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FOX News Most Balanced, Says Independent Study

Sadly I lost faith in those studies after the Wall Street Journal was "proven" to be the most liberal newspaper in America. :p
 
From Sourcewatch, who I am sure that you will dismiss as a bunch of "Libs"

CMPA's claim to be 'non-partisan' is undermined by an analysis of its sources of funding. Information provided by mediatransparency.org [4] reveals that the overwhelming proportion of CMPA's funding comes from conservative foundations. The funding information, covering 1986-2002, lists the following donors:

Carthage Foundation, part of the Scaife Foundations - $267,000 from 5 donations
Earhart Foundation
John M. Olin Foundation - $730,000 from 15 donations
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Sarah Scaife Foundation, part of the Scaife Foundations - $760,000 from 9 donations
Smith Richardson Foundation - $416,916 from 3 donations
Thus, out of the total of $2,523,916, nearly all of it ($2,173,916) came from just three sources: the John M. Olin, Scaife, and Smith Richardson foundations. In other words, CMPA received 86% of its funding from those 3 donors. Here is a sample of other right-wing causes funded by these 3 donors, as listed by their respective SourceWatch articles:

John M. Olin Foundation - American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American Century
Scaife Foundations - American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation
Smith Richardson Foundation - American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute
According to Salon journalist Joe Conason, the availability of this information does not indicate an openness on the part of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. In a Jan 2003 exchange of views with Lichter, Conason said "The IRS form 990 returns filed by [Lichter's] center redacts the names of all the individuals and organizations that contribute to it, thereby concealing them from public scrutiny. But the watchdogs at Media Transparency have collated the 990 returns filed by the conservative foundations, which disclose their contributions to Lichter's outfit." [5]

As at August 2004, the CMPA website contains no information about the Center's sources of funding.
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So a Scaife funded front group gives the true belivers some stats to show that "Dems" and "Libs" are wrong and that Fox IS "Fair and Balanced"?

You are going to have to do better than that.
 
On the other hand, the study covers only the stories on evening news covering primary races for presidential nominations. Also, in a fit of "No ****!", they state, "FOX Is Most Balanced (not a typo)".
 
Even with serious media groups, Fox shows really well for fairness, since all of their programs are labeled "commentary" and only the news ticker gets examined.
 
For a Republican Religious Right Nutjob propaganda point of view waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in right field, nope, not even close to fair or balanced.
 
LOL, what a joke... exactly the sort of thing that every right-winger will fall for each and every time. I wonder why they bother creating fake "non-partisan think tanks", when we know right-wingers would believe it was honest even if the place were called the Darth Vader Institute of Crushing the Rebel AllianceLiberals.
 
I can get Fox News on satellite as it is one of long list of news channels available. I would be pushed to call it a news channel as it seems to focus more on entertainment issues than anything else. I recall flipping through the news channels a while back and while most channels were covering international issues Fox had cameras outside Paris Hilton or Jackson's (or someone of that ilk) house hoping to catch a glimpse of them. This seemed to go on for hours as I it was still happening as I flipped through channels two or three times during the evening.

To be fair I haven't watched Fox much as it has desperately frequent and long advert breaks and I can't be bothered with that. The little I have seen tends to be very studio based and loaded with far from neutral comment. I think the fact that it is much loved by those who lean to the right tells me that either

1) Conservatives are fascinated by celebrity

and/or

2) Conservatives think Fox strokes their particular prejudices and they just grin and bear the rubbish on Paris Hilton et al.

Of all the US news channels I find Bloomberg the most neutral politically.
 
Cicero said:
http://www.cmpa.com/releases/07_12_21_Election_Study.pdf
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From the release:
Methodology
The Center for Media and Public Affairs is a media research organization that uses scientific content analysis to study news and entertainment media content. CMPA is affiliated with the George Mason University, where CMPA President Dr. S. Robert Lichter is Professor of Communications.
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Is there a reason that the Methodology section of the release does not contain their methodology? "Scientific content analysis" doesn't actually tell us anything about what criteria they were using or how they reached their conclusions.
 
Upchurch said:
From the release:

Is there a reason that the Methodology section of the release does not contain their methodology? "Scientific content analysis" doesn't actually tell us anything about what criteria they were using or how they reached their conclusions.
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It does...

CMPA has monitored every presidential election since 1988 using the same methodology, in which
trained coders tally all mentions of candidates and issues and all evaluations of candidates. We report
the evaluations by non-partisan sources, excluding comments by the candidates and campaigns about
each other, because research shows that non-partisan sources have the most influence on public
opinion, and they are also more subject to the discretion of reporters. However, we maintain data files
on partian evaluations as well.
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Upchurch said:
From the release:

Is there a reason that the Methodology section of the release does not contain their methodology? "Scientific content analysis" doesn't actually tell us anything about what criteria they were using or how they reached their conclusions.
Click to expand...

It is only a 2 page press release, not the actual study. The actual study is not up on their site and their previous studies have not been transitioned to their new website, so this thread will be long dead before the methodology is revealed.

The bit you missed from the box in the Methodology section (quoted above) helps, but again is not the complete methodology.

More importantly, I demand equal coverage for Ron Paul
 
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