The second-dumbest people in the news [Comparison of Fox News, BBC and how both do not show reality]

Let's stipulate from the outset that not everything about Fox News is appalling. Brit Hume is an able journalist. Neil Cavuto is watchable. I like some of their political commentators, Fred Barnes most of all.

The rest of it is bunk. Talk-show host Bill O'Reilly is a self-righteous bully. Anchor John Gibson gives the impression of being not very bright, although that may have to do with his hairdo. Political commentator Monica Crowley was caught plagiarizing by the Wall Street Journal. News items are treated as if they were offerings on Fox's line-up of action shows debuting this fall: "We got the Jakarta explosion, we got the hunt for Saddam!" There is no in-depth reporting, while a great deal of air time is wasted on chit-chat. I hate the use of the term "homicide bombing": All bombings that result in death are "homicide" bombings; "suicide bombing" accurately describes a specific act. And there's something about the way that Fox mixes salacious reporting with censorious commentary that's totally repulsive. Is Kobe Bryant guilty of sexual assault and adultery? Well, we've got the vaginal trauma to prove it!

Simply, Fox News is more of a parody of a news program than an actual news program. Not that this seems to bother the Fox people themselves; part of their almost-redeeming charm is that they are blissfully not in earnest. Beyond all the tub-thumping, the American flag waving in the corner of the screen, this is "news" that seems to have an audience of Bart Simpsons in mind. As such, Fox News comes close to being a parody of America itself.

Would that it went all the way. But thanks to people like Hume and Barnes, Fox retains a patina of seriousness that turns what would otherwise be a good joke into a bad caricature, the very picture of what the rest of the world thinks of as Right-wing America. And because Fox News has leapfrogged over its more staid competitors in the ratings, it is also seen as the journalistic equivalent of 1984, a dystopic universe in which Rupert Murdoch's boot stamps forever on the honest reporter's face. The upshot - depressingly - is an excellent argument for the old behemoths.

OF ALL of Fox's sins, this one is the worst. For those routinely depressed or enraged by the inadequate or biased reporting of CNN or the BBC, Fox News is there to prove that perhaps they don't do such a bad job after all. I don't think much of Jonathan Mann and his "Insight" program on CNN, but next to Shep Smith's "Studio B," Mann looks like Ed Murrow. I was turned off by the BBC's coverage of the war in Iraq, with its ill-concealed gloating over apparent Coalition reversals. But that's nothing next to the embarrassment of, say, watching Fox reporter Wendell Goler unable to get right the name of Palestinian arch-terrorist Abu Abbas. Meanwhile, there is no doubting that some BBC programming is fantastically good - Tim Sebastian's "Hard Talk" above all - as is, in the US, "News Hour with Jim Lehrer," which appears on public television.

The conclusion one is tempted to draw here is that quality journalism and market forces pull in opposite directions, and that any society that wants the former had best devote a subsidy to it. Certainly the BBC makes this argument. Amid increasingly vocal calls to revoke or revise the Corporation's charter - or to privatize the BBC outright - it warns that such a step would mean losing the very touchstone for objective, informed and independent journalism. Privatize us, they say, and there will be nothing but Fox News.

In fairness, there really is something to this. In America, at least, none of the best magazines turns a profit: Commentary, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Weekly Standard all depend on the largesse of wealthy patrons to stay afloat. Meanwhile, People, In Style, Cosmo and Maxim rake it in.

But there is a crucial difference between a magazine like The Atlantic, which is privately supported, and the BBC, which survives on an onerous compulsory tax. Then too, it's an open question just how objective, informed and independent the BBC is. "More and more," writes Labor MP Gerald Kaufman in The Wall Street Journal, "there are accusations from different sections of the political spectrum not that the BBC supports one party or another but that it sets its own agenda on different issues and tailors its presentation to fit that agenda."

The proximate cause of Kaufman's musings is, of course, the David Kelly scandal, where it appears that misrepresentation of Kelly's views by BBC correspondent Andrew Gilligan contributed to the government scientist's suicide last month. But anyone who watches the BBC from Israel could not have been surprised by the affair. According to a study conducted last year by Media Tenor, a Bonn-based media research group, 85% of the BBC's coverage of Israel was "negative"; another 15% was rated "neutral"; none was "positive." This has been going on for decades. Nobody noticed in part because Israel is far away, in part because the negative coverage conforms to existing prejudices. With the Kelly story, however, Israel's once-dismissed complaints about the BBC are beginning to seem like part of a larger pattern of questionable reportage and editorial spinning.

In other words, the journalism on offer from the BBC is often no less tendentious than what you get on Fox. This is not to say that it isn't better than Fox's: the breadth of the BBC's coverage is vastly greater, its biases are not so crudely expressed, and the general tenor of its programming isn't so sophomoric. But these advantages are offset by the fact that the BBC is so desperately in earnest. It really does see itself as an "independent" and "objective" voice merely because it isn't governed by considerations of profit. And it also sees itself as a bulwark of decency, duty bound to enlighten the masses and speak truth to power.

The result is coverage that is deceiving principally because it is self-deceiving. How many BBC reporters come to Israel, for instance, sincerely convinced that the core problem here is "the occupation"? Nearly all of them, I should guess. And how many have stopped to wonder how their coverage would change if they tested the proposition that Arab rejectionism was instead to blame? Probably very few.

I'VE DEVOTED this column to Fox News and the BBC because they are often viewed as being the opposite poles of broadcast news: one baldly partisan, the other scrupulously objective; one populist-conservative, the other high-toned and cosmopolitan; one relentlessly profit-driven, the other "in the public interest." As with most poles, too, they have a great deal in common - political agendas and moral smugness above all. I resent both of them; one for having given a bad name to conservatives, the other for having given it to journalists.

It would be nice to find some middle route. Public ownership is not the way. The fact that the BBC isn't answerable to advertisers only means that its biases run in favor of statism and all that it implies. It also makes the BBC an arrogant organization, which goes far to explain its present travails. Yet a private news organization that seeks ratings above everything else is going to wind up turning reportage into entertainment, which is exactly what Fox News has done.

Ultimately, consumers will seek - and news organizations will provide - content that is reasonably accurate and sober. At least that's true when it comes to business news, headlines, the weather. But the aims of journalism, I've always thought, go beyond establishing basic facts to sifting competing claims about the truth. In this latter task, it seems, the thoughtful news consumer walks alone.

Like most liberals, this guy is a raving, lying maniac! I have never known of a case where ox News had to retract anything stated on their station. I wonder if he could be more specific in his accusations. This is a cheap shot.

1. This guy is not spreading liberal crap in this article, as you see he is attacking BBC. The Jerusalem Post is a right-wing Israeli publication.

2. The main point of what he is trying to show concerning Fox News is that it has become not a news reporting station, but a station which is more concerned about entertainment.

I'VE DEVOTED this column to Fox News and the BBC because they are often viewed as being the opposite poles of broadcast news: one baldly partisan, the other scrupulously objective; . . ."

LOL. The interesting thing is that he freely concedes elsewhere that the BEEB pursues a political agenda. He doesn't admit to the relentlessly left wing part of the agenda but his examples all fall quite a bit to the left of center--eg he admits that all BEEB reporters have made up their minds in advance about Israel.

So where does he get 'scrupulously objective?' Had he said that the tone of the BEEB is scrupulously objective, I would have little beef with this. Maybe that's what he meant.

So where does he get 'scrupulously objective?'
I think the important part of his statement is where he says "they are often viewed as." On an international level, the BBC has historically been seen as a "scrupulously objective" voice of the news. He is pointing out that such a view is to an extent outdated. I don't agree with every point he makes, but I think it was a pretty good overall analysis of where Fox and the BBC stand in the world of journalism.

2. The main point of what he is trying to show concerning Fox News is that it has become not a news reporting station, but a station which is more concerned about entertainment.

I don't know why he would single out Fox for this. All of the news programs for the last 15-20 years, maybe more, have been profit-motivated and therefore leaned toward sensationalism and over-hype. That includes the Big Three networks, CNN, and just about every other news agency. That's why we get Kobe and Laci 24x7 everywhere, even though, in the grand scheme of things, neither of those stories matters much relative to world events.

I think it is really just the style that this guy objects to. He wants the dull, monotone of the barely-breathing BBC anchors. Well, Fox is reporting the same stuff as all of the other American news programs; the only difference is that the people at Fox know that most of it is BS, whereas the people at other networks spew this stuff as if it is the word of God. Fox news may have the feel of a local news station broadcast, but that's probably their appeal: that they aren't the type of crew to have an agenda behind their reporting.

As far as the talk programs go, like O'Reilly, they are SUPPOSED to be entertainment, and nobody tries to pass it off as anything else. You simply cannot fill a 24-hour news program with breaking news, so you fill it with commentary.

The BBC, like NPR, feeds on the public dole but feels free to slam the very institutions that allow them to prosper. The NPR gets a lot of funding from foundations that were built on the free enterprise system. The BBC and NPR are both virulently anti-capitalist but have no problem suckling from the teats of the very system that provide them with the money to operate. The BBC, if I recall, had one of its correspondents tossed off a British warship for spreading lies and propaganda. The major networks (CBS, ABC and NBNC) are facing the dead end of irrelevancy because of their own hysterical liberalism. For instance, I watched that fool Harry Smith belaboring the fact that Anrold doesn't have the experience to be governor of California. To Harry, let me say give me a novice with some common sense over thieving politicians any time.

Ultimately, consumers will seek - and news organizations will provide - content that is reasonably accurate and sober.

That's why Fox is number one.

I watched CNN last night for the first time in about a year. They had a story about Arny, it was just a droning piece with no commentary, but I'm sure it is an example of how this person thinks news should be reported. I quickly turned the TV off and went to bed.

The main problem with this article - I'll refrain from referring to it as intentional fraud, since I don't know whether Mr Stephens is merely ignorant of the following or is knowledgeable of it and is purposefully leaving it out - is that Fox News Channel is an American-based network intended FOR AMERICAN CONSUMPTION. It happens to be offered in Israel only because Israeli cable companies have begged to be allowed to carry it. Yet Stephens attacks it precisely for being so American in its tone, and then falsely compares it to BBC World and CNN International, which are intended specifically for international audiences. (Also note that he doesn't alert the reader that he's speaking of CNN International, not the CNN we get here in the US.) He's also viewing the BBC News intended for non-British viewers.

Would he come to the same conclusions if he played fair and compared only the domestic versions of all three channels? Somehow, I doubt it.

Here's the link about Monica Crowley's alleged plagiarism. (Note it's from 1999. Another story from Slate a few days later, including Crowley's response and Timothy Noah's typical sneering commentary. These two articles appear to be the whole of the entire "Monica Crowley plagiarism controversy.")

A bit over the top, but pretty much valid points and criticisms. Fox News Channel would be wise to take heed and fine tune, at time they are truly a sloppy cartoonish embarrassment.

BTW, would it really kill FNC's budget to, when they run background video, to extend it just a little more, instead of looping the same 10 seconds a dozen times. Sheesh, a junior high journalism class could do a better job.

Privatize us, they say, and there will be nothing but Fox News.

(i.e.) If we have to compete, we will lose.

looping the same 10 seconds I'm with you. Its become a tradition now in my house to "sing along" with the North Korean guy. Everytime he comes on we break out into
"OHHHHH-klahoma! Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain!"

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