Posted on 11/06/2008 6:26:44 AM PST by connell
By Christopher Cook
Wait a minute—what's with that crazy headline? FOX News? The denizen of evil, scheming conservative journalists? The outlet for the nefarious plans of right-wing villains like Ailes and Murdoch?
Yes.
This information is found in Pew's study, whose summary is called The Color of News. In fact, it's easily seen in the foregoing graphic:
Oddly, however, the person/s writing the article are incapable of correctly interpreting their own graphs to find the real takeaway, as is evidenced in the following statements about FOX in the summary.
First, they say . . .
Things look much better for Barack Obama—and much worse for John McCain—on MSNBC than in most other news outlets. On the Fox News Channel, the coverage of the presidential candidates is something of a mirror image of that seen on MSNBC.
And then they say . . .
On Fox News, in contrast, coverage of Obama was more negative than the norm (40% of stories vs. 29% overall) and less positive (25% of stories vs. 36% generally). For McCain, the news channel was somewhat more positive (22% vs. 14% in the press overall) and substantially less negative (40% vs. 57% in the press overall). Yet even here, his negative stories outweighed positive ones by almost 2 to 1.
While we appreciate the fact that they note the imbalanced nature of MSNBC, the comment about the "mirror image" is misleading at best. Comparing the graphs showing MSNBC's and FOX's coverage of Obama seems to indicate a bias against Obama at FOX. Using that comparison as the source of one's inference about FOX's coverage seems to indicate that, while MSNBC was reasonable towards Obama, FOX—because of it's right wing hate-bias—was very negative.
Wrong. Wrong comparison, wrong analysis, wrong inference.
The proper comparison is not to look at how MSNBC (or any of the others) treated Obama vs. how FOX treated Obama. The comparison that needs to be made is to see how each network treated both candidates. In other words, look at how FOX treated Obama and compare that to how they treated McCain. Then do the same for MSNBC.
This internal comparison shows something very different from what the author/s of the summary appear to have intended.
According to the graph, FOX covered McCain and Obama essentially equally, i.e., with similar numbers of negative, neutral, and positive stories. By contrast, MSNBC was very negative towards McCain and quite positive towards Obama.
To make this easier to see, we have reworked the graph to show the way it should have been presented:
THAT'S your story right there. Looking at this comparison, we see that MSNBC engaged in an assault on John McCain and a borderline hagiography of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, we see that FOX engaged in, as their tagline suggests, "fair and balanced" coverage of each. More strikingly, we see that FOX was even slightly more positive towards Obama than towards McCain.
That, however, is not what the author/s of the summary appear to want you to take away from the study. The way they composed their graph and their wording appears to seek to reinforce the left's hysterical view of FOX rather than the reality.
Again . . .
On Fox News, in contrast, coverage of Obama was more negative than the norm . . . and less positive . . . . For McCain, the news channel was somewhat more positive . . . and substantially less negative.
That is appallingly misleading, especially when you strip out the numbers as I have done.
The impression the verbiage in the summary seeks to create is . . .
Right-wing FOX News hostile to Obama, friendly to McCain.
The actual result of the study, viewable in their very own graph, leads to a far more salient and newsworthy conclusion:
MSBNC beatifies Obama, assaults McCain; meanwhile, FOX treats both equally
And they easily could have added . . .
Contrary to common view, FOX slightly more favorable to Democrat than Republican
Why do a study at all if you are just going to fabricate a misleading set of conclusions about the numbers? Why not just find out what narrative the left would like you to further and then write an article pretending you did a study?
It would be a lot cheaper.
Of course they were, with the likes of Smith, BOR, Colmes, Hume and the rest, everyone except Hannity and Greta were in the tank for Obama.
Treating them equally isn’t enough...by covering the negative stories at all, Fox caused the public to know about them when the rest of the media kept quiet...so Obama would still have a reason to try to get Fox off the air if he can do so legally. Or at least scare them into becoming a clone of CNN.
Big surprise NOT!!!
Not shocked.
FOX SUX.
We need to stop watching them. Kill their ratings.
This isn’t a surprise to those who’ve been paying attention.
Most of the Fox commentators are conservatives on foreign policy and/or culture issues but are pretty liberal on the core domestic policies.
And please, tell me, who is shocked?
Faux sNooze is dead to me.
My sentiments exactly, and they were definitely biased towards BHO.
I watched Fox almost exclusively, and in my opinion it was pretty close to neutral. Those who wanted a conservative network didn’t find one.
The only blatantly conservative-friendly spots are FoxnFriends, Cavuto, and Hannity. And even there, they give the opposition seriously equal time.
I’m giving O’Reilly credit: he clearly was neutral this time around.
McCain made a huge mistake not getting his entire team with Hume, Wallace, O’Reilly, etc. Neutral is far better than antagonistic.
“Of course they were, with the likes of Smith, BOR, Colmes, Hume and the rest, everyone except Hannity and Greta were in the tank for Obama.”
The reason Fox’s ratings are huge compared to the other networks is because they are fair and balanced. Granted their commentary is biased, but people know that. It’s commentary. And they do offer both points of view.
In the news business, you cannot market to a single demographic, in this case Rat or Repub, and be successful. Just as the MSNBC. In the commentary business, if you only offer one point of view, it has to be intelligent, fact based and be done in a good natured way. This is why Rush, Sean etc, blow away Air Amerika and other left wing shows.
People don’t want vitriol and hatred, they want to be entertained in a positive way.
HUme has seemed depressed grouchy and negative ever since last summer. Is he sick?
Fox knew that obama would be the next president....they acted accordingly.
Don’t you think this is the reason Hume has announced his retirement? He looked absolutely pathetic those last few days of the period before the election. Seemed he was forced to remain unbiased and couldn’t speak his mind.
Looks to me like Fox provided pretty even coverage. My question would is, who decided what represents a positive, neutral, or negative story? Results would vary based on perception and inherent bias.
I think the death of Tony Snow really hit Hume in the gut.
This is why we watch the “Military Channel”, “Cartoon Network” and Biography. (How they’ll do one for BO, I’ll never know) We used to watch Paula Deen on Foodnetwork. Then she invited Michelle Obama on!!! That just pissed me off to no end. Even Paula was in the tank!! That’s like your mother calling you to say “how about that BO”!
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