Fair? Balanced? A Study Finds It Does Not Matter

[Jon8503]

By ALAN B. KRUEGER - Published: August 18, 2005

THE share of Americans who believe that news organizations are "politically biased in their reporting" increased to 60 percent in 2005, up from 45 percent in 1985, according to polls by the Pew Research Center.

Many people also believe that biased reporting influences who wins or loses elections. A new study by Stefano DellaVigna of the University of California, Berkeley, and Ethan Kaplan of the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University, however, casts doubt on this view. Specifically, the economists ask whether the advent of the Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's cable television network, affected voter behavior. They found that Fox had no detectable effect on which party people voted for, or whether they voted at all.

An appealing feature of their study is that it does not matter if Fox News represents the political center and the rest of the media the liberal wing, or Fox represents the extreme right and the rest of the media the middle. Fox's political orientation is clearly to the right of the rest of the media. Research has found, for example, that Fox News is much more likely than other news shows to cite conservative think tanks and less likely to cite liberal ones.

Fox surely injected a new partisan perspective into political coverage on television. Did it matter?

The Fox News Channel started operating on Oct. 7, 1996, in a small number of cable markets. Professors DellaVigna and Kaplan painstakingly collected information on which towns offered Fox as part of their basic or extended cable service as of November 2000, and then linked this information to voting records for the towns. Their sample consists of 8,630 towns and cities from 24 states. (Because many states do not report vote tallies at the town level, they could not be included in the sample.)

(for rest of article)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/business/media/18scene.html

[LeftyDarthBrodie]

1. In order to buy into what is reported on Fox and from any

right wing media outlet you have to first buy into the myth that MSM has a liberal bias. Fox, a major component of the right wing media, makes up most of their audience from people who have been listening to right wing talk radio for years and have never nor will they ever vote for anybody but Republicans or a right wing third party. Fox never has and never will change minds because they preach to the choir.

[Jon8503]

2. Exactly, which is why I was never concerned about Limbaugh,

I mean, the only ones I know from work, elsewhere, that put much into what he says are as you say, people who refuse to go outside of their little narrowminded world of right-wing idealogy.

[LeftyDarthBrodie]

3. Unfortunately a friend of mine

who is in the National Guard and was sent to Afghanistan ended up buying into Limbaugh and the right wing media while over there. That is why we need Limbaugh off of Armed Forces Radio or atleast some "balance." He is now firmly entrenched in the echo chamber though.

[Jon8503]

4. Yeah, you are right about that, remember when they were doing

everything they could to wipe out NPR, actually, still are, There were those in power that were trying to get something to counter Limbaugh because from what I undestand, he is the only talk they are hearing out of country here.

Is that correct, I could see how that happened, nothing other than brainwashing.

[Dr Fate]

6. But his talking points get repeated on TV and in newspapers.

"Al Gore invented the internet"

"Clinton vandalized the White House"

"Dan Rather forged documents"

"Kerry lied about his military record"

They all start or gain steam on Drudge & Rush- we need to stop ignoring this.

[Dr Fate]

5. It matters. If they say "nothing to see here"- then there is somthing.

Anyone who says this does not matter should read a book about how advertising & propaganda works.

Start with somthing on Germany in the 1930's.

The flaw in this research is the presumption that anything other than neutral or pro-Bush and pro-war news existed during this study.

[LeftyDarthBrodie]

7. It is important to tell people who are not highly ideological or news

"junkies" like most of us about the biases inherent in Fox, Right wing radio especially but all media. People who are gullible enough to buy into the media having a "lib'rul" bias and believe what Rush et. al. say are essentially lost. There are people out there we can still convince.