CingularDuality

Indeed. Fox's news reporting is getting worse and worse, IMO. I enjoy much of their commentary and news analysis, though. O'Reilly is enjoyable, as are Hannity and Colmes. They're not news reporters, though...

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Beatnik

Yeah I moved from a very button down, conservative city (Charlotte, NC) where THE industry is banking. 2 of the top 5 banks in the US are headquartered there, and their corporate centers are actually linked by an 'overstreet mall' which is an extended food court, essentially, that spans about 8 blocks.

Fox News is on in most of the restaraunts and all of the breakrooms in my old office building. I've had way too much exposure to it over the past five years, and it's really troubling to see their 'analysis' accepted as news. And to have the moniker/tagline 'Fair and Balanced' just quintuples the absurdity of it.

From my perception, I see a simple partyline support (as opposed to ideological or conservative support) on Fox News. It is entertaining though to see these 'conservatives' who used to bemoan the idea of 'big government' defending recent moves by the administration to vastly expand its presence/awareness of millions' of Americans' lives.

Even though I disagree with many conservative ideologues, at least they stick to their guns and criticize the administration when they disagree with it. Fox News is just the drum beater for the republican party.

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Apophis

As an aside:

Most people don't realize the different between the various shows on Fox. They don't realize that not every show on Fox is news. Many shows are commentary/editorial in nature and are not news reports. In shows that are commentary/editorial in nature, you're absolutely going to have an opinion or slant involved, that opinion/slant will be that of the host of the show.

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Apophis

I think the actual NEWS reports on Fox are very objective. I don't think the "talk" shows are, they lean towards the party affiliation of the hosts of the shows. Most of those are to the right. But the news reports themselves I think are quite balanced.

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Beatnik

I definitely realize that, and know the difference between say Fox & Friends (who had a lovely 'report' on the recent NSA phone data mining this week), Bill O'Reilly, Hannity & Colmes, Cavuto, etc. It seems that actual 'news' is pretty limited - perhaps to Britt Hume and a couple others? But even then, who does the president or Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld turn to when they want to get softball questions? One of the Fox News 'reporters' or 'analysts'.

It's the application of the moniker 'Fair and Balanced' across the board for the channel that irritates me. But that irritation is pretty minor relative to the irritation from the majority of their hosts/reporters/analysts/whathaveyou blindly agreeing with and supporting just about every thing the current administration does.

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Adrielle

My mom has started referring to most 'news' she sees on TV as "News Entertainment", because ... that's what it is, really.


This is a really good point. And it happens on both sides of the argument.


My grandmother takes everything on FOX news as gospel truth and believes it all to be (even the 'talk' shows) balanced news. It's annoying. I try not to take anything I see on TV too seriously, ... too many times it's just missing pieces of the whole picture.

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leejo

Maybe "Fair and Balancing" would be more appropriate, as Fox stands nearly alone in presenting a televised view that is not hovering around the Katie Couric zone.

Beatnik

How about just 'Balancing'?

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TheFeniX

The weather report, maybe...

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leejo

Is that a factually accurate statement, or is it a biased exaggeration of the truth?

Probably depends on who you ask.

In any case, you don't have to outrun the bear, just your buddy. Fox news may be flawed, but the others are pretty bad too.

Apophis

That is precisely the reason I didn't bother replying. I would wager that most of the Anti-Fox crowd rarely even watch the news anyway. Most of the people I hear this type of comment from actually get their "news" from The Daily Show and then criticize other sources for their "fairness". More power to them, I guess.

The amount of spin put on stories and LACK of information provided these days is staggering. One example to note is GW's latest approval ratings. Most stations are more than happy to report his ratings being in the high 20's to low 30's, but they seem to gloss right over the fact that Hillary Clinton and John Kerry share the same dismal ratings or even LOWER ratings than GW. They would have you believe that the lack of confidence in government is solely with the sitting Republican President and not with our government as a whole.

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Steeler

I'm a news junkie, probably because I studied it in college. And I can say with confidence that the majority of national news reporting is simply lazy. Producers and reporters take basic "telemetry" off the news wires (static, non-investigative reports) and rewrite them for broadcast. That's it. They can alter the tone of the presentation or simply choose arbitrarily which stories to report or ignore, but they don't frequently put an overt partisan spin during the broadcast of mundane daily news. Politically, they tend to slant whatever way is "juiciest" and likely to keep eyes glued to the station. If the president is down in the polls, especially one that once enjoyed 70+ approval, that's something to talk about - Congress is almost ALWAYS down in the polls nationally.

That said, the anchors do editorialize during the broadcast. Not as much as the pundits or commentators that make up the howling mass of stupid that is "talk news," but they do do it. Case in point, in the recent NSA flap, I heard at least 2 Fox anchors during the regular broadcast defend the program quite forcefully, even using the time worn phrase, "just to be clear, if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about." Once as a leading question to an official, and once as an aside during a segue.

Here's the thing that has always confused me. I can find lots of concrete examples of broadcasters showing a real conservative or Republican bias. And I don't use those interchangeably. You see a lot of facetime put in my conservative pundits and hear a lot of free-market blather. And especially in 2003 you heard a lot of commentary about how the Democrats are screw-ups and war was awesome. But I have a really hard time identifying the "liberal" bias that gets people so worked up. Is turning a critical eye on the government liberal? Because, left or right, serious or facetious, the news has been doing that for years.

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leejo

I think turning a lazy critical eye on the government is what chaps people. Dan Rather's tapes, e.g., and the complete lack of interest in determining whether or not the swift boat vets, whose leader my father knows personally and considers in the highest regard, were simply making it all up or if there was some factual basis for their claims. You never heard Dan Rather poking into that story, or anyone else for that matter.

When you see pics of Abu Ghraib on the front page of the NY Times over and over and over again, but zero interest in reporting on the Barrett Report, one wonders if they are seriously interested in turning a critical eye on government or just on certain governments.

Maybe the anchors who made those statements about dems and liberals are simply more inclined to place the knife in the chest instead of the back.

Apophis

I think the slant varies direction depending on what news network you watch. Right leaning networks tend to talk about forward movement in a more positive manner with a sitting Republican President while left leaning networks report the here-and-now failures. These situations reverse with a sitting Democrat sitting in the oval office.

What really grinds my gears (thanks Family Guy) is that the left will almost always charge FOX with doing something (leaning right) that they do themselves (lean left). Not acknowledging that your own party participates in the same actions as the opposing party is akin to simply sticking your head in the sand.

My point about the approval ratings is simply this: The REAL story should be about the nation's lack of faith in our political leaders on BOTH sides of the aisle. The problem isn't Bush having a low approval rating, it's our entire government having low approval ratings. With the recent charges against various Republicans being used to tar the image of the party, and the Democrats hiding charges against members of their own party (IE: Ted Kennedy and his driving under the influence free-passes) I'm not surprised to see these approval ratings where they are.

The problem here isn't Bad Bush or Good Bush. It's bad government all over the place. It's corruption in BOTH parties. It's special interest groups getting at Republicans and Democrats alike. If people think that all our woes will be gone simply by getting Bush out of the office, they are sorely mistaken. If the only problem they see is that Bush is IN office, they need to do a little political self-education. If people can't see the wrongdoings of the people in their own parties as well as the opposing parties, well, they're probably just riding an anti-Republican train and probably don't know how they got their ticket to board.

I hate to come back to this again, but I saw a poll recently that was broken down by age group. And it was surprising how many people relied on The Daily Show for their "news". Their opinion of politics and world view is shaped by humor from a Comedy Central TV show. I would equate that to learning maritime law by watching Titanic.

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Diplomacy is the art of saying "good doggie" while looking for a bigger stick.

xTYBALTx

The Daily Show is on par if not better than the other editorial shows on the major networks if judged by the quality of reportage.

If you like the political slant (anti-reactionary (lol!), with some liberal junk economics mixed in), it's pretty much the only thing out there. The Daily Show is one of the most flexible (i.e., favoring idealogical positions NOT partisan ones) AND has the added bonus of picking apart a lot of the BS you find in politics. Nothing wrong with getting your news from that. If someone isn't smart enough to filter out the junk found on the Daily Show (regretably, it's still there, but in far smaller quantities than the other editorial shows), they won't be able to filter out the mass amounts of junk found on every other editorial news show.

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