A professor of journalism at West Liberty University recently banned her students from using FOX News as a source because it’s “biased;” she wrote that it “makes her cringe” and she’d “almost rather you print off an article from the Onion.” Apparently, after public pressure, she’s “since changed her stance and allowed students to use all academic sources.”
My question for the Teeming Millions: Is FOX News reliable enough to be used as a source in an academic paper by undergrad college students?
It’s a great source if you’re taking a course on Propaganda. 
As long as you treat everything Fox puts out as editorial, you don’t have a problem. You could certainly attempt to cite them as a “factual” source, but then your argument would fall apart in the face of contrary factual sources with professional methodology and a smidgen of journalistic integrity.
But of course students should be “allowed” to cite Fox the way they should be allowed to cite the Bible in a science class. You can’t stop somebody who is working really, really hard for that 'F."
For full disclosure, I am in Canada and have never watched Fox News so most of what I know about the channel is what has been said on this forum.
I’d imagine that it would be reliable enough if care was taken to ensure you were isolating facts reported. It is my understanding that the main issue with Fox News is the interweaving of opinion and fact throughout most of their broadcast versus Fox News actually reporting incorrect facts (except of course the political affiliation of whichever republican is in the hot seat at the moment).
I think it would be a good exercise to have the students watch Fox News, come away with their impressions and then watch again to see if those impressions are backed by actual reported facts or if it is something created by the opinions expressed.
I would be very skeptical of anything purported to be fact to be used for supporting a fact-based article. For example, if one is attempting to show dissent in the scientific community on the topic of global warming, i wouldn’t recommend quoting Bill O’Reilly’s show directly, you could cite CEI’s “research” directly. Spoiler alert, CEI is a think tank funded by the oil industry.
If however, one wanted to examine the gap between opposing viewpoints in American “journalism,” (and i imagine this would be fascinating to an outsider), one could compare/contrast the difference between the way O’Reilly at FOX and Rachel Maddow at MSNBC cover the same story.
Or maybe Glen Beck vs. Keith Olberman on the healthcare reform debate… A case study on American dysfunctionality?
Why would a student cite something from a TV show on an academic paper (that wasn’t specifically about TV shows)? When would ‘$News_show said that…’ be a valid factual cite?
It is somewhat unfair to disallow the use of Fox News because of bias. All media outlets are biased. The reason not to use Fox is that they are dishonest, intentionally disseminating false information, in coordination with a particular political party.
Fox as a source of what? Cooties?
Didn’t read the article, but I assume they are using Fox’s web site, not the TV show. Could be wrong about that.
Ok, I’ll be the decenter here and argue that the teacher was wrong about a knee jerk reaction to Fox news. What she should have said was that no editorials could be used from ANY source (including, of course, Fox), and perhaps that students would need to corroborate any assertion with at least 2 independent sources.
I don’t read Fox, nor watch the TV news show, but my understanding is that if we are talking about straight news, it’s as accurate as anyone else. If we are talking about editorials or opinion pieces, then it’s obviously skewed pretty highly…but then, IMHO, so are most of the other news web sites and TV shows, including the one’s I generally read (such as CNN and BBC).
The linked article makes it appear that the first two instructions for completing a “politics journal assignment” were:
It does not specifically say what a “politics journal assignment” is. So I am going to take a guess. Maybe it is something like “keep track of what the candidates are saying at campaign stops” or “document how the candidates are spinning the issues” or something of that nature.
Maybe if this were a full-time doctoral program, you could expect the students to go follow the candidates around the country and take notes themselves, but for a typical undergraduate class, the students are probably going to have to rely on secondary sources. They could rely on the candidates’ web sites, I suppose. But these won’t always give the full story (and probably won’t mention any flubs the candidate made and will mention the opponent’s flubs out of context). I think that ultimately they are going to have to resort to using what the news media have reported about the candidates’ activities.
But, let’s say you were assigned to write a paper about how the 2008 campaign was conducted. What would be a factual source? Could you rely on newspaper archives? But not tapes or transcripts of TV news?
At best the student is inviting a greater level of scrutiny into his claims. At best the bias of Fox news is open for debate. There are more reputable news channels to cite.
The professor certainly should teach the students enough so they understand what makes for a quality source in news reporting.
Though this instance seemed to focus on the national network, student might unfairly think they should dismiss quality reporting from local affiliates simply because the station is a FOX network affiliate.
As I noted in this thread the only systematic studies that I’ve seen on media bias conclude that Fox is better (or no worse) than other main-stream media. That said I wouldn’t trust any news media as a source for anything that can be verified independently.
It seems to me that students should be using primary and not secondary sources for news (Fox or other). So if Fox News is reporting on a scientific study or a survey or a public speech or a traffic accident, the student should go directly to the study/survey/speech/police report, etc.
If the source is someone appearing on Fox News, that would be primary. For example “In an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Congressman Barney said ‘blah blah blah.’” That would be an acceptable source.
Said discussion regards bias. (I think an argument can be constructed that all the networks are bad on bias, but FOX just happens to be more blatant about theirs.) But I don’t think this discussion should be about bias, but accuracy. You can offer a biased vision of the world which still approximates a relatively fair vision of reality (e.g. MSNBC), but FOX is often considered to offer up a lot of stories which are bogus, so I hope my question really boils down to whether they can be considered a relatively accurate secondary source.
But in both of those cases FOX news, and all the other new outlets, are a factual record. You could quote FOX news to show how the right was spinning things and it would be a legitimate quote, because then they aren’t an authority, they are the material you’re quoting.
All of those things are the factual sources. That is how the campaign was conducted, all the speeches, spin, bias, everything. Quoting the news outlets material is one thing, and quoting them as an authority is another.
Yeah, good point. I’d be interested in seeing a study (if there is on) on factual reliability. My guess, though, is that the professor banned Fox because she considered it horribly biased.
As pointed before there are a lot of flaws on the methodology they used in that survey you pointed before, but far more useful, regarding the OP, is that we are not dealing mostly with bias here, but accuracy.
And so, in an academic setting, that is enough to not use FOX news for reports.
And besides that, certifiably scientific failure, there are many other examples of inaccuracies and fabrications that others in the past reported to claim that a case can be made that FOX news is not really a legitimate news reporting organization.
I am in the rather odious position of defending Fox… 
I can totally believe that Fox is inaccurate in it’s reporting of AGW. My caveats, however, are:
(I did not listen to the podcast so if these caveats are discussed then my apologies.)
Correct me if I’m wrong but this seems to be largely anecdotal. I’m sure conservatives could find anecdotes that lambaste liberal news.
I second this.
However, and I may be misreading the second paragraph, but I’d use the transcript of the interview Congressman Barney had with Bill O’Reilly. Instead of an article recapping and likely offering opinions about what was said because the quotes from the interview can be taken out of context.
not so, on this you are wrong.
Missing the point, this is an example where FOX news is on the record of having instructions on just reporting FUD on this subject.
And as a previews discussion showed, of course, but it is not bias what we are dealing with, but simple scientific accuracy.
