANG story in its complete detachment from objective journalism.
Wasn't that story pushed by Dan Rather and CBS, not CNN? Or do you mean a different story than the one I'm thinking of?
i really hate that species of argument where you justify some organization's actions by equating it to the actions of some other organization. that being said, it seems relevant to speak of what is and is not a "news organization." here's a a little excercise for you. next time there is a WaPo article on something the white house does, go to whitehouse.gov and find the corresponding press release. compare both and tell me how much actual reporting you see in the post piece. chances are you will find a re-worked press release that does nothing to question whatever premises or conclusions the white house offers. does that justify fox news? no. it should, however, say something about what we can rightly call news.
Instead of giving little exercises, why don't you link little examples?
do your own homework
He wanted to exercise your little mind.
The amount of promotion and hoopla regarding the summers' protests, down to calling them "Fox News Tea Parties" on occasion, leads to the conclusion that it is an advocacy organization from morning through night and not a news source with a few opinion shows.
If you think Fox News was behind the Tea Party movement this summer, you are in for a big surprise next year. Sure, they were the only TV news to cover them without attempting to slant the coverage but they had nothing to do with the organization. You need to spend a little time investigating if you do.
Megan I'm pretty sure you were just trying to be a little sensational with your headline or were you seriously asking the question if Fox is really news? If so that is more than a little biased as I have never seen you call into question the bonafides of any other broadcaster. Hopefully you are not starting to act like the AP and fact check conservatives at eleven times the rate that you check liberals.
No.
The groundbreaking WW II documentary Victory at Sea (remember the rumbling basso narration by Alexander Scourbie?) featured the infamous footage of Japan's Ghost Pilots.
First they showed a mess deck full of pilots on one of the Japanese carriers just prior to the Battle of Midway drinking a formal toast to the Emperor. In a later episode they showed the same footage purporting to occur just before a subsequent battle.
Inasmuch as all four Japanese carriers and all their aircraft and all their pilots were lost at Midway, it made you wonder if Admiral Nishamura had prolonged the war through the exercise of necromancy....
I'm OUTRAGED they used the incorrect footage! Hey wait, look over there, the government just took over healthcare and a dozen soldiers died in Afghanistan. Ah, nevermind that, can you believe that Fox used that footage?!
C'mon Megan, I thought your training taught you to look at incentives in any given situation and reason accordingly. Take a good look at the management pool at FOX. Start with Roger Ailes and go down from there... notice anything odd? No other media corporation in the world has a management profile quite like FOX. It's not a conspiracy, it's in your face, but people are often too polite to bring up the obvious.
The stock footage thing is nothing in the bias sweepstakes. My favorite FOX gimmick is whenever they have a politician up who has done something crime worthy - like solicit for a prostitute in a public place- they always put a (D) next to his name even though he is a republican. Sometimes it is corrected within the hour, sometimes the next day. I guess it's a little joke they have over there.
But the real problem with FOX is not its opinions, frankly I think every honest news organization should a) have an opinion and b) be very clear about it. The issue with FOX is that they lack independence from the Republican Party. This of course is a lot harder to prove although there is plenty of circumstancial evidence if you look at the frequency with which senior fox management meets with Republican Party operatives (note: this is not republican office holders but republican party members whose full time job is winning elections) No other media outfit in America has a relationship with the Democratic Party that FOX has with the Republican Party. So when you look at it like that, it is a bit of a problem. One bit of evidence on this was how FOX treated the immigration issue during the Bush years by sticking very closely to the White House line even though the conservative base was angry and apopleptic about it. The rage had to go to talk radio and Lou Dobbs in CNN; Fox was running the white house line.
So the focus on FOX's 'conservativeness' is a misdirection. The real issue is its institutional independence. And it is in this sense that they are truly not a news organization.
Something to think about.
Excellent point. There are innumerable criticisms any true conservative ought to be leveling at the Republican Party:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/19/republican-budget-hypocrisy-health-care-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html
Strangely, Fox rarely seems to be able to think of any. At least MSNBC doesn't paper over the various and sundry lefty disappointments with (from their standpoint) the excessively centrist, incrementalist, Wall Street-friendly Democratic administration.
How does letting Beck help drive Scozzafava out in NY-23 dovetail with this narrative? I think Fox represents beltway Republicanism with a tinge of real conservatism. I don't see how you sustain the narrative that Fox is such a shill for the Republicans that they even drive Gingrich-endorsed Republican candidates out of election contests.
From what I've seen of Fox news - not much, lately, it strikes me as inside-the-Beltway conservatism, which is similar but not identical to "mainstream" Republicanism. This looks to me, then, like they found a demographic and pitched themselves to it, but that they're too much in Washington's echo chamber to always see storms brewing when the heartland base gets fed up with the Chamber of Commerce wing of the Republican party. Sadly, it's still the best conservatives have to watch. Hopefully, Beck will pull it further to the right.
Strangely, Fox rarely seems to be able to think of any
Heh, all these people who hate Fox News are somehow experts on Fox News and what it does and doesn't do.
Heh, all these people who don't watch Fox News are somehow experts on Fox News and what it does and doesn't do.
By this standard, we have no professional news organizations.
Sadly, this is probably true
Yeah, I would totally agree with that.
And probably never did. They still haven't rescinded the Pulitzer they gave Duranty for telling us all how wonderfully things were going in Stalin's new worker's utopia.
You say potato, I say potatoe;
When POTUS says "illegitimate",
_that_ is news.
Megan: I'm sure your media contacts are better than mine, but you're off your rocker if you think anybody at Fox was angry. They love getting into a battle with Obama. It solidifies the narrative they love to spin as THE fair and balanced journalism outlet in a sea of subservience to The One -- and that helps their ratings with the low information hordes who they in turn sell to advertisers. Next stop, fair and balanced Lou Dobbs.
Absolutely. Fox loves it. Obama loves it.
Which latter should be of some concern to Republicans.
... But then Obama's just a rube with a silver tongue, no reason to worry that he knows what he's doing.
IDK, four polls have Obama under 50% now.
But really, the whole Fox News enemies list episode just highlights how disappointing he has been.
Obama campaigned on competence, transparency, post-partisanship, pragmatism and accountability but has turned out to be a bumbling deceptive hyperpartisan ideologue who blames everything on Bush and/or Fox News.
Since Fox News is not a real news operation, I don't understand why people insist on holding it to these standards.
Yes they do news segments, but for the most part it's political commentary. Ditto, MSNBC. No one turns on these channels looking for news, they simply want to hear propaganda that echoes their world-view.
Even CNN now cathers to this crowd. Turn on CNN International while out of the country for a reminder that some people at CNN know what NEWS is - they have simply decided Americans have no use for it.
Fox News is a network that says "Republicans are awesome, Democrats are terrible." Some people think that's fair and balanced.
Shrug. The rest of the media says "Democrats are awesome, Republicans are terrible."
I haven't watched much Fox News and had a few garbage science pieces forwarded to me by friends that I traced back to Fox News (one piece on cracking H2O and injecting the gas into the engine to improve combustion was reported on as if someone had found a way to make water into fuel.) But I'd note that they've broken some stories the other outlets have not. That alone makes them significant.
Some people think that's fair and balanced.
The people at Fox News, perhaps? I don't feel that Fox News is that professional, but I'll give them this much credit; as bad as they might be, the few times I've seen them they actually allow people with contradictory opinions on their show to argue the other side. (And get battered by both their opponent and the moderator, but still...)
Without some competition, the American news media has no hope of raising its standards.
How cynical to believe Rupert Murdoch to be? It just seems the people at the top of these organizations are not really interested in journalistic integrity or some type of ideological idea(s) – just what is best for them.
http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2009/11/16/top-rupert-murdoch-adviser-learns-meaning-of-deadline/
Faux News ran a story about Sarah Palin (lot's of people, interested in her book). Using the visual record of the actual event to support their assertion in the story, would simply discredit their claim of intense interest from the book buying public. They cynically elected to misrepresent the footage in order to support their story. Other interpretations that involve B roll mix ups or other improbabilities are simply denial of the agit-prop nature of the organization. (pssst - Pass it on... DON'T drink the kool aid)
Even debating whether Fox News has any worthy "news" is ludicrous. Nearly every time a Republican gets charged with a crime, they label that person as a Democrat. They falsify footage for pro-GOP rallies and send producers out to help stir up the crowd, and actively promote the events throughout the day. During interviews with people like Palin...its not even softball questions, its tee ball.
How many memos must be leaked, how many former employees must speak out? How many "accidents" and "coincidences" happen that invariably benefit one political party over the other must happen before people realize that even considering the idea that Fox is "Fair and Balanced" is more ludicrous than anything George Orwell could ever have imagined.
I don't think you understand. For people who watch and support fox news, the only sane protrayal of the world is one where republicans are all great and awesome and democrats are all stupid and evil. The bias IS the balance to these people.
As opposed to the NYT and others who only mention party affiliation when a Republican gets in trouble - if its a Dem it is anyone's guess as to which party they belong to.
Speaking of Palin and crowds, you might be interested in this example of unbiased news. They have to stir up crowds, eh ?
Good. Yell at them for it. The deserve it. But if the NYT is news, they are too.
Come on, David Brooks isn't nearly as bad as fox.
(lulz)
From S. Robert Lichter at Forbes:
"Fox gave Obama his worst press and John McCain his best press of any network during last year's presidential election [yet] Fox had the most balanced coverage of any network during the same campaign"
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/14/fox-news-barack-obama-media-opinions-contributors-s-robert-lichter.html
I can see where Fox does wrong sometimes and should be called out on it. But the other networks make Fox look worse than it actually is because they all lean the other direction together, making Fox look like the outcast.
At any rate, I can't stand any of the 24 hour news stations because they always feel like they're trying to fill time with sensationalist crud I don't care about. The Internet, NPR, PBS and local stations are all better choices imo.
That report only deals in the raw percentages of "favorable/unfavorable". If the numbers are close, voila, balanced! There's zero mention of how the percentages actually compare to reality.
Because let's face it, what's making fox more "balanced" in this case are stories like "Did Bill Ayers ghostwrite Obama's memoir?"
Well, Winston, would you prefer if there were no stations who took a right of center stance on any topic? Even if you disagree with Fox, you should still support their right to exist because they provide an alternate point of view on many topics that no other cable news network provides. It's either that, or we end up like Russia where the political leaders control the media.
Are you just showing up to this conversation? The problem isn't that they're right of center; the problem is they are distorting facts in order to push their right of center bias!
Can a news organization have a political tilt? Sure, but they shouldn't actually distort the news in order to reinforce that tilt. That's a direction that ends in nothing good at all ...
That's ironic. You see, there's a difference between "neutral" and "independent." MSNBC may not be neutral, but at least it's independent. Its operations are not tied to the Democratic party, as the recent criticisms some of their programs have thrown at the white house on healthcare and not having a public option have shown. Fox, on the other hand, is not neutral, but is also not independent. The closest thing we have to political leaders controlling the media right now in this country is Fox news. Just because those political leaders are currently out of power doesn't make it any less true.
Winston the top two programs on Fox are O'Reilly and Beck. Neither of which is a lapdog of the Republican party. If anything Beck is trying to remake the party into something much more conservative or start a new party via the Tea Party movement. O'Reilly is pretty much a jerk to everyone equally.
Now compare that to virtually every other "news" channel that consistently ignores wrongdoing by Democrats. Just look at the complete lack of coverage of my favorite Pimp & Ho support group, Acorn. Or Beck's coverage of the Czars. No one in the mainstream press has done any investigative work on any of these shadow figures that appear to have tremendous sway with our president.
So please get over your far left talking point that Fox hearts Michael Steele.
In a way, all this back and forth about who's a real news organization and who isn't is amusing. But in another way, it's scary. If this were just a pissing contest about whose news is better, that would be fine. But in an era where campaign finance laws curtail who can and cannot speak in the run-up to an election, some people are pining for the return of the fairness doctrine, etc, we should recall the following:
Let's be very clear: If Fox News wants to run speeches from Michael Steele 24 hours a day, that should be their right. It would be as boring as hell and they would lose viewers, but it's their right. Conversely, if some other network wants to show nothing but Obama speeches alternating with hymns to The One, that's fine as long as the government's not paying for it or using any of its regulatory authority to bolster said network's viewership.If you support Fox's right to do what it does and are just warning other viewers not to fall for its shtick, that's hunky dory. But if you favor the government or some other organization doing something about it, remember that any regulatory apparatus created may one day be in the hands of somebody like George W. Bush or Sarah Palin.
Of course there shouldn't be government intervention. There should merely be an instant call of "BS!" when BS is being served. The problem is when the BS call goes out people at fox and its viewers call "censorship!" when nothing like that is happening, and act as if that excuses everything.
It seems like a lot of people have had that problem recently. When did "freedom of speech" transform into "freedom to say whatever fool thing you want without repercussion" in the minds of some people?
Logically, it would seem, the repercussions would come in two marketplaces: a financial marketplace where your product dies if nobody's buying and a marketplace of ideas where your opinions and reportage are held in low esteem. So long as it stays there, I'm fine.
Well, it depends who is doing the reprecussing - if it is the FCC's Diversity Czar, I tend to get nervous. If it is just a deranged crank like Olberman, then no big deal.
Right. Government holding it against you, out of bounds. Private sports franchise holding it against you, perfectly legitimate. And every time Palin claimed the press was trying to stifle her "Freedom of Speech"?
I don't think those words mean what she thinks they mean ...
Huh, FN covered a story using footage of an unrelated event with the purpose of deceiving its viewers. Twice in one week.
As false equivalencies go, this is a pretty lame one.
CBS used unsubstantiated documents - completely made up out of whole cloth - in an attempt to swing an federal election int he favor of their editorial direction.
I didn't here anyone, let alone you or Winston claiming CBS wasn't a news organization, Bush stonewalling them or Ari Fleischer saying they weren't a news organization.
This is all another example of the hyper-partisan Obama whitehouse and his water-carriers.
Frequency and how mistakes are handled should certainly be a factor. I don't get to say "Hey, they did it once, so we get to do it every day, and on an even more blatant level!"
Rathergate was punished quite severely by CBS, who fired a bunch of people and caused Dan Rather himself to retire in disgrace. As far as I can see, Sean Hannity still has his job, and seems to have suffered no diminuished standing with his bosses.
And also, the day when CBS starts running stories like "Obama: great president, or greatest president?" Is when I'll take your false equivalence a little more seriously (really, that was like, every other story on fox when bush was in office, except replace bush for obama, of course).
Mary Mapes was fired. 3 others were "asked to resign". Dan Rather retired as anchorman and Managing Editor many months later from CBS news (March 2005 to be exact). He continued to work for 60 Minutes for a while after that and didn't completely retire until 2006, almost two years after using the forgeries in his October Suprise.
Not exactly a "severe" response.
Compared to how Fox handles these things? Youbetcha it's severe. That the lapse is seen as a "bad thing" at all by the heads at CBS shows it to be lightyears ahead of Fox as a news organization.
Sean Hannity isn't part of their news operation - he's an opinion commentator. Drawing comparisons between the news desk of CBS and the commentary shows of Fox is part of the problem. If you can't make that distinction, I"m not sure you're credible on this topic. Funny how you never mention Alan Colmes needing to be fired for injecting opinion into these stories.
Show me where the news desk of Fox News is making these issues please, not their commentary.
Skullberg,
I'm not a big Fox news fan right now but I used to watch it alot, so I'm wondering what is being considered "news" on the channel at this point. I agree hannity, O'reilly, Beck...this isn't news nor is it presented as such. The five minutes news updates seemed to be fairly accurate, though. Smith, Gibson seem to be fairly balanced as well. Is this the news you're referring to?
However, I've seen the Fox and Friends schtick, that's not what you consider news is it?
I don't watch any of the TV news shows, nor commentary but I am familiar enough with them.
Fox and Friends is the Today show setup. Bu the Cavuto, Shep Smith, the Special Report and America's Newsroom programs come to mind. Britt Hume used to host the Special Report show.
Their Sunday morning shows are probably news as well, if you consider any of the Sunday shows as such.
No one complained that CNN started crossfire, did they?
My point really is that the cable "news" channels aren't really carrying news shows anymore. It's more commentary from the host's point of views.
Things like crossfire were popular precisely because the conflict it generated. Hannity is popular to those who like his worldview and Olbermann is popular with people who like his worldview. Both are hated by those who don't hold the same worldviews.
But those shows aren't "news" per se. I never thought Crossfire was news nor most of the morning shows. I think Meet the Press and Face the Nation allow folks in the forefront of the national news circuit to explain their own thoughts, but those aren't really news shows either.
CBS story - I hope you have a credible link that supports your claim:
CBS used unsubstantiated documents - completely made up out of whole cloth - in an attempt to swing an federal election int he favor of their editorial direction.
You can't even admit that Fox News, by passing footage of another event as the one they're covering, is going further than the usual opinion bias. Yet you call me hyper-partisan.
Which strikes me as weird. In my opinion, there's plenty to criticize about the way the Obama administration is running things. Which, of course, has nothing to do with the stunts FN regularly pulls.
CBS story - I hope you have a credible link that supports your claim:
Would you accept Kevin Drum when he was doing the Washington Monthly blog? He investigated the same rumors before CBS did the story and concluded it was bogus. Being a lefty he was polite about it but he concluded there was nothing there, including the stuff about Bush being AWOL. Unfortunately, he moved on and Wash Monthly is now a DailyKos clone.
IMHO, use of uncredited stock footage is (1) pretty common, (2) sloppy, but (3) probably not a conspiracy designed to trick viewers.
It's easy enough to manipulate the appearance of crowd size using real footage - the righties used to love getting the uncropped versions of MSM protest photos, which invariably revealed that the couple dozen people packed shoulder to shoulder were the only people there.
If Fox really wanted to trick people about the size of the protests, that would be easily done -- this points more to laziness and sloppiness, which again are fairly common.
No.
Fox News: We don't find the news. We invent the news.
They are justifiably angry because they are not a real news organization. They are entertainment for the wheelchair set.
The problem, in some ways is that Fox is not an arm of the Republican party, but rather an influential faction within it.
They get ratings, viewership, and advertising revenue from the true believers, but as such they pursue rather different goals from the Republican party itself.
I'm trying to remember when Megan seriously asked "is CBS a real news organization?"
"Frequency and how mistakes are handled should certainly be a factor"
Severity should be too. What Rather/Mapes did was exponentially more serious than anything Fox (or for that matter anybody else) has ever been accused of.
"It's entirely true that other news organizations have been caught in sleazy tactics, like the infamous habit of wiring cars to explode during auto safety stories. But they were righteously yelled at, and since the advent of the right-wing blogosphere, they seem to do a lot less of it"
I agree somebody should take a hit over this, but do you seriously think laziness in the use of file footage even approaches the seriousness of just making stuff up? Or deliberately editing footage to mislead viewers? Or suppressing stories to maintain access? I don't expect perfection from anybody, but Fox seems to be better than other networks.
How about "Or suppressing stories to maintain access" to a genocidal madman who was, at the time, in a state of armed conflict with the US?
The networks are in the entertainment business since people do not trust any of them to deliver news objectively or well. Why pick on Fox for trying to produce the product it knows its viewers want, and for delivering that audience to advertisers? They're just working the business model like everyone else.
It is funny that most people assume Fox is conservative and all the others lean to the left. I think Glenn Greenwald makes a persuasive case that all corporate owned media are rightward oriented and worship power, war and status. See the MSM's coverage of Iraq War or most of what is on The Washington Post OpEd page these days.
It seems hard to believe any organization owned by GE, Disney or Westinghouse is really going to challenge the powers that be from a left perspective.
Yes, if you consider Obama right wing, you'll consider the media rightward oriented. And if you do, great. But that's not how we generally use those terms in the USA.
I see NBC shilling for GE to get large government healthcare IT contracts through an expansion of state power into the healthcare sector. Is that not 'challeng[ing] the powers that be from a left perspective'?
See the MSM's coverage of Iraq War
Are we talking about the 100 front-page NYT stories about Abu Ghraib, or the media circus that followed Cindy Sheehan, or the claim of a massacre at Haditha, or...
It seems hard to believe any organization owned by GE, Disney or Westinghouse is really going to challenge the powers that be from a left perspective.
You do realize the editors, reporters, fact-checkers, writers, copy editors, producers, etc all skew way, way to the left? If there's a vast right-wing media conspiracy it sure isn't working very well.
I'm sure Greenwald convinced the other 20 people who live in his apartment like Mr. Ellers, Ellison and the rest of this fact. The rest of the world, not so much.
Quoting the Sockpuppeter of the year is hardly persuasive.
There are organizations that try to present the news, albeit they often display a systematic bias. Think of the BBC. And there are organizations whose motives are to present a viewpoint and they use what they deem the news to broadcast that viewpoint. Think of Granma (Cuban government news service). Fox isn't government run, but it's ethos is closer to Granma's than the BBC's.
Or to put it differently, Fox News has all the objectivity and impartiality of sports announcers who are salaried employees of the home team.
Cosign. Fox News is pretty much like Granma, except its an organ of the Republican Party and not the Communist Party of Cuba. MSNBC will run news stories and commentaries critical of the Democrats. Fox News never runs commentary and news stories critical of the Republicans. It also never runs news stories and commentary favorable to Democrats.
It would accept Fox as a legit news organization- if you accept Granma or the Chinese government news service as legit news organizations
Fox News never runs commentary and news stories critical of the Republicans.
Oh dear God.
Furthermore, AIFAK, MSNBC reporters never actually joined the protests they are allegedly covering.
CNN reports were actively arguing with them though, so I don't see how that's any better....
If Fox News has managed to get lefties to say bad things about Cuba, then I'm willing to forgive them a whole raft of sins.
Yes, Rob. I suppose you also credit MSNBC for getting righties to say bad stuff about fascists.
Hardly any righty has said anything nice about fascists since the late 1930's. The number of morons who said--and continue to say--nice things about communists is surprising. Surely you are aware of the phenomenon.
I'm happy to concede that since after WW2 the left said nicer things about communists much more often than the right about fascists. But let's be honest, there are very, very few liberals around today that defend the Cuban regime.
Concerning fascism, let's not forget that William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of the modern conservative movement himself, held Franco in high esteem, writing in the National Review that "General Franco is an authentic national hero."
But in general, I would say that both sides of the political spectrum in the U.S. have (so far) been able to avoid autocratic tendencies. That's why I consider accusations of sympathies with communists a bit of a cheap shot.
What Martin said.
I'll also throw in Buckley's sympathy for Pinochet.
I'll concede that few (if any) intelligent liberals have nice things to say about Cuba. However, the number of relatively prominent liberal morons (mostly Hollywood, I admit) who have nice things to say about Cuba (or, in Dunn's case, Mao) is orders of magnitude greater than the number of visible conservative morons who pine for Hitler. I don't see a lot of Goebbels T-shirts, but Che just won't go away.
Franco and Pinochet both ran odious regimes, but at lest in Pinochet's case, it was literally orders of magnitude less odious than his left-wing Latin American competition (to say nothing of communists in Asia), and he did surrender power before his death, which is something we should be encouraging. Prosecution doesn't do that.
Try telling that to all the people that disappeared. Oh, wait, dead people thrown alive from helicopters into the ocean tell no tales.
Let's not let the rabid delusionists cause us to lose perspective. At the very worst, Fox News is guilty of trying to make a crowd look bigger than it was.
They deserve to be ridiculed if that was actually their attempt. And somebody should be slapped if this was the result of laziness (the most likely excuse.) But it proves very little about Fox, and I see little other proof of what the resident delusionists are trying to sell.
The numbers are in and you all have no excuse for ignoring actual science. Fox did provide the most balaced election coverage--that means all the others did not. And yet we are to condemn Fox for supposedly trying to make a crowd look bigger? Some perspective please.
Eh, the MSM has only been caught doing this about a million times. It has no bearing on their status as a news organization.
If anything, the rest of the news media is more suspect. They fellated Obama into office and now spend more time fact-checking Palin's book than Obama's claims about the health care bill.
That reminds me how your wife fellated me in my office. Oh, the way she smiled when I sprinkled her face with my hot cum...
Yes, Fox really is the most fair and balanced news org.
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
No doubt this is shocking to anyone who doesn't own a TV.
Amazing. A Fox News contributor cited a study conducted by an organization which he founded (CMPA), and that receives the vast majority of its funding from conservative sources. Oh, and said contributor and founder of CMPA also held a chair in the American Enterprise Institute.
If he says Fox is fair and balanced, it must be true.
The issue is serious enough that we should have had studies by numerous groups, not just CMPA. Why didn't we?
There are some studies. Here is a nice article on the subject in Scientific American.
The main reason seems to be that it's difficult to find a consensual measure of journalistic bias.
It's easy to determine bias. If you agree with me, there's no bias. If you disagree with me, then you're biased.
"I think Glenn Greenwald makes a persuasive case that all corporate owned media are rightward oriented and worship power, war and status"
If you consider the political center to be, say, Noam Chomsky, I can see where you might feel that way. If you're life has some connection to reality, even a tenuous one, not so much.
"It seems hard to believe any organization owned by GE, Disney or Westinghouse is really going to challenge the powers that be from a left perspective"
When the powers that be are so far left that isn't really possible, you're probably right.
This is all minor stuff. In Taiwan, during the invasion of Iraq, they spliced in scenes from Blackhawk down into the war reporting.
The New York Times published photos of a "dead "man being pulled from wreckage who wasn't dead. Reuters published obviously Photoshopped pictures of supposedly burning buildings in the middle east.
I await the same hand wringing about them as the lefties have displayed about Fox...
No offense, but when you work for a magazine that employs Andrew Sullivan, I wouldn't throw rocks at other media organizations regarding the honesty of their reporting. Glass houses and all that...
@Martin said:
"There are some studies. Here is a nice article on the subject in Scientific American."
We're in real trouble here if Scientific American (under its present management) is seen to have much credibility. They have led the howling leftist mobs in trying to crucify anyone who deviates from the falsified data driven 'consensus' on anthropogenic global warming.
Their credibility went down the toilet when much of the writing went to 'journalists' as opposed to actual scientists reporting on their work. See any recent issue for confirmation.
And, while my background and training is in physics, I've made my living in engineering for broadcasting, and as a broadcaster. If anyone has any doubts about newsroom bias, look at the data on political affiliation and contributions by journalists.
Was Fox sloppy? Yes. But it pales beside the gross manipulation of the news by the MSM, and especially PBS, who sold its soul to the left so long ago it has no memory of any other condition.
I'll see flying pigs before the MSM will subject Gore's latest ghost-written screed to level of scrutiny that has greeted Palin''s latest.
FOX didn't cut in "stock footage". Stock footage is generic, nameless, faceless, placeless shots of clouds, landscapes, city streets, etc. FOX editors used file footage or Broll, and weren't very picky about how accurate it was. It may have been bias, but I think some assn't editor or desk aide grabbed some "Palin Crowd" footage and didn't check the dates.
Most networks stopped labeling footage "file footage" some time ago.