Especially since the Trayvon Martin pictures were the ones his family provided to the media rather than ones they carefully selected to make him look like a tiny harmless child.
Yes. In the realm of journalism, it is THAT bad. Their poor attempts at journalism reaffirms my beliefs that anyone with a pretty face can be a Fox News journalist. I guess it’s not that bad if you like misinformation and biases.
Edit: I found one of my favorite Fox News stunts (warning: YouTube video). The video is the Fox News take on the morning after pill.
Far be it from me from me to defend Fox, but that’s not an issue at all particular to them. Cable news is filled with women who look like they just changed careers from cheerleaders.
Also, a pretty face isn’t really enough. Nice legs and a good rack are critical to news delivery.
Good point. 
Journalism is just gone in general. What I mean is that anyone can be a journalist with blogs and such. The obvious problem with this is people have to sift through the content to find anything that isn’t riddled with misinformation - a lot of it is. Far be it from me to say what is a credible news source, but I’m certain that Fox News misses that qualification by a landslide.
Edit: …Or maybe not. This (warning: YouTube video) was interesting. This journalist doesn’t like people calling her fat and does her own little rant.
late to the complaining party, but i go through a lot of this with my folks, esp lately. they are very VERY conservapub christian rights. haaard right. and every. single. time. we. talk, it’s about what fox news said, and how they are the only news channel that will be unbias. they truly believe that ONLY fox news is fair, that all other sources of information are liberally biased.
they were virtually STUNNED that ABC/CBS/NBC “admitted” obama lost the first debate.
the problem i see with it is that Fox news doesn’t just push an agenda, they are having an actual dangerous effect on how people think. my folks have always been conservative, but the bitter, divisive anger is new, and i can trace nearly all of it to the start of the obama election last go-round and their increased interest in Fox news…which says everything they want to hear.
nearly every bit of news my folks discuss (from fox news) is bookended by an extremely biased, fear-mongering, opinion demanding editorialization. but my folk’s fail to see that aspect.
great example: yesterday we were talking about what a sad turn of events this Lance Armstrong has turned to.
my dad said he was watching them talk about it on fox news and how the anchor went into a diatribe about personally meeting Lance Armstrong at some event, after press meetings out at a restaurant or something private, and how Lance tried to start a fist fight with him, and how the anchor explained “this is how this guy was. angry, aggressive, hostile and tried to start a lot of fights with journalists all the time.”
now, any truth in this “report” notwithstanding, my immediate thought was "that sure is an utterly unverifiable personal anecdote you were just fed by your news, one that has since gone to shape your opinion of this person you’ve never met–one you just personally verified by explaining “–and he said he wasn’t the only one that happened to!”
that’s not news. it’s brainwashing.
it’s easy to say anyone who watches this channel has poor character, is an idiot, or just wants the sweet, warm hug of bullshit to make them feel better. but i can attest personally there are middle-ground, regular americans who lack a kind of investigative personality to dig deeper into things who are being straight up brainwashed by all this fearmongering. Fox news is demanding people be angry and are widening the gap between political stances by capturing on people’s fears. they harp constantly on how your freedoms are being eroded by everything you find even remotely disagreeable and pour it all into a mixture of actual shit, news, and opinion, call it fair and balance, and people buy PART A because of the caveat of PART B.
maybe it’s unsophisticated, but my dad always mentions the fact they are the only news who claim to be fair and balanced. because of that claim, he buys some false sense of integrity on their part. and because they scream they are the ONLY honest ones, it makes him think any contradictory news, stats, or facts by any other media outlet is due to THEIR LIBERAL BIAS.
it’s to the point he’s actually convinced we are heading for a new civil war–and that’s 100% Fox news anger-fear-mongering.
I’ve read quite a few online stories like yours about people who just don’t bother going home for Christmas or Thanksgiving because they know that the whole experience will be ruined by fierce arguments due to Fox News propaganda.
Fox News not only poisons political discourse in the US, it also drives a wedge between family members.
O’Reilly is a comedy show, not a news show… whenever I watch it, I can not stop laughing
Hate to quote myself, but while everyone is talking about perceptions of bias which cannot be reliably quantified, I really think that looking at what you can quantify needs to be addressed.
Aside from my self-quoted post above…
That was from earlier this year. During the 2010 election, another study found similar results:
Even way back in 2003 with regard to the Iraq War, you had this study come out:
These are a few of the several surveys that show Fox News viewers are consistantly less informed about world events, science, the economy and politics than those who got their news from other sources.
So what are we to conclude? Seems to me that it’s one of these only:
[LIST=A]
[li]Fox News is really bad at informing their viewers.[/li][li]Fox News is really good at misinforming their viewers[/li][li]Fox News viewers are mostly mouth-breathers.[/li][li]A combination of any or all of the above.[/li][/LIST]So the answer the OP " Is Fox News really all that bad?" I have to say forget about bias. Look at how informed their audience is. If a news station consistently shows that their audience doesn’t know the news, how can anyone make the argument that the station is “good?”
Can I have A, B, C & D, please!
To respond to the OP…
There’s no doubt that Fox News has a conservative bias. I think that bias is most evident in the Hannity show, which I really have no use for. O’Reilly, while conservative, does make air both sides of an issue, and I think he gets a bad rap. I used to put him in the same boat as Hannity, but he’s improves immeasurably in the fair and balanced department.
During this debate season, I’ve chosen to watch most of it on MSNBC. And, my God, talk about bias! First, they seem to make very little effort to get conservatives on. But what surprised me is the degree to which they either intentionally lie to make things seem good for Obama or the degree to which they live in a bubble and everything is automatically put through a Must-Be-Good-For-Our-Side Translator chip that’s been implanted in their brains. I find it to be MUCH more hyper-partisan than Fox News. And vying for Head Partisan is that Schultz character and the smarmy, wisecracking Maddow. I guess refrigerator-head Lawrence O’Donnel is in the running, too.
I see a lot about MSNBC’s commentators, but nothing about their news.
i dont know if anyone here caught it, but Ted Koppel did a piece on Rock Center not long ago (odd seeing him on NBC). it was about the divisive nature of cable news. Ted is more of a straight-forward newsman, not a commentator, not really an editorializer (feel free to set me straight if that opinion is wrong, i’m young and missed the first part of his career).
anyway the point was how people from Fox news, like Bill O’Reily openly admit this is about money. not news, not ideology, not even conservative agenda. MONEY.
once the 24 hour news channel became a “thing,” producers realized quickly they could make shows with talking heads bathering on for next to no cost. and quickly realized the profit margins. O’Reilly minced no words, he made it clear it was all about money for him. that he is often ridiculed for not being FAR ENOUGH right.
MSNBC saw how well the partisan talking-head format was working, and took the same route.
while i don’t watch ANY cable tv news, i think the big 3 stay relatively neutral most of the time. but MSNBC is a toned down, leftist version of Fox news, and that was mostly a business decision. while i tend to agree with their side of the picture a little more, it’s still roughly the same problem when it comes to bias. (sorry. it just is). i do think MSNBC is much less of a politically based news channel, with a more broad approach to actually informing people about real things. fox news doesn’t care about hardly anything unless it’s politically divisive. news? it’s not news. it’s angry politics.
incidentally, everyone involved w MSNBC was gagged by the higher-ups and not allowed to comment at all in Ted Koppel’s piece.
Remember, we’re talking about the NEWS, not commentary.
Care to comment on John_Stamos’_Left_Ear’s excellent post #108? Why do you think Fox News viewers are consistantly less informed about world events, science, the economy and politics than those who got their news from other sources?
I’m not sure if people watch Fox News to become more informed. I’m more inclined to believe they watch it for the hot news reporters (especially to see some cleavage). In my opinion, news reporters are not journalists. Journalists are the watchdogs of the government. Clearly, they are not watching out for anyone by reporting blatant misinformation and spreading their own conspiracies/biases.
I think some watch because many people enjoy being righteously angry, and many more enjoy the feeling of being “one of the few who really know what’s going on”. <touches side of nose with finger>
Your TLDR assumption is incorrect. The mainstream media is biased hard left. FOX is moderate, which puts it in the middle. The others, however, are so far left that it makes FOX look hard right if things like ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN et. al. are all you listen to.
“in the middle”?
Who is on the right then?
I am in my 80’s and I think Fox News is a Joke! Very little actual News, and the word Obama is in almost every sentence. I don’t personally watch it, but My husband does so I do hear a lot of the drivel.If Obama solved all the worlds problems, Fox News would probably say he was helped by Satan!
After every debate I knew ahead of time they would find fault with Obama and sing the praises of no matter who was his challenger. It seems to me if the Know It Alls with all the answers( that they think they have the solutions to), should be running for office them selves.
Even for your usual comments, this is ludicrous. You would need to create an alternative universe to present this seriously.
The U.S. tilts Right on the political spectrum by any objective standard and Fox is to the Right of the American center. Aside from the standard that if it bleeds, it leads, the mainstream media has no overwhelming bias. Aside from Fox the networks are a bit to the Left on issues such as sexual orientation, sexual politics, and race, but they are firmly in the center on issues such as foreign relations and the military, and they tilt Right in the realms of commerce.
I think Clothahump does us a service. He demonstrates quite accurately just what the American public is up against. While the presenters on Fox may not actually believe the nonsense they spew, their audience, as evidenced by CH absolutely does believe it.
Listen to him. This is what you’re up against.