Squawker:
You are but one speck in the left wing political spectrum. I didn't speak to you specifically.
"Speck", nice. Actually, Squawker, you had quoted my entire post within your response. I think that signifies that you were speaking to me specifically. You may not have intended to aim that comment at me, but your posts reads that way.
Squawker:
They have Democrat and Republican reporters, journalists, and political pundits.
True. They do have liberals/democrats in some of their programming. But they are much fewer in number and are less likely to stand up for their points. Basically, weak liberals are brought on to represent that side. For instance, look at Alan Colmes. He's treated like Hannity's pet liberal...merely a token on that show. Like I've said before, that's fine. But that's beside the point. Saying that Fox News does have some liberals on the air does not mean that they can now claim they are "fair and balanced". Air America regularly features some Republicans in their shows. Does this make Air America a "fair and balanced", non-biased radio station. Hell no!
Squawker:
Do you keep track of the minutes? How do you know they don’t give equal time? Does Al Franken tell you? Lol Of course it bothers you, or you wouldn’t mention it.There is a clear agenda to present both sides of the issues. You would have to have a chart of how much time they give to both sides to say they are not balanced. Do you have any links to that information, or are you just pulling stats out of thin air?
For the umpteenth time, what bothers me is that FOX misrepresents itself by using the tag line "fair and balanced". It does not bother me that the liberal side is not represented. I wouldn't expect it to be respresented on a conservative network. That's like getting upset because Rush Limbaugh didn't spend enough time focusing on the good points of Kerry's campaign. That would be stupid.
And as far as media studies on Fox News. There is an organization called FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) which has collected data from the network. I'll include a few clips from one of their studies. This one focused on "Special Report". (See
http://www.fair.org//page=1187 for the entire article.)
If Fox is the “fair & balanced” network it claims to be, then the guest list of what Fox calls its “signature news show” ought to reflect a diverse spectrum of ideas and sources. FAIR has studied Special Report ’s guest list on two earlier occasions (Extra! , 7–8/01, 7–8/02).
FAIR’s current study looked at 25 weeks of Special Report ’s one-on-one interview segments (6/30/03–12/19/03), finding 101 guests. FAIR classified each guest by political ideology, party affiliation (where applicable), gender and ethnicity. When FAIR first studied Special Report in 2001, the dominance of conservative guests was so overwhelming (71 percent of all guests) that we used just two ideological categories, “conservative” and “non-conservative.” The latter included guests with no discernible political ideology.
When FAIR’s second study in 2002 found conservative guests had dropped to less than half of the total, we added a “left of center” category for comparison purposes. Though the “left of center” category was more broadly defined than the “conservative” category— since many right-of-center guests were not counted as conservatives—conservatives still outnumbered those on the left, 14 to one.
So
Aquapub, where's your data to back up that 95% news media is liberal owned?
And,
Squawker, where are your numbers to back up your claim that Fox is indeed "Fair and Balanced"?
Squawker:
What would you call fair and balanced?
"Fair and Balanced" would be a consistent equal amount of time spent on all political sides or stating the news of the day without spin. Am I naive enough to believe any news outlet can claim they are totally fair and balanced? No. The media owners, producers, and reporters are all human with their own preconceived ideas and even if you make an effort, your bias is going to come across. It's near impossible to make sure you give every story a fair amount of coverage or that you even able cover all the news stories out there. For time purposes alone, news sources have to pick and choose what it is they will cover. And when stories, sides of stories, etc are chosen over others there is bias. Now, the Fox News network overwhelmingly chooses the conservative side above all else. Like I said before it would be more honest of them to rewrite their tagline...maybe "Giving Conservative View Its Due Time" or something along those lines. There's nothing wrong with Fox News being a conservative news channel. I just don't understand why they feel the need to try to convince their viewers they are giving both sides fair coverage. Honestly, Squawker, most of the Fox viewers I know watch the channel
because of the fact that it supports their conservative view. The fact that conservatives consistently tune in to and defend the Fox News network should tell you something about its "conservativeness". It's yours, own it, embrace it.
