is it really fair and balanced if you’re wrong?
by Ian Schuldt
Published: January 15, 2008
A recent study by a Professor at George Mason University found that of all the political coverage being done by major television news sources, the least biased coverage was coming from… you might want to sit down for this…
Fox News Channel.
Could this mean that right wing demons like Bill O’Reilly (the most fair and balanced registered Republican on earth) or Sean “Captain America” Hannity with his partner Alan “Just Kicked Leprosy” Colmes are actually as fair and balanced as they say they are?
No. It turns out this study did not encompass all of Fox News. It was only directed at the actual “News” part of the programming, the same as it was for all the other networks. In fact, and I’m quoting the actual professor, it only looked at “the first 30 minutes of Special Report with Brit Hume.” That’s the part where he only tells us what happened before he actually brings on a bunch of pundits to give us their take.
Supposedly, the way this study was done was to take all the positive and negative stories about Democrats and Republicans, count them up and see who was closest to 50/50 for each party. Essentially what this means is that if George Bush Kissed a baby one minute and then turned around and killed a baby the next, NBC would only report that he killed the baby, but Brit Hume would mention that he kissed one too.
“Fair and Balanced” seems like a pretty good slogan (for a cable news company) but a lot of people don’t think Fox actually is. The funny thing is that most of the people that I hear saying Fox isn’t fair and balanced don’t even watch it. Well, it turns out I do, and I’d have to say that it is actually a lot more “Fair and Balanced” then networks like NBC. The problem is that the number of bad stories coming out about the Bush administration greatly outweighs the number of positive stories.
Yet somehow even with the War in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, NSA wire taps, Scooter Libby, Guantanamo Bay, Bin Laden still loose, Gas Prices, Global Warming, Fired Attorneys, Health Care, Social Security, Immigration, and a host of others that I’ve probably forgotten about, Fox news continues to find enough positive stories about the Bush administration to balance things out.
It makes me wonder if Fox News was a German network during WW II, would they have reported on how many jobs were opened up every time the Nazi’s took a train of Jews away? Maybe they would have had an exposé on how fashionable the Star of David patches were that the Jews were being forced to wear. That’s two positive and two negative, it sounds balanced to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I would have to agree that the media in general has a liberal bias, but to me that’s like saying dentists in general have a bias towards Crest simply because “8 out of 10 recommend it.” We’re talking about a group of people who’s JOB it is to learn everything they can possibly learn about politics and foreign relations so that they can turn around and report it to us.
I’m about the last person in the world that is willing to give people in the media credit for being intelligent, but when I think about “bias” I think about someone who has a vested interested in skewing information in order to make money. I think of someone who will tell people what they want to hear in order to get them to listen to what they are saying.
A quick look at the ratings for TV news networks will tell you that there’s one network rolling in the dough in terms of ratings.
Are they balanced? Yes. Are they fair? Ehh… Are they biased?
Well, they report - you decide.
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