How Fox Balances The News
AS FOX NEWS celebrates its 10-year anniversary, media watchers should appreciate how Fox, which tilts right, has provided balance to major new operations such as CNN and the New York Times, which tilt left.
Go to most newsrooms and you’ll find a staff that overwhelmingly voted for John Kerry in 2004, while the rest keep their politics to themselves lest they be considered biased. A survey of the Washington press corps found that 89 percent voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. It’s true, most reporters do their level best to tell a story straight and present both sides. To use Fox-speak, most reporters I know strive to be “fair and balanced.”
But they can’t escape the presumptions that underlie their stories, and they are likely not to notice the presumptions when all the newsroom management thinks alike. That’s how illegal immigrants became “undocumented workers” and global warming became a certainty.
Sometimes you’ll see journalists talk as if opposition to same-sex marriage or support for the death penalty is a Republican position — even though the liberal electorate of California supports the death penalty and voted to ban same-sex marriage. You see, the journalists are liberal, against capital punishment and for same-sex marriage, so they automatically assume that people who disagree with them on those issues must be Republicans.
The worst of it is: They have no idea that they’re biased. They think their positions are neutral.
Read the whole thing.
Tags: Media, Politics
