Did someone say FOX News was biased?

[Ned]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler


It's a real shame I can't recieve Fox anymore.

Was Cavuto at least a bit more creative than the other rabid rightists?

What do you mean by "creative?"

(In view of Cavuto's tone, I think "rabid" is close to accurate.)

[Sava]

Originally posted by Ned
Sava, I just happened to catch Cavuto's original editorial. It came at the very end of his show where he gives his opinion on some issue. No one watching at the time could have mistaken it as something else. That is what set Cavuto off, the NY Times report implied that Cavuto said this while reporting the news.

I can't wait, tough, to hear the response from Klugman. If he does respond, could someone post it here?

I should apologize, I'm just on another one of my "FOX news is the anti-christ" rants. I'm really not saying anything relevant to the discussion. I don't know whether Cavuto said what he said during the alloted "opinion" time. I'm saying it really doesn't matter because everything that comes from the FOX mother nipple is crap anyways.

Don't think I'm defending this Klugman guy either. I really could care less about him.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Defiant
You're right Sava,
We should trust more unbiased media avenues such as the Washington Post, NY Times and the LA Times, now there is some fictional reading.

Don't put words into my mouth.

[HershOstropoler]

Originally posted by Ned


What do you mean by "creative?"

In terms of phrasing his abuse, and of inventing his "facts".

[Bosh]

just like you no doubt call yourself a journalist and a columnist

What an idiot. He could have done five minutes of research and found out that Krugman is an Economist and not a journalist. Just the kind of blind disregard of fact that makes Fox so beloved

[Sava]

Just the kind of blind disregard of fact that makes Fox so beloved

exactly!

[Defiant]

There is my ole'buddy Boshkocommie.
FOX is still much much better than CNN Clinton News Network.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Defiant
There is my ole'buddy Boshkocommie.
FOX is still much much better than CNN Clinton News Network.

good call
considering CNN had 24/7 coverage of Monicagate



some are just beyond help

[Bosh]

FOX is still much much better than CNN Clinton News Network.

Yeah, CNN ****s up with the facts all the time. But nothing beats not even being able to tell the difference between an economist and a journalist while defending your journalistic integrity. This guy is almost as good as Geraldo Rivera

[Defiant]

Monicagate....................

[Defiant]

I'll have to admit Rivera is about the furthest thing from a journalist, but c'mon, FOX does really ask some very point blank questions, like why did NASCAR give 600,000 dollars to the Jessie Jackson Foundation. There is only one reason, payoff because there are very few minorities in NASCAR but no other news media I saw bought up this question of a payoff. O'Reilly did.

[Bosh]

oh, and here's the Krugman column that FOX boy was *****inga about:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/opinion/13KRUG.html

The China Syndrome
By PAUL KRUGMAN


A funny thing happened during the Iraq war: many Americans turned to the BBC for their TV news. They were looking for an alternative point of view — something they couldn't find on domestic networks, which, in the words of the BBC's director general, "wrapped themselves in the American flag and substituted patriotism for impartiality."

Leave aside the rights and wrongs of the war itself, and consider the paradox. The BBC is owned by the British government, and one might have expected it to support that government's policies. In fact, however, it tried hard — too hard, its critics say — to stay impartial. America's TV networks are privately owned, yet they behaved like state-run media.

What explains this paradox? It may have something to do with the China syndrome. No, not the one involving nuclear reactors — the one exhibited by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation when dealing with the government of the People's Republic.

In the United States, Mr. Murdoch's media empire — which includes Fox News and The New York Post — is known for its flag-waving patriotism. But all that patriotism didn't stop him from, as a Fortune article put it, "pandering to China's repressive regime to get his programming into that vast market." The pandering included dropping the BBC's World Service — which reports news China's government doesn't want disseminated — from his satellite programming, and having his publishing company cancel the publication of a book critical of the Chinese regime.

Can something like that happen in this country? Of course it can. Through its policy decisions — especially, though not only, decisions involving media regulation — the U.S. government can reward media companies that please it, punish those that don't. This gives private networks an incentive to curry favor with those in power. Yet because the networks aren't government-owned, they aren't subject to the kind of scrutiny faced by the BBC, which must take care not to seem like a tool of the ruling party. So we shouldn't be surprised if America's "independent" television is far more deferential to those in power than the state-run systems in Britain or — for another example — Israel.

A recent report by Stephen Labaton of The Times contained a nice illustration of the U.S. government's ability to reward media companies that do what it wants. The issue was a proposal by Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to relax regulations on media ownership. The proposal, formally presented yesterday, may be summarized as a plan to let the bigger fish eat more of the smaller fish. Big media companies will be allowed to have a larger share of the national market and own more TV stations in any given local market, and many restrictions on "cross-ownership" — owning radio stations, TV stations and newspapers in the same local market — will be lifted.

The plan's defects aside — it will further reduce the diversity of news available to most people — what struck me was the horse-trading involved. One media group wrote to Mr. Powell, dropping its opposition to part of his plan "in return for favorable commission action" on another matter. That was indiscreet, but you'd have to be very naïve not to imagine that there are a lot of implicit quid pro quos out there.

And the implicit trading surely extends to news content. Imagine a TV news executive considering whether to run a major story that might damage the Bush administration — say, a follow-up on Senator Bob Graham's charge that a Congressional report on Sept. 11 has been kept classified because it would raise embarrassing questions about the administration's performance. Surely it would occur to that executive that the administration could punish any network running that story.

Meanwhile, both the formal rules and the codes of ethics that formerly prevented blatant partisanship are gone or ignored. Neil Cavuto of Fox News is an anchor, not a commentator. Yet after Baghdad's fall he told "those who opposed the liberation of Iraq" — a large minority — that "you were sickening then; you are sickening now." Fair and balanced.

We don't have censorship in this country; it's still possible to find different points of view. But we do have a system in which the major media companies have strong incentives to present the news in a way that pleases the party in power, and no incentive not to.

----

Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

[Sava]

I'll have to admit Rivera is about the furthest thing from a journalist, but c'mon, FOX does really ask some very point blank questions, like why did NASCAR give 600,000 dollars to the Jessie Jackson Foundation. There is only one reason, payoff because there are very few minorities in NASCAR but no other news media I saw bought up this question of a payoff. O'Reilly did.

sure... Fox likes to point out the moral mis-givings of everyone who isn't rich-white and Republican...

[Sava]

Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Actually, that was quite a good article. I can understand why Cavuto, paid employee of Murdoch, would take exception to an article pointing out what's wrong with America's media.

[Ned]

"We don't have censorship in this country; it's still possible to find different points of view. But we do have a system in which the major media companies have strong incentives to present the news in a way that pleases the party in power, and no incentive not to."

Sava, et al., How does this square with your previous statement that CNN savaged Clinton? (Of course, FOX did as well.)

I think Krugman is full of it. Even if the powers that be in DC tried to pull strings to influence media, the media normally will have none of it. They have been highly critical of sitting presidents, including CNN during the Clinton years.

What I think Krugman was doing is telling people to read the NY Times because it could not be influenced by the FCC into being deferential to the Government.