Sam Dealey

Fox News and Media Bias

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November 12, 2008 RSS Feed Print
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In a gloating, open letter to Roger Ailes today, Harold Meyerson, a liberal columnist for the Washington Post, thanks the president of Fox News for the network's "consistent misrepresentation of the news." In Meyerson's view, the "right-wing fantasies" peddled by Fox News are so laughable that they have rolled back conservatism.

Now, I'm not a particular fan of U.S. television news—Fox News included. For the most part, the industry caters to the lowest common denominator, emphasizing tabloid, shallow reporting and anchor star-making rather than hard for-your-own-good news. Far better is the European model, exemplified by the Beeb, al Jazeera International, Euro News, and Sky.

I won't defend Fox News; its reporting is far from faultless. But if Meyerson is so opposed to the network, he might ask himself why it has dominated cable news virtually since its inception. Not surprisingly, it's because Fox News benefits from the very phenomenon Meyerson chides it for: misrepresentation and bias in the media.

The mainstream news media (for lack of a better term) consistently misreport news stories every day. And it's not just a fact or figure here and there but a deep bias in the way the media approach stories.

As just one example, consider taxation, the hottest topic in the last election. How many times did networks report that proposed tax cuts would "cost" so-and-so dollars? Why is static scoring the sole impact measurement, when there is considerable evidence supporting the greater accuracy of dynamic scoring? How many MSM reporters even know who Arthur Laffer is?

This negligence is just as ill-informed or biased as liberals would label Fox News reporting, and Meyerson's snarky piece is typical of the American model's shallow hype over substance. 

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Tags:
journalism,
Fox News,
media,
Fox Broadcasting Co.,
Washington Post,
television

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Sam Donaldson was a Young republican but after several years in the media covering politics and current events his political allegiance swung to the left. I believe it was he became better informed. I know personally another fellow who was a republican until he worked for a newspaper and again, as he became better informed had his political views swing to the left.

It is less significant what reporters might believe than it is what media outlets choose to cover and what their editorial policy is. Again the reporter (and later editor) for the New York Times whom I knew was of the opinion that the Times, which is often pilloried by the right as a Northeastern bastion of left wing bias, took a moderately conservative stance on most issues.

Craig B. Olds of WA 2:17AM March 21, 2012

By the way, Newsvine never activated my account or published my posts either and I assure you they were not mistaken for right wing diatribes. I think their just slow on the uptake.

Craig B. Olds of WA 12:27AM March 24, 2010

There may be some intrinsic bias in the mainstream media, in fact I am sure there is. Generally I think it comes from the fact that big media outlets have parent companies that have axes to grind. GE owns MSNBC- they may make some coin marketing some of their news programing to the left but they still fawn over Ronald Reagan, they still trot out Joe Scarborough and they still choose what gets covered. Little comparative examination of our health care system in relation to health care in other wealthy nations was seen on MSNBC or any other mainstream media. The money just was not behind it.

FOX may be symptomatic of a media system driven by profit and not by substance but it is still worth pointing out, over and over again if necessary that this very popular media outlet is not only not fair or balanced but can hardly be called news at all, so blatant is it's political stance. It is an irresponsible use of the airwaves to wield that kind of power with no allegiance to the truth and the only reasonable answer to it is for other media outlets, like the Washington Post, to call FOX out on it.

Craig B. Olds of WA 12:21AM March 24, 2010

Sam Dealey

Sam Dealey

Sam Dealey, former editor of the Washington Times, is a principal at Monument Communications, a public-relations consultancy in Washington, D.C.

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