Is Fox News promoting media bias?

[question everything]

WILLIAM RASPBERRY �� THE WASHINGTON POST

Is Fox News promoting media bias?

April 18, 2005

The in-your-face right-wing partisanship that marks Fox News Channel's news broadcasts is having two dangerous effects.

The first is that the popularity of the approach – Fox is clobbering its direct competition (CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, etc.) – leads other cable broadcasters to mimic it, which in turn debases the quality of the news available to that segment of the TV audience.

The second, far more dangerous, effect is that it threatens to destroy public confidence in all news. That last, I admit, is more fear than prediction, but let me tell you what produces that fear. Fox News Channel – though the people who run the operation are at great pains to insist otherwise – is deliberately partisan. It is as though right-wing talk radio has metastasized into cable and assumed a new virulence.


(snip)

So why would I consider Fox such a generalized threat? It is because I think the plan is not so much to persuade the public that its particular view is correct but rather to sell the notion that what FNC presents is just another set of biases, no worse (and for some, a good deal better) than the biases that routinely drive the presentation of the news on ABC, CBS or NBC – and, by extension, the major newspapers.

For the Foxidation process to work, it isn't necessary to convince Americans that the verbal ruffians who give FNC its crackle have a corner on the truth – only that all of us in the news business are grinding our partisan axes all the time and that none of us deserves to be taken as serious seekers of truth.

(snip)

What worries me is that journalism could become a battlefield of warring biases: I'll sock it to your guy, your party or your position on a public issue, and you'll sock it to mine. And we'll both believe we've done a good day's work. Come to think of it, a review of the stories on Social Security suggests that it is already happening to some extent. And one result is that you are less sure than you ought to be as to what the truth about Social Security really is.

(snip)

Raspberry can be reached via e-mail at [e-mail].


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050418/news_mz1e18raspbr.html

[Anarcho-Socialist]

1. No! Really?

:sarcasm:

:bounce:

[Kerrytravelers]

3. I agree! Who wouldda thunk it? faux news is bad for journalism.

After reading the article, I am glad that Raspberry wrote it, but it makes me smile. It has taken YEARS to get "journalists" to write about this fact.

[wabranty]

2. If you read the whole article. . .

Raspberry gives the ratings for Fox News which is much lower than any of the entertainment cable channels and much lower than the MSM news shows. Even so, the cable news channels are the ones that reach decision makers and its usually the small and loudly vocal minority that can threaten a democracy. Thus Raspberry is right on the money about warning of the credibility-diminishing effects of Fox news.

[Dr Ron]

4. Fox News is not news

Fox News was established explictly to promote a conservative political agenda. Their news shows regularly feature people with long histories as right wing activists promoting their views thinly disguised as news.

It is important that people realize this. Hopefully more will comment on this and word will get out that Fox News is just not a news source.

[ixion]

5. Faux News is the harbinger that heralds the end of credibility for

US journalism.

This is NOT a prediction, but a fact. World wide, US journalism credentials have increasingly come under suspicion. Geraldo, Hannity, O'Rielly and their gang of thugs have lead the call, and the station managers for all mainstream media outlets have followed the fashion. The result is that anyone who actually cares about news must go outside the US, for the most part, to find papers that practice investigative journalism.

As someone who worked journalist for several years (in fact, bias was what drove me from journalism), I find this very sad. :cry: