Say Anything Blog

And this is supposed to be the conservatives’ network.

Gene,

Whether you meant to include a rhetorical question mark or not, the fact is, Fox does not bill itslef as a “conservative network” but one that is “fair and balanced"… and in Brit Hume’s case, “unafraid.”

Do not take seriously the anti- FNC comments posted here by assorted loons of the Left.  Most of them wouldn’t know Jamie Colby from Jamie Gorelick, and probably couldn’t find Fox News on their changer if their life hung in the balance.

“Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.”

Bat,
You might note that the guy who posted this posted it on Hugh Hewitt’s website.  He’s a regular.  No lib.

Hewitt’s guy is Romney, bigtime to the blindness of everything else.

He’s bemoaning the fact that we are toast as a party.

Not celebrating.

I guess I hoped there was some bias to the right at FNC.  Maybe less than we all thought.

I thought his observation was apt.  I hoped others might.

[b]Old Tigers are more dangerous when they believe this could be their last hunt.

From , “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”
Old tigers, sensing the end,
they’re at their most fierce. 
And they go down fighting.

Fox News: “Fair and Balanced - my arse!”

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Fox News: Fair and Balanced - my arse!

Been quite a while since we’ve seen a more succinct waste of bandwidth.

“Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.”

There you go blaming Rush again.

I’ll stick with blaming you, Gene. It makes just about as much sense.

My take home message is the Democratic Party is for children, and the Republican Party for the adults.

Why is that a bad image again?

MOFAL:

Fox News: “Fair and Balanced - my arse!”

Media studies consistently demonstrate it to be much closer to the middle than any of the other, generally liberal, networks.  It does on balance lean a bit to the right, but it’s hardly a voice for conservatives, rather just a place where conservative voices are given a chance to be heard.

Bat,
A ‘news’ channel that relies heavily on polemic and pundits, whatever their political views, is not fair and balanced. Report the news and let the people make up their own minds about stuff.

Just because they say they are f&b does not make it so.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Carrick,
See
Outfoxed for a viewpoint on Fox’s and by extension Rupert Murdoch’s ideologies (it’s 88 minutes long).

Can you cite your media studies that show Fox to be centrist or right of centre?

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Gene,

I have just one question for you.  Seeing the wrath nature brought to the south on election night, and given the typical response of neo evangelicals to natural disasters, would it be consistent to say that God was not pleased with the support Huckabee had in the south?

ManofFireandLight - Can you cite your media studies that show Fox to be centrist or right of centre?

There is at least ten posts at this very site that give those studies.

Sadly, it’s nearly impossible to find them because of all of the times that people use Fox News as a source for their articles.

MOFAL, I admit I eschew rhetorical arguments in favor of objective measures, when they are available.  There have been several studies done looking at left/right bias (whether the news reporting favors Democrats vs Republicans for example).

A good exampleis this study:

The ATA score is 1=conservative 100=liberal.  40-60 would be considered a moderate range. 

As I would have suspected, Fox comes in slightly to the right of center, the New York TImes to the left.  Note that the Wall Street Journal is very far to the left.  This may seem surprising, but the grading is on the news reporting, not on the editorials (which tend to be very conservative). If you read the WSJ articles, they are pretty much indistinguishable in tone from the NYT ones.  THis is just an objective measure of that.

ManofFireandLight - Here’s one.

I’m not sure you’ll believe it though because it comes from the UCLA. They’re probably not left wing enough for you.

Here’s another one.

Here’s another one.

That’s enough. You’ll believe what you want to believe, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Fox News isn’t the typical left wing station, hence all of the loony toon complaints about it being “right wing”. It’s only “right wing” because you’re so far left.

Report the news and let the people make up their own minds about stuff.

MOFL,

The presumption, perhaps in some cases unwarranted, is that those mature enough to “...make up their own minds about stuff...” are also mature enough to recognize the difference between news reporting and punditry in the first place.

If you actually knew what you’re talking about, perhaps by watching FNC, you’d be aware that straight news shows such as Brit Hume’s Special Report, or Shephard Smith’s Fox Report are scrupulously non-partisan in their presentation of news.

Hume’s Special Report does include a “panel” of commentators to discuss specific issues during the last 20 minutes of the show, but Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, and the occasional Bill Kristol are more than offset by Mara Liasson, Nina Easton, Mort Kondracke and Juan Williams, all various shades of liberal.  That’s what the “balanced” part of “Fair and Balanced” is all about in the first place.

“Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.”

you’re so far left.

HAHAHAHAHA!

I must admit that I have not seen NBC, ABC, CBS et al because they are not aired in the UK, so cannot give a completely objective opinion on the leanings of Fox as compared to them. However, I have seen Fox and when compared with European and particularly British television channels there are clear right wing leanings, as exhibited by Carrick’s table which shows Fox as second only to the Washington Times for right wing views.

Now obviously my opinion of news channels is influenced by the unpartisan news reporting on this side of the pond. There are print media over here that are clearly biased one way or the other, but the tv news remains largely centrist and unbiased.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Lik and Bat, thanks for the ad hominem attacks, you could easily have made your points with such recourse and your decision to do so illustrates the tenuousness of your position and your confidence thereof.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

That should read “without such recourse”

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

I must admit that I have not seen NBC, ABC, CBS et al because they are not aired in the UK, so cannot give a completely objective opinion on the leanings of Fox as compared to them.

Not experiencing the blessings of liberty would then explain your politically left perspective and inability to objectively consider the plight of the right in America.

MOFL,

Ad hominem attack?  I have offered up no ad hominem attack against you.  Not yet, at least.

What I did was point out that you apparently don’t know what your talking about regarding Fox News programming.  It is your pretense, not my description of it, that is insulting.

As for tenuousness and lack of confidence, I have suffered from neither disability in several decades.

“Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.”

HG, left of you maybe, but don’t put me in the same boat as Hannitized et al. I’d rather swim.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

ManofFireandLight - Now obviously my opinion of news channels is influenced by the unpartisan news reporting on this side of the pond. There are print media over here that are clearly biased one way or the other, but the tv news remains largely centrist and unbiased.

That’s funny.

As said, you’re so far left wing that you don’t notice it.

...and your decision to do so illustrates the tenuousness of your position and your confidence thereof.

Meh. That’s quite a heavy assumption there.

It’s just gets old. “Uh duh, like how is Fox News not totally right wing? Everything else is centrist.”

After awhile, one tends to throw up his hands and think, “fuck it, this guy is an idiot.”

I’ll tell you what: I’ll work on that while you work on those assumptions.

MOFAL, there’s nothing particularly tenuous about the notion that the American media are liberally biased.  It is based on two particular observations:

1) Roughly 80% are registered Democrats, and many are active members of their party.
2) Media people are not immune from the distortion provided by their own world view. That’s an unassailable fact from cognitive psychology.

What’s entirely tenuous is the idea that given this state of affairs they could be unbiased.

Notice I used a different choice of words “Democrat/Republican” in my discussion of bias.  I think this is more accurate than “liberal/conservative”.

I don’t dispute that the majority of the US media is liberally/Democrat biased, but that wasn’t my point.
My position is that Fox News is conservatively/ Republican biased. This is obviously necessary in an industry which (in the US) is shaped so much by partisan views and reporting. The point is that Fox News is not “fair and balanced”, but then neither are the majority (if not all) of other news channels.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

MOFAL, you can contend whatever you want, as long as you live in a free country of course....

But you’d better have something more than “I think” or a rhetorical argument if it’s going to fly with me.

Carrick,
See
Outfoxed for a viewpoint on Fox’s and by extension Rupert Murdoch’s ideologies (it’s 88 minutes long).
Can you cite your media studies that show Fox to be centrist or right of centre?

That terrible movie? Oh please.

It spends a good five minutes on playing clips of O’Reilly saying shut up (some of which are clearly repeated).

The basic point of the movie is to focus only on the pundits (TV versions of editorialists), and to downplay the news shows. While Hannity is clearly conservative...he’s not an objective news reporter. And he’s offset by the equally liberal Colmes. O’Reilly is a left of center Libertarian. Yet, shows like Brit Humes are as non-biased as you can get.

Outfoxed, and the side project it has spawned, newshounds.us, are clearly left wing sour grapes...angry that there’s a break in the leftwing stranglehold on the news. They exaggerate comments, remove context, and lie about what has been said.

Using Outfoxed to discredit Fox is like using Ann Coulter to discredit Michael Moore’s objectivity.

For the first time in my adult life, I am ashamed of my country.