Fox News

The Fox News Channel (FNC) is a cable news channel owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal; it is considered by many as a quasi-arm of the Republican party or at least the right wing movement.

Surveys have found that Fox News viewers have more misconceptions than those who get their news from other media outlets.

History

FNC was launched in October 1996 and, according to Fox, as of August 2003 "has over 80 million subscribers throughout the United States. This number is up from 13 million subscribers at the time of the network's initial inception."

"From the time of its launch until the present, FNC has been dedicated to presenting news in what it believes to be an unbiased fashion, eschewing ideological or political affiliation and allowing the viewer to reach his or her own conclusions about the news. FNC was created as a specific alternative to what its founders perceived as a liberal bias in the American media," FNC stated in its statement of claim against Al Franken and Penguin. (See below for more details on the legal suit.)

Since 1997, the statement said, FNC has spent $61 million "promoting and advertising its brand".

"FNC's balanced approach to reporting the news has become extremely popular and FNC is now the most watched twenty-four-hour news network in the nation. FNC regularly scores better ratings than do its chief competitors, MSNBC and CNN. Indeed, during the 2003 war in Iraq, FNC was the most watched cable news source for up-to-the-minute news," FNC stated.

"Fair and balanced" slogan a misnomer

Calling your network "fair and balanced" does not make you fair and balanced, as Media Matters and Newshounds have demonstrated through their analysis of bias at Fox.

Guest selection

Fox News Channel promotes itself under the slogan "fair and balanced", but examinations of the channel's guest selection have found notable imbalances towards Republicans and conservatives. In 2001, media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) studied the guestlist of FNC's flagship news program, Special Report, it found that Republicans made up 89 percent of Fox News' partisan guests, outnumbering Democrats 50 to 6. Avowed conservatives made up 71 percent of guests. When liberal guests do appear they are usually outnumbered by 2 to 3 to even 4 to one. The host usually frames the topic or introduction to the topic in an extreme conservative partisan manner, according to FAIR. The very topics selected by Fox News show a desire to promote a conservative agenda: Fox has also a history of promoting the "Tea Party" rallies and correspondents have been filmed to lead crowds at these rallies in chants.

Ties to Republicans

In late 2002, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes confirmed the allegation in Bob Woodward's book Bush at War that he had sent a note to Karl Rove in the Bush White House suggesting policies to be adopted in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Woodward described the note as advocating Bush take "the harshest measures possible" in order to maintain the support of the American public. Ailes said the note was not political advice but a message sent "as a human being and a citizen", and denied that he used the word "harsh" or "harshly".

Ailes attributes criticism of the political slant of Fox News to envy at its success. "They hate the idea that there is a huge niche for fair and balanced news," Ailes said. "We're not programming to conservatives. We're just not eliminating their point of view," he told the New York Daily News.

It has been reported that Rupert Murdoch has expressed some embarrassment about the extreme ideological bias of Fox News.

Fox News vs. Obama Administration

A public feud between the Obama administration and Fox News began with former White House communications director Anita Dunn claiming that the news organization “often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party" (see October 11, 2009 interview on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” here). Comments by top Obama officials continued throughout the month of October with White House senior adviser David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel criticizing Fox News as “not really news".

The White House went so far as to post a “reality check” [1] on its website, refuting various claims made by Fox talk show host Glenn Beck regarding the failure to secure the 2016 Summer Olympics bid for Chicago. Similarly, a link to a truth-o-meter debunking even more Fox News false claims can be found at the bottom of the page.

In a sign that relations between the White House and Fox News are thawing, President Obama granted an extended interview to Fox senior White House correspondent Major Garrett, covering a broad range of topics on Special Report with Bret Baier on November 17, 2009.

Newsroom memos instruct bias

Joe Muto's Experience

On May 29, 2013 Salon released an excerpt from Joe Muto's book, An Atheist in the FOXhole, detailing his eight-year experience working for the Fox News channel. In this first-hand account, Muto gives insight into the corporation's power structure and control over the content and guests allowed on each news show. He explains how Fox employs a top-down method of editorial control, with the "Second Floor" (executives) implementing checks and balances to ensure no comments are out of line with the right-wing political ideology of the network. An example he gives is how every Fox anchor has to use to term "left-wing Politico" when referencing the news organization, and all Politico reporters are banned from appearing on Fox news shows. The banning of Politico and required political label resulted from an undisclosed conflict between chief executive officer Rupert Murdoch and the organization.

Joe Muto discusses the balance of power between news anchors and management, focusing on Bill O'Reilly and the production of his news show The O'Reilly Factor. According to Muto, O'Reilly would at times be forced to modify his show's content, the conversation over which would inevitably be followed with a string of loud invectives.

Source: Former Producer Charlie Reina

An email sent to Jim Romenesko's for posting on the message board of the journalism training center, The Poynter Institute, by former Fox News producer Charlie Reina, described the Fox newsroom as being permeated by bias:

"the Memo is the Bible"

"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."

Memo history

"The Memo was born with the Bush administration, early in 2001, and, intentionally or not, has ensured that the administration's point of view consistently comes across on FNC. This year, of course, the war in Iraq became a constant subject of The Memo. But along with the obvious - information on who is where and what they'll be covering - there have been subtle hints as to the tone of the anchors' copy."

Iraq memo examples

"For instance, from the March 20th memo: "There is something utterly incomprehensible about Kofi Annan's remarks in which he allows that his thoughts are 'with the Iraqi people'. One could ask where those thoughts were during the 23 years Saddam Hussein was brutalizing those same Iraqis. Food for thought." Can there be any doubt that the memo was offering not only "food for thought", but a direction for the FNC writers and anchors to go? Especially after describing the U.N. Secretary General's remarks as "utterly incomprehensible"?"

"The sad truth is, such subtlety is often all it takes to send Fox's newsroom personnel into action - or inaction, as the case may be. One day this past spring, just after the U.S. invaded Iraq, The Memo warned us that anti-war protesters would be 'whining' about U.S. bombs killing Iraqi civilians, and suggested they could tell that to the families of American soldiers dying there. Editing copy that morning, I was not surprised when an eager young producer killed a correspondent's report on the day's fighting - simply because it included a brief shot of children in an Iraqi hospital."

2009, Climate change: never admit the science is clear

During the climate talks in 2009, Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon sent an email instructing that speakers "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts.",

Fox aim: get management's view on air

"These [memo examples]are not isolated incidents at Fox News Channel, where virtually no one of authority in the newsroom makes a move unmeasured against management's politics, actual or perceived. At the Fair and Balanced network, everyone knows management's point of view, and, in case they're not sure how to get it on air, The Memo is there to remind them."

Other behind-the-scenes "bias" anecdotes

In a subsequent interview with Tim Greive at Salon, Reina expanded on his brief initial note to Romenesko and explained how the bias of Fox management permeated the newsroom.

Environment

Asked for further examples, Reina described a story he worked on. "It was, I would say, about three years ago. I was assigned to do a special on the environment, some issue involving pollution. When my boss and I talked as to what this thing was all about, what they were looking for, he said to me: 'You understand, you know, it's not going to come out the pro-environmental side.' And I said, 'It will come out however it comes out.' And he said, 'You can obviously give both sides, but just make sure that the pro-environmentalists don't get the last word,' he said." Reina declined to do the story.

Middle East

Pressed for further examples, he told Grieve of one affecting coverage of the Middle East. "I'll give you another example from that memo. When the Palestinian suicide bombings started last year, shortly after they started, one of the memos came down and suggested, 'Wouldn't it be better if we used 'homicide bombing' because the word 'suicide' puts the focus on and memorializes the perpetrator rather than the victims?' OK, never mind the fact that any bombing that kills is a homicide bombing. What would you call a suicide bombing where the perpetrator isn't killed? An intended suicidal homicide bombing? It got ridiculous. It may be ridiculous, but if you watch Fox now, you'll frequently hear suicide bombings described as 'homicide bombings,' right? ," he said.

"I'll tell you, it's interesting. On that same day [that Fox management distributed a memo suggesting suicide bombings be called 'homicide bombings'], the White House had made the same suggestion -- well, the Bush administration, whether it was the White House or the Pentagon or whatever. That's the background to it. By the next day, enough people [at Fox] were saying, 'What about this?' So the next day's memo kind of reluctantly said, 'Well, you could use either one.' But by then, everyone -- and again, we're talking about young people who don't have any perspective on this; all they know is that you do what they're told -- they know what management's feeling about this is. So ... it's 'homicide bombings.' And that's the beginnings of a new P.C," he said.

Source: Matt Gross

Matt Gross, who left Fox News in March 2001 after working as a web journalist and editor, wrote to Romenesko about Reina's note:,

Content tailored to angry middle aged white men, facts didn't matter

"Let me just say that the right-wing bias was there in the newsroom, up-front and obvious, from the day a certain executive editor was sent down from the channel to bring us in line with their coverage. His first directive to us: Seek out stories that cater to angry, middle-aged white men who listen to talk radio and yell at their televisions. (Oh, how I'd love to stick quotation marks around what is nearly a direct quote.)"

"To me, FNC reporters' laziness was the worst part of the bias. It wasn't that they were toeing some political line (though of course they were; see the embarrassing series on property rights from 2000), it was that the facts of a story just didn't matter at all. The idea was to get those viewers out of their seats, screaming at the TV, the politicians, the liberals -- whoever -- simply by running a provocative story," he wrote in October 2003.

Retaliation against reporters

2004 Blackisting Fox-critical reporters

In July 2004, an article by Alex Ben Block in TV Week revealed that FNC's media relations department has adopted the practice of blacklisting journalists critical of the network. Included on the blacklist are David Bauder, an AP TV reporter who offended FNC by writing on the departure of Paula Zahn to CNN.

Block quoted FNC's media minder, Irena Briganti, stating "Why we're not dealing with him is that he treated us completely unfairly ... He took a story when we were just doing our job, being a resource, and made (the Fox publicist) a part of the story."

Others on the blacklist include Mike James, the editor of TV news industry website NewsBlue (who called a FNC anchor a "bonehead") and Baltimore Sun reporter David Folkenflik, for reporting that Geraldo Rivera had claimed that he was at a battle in Afghanistan when he wasn't.

"You know, everyone tries to hold us accountable. The reporters should be held accountable for what they do. A lot of media relations people won't do that. Well, we do," FNC flack Robert Zimmerman told TV Week. [2]

1998 Firing of Akre and WIlson over reporting critical of Monsanto

In 1998, a Fox station in Tampa, Florida fired investigative reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson over a dispute involving their reporting on the Monsanto company's marketing of genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone.[3]

Fox and the public

Public perceptions of Fox

In September 2009, the Pew Research Center published a report regarding the public's assessment of the accuracy of news stories. The report found that partisan differences in views of Fox News have increased substantially since 2007. In 2009, a large majority of Republicans view Fox News positively (72%) compared with just 43% of Democrats; 55% of all viewers shared this opinion. In 2007, 73% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats viewed Fox News favorably. However, Fox News had the highest unfavorable rating of all national outlets studied at 25% of all viewers. [4]

In January 2010, Public Policy Polling reported that Fox News was the most trusted news source with 49% of respondents stating that they trusted Fox News. According to the poll, Fox News also scored the lowest level of distrust with 37%. The report found a lot of political polarization in which news outlets people trust: 74% of Republicans polled trusted Fox News, but no more than 23% trusted any of the other four sources (ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC). Conversely, a majority Democrats trust all of ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC while only 30% had faith in Fox News. [5]

Fox audience comprehension

2003 U.Md study - Fox watchers more misinformed on Iraq War

A year-long study by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)[6] reported that Americans who relied on the Fox News Channel for their coverage of the Iraq war were the most likely to believe misinformation about the war, whatever their political affiliation may be. Those mistaken facts, the study found, increased viewers' support for the war.

The study found that, in general, people who watched Fox News were, more than for other sources, convinced of several untrue propositions which were actively promoted by the Bush administration and the cheerleading media led by Fox, in rallying support for the invasion of Iraq:

(percentages are of all poll respondents, not just Fox watchers)

• Fifty-seven percent believed the falsity that Iraq gave substantial support to Al-Qaida, or was directly involved in the September 11 attacks (48% after invasion).
• Sixty-nine percent believed the falsity that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 attacks.
• Twenty-two percent believed the falsity that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. (Twenty-one percent believed that chem/bio weapons had actually been used against U.S. soldiers in Iraq during 2003)

In the composite analysis of the PIPA study, 80 percent of Fox News watchers had one of more of these misperceptions, in contrast to 71 percent for CBS and 27 percent who tuned to NPR/PBS.

As the Washington Post reported[7], "The fair and balanced folks at Fox, the survey concludes, were 'the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions.' Eighty percent of Fox viewers believed at least one of these un-facts; 45 percent believed all three."

As AlterNet reported, "For each of the three misperceptions, the study found enormous differences between the viewers of Fox, who held the most misperceptions, and NPR/PBS, who held the fewest by far. Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers. All the other media fell in between."[8]

PEJ 2005: Fox most one-sided

The Project for Excellence in Journalism's "State of the News Media 2005" concluded that Fox was "the most one-sided of all major news outlets." On Iraq, 25 percent of 2,000 stories analyzed were negative and 20 percent were positive. "Fox News Channel was twice as likely to be positive than negative, while CNN and MSNBC were evenhanded." Also, "with the exception of Republicans who prefer Fox News," Americans don't seek out news sources that reinforce their beliefs.[9]

Actions

Instances of questionable coverage

Saddamathon upon capture

After the capture of Saddam Hussein, Dale Steinreich of the Ludwig von Mises Institute noted how Fox had chosen to "trumpet the capture as ex post validation of the coalition's invasion. Since Sunday December 14, 2003, FNC has been almost one continuous Saddamathon with the now-famous footage of the latex-gloved frisker searching Saddam triumphantly showing on the channel almost every hour on the hour." [10]

Climate change and "Climategate"

On December 15, 2010, MediaMatters released a Dec. 8, 2009 e-mail sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon stating "we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies." The email was sent less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler reported on-air that the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record.”

That night’s Special Report with Bret Baier – Fox’s flagship news program — featured another report by Goler on the Copenhagen conference. Anchor Bret Baier introduced the report by saying that as “‘climategate-fueled skeptics continued to impugn global warming science, researchers today issued new and even more dire warnings about the possible effects of a warmer planet.” Goler’s report featured a clip of Michel Jarraud of the World Meteorological Association explaining the recent finding that 2000-2009 “is likely to be the warmest on the record.” Appearing to echo Sammon’s orders, Goler immediately followed this by saying that climate skeptics "say the recordkeeping began about the time a cold period was ending in the mid 1800s and what looks like an increase may just be part of a longer cycle.” After running a clip of American Enterprise Institute scholar Kenneth Green questioning the “historical context” of the WMO’s climate findings, Goler then brought up the climategate emails, saying the "e-mails cast doubt on the basic scientific message."

Later that night, on the same Special Report broadcast, correspondent James Rosen advanced the wildly misleading claim that climate scientists “destroyed more than 150 years worth of raw climate data.” A month after Sammon sent his memo, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies released data confirming that 2009 was the second warmest year on record and marked the end of the warmest decade on record. Special Report never mentioned the NASA report.

Atheist bashing

FNC shows such as "Fox and Friends" very often discuss issues on church/state, atheists, atheism. What they usually dont' do ironically, is feature many atheist guests. Bill O'Reilly has stated that a humanist billboard that says, "No God, No problem", was filthy. The billboard was a fun loving/catchy slogan that was by no means whatsoever critical of religion and was just a general promotion of humanists and humanism.

Wikipedia edits

On August 16, 2007 the blog network web site http://wired.blog.com, on a page titled Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs, carried an item titled Fox removes smoking warning. Someone monitoring Wikipedia scanner, a tool that records the IP addresses of people performing Wikipedia edits, had found that someone at the Fox Channel had removed a warning on the dangers of smoking by Keith Olbermann and altered the context of the article "to make Olbermann appear as an opportunistic and crass."[11][12]

Reaction to criticism: threats to sue

Fox has a thin skin when it come to criticism:

The Simpsons, 2003

• In October 2003 the creator of The Simpsons, Matt Groening, revealed that Fox News had threatened to sue Fox Entertainment - which makes the show - over the satirical use of rolling ticker lines on the screen. "Pointless news crawls up 37 per cent... Do Democrats cause cancer? Find out at foxnews.com... Rupert Murdoch: Terrific dancer... Dow down 5,000 points... Study: 92 per cent of Democrats are gay... JFK posthumously joins Republican Party... Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple...," read the ticker on the program that sparked the threat. "Fox said they would sue the show and we called their bluff because we didn't think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. We got away with it.... But now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls [tickers] on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news," Groening told National Public Radio. Fox denied that it threatened legal action. [13]

Faux News

• Fox has threatened legal action against the Faux News Channel, which sells a parody T-shirt that carries the logo, "Faux News: We Distort, You Comply."

Al Franken's book

• Fox's "fair and balanced" motto is parodied in satirist Al Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Fox responded with a lawsuit that claimed that his use of the phrase "fair and balanced" infringed upon the company's trademark, and that photos of Bill O'Reilly should not be used on the cover. [14] U.S. District Judge Denny Chin dismissed the Fox claim:

"There are hard cases and there are easy cases. This is an easy case in my view and wholly without merit, both factually and legally.... Parody is a form of artistic expression protected by the First Amendment and the keystone of parody is imitation.... It is ironic that a media company, which should be seeking to protect the First Amendment, is seeking to undermine it by claiming a monopoly on the phrase "Fair and Balanced." "[15]

Personnel

• Fox chairman Roger Ailes is a longtime Republican political operative with ties to the presidential administrations of Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush. While serving as head of Fox, Ailes also gave political advice to the George W. Bush administration.
• Brit Hume is the host of Fox's flagship news program, Special Report.
• Sean Hannity serves as another conservative Fox pundit.[16]
• Steven J. Milloy, who runs the "Junk Science Home Page", also writes a "junk science" column for Fox.[17]
• Oliver North, one of the key players in the Iran-Contra affair, has hosted "War Stories with Oliver North" on Fox and also participated as one of the network's "embedded" reporters during the 2003 war in Iraq.
• Bill O'Reilly hosts a program called The O'Reilly Factor, which calls itself a "no-spin zone."
• Geraldo Rivera works as a Fox correspondent.
• John Podhoretz is a Fox contributor.
• Tony Snow, host of his own Fox talk show, was appointed White House Press Secretary April 26, 2006

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• Proctor & Gamble
• David Hunt
• Meat & Dairy industry
• Monsanto

Case studies

• Monsanto and Fox: Partners in Censorship
• Fired Fox-TV Journalists Win Goldman Environmental Prize
• Fox News fabricates John Kerry quote

External resources

• Fox News
• Tim Dickinson (2011-05-25). How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory. Rolling Stone. Retrieved on 2011-05-28.

External articles

2010-present

• Joe Muto, I was a liberal mole at Fox News: From Bill O’Reilly to Roger Ailes, here’s all the inside dope, Salon, May 29, 2013.

2005-2009

• SilentPatriot, "Conservative Comedy Show: So bad it’s hilarious," Crooks and Liars, February 14, 2007.
• "Seven Things That Are Horribly Wrong with 'The Half-Hour News Hour'," Range Life Blog, February 15, 2007.

• Matea Gold, "Fox News Displays a Green Side: With the help of Laura David, the top-rated news network will air a special report on global warming", Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2005.
• Farhad Manjoo, "Katrina according to Fox: "There are a lot of good stories out there" on the right-wing cable channel. And did we mention President Bush is pouring out relief?", Salon, September 3, 2005.
• "Journalist Q&A: David Clark", PR Week, August 15, 2005. (Sub req'd).
• "Fox creates Buenos Aires PR team, PR Week", June 3 2005. (Sub req'd).
• Project for Excellence in Journalism, The State of the News Media 2005, March 2005.
• "Study Finds No Media Bias on War, Hits Fox News as Most One-Sided", Editor & Publisher, March 13, 2005.
• Jarrett Murphy, "For Fox, Money Isn't Everything", Village Voice, February 17, 2005.

2000-2004

• "Fox News Blacklists journalists, Says TV Week", O'Dwyers PR Daily, July 28, 2004.
• Tim Grieve, "Fox News: The inside story", Salon, October 31, 2003.
• Matt Gross, "The right-wing bias was up-front and obvious", Poynter Forum, October 31, 2003.
• Charlie Reina, "The Fox News Memo", Poynter Forum, October 30, 2003.
• Ciar Byrne, "Simpsons parody upset Fox News, says Groening, Guardian Unlimited, October 29, 2003.
• PIPA study verbatim (PDF)
• Alternet summary of the PIPA study (dead link as of 2011-05)
• Washington Post reports on the PIPA study (dead link as of 2011-05)

• Phil Hirschkorn, "Fox News Loses Attempt to Block Satirist's Book", CNN, August 22, 2003
• By Patricia Hurtado, "Fox Blocked in Suit Against Al Franken's Book", New York Newsday, August 22, 2003.

• Fox News Network, "Complaint against Penguin Group & Alan S. Franken", August 7, 2003.
• Dale Steinreich, "Fibbing It Up at Fox," (June 13, 2003) details some of the errors, bias and propaganda aired on Fox News regarding weapons of mass destruction and other topics during the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

• Stephen Battaglio, "How Fox does it: Flash (or fluff) helped channel win news crown", New York Daily News, January 15, 2003.

• Bill Carter and Jim Guttenberg, "Fox News Head Sent a Policy Note to Bush", New York Times, November 19, 2002.

• Seth Ackerman, "The Most Biased Name in News: Fox News Channel's extraordinary right-wing tilt", Extra!, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, July/August 2001
• Steve Rendall, "Fox's Slanted Sources", Extra!, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, July/August 2001

1990-1999

• Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, "Monsanto and Fox: Partners in Censorship, PR Watch, 2nd Quarter 1998.

Wikipedia also has an article on Fox News. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.