# What's so bad about Fox News?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [June 1, 2004, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041 "2004-06-01T10:14:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Evil\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/45deac/32.png) [@Evil\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_One)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/41 "2004-06-01T14:08:06Z")

</div>

That’s my point as well. I don’t ever see any “blatant propaganda” on Fox or any other news outlet. If anyone has, please feel free to jump in.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lynwood\_Slim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Lynwood\_Slim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynwood_Slim)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/42 "2004-06-01T14:08:35Z")

</div>

Lots of folks denounce Fox news by mentioning a few commentators, O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. They don’t pretend to be “newsmen” – they are unabashedly conservative commentators.

Brit Hume’s show, on the other hand, regularly features a panel across the spectrum, and Hannity at least at Colmes to offset him.

What irritates me so much about CNN is its pretention that there is no other view or way to present the news.

Case in point: The dispute over the war in Iraq basically comes down to “neat” theory or “mess” theory (Harry Shearer mentioned this on his Le Show a few weeks ago). There are those who believe that things are basically neat, getting neater, with some serious loose ends, of course, but things are heading in the right direction. Go the Brookings Institute web site on Iraq, for example, and see the trends in electricty output, oil production, and the total picture one gets from many public opinion polls. Check out car sales, university attendance, size of Iraqi army and police forces, etc.

“Mess theory” holds that things are unravelling quickly. They focus on the “growing death toll”, say that things are “increasingly out of hand” and so forth. CNN, as far as I can tell, holds the left wing position of mess theory, but does not admit this is a position of the left, or have sufficient balance of people to report differently. It is not a overtly and piously left as NPR, but on this and evey political issue that I can gauge, it leans left.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/43 "2004-06-01T14:10:29Z")

</div>

> [@Evil One](#):
>
> That’s my point as well. I don’t ever see any “blatant propaganda” on Fox or any other news outlet. If anyone has, please feel free to jump in.

Constantly refering to the "heroes’’ in Iraq certainly counts as propoganda in my book.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/44 "2004-06-01T14:16:02Z")

</div>

I mentioned once before, but I suspect that a large number of SDMB liberals object to the style of Fox news more than the content. With their strapping square-jawed anchors and bimboesque newswomen, muttering commentary under their breath, all while in front of a backdrop that looks like the decorations for a pre-homecoming pep ralley, I’m sure Fox news gives many a liberal flashbacks to high school and college where the football team or local fraternity pushed them in the mud, stole their Birkenstocks and shaved their Jesus hair.

I don’t have anything against Fox News per se, however IMHO the constant simplistic commentary by the Fox & friends gang, obviously designed to appeal to the Joe Middleamerica who’s never been more than 20 miles from their home town, comes across as ignorant in misinformed.

You are getting paid to sit there and look pretty while reading the Teleprompter. Stop flexing that community college intellect on the air.

As for the actual content, I think the networks are basically all the same. It’s not like Fox and CNN and MSNBC cover diferent stories. I just think Fox tends to focus more on the pretty explosions and tracer fire.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Evil\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/45deac/32.png) [@Evil\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_One)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/45 "2004-06-01T14:23:40Z")

</div>

> [@GorillaMan](#):
>
> Constantly refering to the "heroes’’ in Iraq certainly counts as propoganda in my book.

A vast majority of Americans view our soldiers as just that. My guess would be at eighty percent, plus. Fox understands this and is hoping to draw and hold viewers by expressing an idea that the viewer agrees with.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Evil\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/45deac/32.png) [@Evil\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_One)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/46 "2004-06-01T14:25:50Z")

</div>

> [@msmith537](#):
>
> I don’t have anything against Fox News per se, however IMHO the constant simplistic commentary by the Fox & friends gang, obviously designed to appeal to the Joe Middleamerica who’s never been more than 20 miles from their home town, comes across as ignorant in misinformed.
> 
> You are getting paid to sit there and look pretty while reading the Teleprompter. Stop flexing that community college intellect on the air.

I avoid Fox and friends for this exact reason…and Fox is my network of choice for national news.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/47 "2004-06-01T14:27:16Z")

</div>

> [@Evil One](#):
>
> …is hoping to draw and hold viewers by expressing an idea that the viewer agrees with.

…whether or not it validates the ‘fair and balanced’ claim. Fair balanced reporting is rarely something that the majority will be comforted by.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/48 "2004-06-01T14:28:41Z")

</div>

> [@Evil One](#):
>
> Sure, the MRC leans to the right. But they do take the time to monitor the major media outlets closely. You can disagree with their political philosophy, but the fact remains that the news anchors or interviewers in question did, in fact, utter the words that are attributed to them. If you read the analysis with an open mind, you will see what I’m talking about. If you refuse to accept the idea that ideology makes it’s way into editorial decisions and interview questions, then my time is being wasted here.

First, to say that MRC leans to the right is an understatement. They are a right-wing media watchdog group. Their whole point is to search for supposed left-wing bias. They are not some sort of spinsanity.

And much of the MRC stuff is all cherry-picked and taken out of context. Al Franken has a great story about a time he was on a show with Goldberg and he asked Goldberg if he knew what happened on the day that a quote from MRC that Goldberg used in his book) by one of the news anchors about the Russian leaders came from. Goldberg didn’t know that it was the day of the Russian coup. The context of that changed the whole nature of the quote…If you don’t know that context, it sounds like it is left-leaning but if you do it doesn’t at all.

> [@](#):
>
> The further left you are, the more unwilling you are to accept the idea of left-wing bias in the national media. The further right you are, the less willing you are to see right-wing bias in the Wall Street Journal. People are going to see a point of view they agree with as “the truth” and not bias, unless they are capable of taking a step back and looking at the subject objectively.

That it why it is best not to try to look at how they report the news looking for slight slants, like MRC does, but focus more on actual variances with the truth like FAIR, the left-wing media watchdog group, does. (I’ll note, by the way, that MRC apparently has a budget way, way bigger than FAIR and yet FAIR still seems to come up with better factual documentation of variances with the truth than MRC does.)

One example of this is how the media covered the events surrounding the inspectors leaving Iraq in 1998. Many [incorrectly reported](http://www.fair.org/extra/0210/inspectors.html) that the inspectors were “kicked out” by Saddam. And, even when [they correctly stated](http://www.fair.org/activism/unscom-history.html) that the inspectors were pulled out, they often mentioned Saddam’s interference with the inspections because he alleged that the inspectors were spying without bothering to note that these “allegation” had in fact been reported as fact in several major U.S. newspapers, citing U.S. and U.N. sources. (Actually, if you go to a recent Fresh Air interview with Hans Blix, he also mentions as fact that UNSCOM was being used by the U.S. to spy on Iraq.) Amusingly, even **some of those very same newspapers** who had reported this spying as fact back in 1999 reported it only as an allegation by a nutty dictator in late 2002 and early 2003, despite the fact that there had been no evidence brought to light that disputed the original reports (and, as I noted, reports that Blix himself corroborates).

Hell, even the supposedly left-leaning N.Y. Times has had to issue a [mea culpa](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html) about its poor overly-credulous reporting leading up to the Iraq war:

> [@](#):
>
> In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.
> 
> But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.
> 
> The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on “regime change” in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.

They then go on to give some more specific examples.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/49 "2004-06-01T14:34:25Z")

</div>

> [@Aro](#):
>
> Do all the Americans on posting here (above) really think that CNN is a\* leftist \* news site? I can’t honestly see how anyone could ever get that impression.
> 
> I watch it a fair bit and only when I want to hear the pro-US, pro-corporate right-wing POV on a particular incident.  
> To suggest it is in any way left-leaning is completely laughable to this European.  
> (although I can see how it it may possibly be seen as the _least-right_ of all the major US news broadcasters)
> 
> If you think CNN is leaning left, I’d love to see your faces if you wanted Ch4 news in the UK.

Check - all mainstream US news sources appear to be varying shades of Right.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/50 "2004-06-01T14:35:07Z")

</div>

> [@SentientMeat](#):
>
> The OP enjoined us to debate Fox-bashing **on the SDMB**. Since this site has a considerable international contingent, simply limiting the discussion solely to what the _US_ might consider “centrist” would appear to deprive **Carnick** of the opportunity to explore the reasonable and legitimate position that Fox News is so _way_ out to the right that the rest of the world finds it absurd, sometimes amusingly so.

Right…And, this is particularly true when the beefs with the reporting center on issues of fact, not just on reporting viewpoints with the right balance matching public opinion.

> [@jshore](#):
>
> One example of this is how the media covered the events surrounding the inspectors leaving Iraq in 1998…

Just to clarify, the beef is with how the media discussed these events 4 years later, during the lead-up to the current war, not how they covered them at the time that they occurred. In fact, the amusing thing is how the story changed between 1998 and 2002.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Aro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b3f665/32.png) [@Aro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aro)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/51 "2004-06-01T14:37:15Z")

</div>

> [@Evil One](#):
>
> Fox understands this and is hoping to draw and hold viewers by expressing an idea that the viewer agrees with.

I find the idea of news stations only reporting on news they seem to think the target audience would like or prefer to hear as rather abhorrent. Do you think this is reasonable behaviour for a news station? If it is a non-factual programme, or a op-ed piece and listed as such, then fair enough. But to wilfully manipulate or discard reporting on agreed facts in order to appease a particular target audience is certainly not how I would like my news stations to behave.

Was this a general throw-away comment, or do you feel this is actually designed corporate practice to give Fox greater ratings and viewer approval?  
Fox News: _“Reporting only the news you want to hear!”_

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/52 "2004-06-01T14:39:27Z")

</div>

\>Check - all mainstream US news sources appear to be varying shades of Right.

Well, this rightist says that US news sources appear to be varying shades of Left. No way to disprove me! Nyah!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/53 "2004-06-01T14:40:02Z")

</div>

> [@jshore](#):
>
> The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on “regime change” in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.

You call that a mea culpa?

That’s the same cop-out the administration is using.  
‘Oh poor us ! we were misled into this horrible war by an unscrupulous group of foreign agents.’

No, their reporting 't being misled by any exiles, it was misled by the administration.  
They are still covering the lies that spew forth from the WH.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/54 "2004-06-01T14:43:41Z")

</div>

> [@Evil One](#):
>
> Fox understands this and is hoping to draw and hold viewers by expressing an idea that the viewer agrees with.

The word for this is [propaganda](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=propaganda), not news. That may be an accurate summary of a lot of what FOX does.

n. The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/55 "2004-06-01T14:44:40Z")

</div>

> [@MEBuckner](#):
>
> Interestingly enough, I just did a few quick Google searches, and it does not appear that [Foxnews.com](http://Foxnews.com) has ever employed the phrase “homicide bomb” or any variant thereof in conjunction with the search terms McVeigh, Nichols, Oklahoma City, Kaczynski, Unabomber, Rudolph, or Centennial Olympic Park. On the other hand, the “homicide bomb” trope seems to be used extensively to describe bombings (suicide and otherwise) carried out by Middle Eastern and/or Islamic terrorists (including terrorist attacks in Russia presumably in the cause of Chechen separatism). “Homicide bomb” is used to describe both attacks on unarmed civilians–people blowing up restaurants and subway cars and so on–and bombings aimed at U.S. troops in Iraq.
> 
> (Those were pretty quick Google searches; if someone can come up with some counter-examples, have at it.)

I remember when they first started using the term during the Iraq war. They did use it to describe the American guy who blew up his troop’s tent. The examples you gave are older than that. And frankly, they don’t use the term perfectly consistently. They often say suicide rather than homicide.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/56 "2004-06-01T14:47:06Z")

</div>

> [@jshore](#):
>
> And much of the MRC stuff is all cherry-picked and taken out of context. Al Franken has a great story about a time he was on a show with Goldberg and he asked Goldberg if he knew what happened on the day that a quote from MRC that Goldberg used in his book) by one of the news anchors about the Russian leaders came from…

The fullest account is in Franken’s book, but [here](http://counterspin.blogspot.com/2003_01_05_counterspin_archive.html) is a transcript of part of that interview on a blog.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Unregistered\_Bull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3da27b/32.png) [@Unregistered\_Bull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unregistered_Bull)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/57 "2004-06-01T14:51:37Z")

</div>

They’re blatant neo-conservative cheerleaders. They lost me permanently when they started the “homicide bomber” BS. I had alot of hopes for the channel because I do feel that CNN had and has a liberal bias, and I consider myself a conservative with a libertarian bent. I watch MSNBC anymore.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/58 "2004-06-01T14:52:30Z")

</div>

[Palestinian homicide bomber (Fox)](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108329,00.html)

[And again](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60395,00.html)

Googling homicide bombers, those are the first two entries at this time.

> [@](#):
>
> During the propaganda war between Israel and the Palestinians, each side has developed its own doublespeak for referring to what is also referenced as suicide bombers. The Palestinians refer to suicide bombers as martyrs, while supporters of Israel use the term homicide bombers.
> 
> A suicide bomber is a type of terrorist - specifically, a terrorist who is willing to sacrifice his or her own life in order to kill other people.
> 
> By referring to suicide bombers as “martyrs”, Palestinian jihadists focus attention on the bomber’s “heroic” willingness to die for their cause, while avoiding mention of the innocent people whom the bomber kills. The term also evokes a sense of religious devotion and moral purity.
> 
> The term “homicide bomber”, on the other hand, specifically avoids mention of the humanity and self-sacrifice of the bomber. It is actually a redundant term (since everyone already knows that a “bomber” commits murder). People who advocate using this language have sometimes said explicitly that the bomber’s death is not even worth noticing, because someone who would murder other people is subhuman and undeserving of anyone’s concern.
> 
> The use of these two terms by opposing parties to a violent conflict demonstrates the way that propaganda contributes to social polarization. Rather than sharing a common language, the people who use these terms have invented language which enables them to deepen their estrangement and even to erase awareness of their mutual humanity.

[Martyrs and homicide bombers](http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Martyrs_and_homicide_bombers)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/59 "2004-06-01T15:02:00Z")

</div>

> [@Latro](#):
>
> You call that a mea culpa?
> 
> That’s the same cop-out the administration is using.  
> ‘Oh poor us ! we were misled into this horrible war by an unscrupulous group of foreign agents.’
> 
> No, their reporting 't being misled by any exiles, it was misled by the administration.  
> They are still covering the lies that spew forth from the WH.

Okay…One could certainly make the argument that their apology doesn’t go far enough. But, for the purposes of this thread, my point was that a newpaper that is often cited as having a left-wing bias admits that it did a poor job in the lead-up to the Iraq war because it, for whatever reason, reported the Administration line on Iraq with insufficient investigation and questioning.

* * *

By the way, another piece of evidence in regards to Iraq was a polling study several months back (maybe someone who remembers it can dig up the cite?) showing how Americans tended to believe several factually inaccurate things in regards to Iraq. It may not have proven there is not a “liberal media” but it certainly demonstrated that if such a media existed it was spectacularly ineffective at countering the propaganda spewing forth from this Administration with any amount of factual reporting of the truth.

One of the interesting facts from that study was that when most people cited a TV / radio media as their major news source, there was essentially no correlation between how closely they claimed to follow the news and whether or not they were better informed (in the sense of not believing these falsities about Iraq). The exception was Fox News where the correlation was negative…i.e., if the person said Fox was their major media source, they were more likely to be misinformed if they said that they followed the news more closely than if they said that they followed it less closely. (Only people who used the print media as their major news source were more likely to be better informed if they followed the news more closely.)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2004, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041/60 "2004-06-01T15:04:50Z")

</div>

> [@Lynwood Slim](#):
>
> Lots of folks denounce Fox news by mentioning a few commentators, O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. They don’t pretend to be “newsmen” – they are unabashedly conservative commentators.
> 
> Brit Hume’s show, on the other hand, regularly features a panel across the spectrum, and Hannity at least at Colmes to offset him.

That’s my take on it as well. I generally watch either Fox News or MSNBC for coverage (I don’t care for CNN for a variety of reasons). While I will agree that there probably is some conservative bias in how stories are reported, that in and of itself is not a bad thing as long as they are reporting factually. Personally, I can’t stand O’Reilly or Hannity and Colmes, and I don’t remember being too enamored with Gibson either, but it’s been a while since I watched it. For that matter, I think the only show of theirs that I like is Brit Hume’s, due to the panel discussion. I also like Fox News Sunday (not so much now that changed to that new guy from Hume) and find myself switching between it and Meet The Press depending on who’s on Meet The Press any given week, once again, mostly during the panel discussion.

Personally, it seems to me that most of the anti-Fox News speech is either against the columnists, which I don’t have a problem with, as I can name lots of columnists that I don’t like, both conservative and liberal, or against a perceived bias in the reporting and language used. Honestly, I don’t see that much of a bias, or at least no more than any other news agency has in any given direction.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041.md?page=2)

[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fox-news/248041.md?page=4)
