Beatnik

As opposed to Fox News intentionally and deliberately sitting down to say "OK, how can we spin this story to be favorable to republicans", which I believe is more wrong.

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Apophis

Do you have a non-politically charged source for this allegation? IE: A source whose intent is not to get more Democrats elected and more Republicans slandered?

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

Beatnik

From this post, the first link I provided, here. The Poynter Institute is a foundation that focuses solely on improving the quality of journalism, and has zero political focus.

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Steeler

Jack Cafferty on CNN is one example. Countless local news reports use "illegal alien," even in blue state NY. Of course they are not always talking about Mexicans in that context, but a variety of people.

A note about political correctness. Personally, I appreciate the goal of the concept - to take a wide and less judgemental view of culture in an effort to understand individuals different from ourselves - while deploring the practical application that waters down speech and clouds meaning. But to lay that at the feet of liberalism is (god help me for using the word) disingenuous. Many liberals have loudly protested the use of PC language to mask meaning or intent.

Politically correct newspeak is no different from Orwellian doublethink and has been used by every political movement in existence. Supply side economics. Pre-emptive war. The Department of Defense used to be the War Department. Freedom Fries.

This may be drifting a little off topic but I'll risk it. My chief complaints against claims of liberal bias
in the media are:

1) The complaints are almost always very general. The media in aggregate is liberal, and therefore the entire media establishment is bad. (Thank you Cing, for providing some specifics) If you have a specific problem with the way a news organization presents an issue, deal with that specific case and organization. You'll find that news often gets a lot of things wrong without a clear political slant, and sometimes the individual reporter lets opinion creep into the reporting. But the "liberal media" concept has evolved (or has been designed intelligently and deliberately) into a self-propagating meme that does not address the problem of bias, but instead serves a political interest. Namely that of Republican conservatives. People like Rush, O'Reilly and Horowitz have created this boogieman of liberals undermining the fabric of society, which is just unfounded rhetoric.

2) Liberalism, when detected, is depicted as somehow deviant from mainstream culture. As Beatnik's post illustrates, on issues of policy the US population is largely liberal in opinion. Makes sense, since we are living in a liberal, plural democracy with a strong devotion to individual rights. This is why I constantly press people to supply concrete examples of media bias - explain to me in what way a position is liberal, and how you feel a writer or reporter is inaccurately providing information based on that position. Now, if a reporter suggests that murdering a man for his wallet is wrong, I don't claim that as a conservative bias. I think that's sensible. But if a reporter suggests that not hiring a man because he's black is bad, that's liberal? No, that opinion is also sensible.

Media will, measure by measure, come to reflect the social mores of the culture in which it lives. The free market in action. So if Fox can make a buck selling tawdry sex and violence on network TV while deploring that kind of thing on FNC, job well done. They are playing both ends of the marketplace of ideas. But don't tell me that's balanced - that's marketing.

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Apophis

I'm still not sure I buy what you're selling. I don't see anything here that tells me company policy is to grossly slant news stories to favor the Republican party. What I do see is as follows:

1) Make sure you're not trashing a dead former President on this network. (RE: Regan Special)
2) Give both sides of the argument on environmentalism, but make sure the pro-environmentalists don't get the last word.

The author also creates motive on his own in regards to the "memos". He's not quoting any actual policy stating that shows on FNC should lean right, he's creating that motivation on his own.

I understand #1 completely. I would expect any news organization not to trash a former president after his death. That's just disrespectful. As for #2. The mandate was to make sure both sides on the argument regarding the environment were allowed representation, but an administrative choice was made not to give them the last word. I guess they had one of two choices for that, but it's not like the directive was to suppress information for pro-environmentalists.

The only thing this really shows me is that the management at FOX is certainly conservative Republican. I would imagine that would be clearly represented in this internal memos and that the management would most likely bring up points of interest for their reporters/anchors to consider when doing their shows. But I don't see anything that would lead me to believe that those reports/anchors were forced to constantly spin the news.

Charlie Reina "quit in April, he says, in a fit of frustration over salary, job assignments and respect.". So he was pretty pissed at FNC for a variety of reasons before giving these interviews.

All of this just makes it hard for me to take his complaints at face value. If you want to hate FNC, his comments will provide all the evidence you need, even though they are uncorroborated. If you love FNC, the response from FNC will tell you everything you need to know. That he's just a pissed off former employee with an axe to grind.

Personally, I think it's a big ol' mess and I would love to see some sort of corroboration on one side or the other, at this point in time it's just a big he-said/she-said mess.

I think you're stretching things a bit with your accusations, but that's because I'm in the middle still wanting more information before I take this claim as "fact".

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

Beatnik

Apophis are you really in the middle?

I really don't feel like looking up corroborating links, but I will. That was the first link I found mentioning the morning memo at FN. Of course no one allegation should be taken as fact. But something tells me that your (and other regular Fox News watchers') 'sour grapes' perspective on their accusations won't change no matter how many corroborating claims I dig up...

EDIT: Two corroborating pieces, taken from a followup letter written to Romenesko (Romenesko's blog, incidentally, is a great source of media criticism and showcases much of the handwringing news organizations go through in looking at the ethics of journalism):

Matt Gross, who left Fox News in March 2001 after working as a web journalist and editor, wrote to Romenesko after Reina's note. "Let me just say that the right-wing bias was there in the newsroom, up-front and obvious, from the day a certain executive editor was sent down from the channel to bring us in line with their coverage. His first directive to us: Seek out stories that cater to angry, middle-aged white men who listen to talk radio and yell at their televisions. (Oh, how I'd love to stick quotation marks around what is nearly a direct quote.)," he wrote.

"To me, FNC reporters' laziness was the worst part of the bias. It wasn't that they were toeing some political line (though of course they were; see the embarrassing series on property rights from 2000), it was that the facts of a story just didn't matter at all. The idea was to get those viewers out of their seats, screaming at the TV, the politicians, the liberals -- whoever -- simply by running a provocative story," he wrote in October 2003.

Another corroboration: http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=5961

There are some dead links of actual photocopies of the memo that I can't track down at the moment. I'll keep looking...

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Apophis

I'm sure this one will get disqualified too, a clear example of liberal bias in the media (CBS):

More information on the Killian documents.

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

Apophis

Absolutely. As i've already said, I read CNN, Watch FOX and listen to Air America. I'm not going to jump on any one of the bandwagons, I would rather reach my conclusion based on... lol.. fair and balanced information. I do actually watch MSNBC and CNN as well on occasion, but usually in the morning before heading off to work. I can't stand Fox & Friends.

I still have a hard time reconciling a supposed corporate mandate to spin the news in favor of the Republicans, and the criticism that Bush and others in the Republican party undergo on a regular basis on various FNC shows. It would seem to me that if this mandade DOES exist, very few people are actually following it. Alan Colmes for starters, but following through all the way to Bill O'Reilly, Greta Van Sustren and Shepard Smith.

I did some searches on the Fox memos, but only found references to Charlie Reina. I don't count him giving interviews in two different places as corroborating evidence.

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

Steeler

Criticism of Rather is pretty legitimate. Whatever his politics, I also think he was too ambitious, too greedy to be an honest newsman.

Criticism of Bush has increased on Fox since the war started to go sour and his popularity dropped. Now that the Republicans are unhitching the wagon from Bush's horses, it's less imperative that he be seen in a good light. During 2003, however, you'd be hard pressed to find ANY major news outlet questioning the government or it's decisions.

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Beatnik

FWIW, these are screengrabs from the movie Outfoxed. Take that skeptically as a partisan/biased source if you will, but these grabs, combined with Reina's letter, the other corroboration, and the video clips I posted earlier showing the identical use of language/talking points across Fox News programs in my opinion makes a very strong case showing the explicit management of the message at Fox News.

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leejo

What's up with these memos? What do you think they demonstrate?

Apophis

I was just going to ask that. It seems like they're looking for actual news rather than fluff in almost all accounts. The mention of the pictures from Abu Ghraib suggest to me that there was great (and rightful) outrage at the pictures being displayed but didn't seem to be any outrage over an American hostage being held and blindfolded. It was acknowledged that the Abu Ghraib pictures caused outrage and in no way implied that those pictures should be downplayed.

As for the movie Outfoxed. There were an ALARMING number of misrepresentations in that movie. Many of the individuals they interviewed that worked for FNC either didn't work for FNC at all but independent affiliate stations or their positions at FNC were misrepresented. But i'll take those pics for what they're worth. I don't see anything terrible in any of those memos and would expect to see similar memos at any news network.

It was almost as bad as Fahrenheit 9/11 or Bowling for Columbine.

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

Beatnik

I don't know how to paint it any more obviously, fellas. These particular memos aren't supposed to be emblematic of the worst of the memos, just pointing to their existence. The point is that there are memos distributed from the top down guiding the message of the day. You've seen my links of the videos of correspondents using the same phrase over and over across programs. All these are pieces of evidence that add up to support the assertion that no, Fox News is certainly not fair or balanced, no they're not objective, and yes a central message is crafted for its programming/coverage of events of the day.

This in my opinion is much worse than the 'liberal bias' that occurs in the rest of...the world of mainstream journalism. FN is the only major news organization in which these types of content-specific memos exist.

I cited the source of those shots because I've heard similar allegations. It was provided (at your request) as corroboration of the allegations of the existence of such letters in Mr. Reina's letter to Poynter.

Like I said, take the sum total of all the pieces I've cited here. If that changes your opinion of the fairness of their coverage, great. If not, that's fine too.

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AMosely

What do these memos demonstrate?

Politically charged spin control from the top down in the Fox organization - front and center. Do I really need to spell these out? Sure they happen in every newsroom, but at Fox, they are particularly pigheaded:

5/9/2003:
Let's help push Bush's supreme court nominees down the people's throats by distracting them from their views on abortion. If you refer to any of these views as fact, (and not POSSIBLE), you will be fired.

3/23/2004:
Even though former and current Presidents and White House officials are testifying before the 9/11 comission, we need to continue to downplay the seriousness of this foolish 'so-called' commission.

4/26/2004:
Kerry is probably going to talk about how bad Iraq is getting. Unless he makes some outrageous claims (like 10 million new jobs), let's cover anything else than his comments on Iraq. We will, however, continue to cover every single minute of Bush's speeches - that is, unless a white girl is kidnapped somewhere or there is a car chase.

5/6/2004:
The pictures from Abu-Ghraib are awful. We need to spin this around immediately. We must focus people's outrage back at the terrorists by showing them images of hostages (even if they aren't Americans) and then asking how outraged they feel.

Apophis

See, I don't agree that this is what the memos spell out. I see what you posted as the spin. In fact, I see your spin as doing a complete 180 degree reversal of some of the points I took from the memos. If your desire is to dislike FNC I'm not going to be able to stop that, but I'm certainly not going to change my opinion based on even MORE politically charged spin.

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