I’m a big fan of On the Media — I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while “running.” But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really heard what I heard this week. Brooke Gladstone interviewed TVNewser Brian Stelter (who did damned well) about FoxNews going local and said this:
Any broadcast station has a license that is regarded as a public trust, and in it there’s some assumption that it will offer a broad range of views. And I wonder, if the Fox broadcast stations were to become “Foxified” to the point where they sounded like the Fox news channels, do you think that that would pose a risk to their licenses?
That stopped me in my tracks for a number of reasons: First, do you really think that FoxNews, if broadcast, should lose its license? Why? And in what universe is it the FCC’s and government’s job to judge what is news… to license journalism?
i know it’s tempting to think so, but FOX shouldn’t lose its license for bias anymore than cBS should lose its for trying to throw the 2004 general election.
foxnews can broadcast anything it likes as far as I am concerned; but that doesn’t make it journalism. don’t conflate the two; and the same holds true for any “news” organization that reports beliefs, not facts, as in the case of CBS’s pre-election shoddy Bush gotcha.
“And in what universe is it the FCC’s and government’s job to judge what is news”
Have you read the history of the FCC?
I think Broadcasters should be able to do whatever they want, but since the airwaves are granted to them by the government, which theoretically represents the general public, they should be giving something significant back. Whether this should be big fees, or more support for citizen media efforts, or something else I don’t know.
FoxNews turns journalists into schizophrenics. In order to prove media isn’t overwhelmingly liberal, they claim that their entire profession, which self-identifies itself nationally as 88% liberal or moderate, instead is biased in favor of the political movement that only 7% of their number belong to. (We’re also told that journalists are pressured into right wing views by right wing bosses like, er, Ted Turner and Joe Klein)
Then, forgetting that their own media is supposed to be hopelessly right wing, they become unglued at the thought of FoxNews — proving that conservatism and right wing thought is, in fact, something quite alien and repulsive to them, after all.
Fox News is not real news. It is propaganda from the Republican Party. Why else would its viewers be so uninformed as to reality?
A few points in rebuttal to Carson Fire:
The average journalist is better educated than the general public. There is a direct correlation between education level and having liberal views.
While polls have shown journos to be more liberal than the public on cultural issues, they are decidely more conservative than the public on economic issues.
An ungodly proportion of the right wingers on the tube have shown themselves to be ideologues who are not at all uneasy about using distortion and outright dishonesty to promote their point of view. (And not just on FOX; John Stossel on ABC is an embarrassment, too).
Conservatives consider honesty and truth to be secondary considerations. That’s what’s scary about them.
brabc1: Was the Jimmy Massey story real news, or propaganda for the Democratic party?
Was Rathergate real news, or propaganda for the Democratic party?
Was the New York Times’ deliberate and hurtful misuse of a dead soldier’s last letter real news, or propaganda for the Democratic party?
Was the entire Cindy Sheehan spectacle, which we can now see quite clearly is not a national movement, but a PR campaign, real news or propaganda for the Democratic party?
Try to answer honestly. It will give us some insight to your own grasp on reality.
Where’s the rebuttal, ballmerboy? You cite a couple of blowhardish opinions as to the intelligence of people who don’t Think Just Like You! and expect it to pass as argument.
And that certainly doesn’t have anything to do with the freedom of speech that you and others like you would like to see trashed in light of your mental superiority to everybody else.
Fox News is less like news and more like fantasy propaganda. Who in their right state of mind could believe the factless collection of imaginary facts?
If they agreed to promote progressive causes for free of charge I would flatly turn them down. When pressed for facts to complete a story they would imagine them in their unoriginal thoughts and then pull them out of their asses.
God help us if more of these supermarket tabloids are given news status.
I was going to ask where you got that, since you didn’t provide any substantiation for it. But a quick Google shows that it’s from a FAIR study called “New Study Challenges ‘Liberal Media’ Claim: On Economics, Journalists More Conservative Than Public”
Some problems: they don’t provide raw data so that their conclusions can be checked. If you look at the poll I linked, you’ll see that even though the numbers bear out a very liberal press corp, the title of the overall piece is “Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists: Press Going Too Easy on Bush”
Liberal journalists complaining that they aren’t doing enough to defeat Bush in itself doesn’t prove anything except that liberal journalists don’t like Bush.
Similarly, we can’t see exactly how FAIR comes to the conclusion that liberal reporters are conservatives at heart. The fact that most reporters are openly hostile to tax cuts and budget reductions on social spending seems to suggest otherwise. The fact that most commentators that the press considers “mainstream” are liberal would seem to suggest otherwise.
The way FAIR presents the numbers seem kind of weasely:
Huh? How many journalists said that the economy was “only fair” compared to “fair”? There’s no point to be made here, anyway. If the average income of journalists doesn’t match the average income of the rest of the people polled (how many? They don’t say!), there’s bound to be a difference between the exact adjective one uses to describe the economy.
Their income levels, cited by the story as proof of probable conservatism, is hardly a determining factor. You can’t find many people richer than Soros, Michael Moore, Barbara Streisand, and John Kerry. The cliche that rich people are ipso facto conservatives, when used in this way, is quite frankly a lie.
In the end, I’m trying not to dismiss this out of hand just because it comes from FAIR, but it’s definitely lacking as a source of reliable truth. 141 reporters interviewed and *no* information as to who or how many people were sampled to contrast with the reporters.
If the “people” polled were all members of DemocraticUnderground, of course the reporters would be *more conservative*. Nobody claims that reporters are hopeless fringe soci-lists. Most of them are quite moderate, but that doesn’t mean that they understand issues that are important to conservatives.
Fox News does have real news. It’s the talking heads people don’t like. Please don’t confuse the two. All news stations have talking heads who spout their opinions as well.
jeez louise this debate is tiring. as long as it is created by human beings, “news” has never been, and will never be, unbiased. all news sources are biased, period. its up to you the consumer to decide what media and information you want to consume (some of which may not be served up in nice neat little bite sized morsels, easy to access and digest) and more importantly, to decide what you want to think. the fact that some news purveyors have obvious biases is neither a plus nor a minus, its just life. was ben franklin a bad guy because he used his then-murdoch-like monopoly on newspapers and postal services to forment revolution? how about thomas paine? “common sense” — now there’s an unbiased journsalistic tract (which is what it was cconsidered at the time).
try this on for size:
Jane ran.
Unbiased or biased statement?
Why did I call her Jane, not Mrs. Smith? Or Ms. Smith? Why did I say “ran.” Maybe in her view she was just walking. Maybe she was sprinting but I am jealous and don’t want to giver her due credit.
Sigh.
In order to prove media isn’t overwhelmingly liberal, they claim that their entire profession, which self-identifies itself nationally as 88% liberal or moderate, instead is biased in favor of the political movement that only 7% of their number belong to.
So true! They are counting on: A lie repeated often and forcibly, gains the legitimacy of truth.
Fox News is less like news and more like fantasy propaganda. Who in their right state of mind could believe the factless collection of imaginary facts?
With all due respect, will the Fox-obsessed please stop just yammering about lies and fantasies from FoxNews without providing even one freaking example?
Perhaps you’re used to dumping on people you and your friends don’t like, when it’s just you and your friends. But in the real world, outside of Democratic forums, you have to offer *some* kind of substantial argument in order to be taken seriously, and not just repeat the same angry trope over and over.
It shouldn’t be that hard. Didn’t some guy named Cameron screw up once? Why not use him as an example, even once?
I believe that if pressed, you can come up with some examples, but I am pretty sure that the bulk of them will be ideological disagreements and minor errors, proving that you are not interested in truth vs fantasy so much as juvenile resentment that people who don’t think like you are allowed to live and breathe the same air as you.
There is a direct correlation between education level and having liberal views.
The way you presented that fact to mean what you wanted it to mean is an excellent example of distortion and dishonesty. YOURS
You’re hoping for a distorted conclusion – by leaving out the main reason that statement can be made.
Our higher institutions of learning have a forced leftist agenda, so students are overwhelmingly taught liberal doctrine. Conservative opinion is discouraged.
The study, which analyzed the political affiliations of faculty at 18 elite journalism and law schools, found that faculty Democrats outnumber faculty Republicans by a factor of 7-1. The total number of Democrats on the 18 faculties studied was 494 while the total number of Republicans was 74.
http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/letters/LettersJuly-December2005/letter-TierneyandLawandJournalismStudy102005.htm
Hold the presses!
There you have it. The lie of “journalistic integrity” debunked by Mary Mapes herself. It is not a journalist’s job to prove things that they report are true!
Yes, if Fox were to buy their affiliate in the bay area, KTVU (which currently is the best bay area news though it still could be much, much better), from Cox, and turn it into a local version of the Fox News Channel, I’d join in a license challenge.
Local stations are supposed to serve the public interest and reflect a diversity of voices. Those requirements lost any teeth in the Reagan era, but the stations are still making a lot of money using the public airwaves.
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[...] BuzzMachine Blog Archive Foxnews huntI m a big fan of On the Media I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while running. But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really heard what I heard this [...]
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[...] BuzzMachine ” Blog Archive ” Foxnews hunt … Brian Stelter (who did damned well) about FoxNews going local and said this: … homeinforightnow.info ” Take a peek at what FoxNews looked like Says: … [...]
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[...] BuzzMachine Blog Archive Foxnews huntI m a big fan of On the Media I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while running. But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really heard what I heard this [...]
[...] BuzzMachine ” Blog Archive ” Foxnews hunt … Brian Stelter (who did damned well) about FoxNews going local and said this: … homeinforightnow.info ” Take a peek at what FoxNews looked like Says: … [...]
[...] BuzzMachine ” Blog Archive ” Foxnews hunt … Brian Stelter (who did damned well) about FoxNews going local and said this: … homeinforightnow.info ” Take a peek at what FoxNews looked like Says: … [...]
[...] BuzzMachine Blog Archive Foxnews huntI m a big fan of On the Media I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while running. But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really heard what I heard this [...]
[...] BuzzMachine Blog Archive Foxnews huntI m a big fan of On the Media I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while running. But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really heard what I heard this [...]
[...] BuzzMachine Blog Archive Foxnews huntI m a big fan of On the Media I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while running. But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really heard what I heard this [...]
[...] BuzzMachine ” Blog Archive ” Foxnews hunt … Brian Stelter (who did damned well) about FoxNews going local and said this: … homeinforightnow.info ” Take a peek at what FoxNews looked like Says: … [...]
[...] BuzzMachine ” Blog Archive ” Foxnews hunt … Brian Stelter (who did damned well) about FoxNews going local and said this: … homeinforightnow.info ” Take a peek at what FoxNews looked like Says: … [...]
[...] BuzzMachine Blog Archive Foxnews huntI m a big fan of On the Media I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while running. But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really heard what I heard this [...]
[...] BuzzMachine Blog Archive Foxnews huntI m a big fan of On the Media I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while running. But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really heard what I heard this [...]
[...] BuzzMachine Blog Archive Foxnews huntI m a big fan of On the Media I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while running. But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really heard what I heard this [...]
[...] BuzzMachine ” Blog Archive ” Foxnews hunt … Brian Stelter (who did damned well) about FoxNews going local and said this: … homeinforightnow.info ” Take a peek at what FoxNews looked like Says: … [...]
People who are up in arms about FOX news and don’t think twice about CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, NYT, etc, etc….what f-ing planet do you live on? FOX is no more biased right than most major media outlets are biased left.
Do mature adults really believe there is an actual difference between the two parties? Laughable.
The best thing that could happen to the USA would be alien abduction of everyone in the white house and congress. If these bastards would just disappear, maybe there would be a chance that govt would revert to what the Constitution allows it to do. As is stands now, both parties rape the Constitution silly as assheaded cheerleaders for each party do their idiotic best to convince themselves that “we care about the little guy, the small business owner, working familes” and other despicable lies. This is as true now as it was when the GOP had the WH and congress.
If you really do believe there is a meaningful difference between the DNC and GOP, it’s time to grow the hell up.
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[...] BuzzMachine ” Blog Archive ” Foxnews hunt … Brian Stelter (who did damned well) about FoxNews going local and said this: … homeinforightnow.info ” Take a peek at what FoxNews looked like Says: … [...]
[...] BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Foxnews huntI’m a big fan of On the Media — I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while “running.†But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really heard what I heard this [...]
[...] BuzzMachine ” Blog Archive ” Foxnews hunt … Brian Stelter (who did damned well) about FoxNews going local and said this: … homeinforightnow.info ” Take a peek at what FoxNews looked like Says: … [...]
[...] BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Foxnews huntI’m a big fan of On the Media — I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while “running.†But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really [...]
[...] BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Foxnews huntI’m a big fan of On the Media — I listen to its podcast every Saturday morning while “running.†But I had to wait for the transcript to come out to verify that I really [...]
[...] BuzzMachine ” Blog Archive ” Foxnews hunt … Brian Stelter (who did damned well) about FoxNews going local and said this: … homeinforightnow.info ” Take a peek at what FoxNews looked like Says: … [...]