But, even assuming that there are enough anecdotes on all sides that you generally haven’t been able to determine if one side is worse, there’s a huge difference between saying “I am unable to decide if either side is worth, I do not have sufficient evidence” versus saying “I have determined the the two sides are EQUALLY bad”.
Think about it… what are the odds that any two things are every EQUALLY anything? I mean, Fox News is some amount partisan. Let’s say that there’s a partisanness scale of 0 to 100. Fox news might be, I dunno, 57. Then the MSM (as a whole) can be measured on the same scale. What are the odds that it’s ALSO precisely 57?
It’s like people who say “well, sure, there’s Ann Coulter on the right, but there’s Michael Moore on the left, and they’re EQUALLY BAD”. No they’re not. How could they be? WHY would they be?
You are correct, my bad–I just glanced through the article and misinterpreted. She is a regular commentator on CNN, no?
It seems like you’re splitting hairs here. Given something as nebulous as media bias there’s no practical way to conclude that two outlets are exactly equal, especially if they are biased in opposite directions. Of the three studies I’ve seen two are for Fox, one against, so it seems reasonable to conclude that the outlets are roughly equal. Maybe I’ve found the only two studies that are favorable to Fox and there are thousands of others; if that was true would could conclude that Fox is worse. Until I see evidence of other studies, though, I’ll keep my opinion.
I have posted several studies that explicitly show that Fox News Viewers are either uninformed or misinformed compared to viewers of other news outlets, people who get their news from Comedy Central or people who do not listen to the news at all!
For the third time, I am asking you why do you think that is?
Part of what makes this issue so pernicious is that it IS, in fact, very hard to measure or quantify. Suppose that during the week after the Benghazi attack, Fox spent 25% of air time covering Benghazi, and mentioned Obama’s name 8 times per hour of coverage, while NBC spent 15% of air time covering Benghazi, and mentioned Obama’s name 4 times per hour of coverage.
Does that prove anything? Is there some objective standard of “this is the CORRECT amount of coverage for Benghazi” that we can look at, and see which of Fox vs NBC diverge from it more? Of course not. If there were some simple proof that demonstrated that Fox was 85% biased to the right while NBC was only 14% biased to the left, it would be well known, and we would already be discussing it.
Instead, I think you have to view the situation on a more holistic level, and think about various issues:
-financial ties and motivations of Fox executives
-testimony from former Fox employees about practices there
-who Fox’s audience is
-the fact that Fox is a single organization and the MSM is a whole bunch of them
-and of course, what you see broadcast on Fox day after day after day, vs the MSM
I strongly believe that there are conscious choices and directives made inside Fox news to promote and benefit the Republican party, which express themselves in a number of different ways. And I also strongly believe that there is no equivalent conscious bias in any of the MSM outlets, with the possible exception of MSNBC. Do you agree or disagree?
I challenged your studies over six months ago, and got no response from you. I’ll try again.
IMO both studies show absolutely nothing. The first uses this methodology to find bias:
As I noted in March, that means that if MSNBC cites the Brookings Institution saying a US default would have a negative impact on interest rates, it counts as liberal bias. If Fox doesn’t cite anyone, but simply asserts that a US default would be good for the world economy, that counts as neutral.
Can you see the problem here? One of the biggest problems with Fox News (and IMO it’s disingenuous to concentrate on its couple of hours of alleged straight news, when the vast majority, especially in prime time, is commentary and opinion) is that it just makes shit up. It should be a good thing to cite credible sources for your assertions, but this study penalizes MSNBC for doing so.
The second study is so confusingly written that it’s hard to pin down exactly what its criteria are, but it seems to concentrate on whether stories were favorable or unfavorable to Dems and Pubs.
Again, that has a very tenuous connection to bias. If the story is about whether Obama referred to Benghazi as a terrorist incident in his Rose Garden speech, and Obama says he did, and Romney says he didn’t, that is a matter of fact, not bias. Yet a story that says Romney was wrong will presumably indicate liberal bias.
You claimed in your post several months ago that you’ve never watched Fox News. Watch it. Just watch Hannity, any day, and compare it with Maddow, any day. If it’s not immediately obvious which one cares more about fairness and accuracy, then you’re beyond help.
And just to repeat, I don’t claim MSNBC is fair and balanced, I claim they are fair and accurate. They report on stories unfavorable to Pubs as often as they can, so in that sense they’re like Fox. But unlike Fox, they report the stories accurately. They don’t make shit up, they don’t deliberately and obviously take stuff out of context, they concentrate on very important and influential Pubs rather than schmucks like Ward Churchill, whom nobody would ever hear of without their broadcasts, and they don’t repeat for months or years things that have been thoroughly discredited.
Fox does all of those things, and it does it so often that it is the rule, rather than the exception.
I have to say I never understood the balanced part.
Running primarily negative stories about Ted Bundy doesn’t mean a news source is biased, because Ted Bundy is an asshole.
Likewise running primarily negative stories about the douche-bags in the Republican party who do douche-bag stuff doesn’t make you biased as long as you’re telling the truth.
The difference is that Fox runs stories that paint the Democrats as douche-bags, BUT THEY MAKE IT ALL UP! It’s all lies. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff to get outraged regarding Democrats so why make shit up? It’s just crazy.
I’ve already replied. In short I think it has little if anything to say about media bias. If that was all we had to judge bias then I’d give it more credence but we don’t.
I agree that Fox likely promotes the GOP. I totally disagree that other outlets don’t do similar for the Democrats.
I agree that the first study uses a methodology that has its flaws. However it’s the only study I’ve seen that tries to measure all of media bias and attempts to do so independently. Until another one comes along it’s the one I have to use. I disagree with your objections to the second study. All measurements that are subjective will have similar complaints and overall I think the study reasonable. On this we are at an impasse.
I am easily swayed by good data. If there are other studies that compare the outlets (not the viewers) then I will take them into account and do my best to do it in good faith.
So what you’re saying is that all media outlets are biased. But it doesn’t concern you in the least that viewers of one media outlet in particular are demonstratively less informed and more misinformed than viewers of other media outlets, Comedy shows or no media outlets for their news.
Why do you think that, if all media outlets are equally biased, that would be the case? Or maybe this is evidence that not all media outlets are equally biased since the bias doesn’t have to be towards left or right political views, but towards fact-based commentary and reporting as opposed to espousing falsehoods.
The many, many studies which show Fox News viewers to be far more less informed and misinformed tells me (and should tell you) that Fox News has a bias against telling the truth. Which should be a lot more offensive than any partisan slant it might have. Don’t you agree?
Sorry, but demonstratively bad data is not good until something else comes along. It’s worth (or lack thereof) stands on it’s own. A flawed study with a flawed methodology is flawed and should not be taken as gospel simply because it’s the best thing out there. If anything, the opposite is true: If flawed citations are all you got, that bolsters the other side.
Incidentally, let me mention that the thread title is “Is Fox News really all that bad?”
It is not “Is Fox News really all that biased?”
Ironically we all agree that Fox News is biased! Even the Fox News apologists in the room agree with this. They just think it’s peachy because so are other media outlets and their bias to the right counteracts the rest of the liberal media. :rolleyes:
It’s not true but even if it was that’s just a variation of BSABSVR, of course.
Not once have I said it was OK to be biased nor have I apologized for Fox. Fox is heavily biased but one must be naive to believe that they are unique in this regard.
Then how come their viewers are more uninformed or misinformed about the facts than viewers of all the other media outlets if all of them are equally biased?
Ah, the old “not looking at the replacements to see the real bias” item.
Well, answer yourself this:
Why is that when guys in those other networks get replacements (due to the host being sick or unavailable) we see plain vanilla unknown hosts, and at Fox when a replacement host shows up it is guys like New Ginwrinch, Mike Huckabee or even Chuck freaking Norris?
I would expect that for fairness sake when a news host at ABC, for example, is replaced we could see someone like Michael Moore on the chair, but I don’t think you need to worry about that. (Although I would love to see the right wing shit in their pants if that happens)
Frankly about the only mainstream source one I could point as left leaning is MSNBC, but that applies to only a few of their shows.