Is Fox News a legitimate news organization?

MAINSTREAM MEDIA RUSHES TO FOX ‘NEWS’ DEFENSE
DEFINITION OF NEWS IS NEVER DEBATED


By Michael C. Burton

The inability of the mainstream media to discuss whether Fox News is a legitimate news organization points to the decline of traditional journalism in cable television and the rise of the partisan press as a new model for cable news networks.
In mid-October, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that Fox News is “opinion journalism masquerading as news” and that the organization operates “as a research arm or communications arm of the Republican Party.” She did not say that Obama administration officials would never appear on Fox programs, only that they would do so with the knowledge they were debating the opposition – the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
The news coverage since that announcement was predictable, with most news outlets covering the story as “the White House war on Fox” (The Baltimore Sun) and “The White House bullying of Fox” (The Washington Post), and “Obama delegitimizing any significant dissent” (Chicago Tribune). One TV news correspondent, Jake Tapper of ABC News, publicly came to Fox News’ defense, questioning how the White House could define what is news and what is not. On CBS News, Katie Couric teased the story at the top of the October 23 newscast: “They report and the White House decides it’s not fair: the President’s feud with Fox News Channel.” Even Mark Shields and David Brooks on the PBS News Hour defended Fox News, saying they had “real journalists” who report the news with minimum bias.
The mainstream media’s defense of Fox News is like an angst-ridden teenager who defends his crazy aunt in the basement – she may be loony, but by God she’s still a member of the family and he will defend her honor (especially since she runs a very profitable business in that basement and he wants a cut).
Despite the spin by the mainstream media that this was a war the White House instigated, the facts show that Fox has consistently viewed itself as the voice of the opposition to the current administration. Back in March, Fox News Vice-President of Programming Bill Shine described his network as “the voice of opposition [to Obama] on some issues.” Conspiracy-theorist Glenn Beck, who called the president “a racist,” claims Fox News President Roger Ailes wooed him over to the conservative network from CNN headline News in part by stressing the network’s opposition to Obama, saying, “I see this as the Alamo.”
Seems pretty clear who started the “war.”
Still, Anita Dunn’s central premise – that Fox News does not operate like other mainstream news organizations but is driven by partisan ideology—went largely unaddressed in news coverage. That’s because of the mainstream media’s inability to examine its own journalism practices and also because there is a trend in television news towards ending manifest objectivity as the journalism standard in favor of partisan political advocacy.
This is not to say that Fox News is disingenuous in defending its news programs as “separate” from its opinion commentators. In a statement, Fox Senior Vice-President for News Michael Clemente claimed that its news hours – 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays – are objective. “The average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and the editorial page,” Clemente said. Yet as Media Matters cogently points out, not only does Fox News network’s purportedly “straight news” programs echo its editorial programs, but they also contain a disproportionate share of smears, falsehoods, doctored & deceptive editing, and GOP talking points (see http://mediamatters.org/research/200910130047).
Media Matters also makes a good case how Fox News violates every ethical canon outlined by the Society of Professional Journalists in “30 Reasons Why Fox News is not legit” (http://mediamatters.org/columns/200910270002). On the other side of the political spectrum, the conservative media watchdog group NewsBusters claims that MSNBC is also biased because they have left-leaning commentators Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz. However, the organization funded by Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center is unable to show overt political bias on MSNBC’s straight news programs. That is because there is no comparison (for short video examples of how Fox constantly disparages Obama in its supposedly “straight news” reporting, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/20/the-ten-most-egregious-fo_n_327140.html).
This is the main flaw in the conservative’s argument that other cable news networks such as MSNBC, CNN, ABC and CBS are also biased and have ideological agendas. True, the other cable news networks are biased towards a corporate profit agenda and sensational infotainment on a wide range of issues – but manifest political objectivity in news programming is still the order of the day -- using the journalistic canons of the straight news story, attempting to select facts based on sound news judgment and the traditions of fair play and objectivity. When a journalist does make departures into opinions, he or she gives clear signals that he or she is doing so. Some may claim that objectivity is a myth, but fairness and nonpartisan focus is still the standard objective in reporting the news. Fox News has abrogated that standard, and deliberately skews its “straight news” coverage from a right-wing perspective. The problem lies in Fox News’ dishonesty and failure to admit that they are an ideologically-driven partisan news outlet (see “Why the White House is 100 % right to Challenge Fox News, at http://www.theyoungturks.com/story/2009/10/19/13738/762/Diary/Why-the-White-House-is-100-Right-to-Challenge-Fox-News).
The danger in presenting news as “fair and balanced” when it is not is that those predisposed to this ideological viewpoint will believe it is straight news. Indeed, many devoted Fox News viewers believe what they are watching is hard factual information that cannot be disputed. And, as Michael Massing points in the Columbia Journalism Review, “it is true that Fox can break legitimate news stories, as it did with ACORN. Yet for every such story, it seems to push many that are not legitimate – that in fact seem lunatic…in contrast, MSNBC just doesn’t seem to feature the conspiratorial looniness or corrosive fear-mongering that pervades Fox.” (See http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/howard_kurtz_missing_in_action.php).
In fact, Fox News even makes up its own facts in their news programs to suit its political agenda, something no other television news network does (i.e., falsely claiming that the Obama budget was “4 times bigger than Bush’s,” falsely claiming that “house Dems vote to protect pedophiles, but not veterans,” and falsely asserting that the hate crimes bill would gag ministers). Spreading misinformation under the guise of “fair and balanced” journalism is not only disingenuous, but threatens a robust and informed democracy because it stokes the fears of the uninformed and cheapens political dialogue (in most cases, it renders political discourse impossible). As Hendrik Hertzberg writes in the September 21 issue of The New Yorker, the disaffected right-wingers “do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful – they all routinely liken the President and the ‘Democrat Party’ to murderous totalitarians – but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, leading them a considerable measure of institutional prestige.”
U.S. News columnist Bonnie Erbe says that even Fox News viewers understand that it is “nothing more than a Republican/conservative cheat sheet,” ( see http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2009/10/19/), but there is scant evidence to support this viewpoint. Indeed, the opposite it true: most Fox viewers cannot distinguish between objective news and political opinion, and most regular viewers are least knowledgeable about national and international affairs than viewers of other news outlets. A 2007 Pew Research Study showed that those who receive most of their news from Fox are more likely than average to have misperceptions about national and international affairs. It also showed that viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have the highest knowledge of national and international affairs, while Fox News viewers ranked nearly dead last (see http://people-press.org/report/319/public-knowledge-of-current-affairs-little-changed-by-news-and-information-revolutions).
In a chain email sent out by Fox minions in early October, this confusion over what is news and what is opinion became very evident. The email touted an upcoming “important documentary about Barack Obama…a report that will go back to Obama's earlier days, showing even then his close ties to radical Marxist professors, friends, spiritual advisers, etc…. Democrat or Republican, this report will open your eyes to how YOUR country is being sold down the road to Totalitarian Socialism….these are the FACTS.”
The “facts” that the Fox cheerleader is talking about was a re-run of a Sean Hannity special (not a news documentary) called “Obama & Friends: History of Radicalism,” that offered a series of unproven allegations, half-truths, and innuendos about Obama’s supposed ties to Louis Farrakan, Muslim fundamentalism, black-power advocates, and Bill Ayers. The McCarthy-like programming was already discredited by reputable news organizations such as the Los Angeles Times, but don’t tell that to the fanatical Fox fans who confuse hearsay with fact.
Regrettably, because Roger Ailes and his boss Rupert Murdoch have proven that a scurrilous partisan press is profitable, other news networks may follow suit with more biased news “commentators” on either side of the political spectrum (except the far left, which has never had real air time in the mainstream media). Surveys show that more and more news audiences are gravitating towards news that matches their ideological viewpoint of the world.
The rise of these political pundits may be the beginning of the new partisan press era in American TV journalism. A new poll showed that the major metropolitan newspapers had lost as much as a quarter of their circulation over the past six months. New TV ratings showed that CNN, the cable news network that prides itself as being in the middle of the political spectrum, finished dead last in prime time against Fox News and MSNBC (see http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28822.html ). While newspapers are losing readers, partisan ideologues are gaining attention on television news, which is the main source of information for 70 percent of Americans. The evening network news executives who try to present the news fairly and objectivity may scrap the model of carefully scripted storytelling and make their shows more unscripted and opinionated, like cable interview programs, to recapture ratings.
Eric Alterman, a media columnist for the Nation, believes that cable news is moving away from nonpartisan news because it doesn’t sell. “Politics without a slant, without a point of view, is interesting to very few people,” he said at a New York University conference on the subject “Good Riddance to the Mainstream Media.”
The dismal ratings also come at a time where the public holds a less favorable opinion of the news media. According to Pew Research Center poll, only 29 percent believe that most news stories are accurate, and 60 percent believe most news coverage is biased, a dramatic increase from 24 years ago before the rise of cable news and Internet news operations. Ryan Blethen, the Seattle Times editorial page editor, wrote that “the new partisan journalism that has found a home on cable news and the Internet are here to stay. The trick for objective media is twofold. Figure out how its hallmarks such as investigative journalism and local reporting will be funded and then find a way to not get lost in the screaming vortex that is the 24-hour news cycle.”
###

MICHAEL BURTON, a former print and broadcast journalist, is author of the book “John Henry Faulk: The Making of a Liberated Mind,” a biography of a blacklisted entertainer who was falsely labeled a Communist sympathizer during the McCarthy era.