Fox News vs. Barack Obama
The Obama White House has recently asserted that Fox News is the “communications arm of the Republican Party.” Fox News and its supporters are appalled by this, pointing out among other things that Fox News offers both opinion and “hard” news in its programming, and that the two should be distinguished.
Media Matters has released this compilation of clips dating back to January illustrating the attitude of Fox News toward Barack Obama. It appears to me the line between “opinion” and “news” is a bit blurry at Fox. Watch it and decide for yourself:
What do you think? Is Obama justified in mounting a counter-offensive?
I’m sure many of my readers support Fox News. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Fox News claims to be fair and balanced. A Fox News advocate could support this assertion by showing the “balance” of all these attacks on Obama. Can anyone put together a five minute compilation of clips where Fox News personalities compliment Obama and defend some of his policies?
I doubt if anyone is willing to put together a comparable series of clips taken from the ‘other’ major networks that shows their equal bias for President Obama. I don’t follow the ‘news’ enough to know if the clips in the video above are from news segments or from opinion segments. Many of the ‘talking point’ shows on the major networks cannot be listed in the news column. As i watched the clip what I see most are if you want to call them, attacks, on a political philosophy now attacks on a person. Most people, it seems, cannot let go of the person of President Obama and discuss his world and political ideology.
I hope that someone does put together clips from all points of view that everyone could discuss, after all isn’t that what news is supposed to do?
So, since other networks are biased, it’s okay for Fox News to be biased? That doesn’t make any ethical sense. Further, Fox News claims to be “fair and balanced.” If that’s true, we would find as much commentary supporting the Obama administration as condemning it.
I still have to claim a whole lot of ignorance. Who are most of the people on the clip? I live out where I only have a TV antenna. Fox and most of the other outlets I have not watched. Are the Fox people anchors or commentators? Do the clips relate the whole context of their comments or are they taken out of context to reinforce the claim of bias at Fox News? Without really knowing and following the Fox News channel and the others, I can only guess that there are NO shows that are totally ‘fair and balanced’ even on Fox. I do believe however that Fox might make more of an effort to do just that. Personally what I believe is that once ‘The News’ became a viable business what you would call true journalism pretty much ceased to exist in high dollar media outlets. But you write ” If that’s true, we would find as much commentary supporting the Obama administration as condemning it.” It seems to me that the fair and balanced is for news and not commentary. I believe that there has been many reports on the demographics of political party affiliation of employees at the major networks, and I believe they are overwhelmingly Democratic. That means that there is a large number of ‘Left leaning’ commentary out there already. I would absolutely love to be able to go to ANY outlet that would actually present a equally balanced news and commentary department. Alas, there is too much money in controversy.
Your response is interesting. On the one hand, you confess ignorance, even a lack of access to cable news/opinion programming. On the other hand, you “believe that Fox might make more of an effort” to be fair and balanced. On what facts do you base your opinion?
I’m not aware of party affiliation data at any network. It’s beside the point anyway. Fox News claims to be fair and balanced. We don’t need to know what’s going on at other networks to check out that claim.
My response of Fox making more of an effort to be fair and balanced is based on the truth of your implication that they are not. Since I don’t watch them I really don’t know. I rely on others statements. If they are not fair and balanced then they are not. You still haven’t answered the question of if the Fox people in the clip are news anchors making the statements during a news cast or during a commentary. I also do not know, maybe you can direct me to a source, if their fair and balanced claim includes news only or all of their programing content. I really do not know how to research their fair and balanced claim. Over what period of time were all of those statements in the clip supposed to have been made? What percentage of all comments directed at President Obama were the clip statements? There is a lot to look into to say definitively that the are not fair and balance. In the end it is a free country for now. They can claim to be fair and balanced even if they are not,and be Hippocrates of course.
Sorry that I interrupted your post since I don’t really know what I am talking about.
Fox News makes little if any effort to clearly distinguish between the news portion of their network broadcast and the opinion portion. When you get cable TV and watch Fox regularly, you’ll figure that out. About half of what you see in the clips comes from their news programming, and half from the commentary. The clips date to January 20, 2009, as indicated in the video.
Fox News parades the “fair and balanced” slogan across ALL of its programming, both news and commentary. It’s perfectly clear they intend that slogan to apply across the board to all the shows they broadcast.
“What percentage of all comments directed at President Obama were the clip statements?” I can’t parse this question. If you’re asking if Fox News makes any positive statements about Obama and/or left-of-center policies, they make only a small number that I’ve seen.
Hippocrates? Do you mean hypocrites?
http://www.lastingliberty.com has a good article about this today: “Fox News Obama’s Only Friend”. The author makes a great point.