<<http://poynter.org/forum/?id=letters#foxnews>>
>From CHARLIE REINA: So Chris Wallace says Fox News Channel really is fair
and balanced. Well, I guess that settles it. We can all go home now. I
mean, so what if Wallace's salary as Fox's newest big-name anchor ends
with a whole lot of zeroes? So what if he hasn't spent a day in the FNC
newsroom yet?
My advice to the pundits: If you really want to know about bias at Fox,
talk to the grunts who work there - the desk assistants, tape editors,
writers, researchers and assorted producers who have to deal with it
every day. Ask enough of them what goes on, promise them anonymity, and
you'll get the real story.
The fact is, daily life at FNC is all about management politics. I say
this having served six years there - as producer of the media criticism
show, News Watch, as a writer/producer of specials and (for the last year
of my stay) as a newsroom copy editor. Not once in the 20+ years I had
worked in broadcast journalism prior to Fox - including lengthy stays at
The Associated Press, CBS Radio and ABC/Good Morning America - did I feel
any pressure to toe a management line. But at Fox, if my boss wasn't
warning me to "be careful" how I handled the writing of a special about
Ronald Reagan ("You know how Roger [Fox News Chairman Ailes] feels about
him."), he was telling me how the environmental special I was to produce
should lean ("You can give both sides, but make sure the
pro-environmentalists don't get the last word.")
Editorially, the FNC newsroom is under the constant control and vigilance
of management. The pressure ranges from subtle to direct. First of all,
it's a news network run by one of the most high-profile political
operatives of recent times. Everyone there understands that FNC is, to a
large extent, "Roger's Revenge" - against what he considers a liberal,
pro-Democrat media establishment that has shunned him for decades. For
the staffers, many of whom are too young to have come up through the
ranks of objective journalism, and all of whom are non-union, with no
protections regarding what they can be made to do, there is undue
motivation to please the big boss.
Sometimes, this eagerness to serve Fox's ideological interests goes even
beyond what management expects. For example, in June of last year, when a
California judge ruled the Pledge of Allegiance's "Under God" wording
unconstitutional, FNC's newsroom chief ordered the judge's mailing
address and phone number put on the screen. The anchor, reading from the
Teleprompter, found himself explaining that Fox was taking this unusual
step so viewers could go directly to the judge and get "as much
information as possible" about his decision. To their credit, the big
bosses recognized that their underling's transparent attempt to serve
their political interests might well threaten the judge's physical safety
and ordered the offending information removed from the screen as soon as
they saw it. A few months later, this same eager-to-please newsroom chief
ordered the removal of a graphic quoting UN weapons inspector Hans Blix
as saying his team had not yet found WMDs in Iraq. Fortunately, the
electronic equipment was quicker on the uptake (and less susceptible to
office politics) than the toady and displayed the graphic before his
order could be obeyed.
But the roots of FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They
come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each
morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting
how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the
channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given
day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a
particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it.
The Memo was born with the Bush administration, early in 2001, and,
intentionally or not, has ensured that the administration's point of view
consistently comes across on FNC. This year, of course, the war in Iraq
became a constant subject of The Memo. But along with the obvious -
information on who is where and what they'll be covering - there have
been subtle hints as to the tone of the anchors' copy. For instance, from
the March 20th memo: "There is something utterly incomprehensible about
Kofi Annan's remarks in which he allows that his thoughts are 'with the
Iraqi people.' One could ask where those thoughts were during the 23
years Saddam Hussein was brutalizing those same Iraqis. Food for
thought." Can there be any doubt that the memo was offering not only
"food for thought," but a direction for the FNC writers and anchors to
go? Especially after describing the U.N. Secretary General's remarks as
"utterly incomprehensible"?
The sad truth is, such subtlety is often all it takes to send Fox's
newsroom personnel into action - or inaction, as the case may be. One day
this past spring, just after the U.S. invaded Iraq, The Memo warned us
that anti-war protesters would be "whining" about U.S. bombs killing
Iraqi civilians, and suggested they could tell that to the families of
American soldiers dying there. Editing copy that morning, I was not
surprised when an eager young producer killed a correspondent's report on
the day's fighting - simply because it included a brief shot of children
in an Iraqi hospital.
These are not isolated incidents at Fox News Channel, where virtually no
one of authority in the newsroom makes a move unmeasured against
management's politics, actual or perceived. At the Fair and Balanced
network, everyone knows management's point of view, and, in case they're
not sure how to get it on air, The Memo is there to remind them.
----
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal." - Diebold
Internal Memos
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