Fox News gives Iraq war less attention

[EV_Ares]

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer
Sun Jun 10, 12:18 PM ET



NEW YORK - On a winter day when bomb blasts at an Iraqi university killed dozens and the United Nations estimated that 34,000 civilians in Iraq had died in 2006, MSNBC spent nearly nine minutes on the stories during the 1 p.m. hour. A CNN correspondent in Iraq did a three-minute report about the bombings.

Neither story merited a mention on Fox News Channel that hour.

That wasn't unusual. Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months of the year, and considerably less than CNN, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The difference was more stark during daytime news hours than in prime-time opinion shows. The Iraq war occupied 20 percent of CNN's daytime news hole and 18 percent of MSNBC's. On Fox, the war was talked about only 6 percent of the time.

The independent think tank's report freshens a debate over whether ideology drives news agendas, and it comes at a delicate time for Fox. Top Democratic presidential candidates have refused to appear at debates sponsored by Fox. Liberals find attacking Fox is a way to fire up their base.

"It illustrates the danger of cheerleading for one particular point or another because they were obviously cheerleaders for the war," said Jon Klein, CNN U.S. president. "When the war went badly they had to dial back coverage because it didn't fit their preconceived story lines."

Fox wouldn't respond to repeated requests to make an executive available to talk about its war coverage.

(rest of article @ link below)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070610/ap_on_en_tv/ap_on_tv_fox_s_war_2

[zbdent]

1. 2008, Faux News will be mentioning the war

"that the Democrats started" ...

[NewJeffCT]

3. well, it's all Clinton's fault

if he wasn't distracted by Monica, Saddam would have been overthrown and 9/11 would never have happened because Al Qaeda would have had no place to train to fly airplanes and the weapons inspectors wouldn't have been barred from going into Iraq. Or, something like that, but Iraq would be just like an Indiana marketplace if it wasn't for Clinton.



:grr:

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. Ah, the final paragraph says it all...

So with less on-air attention being paid to Iraq during the first few months of the year, what filled the void for Fox? PEJ's report said the network gave the death of Anna Nicole Smith significantly more air time than its rivals.

The thing that is hard to imagine, are those hard core, war hawk conservatives actually sitting through non stop ANS, Britney and Paris coverage.

Now that FAUX is becoming the on air media equivalent of The Nat'l Enquirer, how can they keep the attention of those who want to see combat in Iraq (you know, our battle against those gosh darn evil doers) on their TeeVee?

MKJ

[xultar]

4. WHAT??? You mean there isn't enough good news in Irak to talk about? Schools? Candy?

Flowers?

Why does FAUX hate Amerika?