FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and news reports
SPECIAL FAIR REPORT--
THE MOST BIASED NAME IN NEWS:
Fox News Channel's extraordinary right-wing tilt
July 2, 2001
Fox News Channel wraps itself in slogans of journalistic objectivity like
"Fair and balanced" and "We report, you decide," but a new FAIR report finds
a dramatic right-wing tilt in the network's news.
The full report is in three parts, all available online:
--The Most Biased Name in News: Fox News Channel's extraordinary right-wing
tilt
--Fox's Slanted Sources: Conservatives, Republicans far outnumber others
--Bill O'Reilly's Sheer O'Reillyness: Don't call him conservative-- but he
is
http://www.fair.org/reports/fox.html
In a study of interviewees on the network's signature political news show,
Special Report with Brit Hume, FAIR found that of 56 partisan guests in a
five month period, 50 were Republicans and six were Democrats. That's 89
percent Republican, a greater than 8 to 1 imbalance.
But Special Report-- originally created as a daily hour-long update on the
1998 Clinton sex scandals-- doesn't just skew Republican, it skews
conservative: During the course of the study, 65 of the show's total of 92
guests (71 percent) were avowed conservatives. Conservatives outnumbered all
other points of view, including non-political guests, by a factor of more
than 2 to 1.
What's more, the show featured only eight female guests and six people of
color, making for a guest list that was 91 percent male and 93 percent
white.
The darling of conservative politicos, Fox News Channel's entire editorial
philosophy revolves around the idea that the network is an antidote to
supposedly "liberal" mainstream media like CNN. But the facts just don't
back Fox up. As a comparison to Special Report, FAIR studied interviewees on
CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports over the same period, and found that of 67
partisan guests, 38 were Republicans and 29 Democrats-- 57 percent
Republican versus Special Report's 89 percent. About 32 percent of Wolf
Blitzer's total guests were avowed conservatives, versus 65 percent on
Special Report.
Fox often has trouble keeping the partisanship of its main news
personalities in check. In 1996, for instance, Fox anchor Tony Snow endorsed
Bob Dole for president in a Republican National Committee magazine. At the
2000 Republican Convention, Snow-- ostensibly a journalist covering a news
event-- gave a speech before to Republican Youth Caucus. Trent Lott followed
up with a cheer of "How about Tony Snow in 2008?"
The on-air bias is often just as pronounced. Liberals come in for regular
bashing on the show of Fox's star performer, Bill O'Reilly. Since 1998, The
O'Reilly Factor has run an astounding 56 segments about Jesse Jackson-- that
means that one out of every 12 episodes of the show featured a Jackson
segment, many with themes like "How personal are African-Americans taking
the moral failures of Reverend Jesse Jackson?"
During the 2000 election, O'Reilly wondered whether Al Gore was running "on
a quasi-socialistic platform" with "work and production being supervised by
the government." After the election, O'Reilly's softball treatment of the
new administration was a marked contrast to his scrutiny of Clinton--
"President Bush ran on the slogan 'reformer with results,'" said O'Reilly.
"That sounds good to me." So much for the "No spin zone."
Check out the full report at:
http://www.fair.org/reports/fox.html
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