Fox News
 

I watched a documentary about Fox News the other day and I just want to ask you Americans if the TV news (and Fox News in particular) are as right-wing biased as it were made out to be. The phenomena in itself is nothing new, we have some rather left-wing biased programs here in Sweden. The thing is that Fox were made out to be much much worse than I thought to be possible.

How do you Americans find the news and news-shows on TV? Are Fox this bad?

Fox are RENOWNED for being right-wing (Rupert Murdoch owns it after all). They recently ran an article making claims about something Kerry was supposed to have said, only for most other media outlets to slam them for publishing an obvious and outright lie.

Their editor's response ?

"Earlier Friday, FOXNews.com posted an item purporting to contain quotations from Kerry. The item was based on a reporter’s partial script that had been written in jest and should not have been posted or broadcast. We regret the error, which occurred because of fatigue and bad judgment, not malice."

Mmmm, good quality journalism going on there then....

FOX is much worse than any other news organization in America (on the other hand, it's also the most popular). The media here does have a conservative bias, but most of the time it's not nearly as bad as FOX. Most other news organizations do a better job of at least pretending to be balanced.

mag

If it says anything, after debate #3, while every other network was calling the debate "fairly even" and trying to avoid any obvious bias, the talking heads at FOX News were gloating over Bush's "obvious victory." This, of course, despite the fact that the post-debate instant polls showed just the opposite. (CBS and CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls both giving Kerry a huge victory and the ABC poll calling it dead even. Interestingly, the ABC poll was 38% republicans and only 30% Democrats.)

In the program I watched, they had some polls on the knowledge of people who viewed different news channels and _that_ poll showed that Fox viewers had much more skewed views of reality than others. If the poll is accurate is another question.

What I've seen of the US media, especially during the hate-french phase (which may or may not still be in order), was really scary. You'd never see such a impressive amount of dumb patriotism, paranoia and misinformation here in France, and god (or whoever) knows that I hate our television. :(
I'm not sure whether what I've seen was mainly or totally taken from Fox, but I don't believe so.

I was kind of surprised when I went to FOX's website after the debate to see what people were saying, their internet poll showed that most of the people thought Kerry won--and by quite a large margin. I didn't think FOX's viewers were that capable of facing reality.

Of course, their TV programming is different. Somehow I don't think covering the debate with a special episode of Hannity & Quasimodo, er...I mean Holmes is quite as balanced as CNN's debate coverage.


That's true. FOX News viewers are more likely to believe things that aren't true about Iraq and are more likely to support the government. I can't think of the name of the group that did the study, though.


Yeah, that was definitely a low point for America. I never thought I'd live to see the day that we have racism against the French. And that's not an exaggeration to call it racism. We're talking about hate. The real thing. That was pretty disgusting. I mean, I used to make a lot of jokes about France too, but it was all in good fun. Now they've taken all the fun out of it.

mag

You did, uh? :shifty:

I guess you saw Outfoxed? I saw some clips of that. Anyway, yeah, it's pretty accurate, based on what FOX and Outfoxed I've seen. That show with O'Reilly is the worst offender by far (it's the one with the mike-cutting and whatnot). It's amazing how a news channel could ever be so biased. Even accepting the fact that they're biased, it's amazing they show it in such an overt way, and not sneak it in subtly so people don't notice.

Last night they did a rerun of that NBC documentary of Bush' 2000 campaign over here. As a documentary, it's completely worthless, but some of the quotes from the members of the press were pretty astonishing. I kept wanting to scream at the TV...

Reporter guy: "This is not news. This is just pictures. I haven't seen any news here since [insert some year]".
Me: "ARghh then what are you doing there?!"

Other reporter guy: "We're so close to the Bush campaign and yet we know nothing of what the people want. We should be talking to people, and campaign managers, and get other sources. But who will speak to them? Who will get their voice?"
Me: "YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH. GET OFF THE DAMN PLANE RIGHT NOW." :frusty:

*inhales* ...

It was completely baffling how aware those guys were of proper journalism and yet sacrificed so much to be on the campaign trail where the real news usually isn't.

Oh, come on. Like you've never made a crack about Americans.


My favorite part is when Bill tries to defend himself by saying that he's used the phrase "shut up" only six times. The fact that he has ever told his guest to shut up at all is pretty damning. So that doesn't really help him. I watch a lot of news, and FOX News is the only channel where I have ever seen a host tell a guest to shut up. Even NBC's Katie Couric or CNN's Tucker Carlson have never done that. And they're two of the most insulting journalists on TV.

mag

Yeah I saw that too, "Journeys with George" (Bush thought of the name, saying to the reporter "Hey you could even spell it with a G!" LOL :P). It was pretty funny to watch, if only to see the campaign trail, and pretty much the only thing missing was a drunk Bush giving an interview. It was also very obvious that Bush "matured" during the campaign, and slowly but surely became highly aware of his actions, words, and even posture. And did you see Bush's answer to one of her more serious questions? It was something like "Yeah but why should I vote for you? I'm not voting for myself but for the people who need it, so why should I vote for you?" and he answered something like "You've got to vote for me! Those stupid democrats with their retarded spending on idealog programs!" (don't recall the exact words but I had NEVER seen him so angry, it was a look right out of "The Shining"). But yeah it scared the hell out of me how it all worked: If a reporter asked ONE serious question, he'd be practically excluded from Bush for the rest of the campaign. And if Bush was to lose the election back then, most reporters and photographers would be on the streets, so it was actually in their own interest that their candidate won, which is pretty frickin' weird! The British reporter from BBC (I think) was the only one really aware of his bad reporting, he said something like "We didn't do our jobs, and the reporters on the Gore campaign were always publishing criticizing stuff about him, while we were here getting sweet talked and wrapped up by Bush" and you could tell he felt really guilty for not doing his job.

On-topic: Heh if you've also seen Control Room, it's pretty funny to compare the two news networks. Al-Jazeera is so much better than Fox in any possible way, yet it's considered as muslim propaganda or whatever by alot of people, while Fox calls itself "Fair and Balanced" :D

edit: Oh and O'Reilly is a creep, an utter creep. And this document on him is hilarious.

Yes, Outfoxed it was.

What I read in a newspaper some time ago was that Al Jazeera's news, as well as every other TV channel in the Middle East, tries to get people to sympathise with their own side - so actually the news broadcasts aren't that unbiased. :shifty:

I thought the last debate was pretty even. I thought it was a 1-1-1 record for both of them in the debates overall. Anyway, to clear something up though... That SAME Fox News panel you are talking about as being so biased, they weren't by any means after debate 1 and 2, so I don't think that's fair at all. After debate 1 they all said Bush lost. And even in debate 2, which I thought Bush won, they all said he lost! Only debate 3 did they all give Bush credit.

Al-Jazeera is one of most balanced news networks in the middle-east. You should see some of the other channels, all they have is talk shows with imams and whatnot shouting that the Islam is under attack by America and killing Westerners is completely justified as long as it hurts America and it goes on and on, seriously. Al-Jazeera doesn't have talk shows like these, very rarely invites radical religious leaders, in fact, all they did to piss off the U.S. was report the war in Iraq from the other side. Alot of Arab governments have bashed Al-Jazeera for being "politcally correct", pro-US or pro-Coalition, yet it remains the "tea salon" channel in big parts of the middle-east. If you want more information then I highly recommend you go see Control Room, it may be an eye-opener.

Sanjuro, Kerry clearly won all debates, there's no doubt about it, and his remark about Cheney's lesbian daughter won't change anything about that.

Uh, what is clear in your view isn't clear in mine. BacardiJim is on your side in this, and I believe he said he thought Bush did a little better than Kerry in debate 2. He is much fairer than you, despite sharing your political views.

Well I don't measure Kerry's succes in percentages, but I would say that overall, he won all three debates. I never said he won them all by a landslide, but objectively observing (I hope I still have that ability :P) all three debates, it's clear (to me) that Kerry's performance (reasoning, presentation, style, charm, whatever etc.) was much better throughout. It's just that we've already talked on this issue alot and I believe I already mentioned somewhere else that Kerry's performance was best in the first debate, worse in the second (though still good enough to beat the president) and simply good in the last. And I don't believe Kerry was that good, but moreover Bush did pretty bad in all debates. Also keep in mind that I'm used to different types of debates, and to me, one-liners like "But perhaps the best way to keep jobs here in America and to keep this economy growing is to make sure our education system works" are not a way of debating at all, rather it feels like he's relying on his acting talents to repeat his message. It may in fact fall on right ears with republicans, and it may depict him as a resolute war president to some (thanks to his acting), but to undecided voters or democrats he was not very convincing, I would imagine. Kerry on the other hand was much more of a debater in ALL THREE DEBATES. He responded to everything the president had to say (which may have been his weakness, it cost him time), sometimes he even went into refuting the president's rebuttle. Bush on the other hand sometimes totally ignored the question, "refuted" Kerry's arguments by labeling him as THE MOST LIBERAL SENATOR OF ALL TIMES, IN ANY GALAXY, ANYWHERE, or by implying his opponent is a flipflopper. So in debating terms, I think I can safely say he won all three debates, it's just sad that in your country, the media 'gets to decide' who won and who lost. In short: I didn't want to get into it :)

Yes well, that's all fine and dandy, but as far as polling of the American people was concerned, the last two debates were within the margin of error. But yes, Bush clearly LOST the first debate.

Which isn't saying that much.

Al-Jazeera is doing a great job. The US hates them for being too anti-American. Many countries in the Middle-East hate them for being too pro-American. Clearly they're doing something right.