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    NeedKarma's Avatar
    NeedKarma Posts: 10,635, Reputation: 1706
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    #1

    Nov 20, 2007, 02:37 AM
    FOX News becoming international laughingstock - servant of the Republican party
    A myth in the unmaking | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited

    Britons may be familiar with Rupert Murdoch, but I don't think the UK has a beast quite like the American Fox News Channel. Celebrating its 11th year on the air, Fox is a breathtaking institution. It is a lock, stock and barrel servant of the Republican party, devoted first and foremost to electing Republicans and defeating Democrats; it's even run by a man, Roger Ailes, who helped elect Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior to the presidency. And yet, because it minimally adheres to certain superficial conventions, it can masquerade as a "news" outfit and enjoy all the rights that accrue to that. <!-- /* set the domain in anticipation of the ad*/ if(setDomainForAds) { setDomainForAds(); }; //-->
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    Journalism with a point of view is a fine thing. It's what I do. The difference is that I say I'm a liberal journalist while Fox executives and "reporters" insist they play it straight. But everyone in the US knows that my description is true. This is precisely why its fans watch it. Walk into any bar, hair salon, gym or motel lobby in the country; if the TV is tuned to Fox rather than CNN, you know that the owner or clientele or both are Republican. It's a secret - although not actually secret any more - sign of fraternity among conservatives, the way a solid red tie worn by a single urban man used to signal to other urban men that the wearer was indeed "that way".So everyone knows, but, because of the conventions of journalistic propriety, Fox can't admit that it's a Republican outfit. It would have no credibility with politicians if it did and would be too easily dismissed as "ideological media". To get around this problem, its marketers devised what must be the most deviously ingenious pair of advertising slogans of all time: "We report, you decide" and "Fair and balanced".
    And so, for a decade and more, Fox has got away with an amazing thing: it can call itself a "straight" news channel even while everyone knows it's not. It's a great little racket. Every so often, a Toto comes along and tugs at the curtain - earlier this year, for instance, the Democratic presidential aspirants agreed that they would not participate in any debates hosted by Fox because there was no point in getting up there and being asked questions merely for the purpose of providing footage that the eventual Republican nominee could use against them. But these moments have been rare.
    Last week brought an event with the potential to change all that. Judith Regan, a former Fox host perhaps best known in the UK as the, um, brains behind the OJ Simpson If I Did It mediapalooza, has sued her former employer for wrongful dismissal.
    So what? So this. Regan spent some portion of the dawn of the 21st century having an affair with NYC's then police commissioner, Bernard Kerik. The commissioner was recently indicted by a federal prosecutor in New York for alleged misdeeds dating from his time as a public servant. Kerik is a very close associate of presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani - so close that Giuliani once recommended Kerik to President Bush as homeland security director.
    The nomination advanced far enough for Bush to stand at Kerik's side at a press conference. But suddenly, the doors blew open and the allegations against Kerik - that he'd renovated his home with ill-gotten gains, and more distressingly that he had suspected connections to organised crime - ended his nomination quickly. Ever since then, the question has loomed over Giuliani: when did he know that the man he recommended to run America's security was alleged to have mob ties? (A now deceased investigator once suggested that he warned Giuliani, but Giuliani says he has no memory of this.)
    Regan, naturally enough given her special knowledge of the man, was questioned about Kerik by federal investigators. And she now alleges that two executives of Fox News instructed her to "lie to, and withhold information from" the investigators about Kerik. Regan charges that Fox executives did this because they feared the inquiry into Kerik might singe Giuliani, whose presidential ambitions, her complaint charges, Fox has long been intent on "protecting".
    Let's linger over that for a moment. Two executives of a major news organisation may have told a citizen to lie to federal investigators to protect a presidential candidate. It's a stunning charge. If proven someday, Fox will no longer be able to hide behind the fiction that it's a neutral news outfit.
    In the meantime, Democrats should ratchet up their refusal to pretend that Fox bears any relationship to news. I've always felt they should just boycott the network en bloc. One can be pretty confident that if the situation were reversed - imagine a cable channel that was known as a Democratic house organ and run by, say, Bill Clinton adviser James Carville - Republicans would have done something like that long ago. I asked Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic speaker, about this last Friday, and she just replied wanly: "I think we have to reach out to all the viewers out there."
    I guess I didn't really expect her to say more on the record. But if the day ever comes that Fox is no longer allowed to have it both ways, Democrats won't have to keep playing along with the rabbit-hole fiction that Fox is a genuine news-gathering operation.
    · Michael Tomasky is editor of Guardian America
    Did anyone ever think otherwise? Have you ever watched Òutfoxed?
    N0help4u's Avatar
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    #2

    Nov 20, 2007, 08:18 AM
    Simply the opposite extreme of the liberal media who are N0 better!
    NeedKarma's Avatar
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    #3

    Nov 20, 2007, 08:30 AM
    Ok. :rolleyes:
    tomder55's Avatar
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    #4

    Nov 20, 2007, 08:43 AM
    Lol this is a riot ! Have you ever watched David Shuster on MSNBC ? My question is why even have the charade and claim that news isn't spun ?I think it fair to say that all the cable companies that are "news formatted " have their own biases ;and truth be told ;so does the major network news programs.

    The thing about FOX (which is mostly commentary and not news reporting ) that is different is that hosts like OReilley and Hannity and Colmes will offer a debate format to their program . Whereas over at MSNBC Keith Olberman never even attempts to have someone on his program with an opposing view.
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    #5

    Nov 20, 2007, 08:54 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by tomder55
    The thing about FOX (which is mostly commentary and not news reporting )
    See this is where we all agree with you. So why does it pass itself off as a news program?
    N0help4u's Avatar
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    #6

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:02 AM
    Same reason the liberal fluff can pass itself off as NEWS
    When they D0 N0T ask the real hard hitting issues but do ask what kind of IPod will you buy.
    magprob's Avatar
    magprob Posts: 1,877, Reputation: 300
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    #8

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:19 AM
    And why wouldn't a Democratic Dictatorship such as the U.S. government have control of the media for brainwashing purposes? Isn't that the fastest and most effective way to lie to an entire country?
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    #9

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:22 AM
    It doesn't pass itself off as a news program it is a network. Where is gives commentary it is upfront about it. When it's programing is "news " ;like THE FOX REPORT with Shep Smith it is pretty balanced. The stuff about "fair and balanced "motto is schtick ;just like the NY Slimes motto "all the news that's fit to print " . The nature of news is that it is biased and slanted and catering to it's audience. Why is this news ? It was much worse during the days of yellow journalism . And Before that the printed press was no better in content then today's blog .
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    #10

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:22 AM
    What we need is more unbiased reporting. Too bad Dan Rather retired.
    tomder55's Avatar
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    #11

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:22 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by magprob
    And why wouldn't a Democratic Dictatorship such as the U.S. government have control of the media for brainwashing purposes? Isn't that the fastest and most effective way to lie to an entire country?

    You mean like PBS ?
    NeedKarma's Avatar
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    #12

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:27 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by tomder55
    it doesn't pass itself off as a news program it is a network.
    We're talking about Fox News here Tom, not the network. Why are so many people (and other countries) watching Fox News and lambasting them if *everyone* is doing it? The answer is of course that everyone is *not* doing it to the awful extent that FOX is.
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    #13

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:28 AM
    Yes, I just loved the PBS show Avoiding Arrmageddon. You should watch it tom!

    Avoiding Armageddon | PBS
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    #14

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:29 AM
    Who has a problem with PBS' reporting other than yourself Tom?
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    #15

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:34 AM
    All you can give is a couple of web sites of questionable origin I would say Why are so many people (and other countries) watching Fox News and lambasting them is an overstatement.

    You have your obsession with them that is clear from the many times you make commentary about them ;and the same could be said about my distaste for the NY SLIMES (which still passes itself off as the source of reference) .


    What we can agree on is that no news outlet will ever get the free pass that they had before the internet. There will no longer be Walter Cronkite's telling us "that's the way it is" . That is a good development in my book.
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    #16

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:36 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by NeedKarma
    Who has a problem with PBS' reporting other than yourself Tom?

    Everyone should have a problem with taxpayer funding of news broadcasts . How can Magprob rail about gvt. Propaganda on one hand and not object to PBS ?
    speechlesstx's Avatar
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    #17

    Nov 20, 2007, 09:38 AM
    Again with the Fox News NK? Since tom mentioned him, have you ever watched Olbermann or read a transcript? I think it's a riot that there is an entire industry devoted to destroying FNC, while 90 percent of the rest of the media has an obvious liberal bias - including that one partially funded by our tax dollars, PBS. Yet, FNC is probably where Hillary got her debate line about attacking her because she's winning. :D

    Of course I'm a stickler for facts, stubborn things that they are, so I should point out that "A new study... from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, found newspapers and broadcast TV outlets devoted far more time to covering the Democratic candidates than the Republicans and that the tone of those stories was much more favorable to the Democrats, mirroring the results of a Media Research Center study released in August."

    It also revealed that any sense here that FNC "was uniformly positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not manifest in the data."


    Fox News: The programming studied on Fox News offered a somewhat more positive picture of Republicans and more negative one of Democrats compared with other media outlets. Fox News stories about a Republican candidate were most likely to be neutral (47%), with the remainder more positive than negative (32% vs. 21% negative). The bulk of that positive coverage went to Giuliani (44% positive), while McCain still suffered from unflattering coverage (20% positive vs. 35% negative).

    When it came to Democratic candidates, the picture was more negative. Again, neutral stories had a slight edge (39%), followed by 37% negative and 24% positive. And, in marked contrast from the rest of the media, coverage of Obama was twice as negative as positive: 32% negative vs. 16% positive and 52% neutral.

    But any sense here that the news channel was uniformly positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not manifest in the data.
    On newspapers:

    Another distinguishing characteristic of the print stories studied was tone. Democrats got much more positive coverage in the daily papers examined than they did elsewhere. Fully 59% of all stories about Democrats had a clear, positive message vs. 11% that carried a negative tone. That is roughly double the percentage of positive stories that we found in the media generally. Just under a third (30%) of the front page stories examined were neutral.

    For the top tier Democrats, the positive tilt was even more the case than for Democrats in general. Obama’s front page coverage in the sample was 70% positive and 9% negative and Clinton’s was similarly 61% positive and 13% negative.

    Republican candidates, in contrast, were more likely to receive clearly negative stories in print than elsewhere: 40% negative vs. 26% positive and 34% neutral.

    Newspapers also stood out for initiating more campaign coverage on their own. Nearly half of all front page stories were triggered by newsroom initiative rather than reacting to what the candidate or others said or did (46%). That is substantially higher than the 28% in the media generally in the sample. A little more than a third of stories were triggered by the candidates and their campaigns (37%), compared with 46% generally.
    On broadcast networks:

    Network evening news closely reflected the overall media when it came to dividing time between Democrat and Republican candidates (49% vs. 28%). While all three produced more stories about Democrats than Republicans, at the NBC Evening News the gap was smaller—just an 11 percentage point difference (41% Democrats vs. 30% Republicans) vs. roughly a 30 percentage point gap at ABC and CBS.

    The tone of coverage in the 30-minute evening newscasts was much more positive toward the Democrats than Republicans. And again, among the major candidates, Obama got the best of it and McCain the worst. Of the 11 stories primarily about McCain that ran on the nightly news in the first five months of the year, not a single one carried a clearly positive tone. Six of them were clearly negative and five were neutral.

    The commercial over-the-air TV networks did not focus on second tier candidates at all, except for Bill Richardson when he announced (and Joe Biden when he made controversial comments about Obama). PBS was the only network in which any other 2nd tier candidates was successful as a newsmaker.
    If the other networks and most major newspapers can't handle FNC perhaps they should rethink their strategy, their ideology or just get out of the game.
    magprob's Avatar
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    #18

    Nov 20, 2007, 10:07 AM
    NET's refusal to end its commitment to the production of hard-hitting controversial documentaries such as Who Invited US? And Banks and the Poor led to public clashes between NET and PBS over program content. PBS wanted to curb NET's controversial role in the system and create a new image for public television, particularly since NET documentaries inflamed the Nixon Administration and imperiled funding. In order to neutralize NET, the CPB and Ford Foundation threatened to cut NET's program grants unless NET merged with New York's public television outlet, WNDT. Lacking allies, NET acquiesced to the proposed alliance in late 1970 and its role as a network was lost. The final result was WNET-Channel 13.
    magprob's Avatar
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    #19

    Nov 20, 2007, 10:18 AM
    My guest on today's program is Nicholas Johnson. He teaches at the University of Iowa College of Law and he served on the Federal Communications Commission. We are talking about using public money in the private sector or in a mixed sector. That's a question that Nick Johnson had tackled all his life pretty much, and that is the general topic of our program today.

    Nicholas Johnson.
    "So, I think we made a big mistake on two counts. The first was when Nixon went after McNeal-Lehrer and others that he thought were too liberal. I think the network should have been used at that time to stand up to him and insist on political independence. I think that battle could have been won at that time."
    NeedKarma's Avatar
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    #20

    Nov 20, 2007, 10:19 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by speechlesstx
    Since tom mentioned him, have you ever watched Olbermann or read a transcript? I think it's a riot that there is an entire industry devoted to destroying FNC.
    Actually you have it wrong there. People are criticizing the abysmal performance of the current administration which basically happens reflects the current feelings of the US population.

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