FOX: The Socialist News Network

[GStan]

It's not the Conservative tilt that's the problem with Fox. It's the fact the station is a Republican Party echo chamber, regardless of the factual integrity of the echo.

I'm not asking this with sarcasm, but is there some independent study that shows that Fox has less "factual integrity" than other networks?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Maybe it is because the sans makeup Raychill draws attention to MSNBC's inabiltiy to report straight news.

Homophobia leaking out there, Cic?

 

[Cicero]

Homophobia leaking out there, Cic?

Isn't homophobia fear of oneself?

 

[Cicero]

Natural state as in wearing casual clothes?

She's doing a stupid piece on a hard cider and grenadine cocktail. Big deal.

No, as in eschewing the Buddy Holly eye wear for her MSNBC show. Does it make her look too much like KO? Do you think the level of material on her show rises above what she does in the video?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not asking this with sarcasm, but is there some independent study that shows that Fox has less "factual integrity" than other networks?

Here's a link to the documentary, "Outfoxed". It's 78 minutes long so you may not be interested enough to watch it. But if you are really interested in an answer to your question, you will find it enlightening.

Wiki summary.

Rotten Tomatoes reviews

Internet Movie Database reviews

NYTs review

One of Fox's great successes, apart from an impressive ability to attract viewers and infuriate liberals, has been the promotion of the idea that what it does cancels out the unacknowledged propaganda coming from the other side. Mr. Greenwald's film challenges this notion and methodically works to disarm the ready-made accusation that it is outfoxing Fox by stooping to its methods.

These methods are analyzed by an array of media critics and activists, and also exposed by former employees of Fox News Channel and its parent, the News Corporation, some of them speaking anonymously, with their voices disguised. The story they tell is of the systematic and deliberate dismantling of journalistic norms, and of an outfit that has become not merely a voice of conservatism but a cheerleader for the Republican Party. Sean Hannity, co-host of a popular public-affairs yelling match, uses part of each broadcast to count off the days until "the re-election of George Bush," and daily memos from headquarters set an agenda of slanted priorities.

There probably are some studies on the mainstream news broadcasters. If I point out Media Matters and FactCheck.org I'm sure a few people will scream those are not neutral sources. AIM (Accuracy In Media) is a right wing partisan site that popped up to counter Media Matters. The difference is MM backs up what they say with sources one can verify. AIM makes unfounded claims with no apologies.

There was at least one study which found Fox News watchers were more likely to believe Bush propaganda that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for 911. Bush and Cheney had an active campaign of hinting at this non-fact while denying there was any evidence when asked directly. It was an effective strategy to mislead and Fox participated whether they were actually in on the game or not.

It's not hard to show Fox is worse than the usual breed of inaccurate news for specific partisan attacks.

 

[Cicero]

Here's a link to the documentary, "Outfoxed". It's 78 minutes long so you may not be interested enough to watch it. But if you are really interested in an answer to your question, you will find it enlightening.

There probably are some studies on the mainstream news broadcasters. If I point out Media Matters and FactCheck.org I'm sure a few people will scream those are not neutral sources. AIM (Accuracy In Media) is a right wing partisan site that popped up to counter Media Matters. The difference is MM backs up what they say with sources one can verify. AIM makes unfounded claims with no apologies.

There was at least one study which found Fox News watchers were more likely to believe Bush propaganda that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for 911. Bush and Cheney had an active campaign of hinting at this non-fact while denying there was any evidence when asked directly. It was an effective strategy to mislead and Fox participated whether they were actually in on the game or not.

It's not hard to show Fox is worse than the usual breed of inaccurate news for specific partisan attacks.

There is nothing out of character in this absurd diatribe that does not reflect the ideology of the liberal political action group MoveOn[...] the original distributors of this DVD.

Even Howard Kurtz, a vociferous critic of FOX, commented that Greenwald's propaganda flick, posing as a documentary, made allegations against FOX that relied on "orders, or attitudes, of an unnamed "'they.'" Kurtz chastises Greenwald for not even providing the illusion of fairness or balance himself. "Not only did he avoid contacting FOX, and indulge in some misleading editing, but the film also features a parade of the network's liberal detractors," noted Kurtz.

Had Greenwald actually been interested in making a documentary, he might have bothered to check his facts, and in doing so, would have discovered that some of the "sources" for this "documentary" never worked for FOX News Channel. Those employees he did eventually bamboozle into appearing in his amateur Leni Riefenstahl propaganda flick represent fewer than ten out of 2,000 FOX employees spanning an eight year period.

I wonder what sort of reply Greenwald would get from ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The LA Times, asking for them to submit 100 percent of their editorial directions and internal memos? But then again, why would Greenwald be interested in exposing liberal media when their ideology mirrors his own.

Compared to the viewing audience of network TV news, FOX Channel barely registers at all. While it does trounce the other cable channels in ratings, it is a head scratch why Greenwald targeted a relatively tiny market share channel while ignoring the shameless propagandizing and biased news reporting that is de rigueur for network TV. Of course if you understand that Greenwald is a left wing ideologue, posing as a documentarian, in the mold of Michael Moore, it really isn't mysterious at all.

 

[GStan]

Here's a link to the documentary, "Outfoxed". It's 78 minutes long so you may not be interested enough to watch it. But if you are really interested in an answer to your question, you will find it enlightening.

<snip>

It's not hard to show Fox is worse than the usual breed of inaccurate news for specific partisan attacks.

I was thinking more along the lines of a peer-reviewed academic study, not a propaganda piece with a predisposed agenda like a documentary titled "Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism". I was thinking you might find something like this from MIT's Quarterly Journal of Economics. [url="http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=2&hid=2&sid=2a26b9c1-2c28-462f-9580-53bd92512bb7%40SRCSM1]A Measure of Media Bias.[/url] (Don't know if you can access this without a university connection, sorry.) Anyway, here is the abstract:

We measure media bias by estimating ideological scores for several major media outlets. To compute this, we count the times that a particular media outlet cites various think tanks and policy groups, and then compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same groups. Our results show a strong liberal bias: all of the news outlets we examine, except Fox News' Special Report and the Washington Times, received scores to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with claims made by conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received scores far to the left of center. The most centrist media outlets were PBS NewsHour, CNN's Newsnight, and ABC's Good Morning America; among print outlets, USA Today was closest to the center. All of our findings refer strictly to news content; that is, we exclude editorials, letters, and the like.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

GStan, if you had an agenda, a search for past threads on the topic would have been more productive than your feigned question. That study is 5 years old. And it's been discussed before. The claim of liberal media bias has been discussed on this forum before too. And the evidence is clear there is no liberal media bias. Not that OutFoxed hasn't also been discussed. But that's what you get when you waste people's time with fake questions you already had an answer to.

Fox...We opine, you decide...
Documentry targets FoxNews Bias




Your link is broke. In the meantime, here's a critique of that study, which also was discussed before.
The problems with the Groseclose/Milyo study of media bias

Their link is also a dead end. But here is a link to the paper. It took me all of 30 seconds to find on Google.
A Measure of Media Bias

Former fellows at conservative think tanks issued flawed UCLA-led study on media's "liberal bias"

Of course, we need an authors respond to the criticisms.
Groseclose and Milyo respond

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

As long as we're on Faux News, Hannity said yet another outrageous thing recently. Will the boy ever cease to amaze?

Get this rationale. The recession started when Obama first threw his hat in the ring over 2 years ago as a candidate for President, so that is what caused the lack of confidence in the market and the subsequent recession. I kid you not. That's what he said.

I'm trying to find a transcript.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Heh, they had Rove on and he said "If Obama said the economy would recover by the end of 2009, it would."

Hey, Obama's speaking ability really is magical !

 

[Tin Foil Timothy]

Not surprising that the Fox News cable network doesn't appeal to your peculiar Weltanschauung.

Of course it doesn't. I would be embarrassed to claim any allegiance to such propagandic nonsense.

I imagine if it did, it would be an outlet of Al-Jazeera TV.

I'm no fan of Al-Jazeera. But good of you to show your "Good v. Evil" fantasy for us. - Are you a fan of Leo Strauss by any chance?

 

[Cicero]

Of course it doesn't. I would be embarrassed to claim any allegiance to such propagandic nonsense.




I'm no fan of Al-Jazeera. But good of you to show your "Good v. Evil" fantasy for us. - Are you a fan of Leo Strauss by any chance?

Perhaps you could provide the propaganda sources you do pledge allegiance to?

 

[quarky]

I pledge allegiance to Cicero's right to post his opinions here.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

As long as we're on Faux News, Hannity said yet another outrageous thing recently. Will the boy ever cease to amaze?

Get this rationale. The recession started when Obama first threw his hat in the ring over 2 years ago as a candidate for President, so that is what caused the lack of confidence in the market and the subsequent recession. I kid you not. That's what he said.

I'm trying to find a transcript.

Found it. Keith Olbermann played it back on tonight's Countdown.

It's in the "Bushed" section, "rewriting historygate", 03/04/09, in case the link has a time limit on it.

It's at ~1min30 in the segment, after the 20 sec obligatory commercial. Olbermann only has the beginning of Hannity's comments. He went on to make a ridiculous case for why Obama caused the stock market crash because the market lost confidence when Obama began his bid for President. Unbelievable.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Perhaps you could provide the propaganda sources you do pledge allegiance to?

VOA and Radio Marti.

 

[GStan]

GStan, if you had an agenda, a search for past threads on the topic would have been more productive than your feigned question.

I don't have an agenda, at least not the one you presume without evidence. I'll tell you what it is, since your presumption seems to be the result of me hitting some kind of nerve. (And I'll hide it in case you'd like to guess before reading it)

My agenda, or rather default position is, that all media, not only liberal or only conservative, reflects some measure of bias from their journalists or editors. These are people who are immersed in the subject matter for a living. They are going to form opinions about which side is correct on many issues. They are professional journalists, and may be able to substantially mask their opinions quite often, but cannot completely hide the fact that they are also voters, also Americans, and their opinions are going to be at least subtly evident in their reporting on occasion. So my agenda is not trying to point out or defend claims of bias in the media, but rather to ask people to defend claims that a particular media is "more biased" or "more erroneous" than others, and perhaps to defend claims that their is no media bias at all. There's more that I am willing to share, but don't want to venture off into tl;dr territory just yet.

That study is 5 years old. And it's been discussed before. The claim of liberal media bias has been discussed on this forum before too. And the evidence is clear there is no liberal media bias. Not that OutFoxed hasn't also been discussed. But that's what you get when you waste people's time with fake questions you already had an answer to.

Apologies. The study was a regretable cheap shot on my part. I was in a hurry when I made the post. I just found it amusing that in my haste, when I typed "media bias fox news" into the Google Scholar search function, the first article it returned that I had access to was showing Fox favorably, not negatively as you had claimed. I didn't read past the abstract.

Fox...We opine, you decide...
Documentry targets FoxNews Bias

Your link is broke.

I was worried about that. Sorry. I have access to the internet at work through a university portal and as a result frequently have access to many journal pages that are not available to individual users. (Which is why I said as much in my original post.) The link is not broken, I got there through that link; its just not accessible through all internet connections. Again apologies.

In the meantime, here's a critique of that study, which also was discussed before.
The problems with the Groseclose/Milyo study of media bias

Their link is also a dead end. But here is a link to the paper. It took me all of 30 seconds to find on Google.
A Measure of Media Bias

Former fellows at conservative think tanks issued flawed UCLA-led study on media's "liberal bias"

Of course, we need an authors respond to the criticisms.
Groseclose and Milyo respond

Thanks for the links. I will read them, as I am interested in the material, but I didn't really make any claims about the article other than it was an example of a peer-reviewed academic study. You were the one that made the claim that:

It's not the Conservative tilt that's the problem with Fox. It's the fact the station is a Republican Party echo chamber, regardless of the factual integrity of the echo.

and further followed it up with:

It's not hard to show Fox is worse than the usual breed of inaccurate news for specific partisan attacks.

The only evidence you offered for such a claim is a commercial documentary and the reviews thereof. That's simply not good enough for me. If it is good enough for you, that's your business, but it seems to me to be a rather unskeptical approach to finding the truth of this issue.

I am willing to revise my assessment, but you haven't provided sufficient evidence yet.

 

[Cicero]

Found it. Keith Olbermann played it back on tonight's Countdown.

It's in the "Bushed" section, "rewriting historygate", 03/04/09, in case the link has a time limit on it.

It's at ~1min30 in the segment, after the 20 sec obligatory commercial. Olbermann only has the beginning of Hannity's comments. He went on to make a ridiculous case for why Obama caused the stock market crash because the market lost confidence when Obama began his bid for President. Unbelievable.

Keith Olbermann is a bigger blow hard than Hannity. You actually belive MSNB's programing line-up of liberal moonbats has more credability than FOX News line-up of conservative blow hards? No wonder you consider "Outfoxed" to be a documentary. One could just as easily cobble together an expose on the absurdity of MSNBC posing as a anything other than a parade of liberal bug wits. The only problem is MSNBC's name doesn't lend itself to the same inchoate play on words tha FOX does.

 

[Pardalis]

Linky.

I liked how when Beck got an actual socialist on the show, he was a complete jerk:

Ohh, a stunning point!



Linky.

(The whole ending was particularly dickish)

So they will yell at us about how we are going down the road to socialism, and when a socialist is on the show they will tell him he doesn't know what socialism is? And they don't see the problem with that?

The whole thing is just so surreal.

I just watched the show on YT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSqy3BmMBGs

Did he say that all countries that have social wellfare are socialist countries? How come he still has a job after showing such ignorance?

It's clear he invited the guy only to fuel paranoia, as he clearly didn't listen to a word his guest said and didn't engage in any meaningful debate with him (funny enough, he is asking for a debate at the end).

What a sorry piece of television.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't have an agenda, at least not the one you presume without evidence. I'll tell you what it is, since your presumption seems to be the result of me hitting some kind of nerve. (And I'll hide it in case you'd like to guess before reading it)

My agenda, or rather default position is, that all media, not only liberal or only conservative, reflects some measure of bias from their journalists or editors. These are people who are immersed in the subject matter for a living. They are going to form opinions about which side is correct on many issues. They are professional journalists, and may be able to substantially mask their opinions quite often, but cannot completely hide the fact that they are also voters, also Americans, and their opinions are going to be at least subtly evident in their reporting on occasion. So my agenda is not trying to point out or defend claims of bias in the media, but rather to ask people to defend claims that a particular media is "more biased" or "more erroneous" than others, and perhaps to defend claims that their is no media bias at all. There's more that I am willing to share, but don't want to venture off into tl;dr territory just yet....

My complaint was with the fake question, not with your opinion.

I'll tell you my default position. I'm not an idiot. I am most certainly media literate and promote media literacy along with promoting science.

Broadcast news and the rest of mainstream news media are not a source of information as much as they are produced as a commodity. Their business model has devolved into producing the cheapest possible product. In doing so they've gutted the investigative news budgets of the past. In addition, we have lost most diversity because there are now only 6 major owners of broadcast media, including radio, and the 6 also own many print news sources. Thank the FSM for Internet, or we'd all be in the dark.

Source watch is an excellent web site for revealing the huge industry of Video News Releases (VNRs) which are essentially commercials disguised as news. The Bush government increased the budget for these as well as hiring a number of different PR firms thus expanding the government propaganda machine during his term. It's unlikely that genie will ever go back into the bottle. While it is illegal not to disclose the source of VNRs, broadcasters often ignore the rule and some have even gone so far as to put a fake interaction between the real host and the canned host on the VNR. The free production cost for the broadcasters is irresistible.

So you are preaching to the choir here, and of course, the TV news especially, is mostly tripe. Bill Moyers documentary, "Buying the War", did an excellent job of revealing how the whole batch of TV news broadcasters caved to perceived political pressure after 911 and did not do their job actually asking questions about the lies the public was fed promoting the Iraq war. And the public ignored the facts as well, because a lot of us were pointing out the Ambassador Wilson report, the Downing St Memo, the Italian version of the CIA which alerted Bush he was relying on forged documents, and so on.

I saw it before 911 when the Republicans called a news conference almost every day during the 2000 Florida recount and the news media just put the conferences on screen as is, no questions, no counter points, no fact checking. The Democrats did a poor job of 'producing the news' during that time.


But now a little balance is back on the news. The well done studies, not the one you cited, really did show a conservative news bias, which has been especially true over the last 8 years. Fox News likes to repeat the 'liberal news media' charge on their stations daily. It's one of their marketing slogans. The content is still about as in depth as milquetoast. CNN puts on hours and hours and hours of the latest missing/murdered white girl. They have so much time with these 24 hour stations, they could be presenting all sorts of interesting news. But that costs money to produce. They are not interested. And since there is little competition with only 6 major owners, there are no market forces driving a quality product.

The best broadcast news is "Democracy Now!". They are on public stations both TV and radio. They actually still produce an investigative news program. They have a left leaning bias, but that doesn't stop them from putting on factual programs.

Which brings me back to the thread and why Fox is different. It's not the political bias that is the problem. It's the factual accuracy that differs. And if you are unaware of that and need proof, then you haven't been following the situation or you believe many of those NeoCon lies.

Even comparing the media watchdogs reveals the right wing propensity to outright lie about all kinds of facts. Just compare Media Matters and FactCheck.org to Accuracy in Media, the right wing answer to MM. Read what is documented on Wiki about AIM

AIM has also been vigorously defensive of former Senator Joseph McCarthy, referring to his critics as "liars" and "communists," and defending his legacy, claiming that he never once fingered an innocent person in his accusations during the red scare he helped to fan. [5]

Fox cannot back up their 'facts' with evidence much of the time. While there are certainly errors and gray areas on left leaning opinion programs like Olbermann, there is nothing like the daily outright fabrications one hears on Fox. There's crappy news because of market forces, and then there is Murdoch who has publicly stated he has no qualms about using his news pulpit to broadcast his conservatism. The result is no truth threshold needed. I would welcome a truthful right wing news source. They would have news perhaps not covered on Democracy Now!. But accuracy matters, regardless of political leaning. And Fox ain't it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Keith Olbermann is a bigger blow hard than Hannity. You actually belive MSNB's programing line-up of liberal moonbats has more credability than FOX News line-up of conservative blow hards? No wonder you consider "Outfoxed" to be a documentary. One could just as easily cobble together an expose on the absurdity of MSNBC posing as a anything other than a parade of liberal bug wits. The only problem is MSNBC's name doesn't lend itself to the same inchoate play on words tha FOX does.

Document an Olbermann lie and let's look at it. I just documented one of Hannity's.