FOX editorial memos reveal News Channel's inner workings

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

This may be a silly question, but:

Being a corporate entity, can't Fox News basically report whatever they want (or whatever the boss says)?

Well they can and do. My point is that this often comes at the expense of quality reporting (or rather, "consumer value for money" if we're looking at it in those terms) - which again that FCC thing would seem to indicate.

Basically, can they tell outright lies ("the Easter Bunny was responsible for 9/11") or would they get in trouble for that?

Isn't that the purpose of the FCC? Or do they only regulate the frequencies and the "moral content" of what is being transmitted?

Well the corporate side of things certainly plays a role in the selection of what is deemed to be 'newsworthy', and how also it should be presented - but that's generally a framework around which journalists and editors have some creative latitude.

Journalism is predominantly a self-regulating industry - that's kind of what defines the term "free press". A lot of that is done in-house - via an ombudsmen, for example. But there are also professional bodies - like the National Union of Journalists in the UK. The US equivalent I guess would be the Society of Professional Journalists. Kind of like journalism unions - these days you can't really become a news journalist without undergoing some sort of professional training - which includes demonstrating certain standards of ethical behaviour. As I understand it you can be disbarred from those organisations for serious breaches of those codes of conduct, which obviously has career-changing implications.

Not sure if the US has an equivalent to the UK Press Complaints Commission - but as I understand it the rules that pertain to journalists in the US in terms of what can be written or published are not as stringent as they are in Europe. I made the point the other day about defamation & libel - there are legal precedents for it in the US, but winning a libel suit in the US is much more difficult (because the speech is protected under the constitution) than it is in Europe. Again the obvious example is Tom Cruise suing a UK newspaper who reprinted a story from a US publication which suggested he was gay. He won the suit, but he wouldn't have had much of a case in the US.

The FCC as I understand it is more concerned with awarding licenses to ensure that programming meets certain standards of variety of quality - (standards which are pretty ill-defined). It doesn't have any direct power to regulate the content of news journalism.

Edited June 5, 2007 by erekose

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

This may be a silly question, but:

Being a corporate entity, can't Fox News basically report whatever they want (or whatever the boss says)?

Well they can and do. My point is that this often comes at the expense of quality reporting (or rather, "consumer value for money" if we're looking at it in those terms) - which again that FCC thing would seem to indicate.

Basically, can they tell outright lies ("the Easter Bunny was responsible for 9/11") or would they get in trouble for that?

Isn't that the purpose of the FCC? Or do they only regulate the frequencies and the "moral content" of what is being transmitted?

They have to follow all the regular media laws...

Which are...?

Which vary from publication to publication or news service to news service.

[homesick_american 1]

In case anyone wants to discuss the media today

Of course its a given that my dislike of Fox News (and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation) can't be taken on its own merits, Fox being one ####### news channel in a sea of generally bad media.

A lot of this was covered in the Outfoxed documentary.

As if Ted Turner with CNN (Clinton News Network) and MSNBC doesn't do the same with an opposite spin. I find it strange that Fox gets hammered while the left leaning stations get a pass.

Y'know, I've been listening to conservatives perpetuate the myth of the 'liberal' media for a long time and I've seen ZERO proof. You are asserting that CNN leans left. Prove it. Not with links from FreeRepublic.com or the Heritage Foundation, but with UNBIASED hard statistics.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

As far as proving bias in the media the data is far from conclusive. I don’t have links to hand – but generally the research falls is of two types. On the one hand there are surveys that try to expose the political leanings of journalists (independent of what the work they actually produce), and on the other you have content analysis – which looks at the journalism itself. It difficult to quantify in that respect – largely because we’re talking about a fluid medium, and people’s opinions (and indeed the opinions of particular publications) are often not fixed in those ideologies.

With reference to the OP post – it wouldn’t be overly presumptuous to suggest that CNN has a similar thing going on (to Fox) as far as its “top-down” editorial agenda goes.

I get the impression a lot of the time that a lot of people would be happier if people simply wore a badge on their chest to announce their political affiliation, so we wouldn’t have to have these kind of debates. There is a lot of here-say when it comes to the media. It bothers me for instance, that Bill O’Reilly (and others) consistently characterize people who disagree with them as “hard-left”. Hard-left to me is suggestive of communism, something I honestly don’t see. Rosie O’Donnell might say stupid and unsubstantiated rubbish, but what is it about that those comments that makes them “hard-left”, rather than simply ignorant and stupid?

[GaryC 7]

In case anyone wants to discuss the media today

Of course its a given that my dislike of Fox News (and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation) can't be taken on its own merits, Fox being one ####### news channel in a sea of generally bad media.

A lot of this was covered in the Outfoxed documentary.

As if Ted Turner with CNN (Clinton News Network) and MSNBC doesn't do the same with an opposite spin. I find it strange that Fox gets hammered while the left leaning stations get a pass.

Y'know, I've been listening to conservatives perpetuate the myth of the 'liberal' media for a long time and I've seen ZERO proof. You are asserting that CNN leans left. Prove it. Not with links from FreeRepublic.com or the Heritage Foundation, but with UNBIASED hard statistics.

I am sure your going to shoot this down and I really don't know why I bother but this seems unbiased. Feel free to do your usual demagoguing.

Date: December 14, 2005

Contact: Meg Sullivan ( msullivan@support.ucla.edu )

Phone: 310-825-1046

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.

"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren't centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."

The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.

An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS' "Evening News" and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.

Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC's "World News Tonight," NBC's "Nightly News," USA Today, NBC's "Today Show," Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR's "Morning Edition," CBS' "Early Show" and The Washington Post.

Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.

Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center.

"One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites," said Groseclose. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media."

Yet another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom relates to National Public Radio, often cited by conservatives as an egregious example of a liberal news outlet. But according to the UCLA-University of Missouri study, it ranked eighth most liberal of the 20 that the study examined.

"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," Groseclose said. "Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post's. If anything, government‑funded outlets in our sample have a slightly lower average ADA score (61), than the private outlets in our sample (62.8)."

The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.

"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.

The results break new ground.

"Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers," Groseclose said. "Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians."

-UCLA-

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

In case anyone wants to discuss the media today

Of course its a given that my dislike of Fox News (and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation) can't be taken on its own merits, Fox being one ####### news channel in a sea of generally bad media.

A lot of this was covered in the Outfoxed documentary.

As if Ted Turner with CNN (Clinton News Network) and MSNBC doesn't do the same with an opposite spin. I find it strange that Fox gets hammered while the left leaning stations get a pass.

Y'know, I've been listening to conservatives perpetuate the myth of the 'liberal' media for a long time and I've seen ZERO proof. You are asserting that CNN leans left. Prove it. Not with links from FreeRepublic.com or the Heritage Foundation, but with UNBIASED hard statistics.

I am sure your going to shoot this down and I really don't know why I bother but this seems unbiased. Feel free to do your usual demagoguing.

Date: December 14, 2005

Contact: Meg Sullivan ( msullivan@support.ucla.edu )

Phone: 310-825-1046

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.

"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren't centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."

The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.

An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS' "Evening News" and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.

Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC's "World News Tonight," NBC's "Nightly News," USA Today, NBC's "Today Show," Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR's "Morning Edition," CBS' "Early Show" and The Washington Post.

Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.

Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center.

"One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites," said Groseclose. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media."

Yet another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom relates to National Public Radio, often cited by conservatives as an egregious example of a liberal news outlet. But according to the UCLA-University of Missouri study, it ranked eighth most liberal of the 20 that the study examined.

"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," Groseclose said. "Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post's. If anything, government‑funded outlets in our sample have a slightly lower average ADA score (61), than the private outlets in our sample (62.8)."

The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.

"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.

The results break new ground.

"Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers," Groseclose said. "Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians."

-UCLA-

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

Not to split hairs here but the question posed was with regards to your assertion that CNN is "left-leaning". The article you posted only directly mentions one piece of CNN's news programming, describing it as centrist.

[GaryC 7]

Not to split hairs here but the question posed was with regards to your assertion that CNN is "left-leaning". The article you posted only directly mentions one piece of CNN's news programming, describing it as centrist.

Yeah I know. I used CNN as an example. But my point was the media in general. If you look at the Mathews show it is as left as you get. But I suppose that can be called a opinion show like the Hannety show on Fox. Just from my own observations of both Fox and CNN if you watch the hard news portion of the channels the story selection and frequency of stories, CNN tends to hammer at the stories that look bad for the right. I will admit that Fox does the same thing in the opposite way.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Not to split hairs here but the question posed was with regards to your assertion that CNN is "left-leaning". The article you posted only directly mentions one piece of CNN's news programming, describing it as centrist.

Yeah I know. I used CNN as an example. But my point was the media in general. If you look at the Mathews show it is as left as you get. But I suppose that can be called a opinion show like the Hannety show on Fox. Just from my own observations of both Fox and CNN if you watch the hard news portion of the channels the story selection and frequency of stories, CNN tends to hammer at the stories that look bad for the right. I will admit that Fox does the same thing in the opposite way.

My problem with this issue is that is as politicised as it can get. There is a lot wrong with our media - as I suggested, corporate influence being one of the biggest offenders. Its one of the reasons our news media lacks genuine diversity and why editorialising is able to creep into actual reporting.

The tendency is to approach this as a partisan issue - that as long as 2 diametrically opposed sides of same debate are presented we have 'balance'. I don't think that's the case at all.

[Boiler 45,482]

Proof,

Well you can just go and look, all my local rags have web sites

Daily Camera

Denver Post/Rocky Mountain News

When I was in Mexico, there seemed to be a broad spread of the written media and it seemed to be of a much higher Journalistic standard.

Canada, no idea.

So not a North American thing.

[Dan J 277]

I've seen news sorces that do a pretty good job covering both sides called left or right leaning, simply because they give the other side a voice. Some people only want to hear news and ideas that match thier political leanings.

[homesick_american 1]

I am sure your going to shoot this down and I really don't know why I bother but this seems unbiased. Feel free to do your usual demagoguing.

You guessed correctly. I wanted you to tell me in your own words. I am perfectly capable of using Google.

[GaryC 7]

I am sure your going to shoot this down and I really don't know why I bother but this seems unbiased. Feel free to do your usual demagoguing.

You guessed correctly. I wanted you to tell me in your own words. I am perfectly capable of using Google.

No you didn't. You wanted me to "prove" it with hard facts from an un-biased source. Your memory is pretty short.

Y'know, I've been listening to conservatives perpetuate the myth of the 'liberal' media for a long time and I've seen ZERO proof. You are asserting that CNN leans left. Prove it. Not with links from FreeRepublic.com or the Heritage Foundation, but with UNBIASED hard statistics.

[Heracles 417]

If I'm singling Fox out its because I see it as representative of corporatised mass media, though it stands to reason that it isn't the only one.

We need more reliable news sources such as blogs and John Stewart..

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

If I'm singling Fox out its because I see it as representative of corporatised mass media, though it stands to reason that it isn't the only one.

We need more reliable news sources such as blogs and John Stewart..

Actually its not not just the sources themselves but over-reliance that is the problem.

[homesick_american 1]

I am sure your going to shoot this down and I really don't know why I bother but this seems unbiased. Feel free to do your usual demagoguing.

You guessed correctly. I wanted you to tell me in your own words. I am perfectly capable of using Google.

No you didn't. You wanted me to "prove" it with hard facts from an un-biased source. Your memory is pretty short.

Do you think what you provided me in any way answers my original question? I expected you to at least tell me WHY what you posted proved your point but you did not even do that.