Attention: love him or loathe him, Rupert Murdoch is NOT a “foreign national.” He became a U.S. citizen decades ago.
So again it seems that there can be no criticism of Fox News.
With that in mind, should the premise still stand: a news agency should disclose it’s financial contributions to a political party.
Like others have said, I’m used to watching CNBC, so I’ve come to expect those sort of disclosures. It just makes sense to me that the anchors mention GE and NBC Universal are their parent company when discussing stories concerning those two companies. I think this sets the president that we’re talking about here. Otherwise, CNBC could be used as a propaganda tool for GE and NBC Universal, giving the impression the two companies are better than they are.
What would people think of CNBC is nightly they ran several hours of shows talking about how great GE is?
So if the parent company of CSPAN made a significant campaign contribution to a political party, it would put into question their ability to report factually.
This is the nature of propaganda that supporters of Fox News fail to understand in thread after thread after thread. We don’t expect fair and balanced reporting from the White House Press Secretary. We don’t expect the CEO of BP to present a fair and balanced report of the oil spill.
It really shouldn’t be a big deal. Today, the Fox News contributor can read the prepared speech from the Republican party, “in other news, Republicans are awesome, they would have done a much better job running the country, and they make great governors.” Then she just has to mention, “Fox News is a a subsidiary of News Corporation who is a key contributor to the Republican governors association.”
It has been argued, seriously, in the past that Fox is fair and balanced, and it’s only because the rest of the media is so lefty-biased that it looks right-biased. There is no shortage of people who believe Fox delivers unbiased truth.
So yes, strong evidence that Fox is a conservative shill is desired. There’s nothing especially wrong with being a shill for one side or the other (so long as they don’t just fabricate facts and stories out of whole cloth), but it would be nice to see it acknowledged as such.
And by that we assume you actually mean ALL news organizations, regardless of their leanings, right?
I’m no supporter of Fox News, I just expect people to limit themselves to the wide variety of criticisms that actually make sense. And that means not accusing them of a “conflict of interest” if you have to mutilate the meaning of the phrase to do it.
Of course. Fox is just the most egregious about it, so far as I can see.
Sure, except the purpose of disclosure is to avoid the accusation. The anchors for CNBC don’t actually have a conflict of interest, they simply acknowledge their relationship so it’s all in the open.
Is that too much to ask with regards to political contributions?
And by that you mean they are ONE of the most egregious, right?
I’ve read a lot of these threads concerning Fox News, and there is a very predictable pattern. You need to choose your words carefully when a lawyer is involved. Especially a lawyer who may or may not have a conflict of interest regarding conservative politics.
Or such sympathies which may, or may not, have direct bearing upon the fiscal well-being of said lawyer, or group of lawyers, in any way, shape, or form, or might have direct or indirect consequences for any future condition, as might be anticipated given appropriate perceptions of pending circumstance.
So why is this year’s disparity such a cause for concern? Why wasn’t the steady, year-after-year disparity of other news organizations also suspect?
So why is this year’s disparity such a cause for concern? Why wasn’t the steady, year-after-year disparity of other news organizations more egregious than a one-time disparity (that may or may not change as the election cycle period continues?)
Damn, Bricker, these quizzes of yours aren’t much fun. The answer is pretty much always “liberal hypocrisy”. Couldn’t it be “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” or even “42”? Just for a change? A little variety?
You still haven’t pointed out a year-after-year disparity for the PAC of other news organization. You have pointed out only that the PAC’s for Fox News’ parent company has in the past been rather even-handed and that the employees of the other organizations have been rather lopsided.
If you have a cite for the company or PAC of another news organization being lopsided (on the order of 80/20, let’s say), please provide it.
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I hadn’t even considered it until it was mentioned here. To me it *seems *like a conflict of interest for a news organization to be funding gubernatorial campaigns, to be honest I’m a little shocked it happens at all. Although I should admit when I read the thread title I assumed it was the Republican Governors that paid FNC.
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Straw the broke the camel’s back.
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Why can’t it cause concern? Is it not worthy of concern? Once again your argument is based on, “the other guys did it too.” Fine, start a thread and go after them. This thread is about whether or not FNC should reveal a *potential *conflict of interest. Do you think they should? Or is your only contribution to point out that someone at some time may have done something similar in some way?
Still waiting on answers to my questions.
Fox News Channel is owned by News Corp which is owned in part by Rupert Murdoch.
If FNC was reporting on a story about News Corp of Rupert Murdoch, do you think they should disclose their relationship? In other words, should they disclose their potential conflict of interest?
You’ve very eloquently pointed out that “others make donations too.” So let’s say hypothetically a Governor was caught up in a alleged conspiracy to sell a Senate seat. In the process of reporting that story, should the news organization reveal that their parent company made a significant campaign contribution?
If after hearing a said story, and you discovered that there was a large contribution made, would you feel different about the reporting?
As a lawyer, either prosecuting or defending said governor, would you expect the judge to disclose any perceived conflicts of interest? Would it impact the case to find out afterwords that the judge had made a significant contribution to that governor’s campaign?
Please - as though the employees are not in even BETTER position to slant coverage than anyone else?
And I’ll note again that we have prior years’ data asone number. Here we are midway through the election cycle and treating the numbers as though they are final. Do YOU have a cite that this kind of disparity midway through a year is unusual?
No, no. Your claim is that it’s cause for concern, which creates the inference taht your concern is the inappropriate behavior. But now we see that your concern is only triggered when the supposedly inappropriate behavior comes from your political enemies. There is no principled reason that we should have one thread to explore whether Fox should disclose their contributions, and a different thread to explore whether other news organizations should disclose theirs, when the issue in each case is the same.
When I say, “The other guys do it too,” it both rebuts the inference that Fox is unique, and prevents you and your ilk from trying to simultaneously argue that Fox is unethical and Time Warner is doing just fine.
It’s cause for concern if you’re concerned about the behavior.
It’s not cause for concern if you’re concerned about Fox and Fox alone.
I have no idea. That is, I don’t know if there is some widely-accepted journalistic standard to that end. If there is, then yes. If not, then no.
If there is a journalistic standard, then yes. If not, then no.
No.
Yes, and yes.
I bet you can guess why!
In fact… just look at this thread, and be honest with yourself.
The bulk of this thread has been an attempt to find some kind of basis, thin better than nothing, to be able to say that Time Warner and GE and Disney didn’t do anything wrong, but NewsCorp did.
That’s not a neutral, detached approach, is it?
C’mon. You can say. They all know anyway. It’s all right.
That’s right, you made an inference. Someone made a criticism of FNC, and you inferred a great and many things. One might say that you imputed a set of beliefs onto someone, and then suggested hypocrisy.
If, as you say, FNC is our political enemy, does that mean we can never accuse them of inappropriate behavior? If we don’t, who will? Des the conservative movement have an internal code of conduct? Do they have an internal review process? Who else is going to hold them accountable?
And why shouldn’t we have separate threads? If this act was illegal wouldn’t there be separate trials?
Why is it that when ever one of your political friends (like James O’Keefe) is charged with something, your defense is “a liberal did it too.” So what?
At least have the decency to be honest about the charges. And once it’s settled, you can go back and apply the ruling to YOUR political enemies. Good for the goose, good for the gander.
Again, the inference, and by that I mean YOUR inference, as to someone else’s beliefs, which then follows with the charge of hypocrisy. Why does that sound so familiar?
So did FNC act unethically?
[quote=“Bricker, post:97, topic:550772”]
I’m concerned about the behavior, but that could just be me. As an immigrant, the level of journalistic integrity within the US (or lack thereof) is concerning. I personally, was shocked that this wouldn’t be disclosed, and was further shocked that in happens as frequently as you have shown.
So back to the question at hand should FNC disclose the gubernatorial contributions as part of their reporting process?