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Fox News Channel controversies

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Fox News Channel
Launched October 7, 1996
Owned by News Corporation
Picture format 480i / HDTV
Slogan "We Report. You Decide";
"Fair and Balanced";
"The Most Powerful Name in News"
Country United States
Language English
Broadcast area United States and International
Headquarters New York, New York, United States
Sister channel(s) Fox Business Network
Fox Broadcasting Company
Website foxnews.com
Availability
Satellite
DirecTV 360
Dish Network 205
SKY Italia 514
Sky Digital 509
Satellite Radio
Sirius 131
XM 121
IPTV over ADSL
Sky Angel Channel 318

Critics and some observers of the Fox News Channel have accused the network of unethical journalistic conduct, particularly regarding an alleged bias favoring the political right and the Republican Party. Fox News has publicly denied such charges.[1]

Contents

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[edit] Accusations of bias

Media watch groups such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)[2] and Media Matters for America[3] have said that Fox News reporting contains conservative editorializing within news stories. Others have referred to the network as "Faux News",[4] "GOP-TV",[5] "Fox Noise Channel",[6], "Fox Nothing Channel" and "Fixed News."[7]

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean has referred to Fox News as a "right-wing propaganda machine,"[8] and several Democratic Party politicians have boycotted events hosted or sponsored by the network.[9][10] In 2007, several major Democratic Party presidential candidates (Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson) boycotted or dropped out of Fox News-sponsored or hosted debates,[9][11][10][12] forcing their cancellation. The Nevada State Democratic Party had originally agreed to co-host a Democratic debate with Fox News Channel in Reno, Nevada. Despite the opposition of groups like MoveOn.org, the party agreed to bring in Fox News in an effort to find "new ways to talk to new people." However, after Fox News chairman Roger Ailes was quoted making a joke involving the similarity of Barack Obama's name to that of the terrorist Osama bin Laden,[13] a firestorm of opposition arose in Democratic circles against the debate. On March 12, 2007, the party announced it had pulled out of the debate, effectively cancelling it.[14]

Fox News Channel's "Fair and Balanced logo", the subject of much controversy.

CNN's Larry King said in a January 17, 2007 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, "They're a Republican brand. They're an extension of the Republican Party with some exceptions, [like] Greta van Susteren. But I don't begrudge them that. [Fox CEO] Roger Ailes is an old friend. They've been nice to me. They've said some very nice things about me. Not [Bill] O'Reilly, but I don't watch him."[15] Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Republican and conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg indicated his belief that Fox News was rightward-leaning: "Look, I think liberals have reasonable gripes with Fox News. It does lean to the right, primarily in its opinion programming but also in its story selection (which is fine by me) and elsewhere. But it's worth remembering that Fox is less a bastion of ideological conservatism and more a populist, tabloidy network."[16] Fox News host Bill O'Reilly has stated that "Fox does tilt right," (although he states this in specific reference to the coverage of the Iraq war, not FNC's coverage in general), but that the network does not "actively campaign or try to help Bush-Cheney."[17][18]

Accuracy in Media has claimed that there was a conflict of interest in Fox News' co-sponsorship of the May 15, 2007 Republican presidential candidates debate, pointing out that Rudy Giuliani's law firm had tackled copyright protection and legislation on the purchase of cable TV lineups for News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, and suggesting that Fox might be biased in favor of Giuliani's candidacy for the Republican Party presidential nomination.[19]

Similar accusations have been levied against Fox News in response to their decision to exclude Texas Representative Ron Paul and California Representative Duncan Hunter from the January 5, 2008 Republican candidate debate.[20] In response, many individuals and organizations petitioned Fox News to reconsider its decision. When Fox refused to change its position and continued to exclude candidates Paul and Hunter, the New Hampshire Republican Party officially announced it would withdraw as a Fox partner in the forum.[21]

Council on Foreign Relations president Leslie H. Gelb has stated in 2002, after he was watching international news obsessively, "I never watch a commercial." "He [then] considered Fox News Channel often to be a more reliable news source for international reporting than CNN or the nightly network news", and that FOX news provides a "fairer picture, a fuller version of the different parts of the arguments" over world affairs. He added that "he makes a distinction between Fox's news coverage and its opinion programs, like The O'Reilly Factor, which he considers biased. But even here, he finds himself drawn to Fox. "CNN's commentary tends to be less biased and less interesting," he said.[22]

Fox News has been the object of satire on sitcoms and sketch comedy programs airing on its sister network, Fox Broadcasting Company. In the episode of Fox's The Simpsons titled "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington", Fox News displays a clear bias towards Krusty the Clown, who is running for Congress as a Republican, during a televised debate; the Democratic candidate, by contrast, has two red horns drawn over his image during the debate and a Soviet flag shown over his shoulder. The anchor moderating the debate also says, "You're watching Fox News, your voice for evil." The ending credits also show a fake Fox News ticker, which includes headlines like, "JFK Posthumously Joins Republican Party" and "Albert Einstein + Brad Pitt = Dick Cheney". Also, in the episode "Yokel Chords", Bart Simpson discusses a dream with his psychatrist in which, "my whole family was just cartoon characters, and that our success had led to some crazy propaganda network called 'Fox News'". Fox News was also lampooned on the now-defunct program MADtv, in which Nicole Parker played an anchor who went to ridiculous and fraudulent extremes to make then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama seem dishonest, such as showing pictures of Obama with a pixelated Hillary Clinton, insinuating that he was having an affair with an anonymous woman. Talkshow host Spike Feresten also began a skit called "Fox News Guy", where he disguised himself as a Fox News reporter to aggravate Obama supporters during his inauguration.

[edit] Ownership and management

  • Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, the owner of Fox News Channel. He has been a subject of controversy and criticism as a result of his substantial influence in both the print and broadcast media. In the United States, he is the publisher of the New York Post newspaper and the magazine of opinion, The Weekly Standard. Accusations against him include the "dumbing down" of news and introducing "mindless vulgarity" in place of genuine journalism, and having his own outlets produce news that serve his own political and financial agendas. According to the BBC website: "To some he is little less than the devil incarnate, to others, the most progressive mover-and-shaker in the media business".[23]
  • CEO Roger Ailes was formerly a media/image consultant for Republican Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. Controversy was generated in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York City, when it was revealed that Roger Ailes was sending political advice via "back channel messages" to the Bush administration through its chief political aide, Karl Rove. According to Bob Woodward, in his book Bush At War, the messages consisted of warnings that the American public would quickly lose support for the Bush administration unless it employed "the harshest measures possible" in response to the 9/11 attacks.
  • George W. Bush's cousin, John Prescott Ellis, was Fox News' projection team manager during the general election of 2000. After speaking numerous times on election night with his cousins George and Jeb,[24] Ellis, at 2:16 AM, reversed Fox News' call for Florida as a state won by Al Gore. Critics allege this was a premature decision, given the impossibly razor-thin margin (officially 537 of 5.9 million votes[25]), which created the "lasting impression that Bush 'won' the White House - and all the legal wrangling down in Florida is just a case of Democratic 'snippiness'."[26] Others note that, by this reasoning, Fox News and the other networks were even more premature in initially calling the state for Gore, a call made while polls were still open, probably depressing voter turnout for Bush. In addition, other networks reversed their decisions and retracted their calls for Gore before Fox News did so.[27]

[edit] Reports, polls, surveys and studies

For more details on this topic, see Media bias.

[edit] Polls and surveys

A poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports during September 2004 found that Fox News was second to CBS as the most politically biased network in the public view. 37% of respondents thought CBS, in the wake of the memogate scandal, was trying to help elect John Kerry, while 34% of respondents said they believed that Fox's goal was to "help elect Bush".[28]

A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed "a striking rise in the politicization of cable TV news audiences . . . This pattern is most apparent with the fast-growing Fox News Channel."[29] Another Pew survey of news consumption found that Fox News has not suffered a decline in credibility with its audience, with one in four (25%) saying they believe all or most of what they see on Fox News Channel, virtually unchanged since Fox was first tested in 2000.[30]

According to the results of a 2006 study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism a survey of 547 journalists, found that FOX was most frequently cited by surveyed journalists as an outlet taking an ideological stance in its coverage, and most identified as advocating conservative political positions,[31] with 56% of national journalists citing Fox News as being especially conservative in its coverage of news. Additionally FOX was viewed as having the highest profile as a conservative news organization; it was cited unprompted by 69% of national journalists.[32]

[edit] Studies and reports

In an academic content analysis of election news, Rasmussen Reports showed that coverage at ABC, CBS, and NBC was more favorable toward Kerry than Bush, while coverage at Fox News Channel were more favorable toward Bush.[33]

The Project on Excellence in Journalism report in 2006[31] showed that 68 percent of Fox cable stories contained personal opinions, as compared to MSNBC at 27 percent and CNN at 4 percent. The "content analysis" portion of their 2005 report also concluded that "Fox was measurably more one-sided than the other networks, and Fox journalists were more opinionated on the air."[34]

A 2007 Pew Research Center poll of viewer political knowledge indicated that Fox News Channel viewers scored 35% in the high-knowledge area, the same as the national average. This was not significantly different than local news, network news and morning news, and was slightly lower than CNN (41%). Viewers of The O'Reilly Factor (51%) scored in the high category along with Rush Limbaugh (50%), NPR (51%), major newspapers (54%), Newshour with Jim Lehrer (53%) The Daily Show (54%) and The Colbert Report (54%).[35]

Research has shown that there is a correlation between the presence of the Fox News Channel in cable markets and increases in Republican votes in those markets.[36]

The "signature political news show" of the Fox News Channel, Special Report with Brit Hume, was alleged to have a strong bias in their choice of guests, overwhelmingly choosing "conservatives" over "non-conservatives" for interviews. The progressive media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) claimed that in a study of a 19 week period from January 2001 to May 2001 the ratio of conservative guests to liberals was 50:6.[37]

The documentary Outfoxed claims that FOX reporters and anchors use the traditional journalistic phrase "some people say" in a very clever way; instead of citing an anonymous source in order to advance a storyline, FOX personalities allegedly use the phrase to inject conservative opinion and commentary into reports. In the film, Media Matters for America president David Brock noted that some shows, like FOX's evening news program, Special Report with Brit Hume, tend to exhibit editorializing attitudes and behavior when on the air.

A study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes,[38] in the Winter 03-04 issue of Political Science Quarterly, reported that viewers of the Fox Network local affiliates or Fox News were more likely than viewers of other news networks to hold three misperceptions:[39]

  • The belief that "Iraq was directly involved in September 11" was held by 33% of CBS viewers and only 24% of Fox viewers, 23% for ABC, 22% for NBC, 21% for CNN and 10% for NPR/PBS
  • 35% of Fox viewers believed that "the majority of people [in the world] favor the U.S. having gone to war" with Iraq. (Compared with 28% for CBS, 27% for ABC, 24% for CNN, 20% for NBC, 5% for NPR/PBS)

In response, Fox News contributor Ann Coulter characterized the PIPA findings as "misperceptions of pointless liberal factoids" and called it a "hoax poll".[40] Bill O'Reilly called the study "absolute crap".[41] Roger Ailes referred to the study as "an old push poll."[42] James Taranto, editor of OpinionJournal.com, the Wall Street Journal's online editorial page, called the poll "pure propaganda."[43] PIPA issued a clarification on October 17, 2003 stating that "The findings were not meant to and cannot be used as a basis for making broad judgments about the general accuracy of the reporting of various networks or the general accuracy of the beliefs of those who get their news from those networks. Only a substantially more comprehensive study could undertake such broad research questions," and that the results of the poll show correlation, but do not prove causation.[44][45]

A study published in November 2005 by Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science at UCLA, comparing political bias from such news outlets as the New York Times, USA Today, the Drudge Report, the Los Angeles Times, and Fox News’ Special Report, concluded that "all of the news outlets we examine, except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times, received scores to the left of the average member of Congress." In particular, Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume had an Americans for Democratic Action rating that was right of the political center. Groseclose used the number of times a host cited a particular think tank on his or her program and compared it with the number of times a member of the U.S. Congress cited a think tank, correlating that with the politician's Americans for Democratic Action rating.[46][47]

Geoff Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley and a National Public Radio commentator, criticized the methodology of the study on his personal blog, and contends that its conclusions are invalid.[48] He points to what he saw as a Groseclose's reliance on interpretations of facts and data that were taken from sources that were not, in his view, credible. Groseclose and Professor Jeff Milyo rebutted, saying Nunberg "shows a gross misunderstanding [of] our statistical method and the actual assumptions upon which it relies".[49]

Mark Liberman, who helped to post Groseclose and Professor Jeff Milyo's rebuttal, later posted how the statistical methods used to calculate this bias poses faults.[50][51] Mark Liberman is a professor of Computer Science and the Director of Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania. Mark concludes his post saying he thinks "that many if not most of the complaints directed against G&M are motivated in part by ideological disagreement -- just as much of the praise for their work is motivated by ideological agreement. It would be nice if there were a less politically fraught body of data on which such modeling exercises could be explored."[50]

A December 2007 study/examination by Robert Lichter of the nonpartisan media watchdog group, the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that Fox News's evaluations of all of the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates combined was 51% positive and 49% negative, while the network's evaluations of the Republican presidential candidates 51% negative and 49% positive. The study, however, did find that Fox's coverage was less negative toward Republican candidates than the coverage of broadcast networks.[52] In addition, FAIR has noted that Lichter himself is a Fox News contributor. Also, on the January 10, 2008 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Lichter stated that he only examined the first half of the Special Report with Brit Hume.[citation needed]

[edit] Internal memos

Fox News executives exert a degree of editorial control over the content of their daily reporting. In the case of Fox News, some of this control comes in the form of daily memos issued by Fox News' Vice President of News, John Moody. In the documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, former Fox News employees are interviewed to better understand the inner workings of Fox News. In memos from the documentary, Moody instructs employees on the approach to be taken on particular stories. Critics of Fox News claim that the instructions on many of the memos indicate a conservative bias. The Washington Post quoted Larry Johnson, a former part-time Fox News commentator, describing the Moody memos as "talking points instructing us what the themes are supposed to be, and God help you if you stray."[53]

Former Fox News producer Charlie Reina explained, "The roots of Fox News Channel's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the Bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it."[54] [55]

Photocopied memos from Fox News executive John Moody instructed the network's on-air anchors and reporters to use positive language when discussing pro-life viewpoints, the Iraq war, and tax cuts, as well as requesting that the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal be put in context with the other violence in the area.[56] Such memos were reproduced for the film Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, which included Moody quotes such as, "The soldiers [seen on FOX in Iraq] in the foreground should be identified as 'sharpshooters,' not 'snipers,' which carries a negative connotation."

Two days after the 2006 election, The Huffington Post reported they had acquired a copy of a leaked internal memo from Mr. Moody that recommended: "... let's be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled congress." Within hours of the memo's publication, Fox News anchor Martha McCallum, went on-air on the program The Live Desk with reports of Iraqi insurgents cheering the firing of Donald Rumsfeld and the results of the 2006 Congressional election.[57][58]

[edit] Talking points from Bush White House

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan in 2003.

While promoting his memoir, What Happened, Scott McClellan, former White House Press Secretary (2003–2006) for President George W. Bush stated on the July 25, 2008 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews that the Bush White House routinely gave talking points to Fox News commentators — but not journalists — in order to influence discourse and content.[59] McClellan stated that these talking points were not issued to provide the public with news, but were issued to provide Fox News commentators with issues and perspectives favorable to the White House and Republican Party.[59]

McClellan later apologized to Fox News commentator, Bill O'Reilly for not responding to Matthews' suggestion that "Bill" or "Sean" received the talking points; McClellan said he had no personal knowledge that O'Reilly ever received the talking points. Furthermore he pointed out "the way a couple of questions were phrased in that interview along with my response left things open to interpretation and I should not have let that happen".[60]

Many people, including MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, have often cited McClellan's interview with Chris Matthews as proof that Fox News is biased.[61] Olbermann, a frequent critic of President Bush as well as Fox News, said on his July 25th, 2008 show:

“ It is one of those things you kind of assumed to have been true all along, and yet you are shocked when the hard confirmation actually shows up on your door. Our fourth story tonight: From the former White House press secretary himself, word that the Bush White House routinely sent, and as far as we know, still sends literal talking points to Fox News for its primetime propagandists. Bill O‘Reilly, Sean Hannity and the others spout, as if ventriloquist dummies, as if they had thought of it themselves, as if they had come to those opinions independently, as if there had been a process that was either fair or balanced.[62] ”

[edit] Wikipedia edits

In August 2007 a new utility, Wikipedia Scanner, revealed that Wikipedia articles relating to Fox News had been edited from IP addresses owned by Fox News,[63] though it was not possible to determine exactly who the editors were. The tool showed that self-referential edits from IP ranges owned by corporations and news agencies were not uncommon.[64] Fox edits received attention in the blogosphere and on some online news sites. Wikipedia articles edited from Fox computers from 2005 through 2007 included Al Franken, Keith Olbermann, Chris Wallace and Brit Hume.[65][66]

[edit] Photo manipulation

Fox News Channel image of Steinburg superimposed on a poodle, and Redicliffe superimposed on the man holding the poodle's leash
Left: Original photo of Jacques Steinberg. Right: Photo aired on Fox News Channel.
Left: Original photo of Steven Reddicliffe. Right: Photo aired on Fox News Channel.

On the July 2, 2008 edition of Fox and Friends, co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy aired photos of New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and Times television editor Steven Reddicliffe that had been crudely doctored, apparently in order to portray the journalists unflatteringly.[67]This occurred during a discussion of a piece in the June 28 edition of The New York Times, which pointed out what Steinberg called "ominous trends" in Fox News' ratings.[68]

According to Media Matters, the photos depict New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg with yellowed teeth, "his nose and chin widened, and his ears made to protrude further". The other image, of Times television editor Steven Reddicliffe, had similar yellow teeth, as well as "dark circles ... under his eyes, and his hairline has been moved back".[69]

During the discussion, Doocy called the Times report, written by Steinberg, a "hit piece" ordered up by Reddicliffe.[68] The broadcast then showed an image of Steinberg's face superimposed over a picture of a poodle, while Reddicliffe's face was superimposed over the man holding the poodle's leash.[68]

Times culture editor Sam Sifton called the Fox photo work "disgusting," and the criticism of the paper's reporting a "specious and meritless claim" while denying that it was a "hit piece".[68]

[edit] Criticisms of pundits

[edit] Notable pundits

  • Business anchor Neil Cavuto, who is also Fox News' vice president of business news and a current member of the network's executive committee, has been described as a "Bush apologist" by critics[70] after conducting an allegedly deferential interview with President George W. Bush. Democratic strategists and politicians boycotted Cavuto's show in 2004 after he claimed, on air, that Bin Laden was rooting for John Kerry in the presidential election, critics contend, in an attempt to create a backlash among voters casting ballots for Bush, against Bin Laden's alleged pick.[71] Cavuto has also received criticism for gratuitous footage and photos of scantily clad supermodels and porn stars on his show, Your World with Neil Cavuto.[72][73]
  • Alan Colmes is touted by Fox as "a hard-hitting liberal",[74] who was used to counter the conservative opinions of his co-host, talk radio personality Sean Hannity, on the now-defunct political debate program Hannity & Colmes. However, he had admitted to USA Today that "I'm quite moderate". He has been characterized by several newspapers as being Sean Hannity's "sidekick".[75] Liberal commentator Al Franken lambasted Colmes in his book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. In the book, Colmes' name is printed in smaller type than all other words. Franken accuses him of refusing to ask tough questions during debates and neglecting to challenge erroneous claims made by Hannity or his guests.[75] In 2008, Colmes announced that he would be leaving the program in January 2009, which led to Hannity becoming the sole host of the show that replaced Hannity & Colmes, simply titled Hannity. This caused critics to further question Fox News' objectivity, given that Colmes was widely cited by Fox News personalities and management as an example of the network's neutrality, and that Hannity's new weeknight show would now more closely resemble his weekend opinion program, Hannity's America. [76]
  • John Gibson, the former host of an afternoon hour of news coverage called The Big Story, was cited as an example of Fox News blurring the lines between objective reporting and opinion/editorial programming. Gibson angered some people immediately after the 2000 presidential election controversy when, during the opinion segment of his show, Gibson said: "Is this a case where knowing the facts actually would be worse than not knowing? I mean, should we burn these ballots, preserve them in amber, or shred them?" and "George Bush is going to be president. And who needs to know that he's not a legitimate president?"[77] In an opinion piece on the Hutton Inquiry decision, Gibson said the BBC had "a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Americanism that was obsessive, irrational and dishonest" and that the BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan, "insisted on air that the Iraqi Army was heroically repulsing an incompetent American Military".[78] In reviewing viewer complaints, Ofcom (the United Kingdom's statutory broadcasting regulator) ruled that Fox News had breached the program code in three areas: "respect for truth", "opportunity to take part", and "personal opinions expressed (in an opinion slot) must not rest upon false evidence". Fox News admitted that Gilligan had not actually said the words that John Gibson appeared to attribute to him; Ofcom rejected the claim that it was intended to be a paraphrase. (See[79]). Gibson has also called Joe Wilson a "liar", claimed that "the far left" is working for Al Qaeda[80] and stated that he wished that Paris had been host to the 2012 Olympic Games, because it would have subjected the city to the threat of terrorism instead of London.[81] Gibson ran a segment on the exchange between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani at the Republican primary debate on the motives of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The majority of the segment was centered around the 9/11 Truth movement; Gibson said that the movement has "infected" many people "including Ron Paul", though Ron Paul has never subscribed to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and believes that Al-Qaeda perpetrated the attacks. Gibson was also harshly criticized when, on his radio program, he repeatedly mocked Jon Stewart's reaction to 9/11 on the Daily Show. Some allege that this incident lead to his dismissal at Fox.
  • Steven Milloy, the commentator for FoxNews.com, has been critical of the science behind global warming and secondhand smoke as a carcinogen. In a February 6, 2006 article in The New Republic, Paul D. Thacker revealed that ExxonMobil had donated $90,000 to two non-profit organizations run out of Milloy's house.[82] In addition, Milloy received almost $100,000 a year from Philip Morris during the time he was arguing that secondhand smoke was not carcinogenic.[83] Milloy's website, junkscience.com, was reviewed and revised by a public relations firm hired by RJR Tobacco.[84] In response to Thacker's disclosure of this conflict of interest, Paul Schur, director of media relations for Fox News, stated that "...Fox News was unaware of Milloy's connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed."[82]
  • Bill O'Reilly, the host of The O'Reilly Factor, has been target of media critics. See also: Criticism of Bill O'Reilly

[edit] Discredited military & counterterrorism editor

[edit] Other criticisms

[edit] Criticism of media coverage

  • Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, a documentary film on Fox News by liberal activist Robert Greenwald, makes allegations of bias in Fox News by interviewing a number of former employees who discuss the network's practices. For example, Frank O'Donnell, identified as a "Fox News producer", says: "We were stunned, because up until that point, we were allowed to do legitimate news. Suddenly, we were ordered from the top to carry [...] Republican, right-wing propaganda", including being told what to say about Ronald Reagan. The network made an official response[86] and claimed that four of the individuals identified as employees of Fox News either were not employees (O'Donnell, e.g., worked for an affiliate over which Fox News claims to have no editorial authority) or had their titles inflated.[87]
  • CNN founder Ted Turner accused Fox News of being "dumbed down" and "propaganda" and equated the network's popularity to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1930's Germany, during a speech to the National Association of Television Program Executives.[88] In response, a Fox News spokesperson said "Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network, and now his mind. We wish him well." The Anti-Defamation League, to whom Turner had apologized in the past for a similar comparison, said Turner is "a recidivist who hasn't learned from his past mistakes."[89]
  • Media watchdog group Media Matters criticized Your World with Neil Cavuto for its focus on soft news stories. The show is targeted for its coverage of missing women, troubled celebrities, and gratuitous footage and photos of scantily clad supermodels and porn stars.[90]
  • The New York Times editorial board criticized Fox News for employing political contributor Liz Trotta, who thought talking about assassinating Democratic Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama was appropriate for television and laughed after saying it.[91]

[edit] Criticism of ethics

  • During the Terri Schiavo case in early 2005, most of the major personalities on Fox News — Sean Hannity (who camped outside of the hospital where Schiavo lay dying after her feeding tube was removed), Brit Hume, Bill O'Reilly, Neil Cavuto, and John Gibson — called for her feeding tube to be reinserted. Progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America (MMFA) criticized Fox for its coverage of the affair,[92] saying that Fox took sides by referring to the affair as "Terri's Fight".[93] It also complained that Fox generally failed to disclose Schindler family spokesman Randall Terry's anti-abortion activism as the head of Operation Rescue. When O'Reilly's stated that "the battle over Terri Schiavo's life came down pretty much along secular-religious lines. Roman Catholics and other right-to-life-based religions generally wanted Ms. Schiavo to live", Media Matters noted that although evangelical Christians had been closely divided on the issue of removing Mrs. Sciavo's feeding tube, both Catholics and non-Evangelical Protestants were overwhelmingly in favor of doing so.[94][95] When Gibson's offering the suggestion that the "political divide" was "Republicans stand for parents' right and life, and Democrats have sided for [a] questionable husband and dying", MMFA noted that in fact, a majority of Republicans also supported removal of the feeding tube.[94][96] When Democrats provided the media with a memo written by staffers of Republican Senator Mel Martinez suggesting ways in which the Republicans could use the issue for political gain, Fox News personalities suggested that Democrats might have forged the memo. Senator Martinez later admitted that someone on his staff had written it,[97] and MMFA complained that Hume did not later mention that he had suggested an alternative possibility.[98][99]
  • Carl Cameron, chief political correspondent of Fox News, authored a bogus "news article" on the Fox News website during October 2004. It contained three fabricated quotes attributed to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. The quotes included: "Women should like me! I do manicures," "Didn't my nails and cuticles look great?" and "I'm metrosexual [Bush's] a cowboy."[citation needed] Fox News retracted the story and apologized, calling it a "jest" that became published through "fatigue and bad judgement, not malice."[100]
  • The network has also drawn repeated criticism for falsely or poorly identifying guests on political programs. On the January 6, 2006 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, two former Congressmen were brought on to discuss the "formula for success for the Democratic Party to win in 2006." One, Jimmy Hayes, was identified in a caption as a Democrat. He had become a Republican in 1995. The other, George Nethercutt Jr., was not identified by party but is also a Republican.[101] Also, during an edition of The O'Reilly Factor, congressman Mark Foley, a Republican in trouble for writing sexually suggestive e-mails and instant messages to underage congressional pages, was misidentified as a Democrat in the onscreen text. Senator Arlen Specter was also mislabeled as a Democrat on Special Report with Brit Hume.[citation needed] Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who won in the 2006 election as an "Independent Democrat" after losing in the Democratic Party primary election, was featured on Hannity's America with the superimposed text under his name indicating that he was a Democrat.[102][103]

[edit] Criticism of individuals

  • Critics of the network contend that Fox specializes in "political sabotage" by putting up moderate-to-conservative "Democrats" as token liberals against more staunchly conservative Republicans. Critics cite the following people as examples of this:
  • Another allegation of Fox's critics is that it sometimes ridicules protesters. For example, during the 2004 Republican National Convention, Bill O'Reilly referred to some of the protesters as "terrorists" (though he added, "most protesters are peaceful").[108][109] Fox News online columnist Mike Straka referred to anti-war protesters at the September 24, 2005 march in Washington, D.C. as "jobless, anti-American, clueless, smelly, stupid traitors" and "protesters from hell".[110][111][112]'
The Fox News report on Malmö was replayed on Swedish television, here on SVT1
  • Iranian-Swedish newspaper commentator Behrang Kianzad wrote in the Expressen newspaper that "there are lies, damned lies and Fox News",[113] in response to a Fox News story about allegedly Muslim violence in the city of Malmö. The report focused on the borough of Rosengård where 2 out of 1000 school students were ethnic Swedes.[114] Kianzad wrote that rock throwing against police, firefighters and ambulance personnel happened "not just in Rosengård and not as a Muslim custom."[113]
  • In August 2006, Serene Sabbagh and Jomana Karadsheh, Jordanian-Arab freelancers who were working for Fox News as producers, resigned from the network, citing its coverage that month of the Israel's conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Their resignation letter read in part: "We can no longer work with a news organization that claims to be fair and balanced when you are so far from that...Not only are you [Fox News] an instrument of the Bush White House, and Israeli propaganda, you are war mongers with no sense of decency, nor professionalism." Sabbagh said, "I was devastated at the way that Fox was handling the coverage from Lebanon in the U.S., and I felt there was bias, the slant, the racist remarks, the use of the word "we" meaning Israel, and it was just unbearable up until basically the massacre at Qana... I switched to Fox News to hear some of their anchors claiming that these little kids that were killed... were human shields used by Hezbollah. And one of the anchors went as far as saying they were planted there by Hezbollah to win support in this war... this is when I decided, me and my colleague Jomana, to hand in our resignation." [4]
  • On January 19, 2007, reports and commentary by Fox News personalities featured an anonymously sourced article in the conservative web magazine Insight that claimed that associates of Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton had discovered that Senator Barack Obama had attended a "Muslim seminary" as a child in Indonesia. The term "Muslim seminary" refers to a specifically-religious form of madrassa (school). It was determined within days that Obama had instead, as he had said in his memoirs, attended first a Catholic and then a modern public elementary school. The latter was, as Obama had written, "predominantly Muslim" (as Indonesia is predominantly Muslim), and not a seminary of any kind.[115][116] On January 31, 2007, the Washington Post suggested that because of FNC's reporting of the Insight article, Obama had "frozen out" the network's reporters and producers while giving interviews to every other major network. After the incident John Moody, a vice president at Fox, wrote to staff: "For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC. The urgent queue is our way of communicating information that is air-worthy. Please adhere to this."[117]
See also: Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008#Coverage of Obama's childhood and heritage
  • In March 2007, the Democratic Party in Nevada pulled out of a planned debate to be hosted by Fox. Its spokesmen cited a joke by Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, which hinged on President George W. Bush confusing the names of Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden, as evidence that Fox News is biased against the party. Fox News chairman David Rhodes responded to the cancellation by saying that the Democratic Party is "owned by MoveOn.org" (which had created a petition against the debate).[118][118]
  • In June 2007, when Louisiana Democratic congressman Bill Jefferson was indicted on corruption, racketeering and bribery charges Fox News ran a video of Michigan Democratic congressman John Conyers, also African-American. Conyers criticized the network for "a history of inappropriate on-air mistakes" and the network's "lackluster" apology (which did not name him),[119] and a second, more specific apology was issued.[120] In November 2006 Fox News had aired footage of then-Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN) while talking about Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).[121]
  • On January 21, 2008, Fox's The Live Desk broadcast a discussion for the XBOX 360 video game Mass Effect, for which author Cooper Lawrence was consulted as a psychology specialist. Lawrence argued that the game was misogynistic and depicted full digital nudity. During the interview, Spike host and video-game journalist Geoff Keighley had Lawrence admit that she had never played the game. On January 26, Cooper apologized and admitted she only heard about Mass Effect a few minutes before the segment and has since seen it played, noting that it was less graphic than episodes of the TV show Lost.[122]
  • On August 13, Fox News interviewed [5] Amanda Kokoeva, a 12 year old girl from San Francisco, and her aunt, Lora Tedeeva-Korevisky both of whom had just returned from South Ossetia. Fox began the interview by emphasising the terrors faced by the 12 year old "when bombs started falling". Invited to tell about the Georgian bombings of South Ossetia, the young girl and her aunt said they were saved by Russians from the bombings. After the girl's aunt spoke at length, for such short personal piece, concerning South Ossetians were being killed by Georgians, Fox News cut from the interview to a commercial break. After the commercial interruption, Fox allowed the aunt an additional 40 seconds to finish her thoughts at which time she started to blame the Georgian government but explicitly distinguished it from the Georgian people [123]. Immediately thereafter, in the last minutes of Studio B, the anchorman stated "as we know, there are gray areas in war". [124][123] CBS also had an interview with this girl before. [125]

[edit] Fox News responds

In June 2004, CEO Roger Ailes responded to some of the criticism with a rebuttal in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal,[126] saying that Fox's critics intentionally confuse opinion shows such as The O'Reilly Factor with regular news coverage. Ailes stated that Fox News has broken stories harmful to Republicans, offering "Fox News is the network that broke George W. Bush's DUI four days before the election" as an example. The DUI story was broken by then-Fox affiliate WPXT in Portland, Maine, although Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron also contributed to the report.

Upon the release of the Robert Greenwald documentary "Outfoxed", Fox News issued a statement[86] denouncing Moveon.org, Greenwald and The New York Times for copyright infringement. Fox dismissed their judgments of former employees featured in the documentary as the partisan views of disgruntled workers who never vocalized concern over any alleged bias while they were employed at the network. Ailes also shrugged off criticisms of the former Fox employees by noting that they worked in Fox affiliates and not at the actual channel itself. Fox News also challenged any news organization that sought to portray Fox as a "problem" with the following proposition: "If they will put out 100 percent of their editorial directions and internal memos, FOX News Channel will publish 100 percent of our editorial directions and internal memos, and let the public decide who is fair. This includes any legitimate cable news network, broadcast network, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post."

Ex-Fox News personality Eric Burns has suggested in an interview that Fox "probably gives voice to more conservatives than the other networks. But not at the expense of liberals." Burns justifies a higher exposure of conservatives by saying that other media often ignore conservatives.[127]








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  127. ^ Eric Burns: Fox News Does Not Air 'Irresponsible Right-Wing Ranting'

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