Why does Kaus ignore Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE which owns NBC and MSNBC who is an advisor to the Obama administration? Surely those ties are more troubling and likely to lead to less independence than Robert Murdoch’s ownership of Fox?
He makes a big deal that Robert Ailes worked in a Republican administration, but ignores all the former Democratic operatives working for the other channels.
He ignores the Pew report which shows that Fox News had the most balanced coverage of the 2008 presidential election.
In short, Kaus looks like a man desperately trying to justify President Obama’s Nixonian attack on Fox News.
Joe Mama
Kaus bases his opinion that FNC is not independent on (1) the fact that it’s run by Roger Ailes, and (2) FNC’s coverage of the immigration debate, where FNC “initially seemed to try valiantly–against the beliefs of most of its audience–to push the Bush White House line in favor of ‘comprehensive’ legalization (while brushing aside its viewers’ views).” (1) deserves a big “so what?” for the reasons gahrie set forth above (not to mention that Kaus provides no explanation whatsoever for why Ailes can be told what to do by the Bushies but Keller and Olbermann for some reason can’t be told what to do by the Obama WH), so that leaves (2). As a watcher of FNC, I don’t recall a “push” for the Bush WH line on comprehensive legalization at all, but leaving that aside, the obvious question is whether FNC ever pushed back against the Bush WH line on something. If it did, then that would disprove Kaus’ theory. I’d have to do some digging, but I seem to recall many on FNC talking pretty disparagingly about Bush’s bailouts. I’d also be curious about how FNC covered the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Brendan Loy
Honestly, I don’t watch Fox News (or any cable news channel, for that matter) enough to have a well-supported opinion on the issue. I mostly liked Kaus’s post for the categories of analysis he created, described, and distinguished from one another — Neutrality, Independence, Accuracy, Fairness, Discipline, and Willingness to Suppress — rather than for his application of those categories to this particular situation. Is Fox more or less independent than MSNBC, the NYT, etc.? I don’t know. But I do think the parsing and separate analysis of these journalistic traits is very helpful. Though I would add a seventh category, albeit one that virtually no broadcast outlet would score well in (NPR is the only exception I can think of) — the category of Seriousness. I might do a full-fledged blog post on this at some point.
Jazz
I think Joe Mama makes a good point re: whether FNC pushed back on suspiciously non-Republican actions from the Bush Administration. I personally don’t recall, as I don’t watch the cable newsies much.
It seems that, given the for-profit, infotainment aspect of those channels, its a bit much to expect them to act like Edward R. Murrow, telling us the Truth whether we want to hear it or not. These days, if we don’t want to hear it we’ll change the channel, which is decidedly bad for business.
Seems like you have to concede ideology from various cable news channels, but I’d add one more to the list: internal controls. IOW, does Fox News stick to its ideological guns by opposing Republicans when they leave the reservation, or are they mere fanboys, rubber-stamping anything that comes down the line from their party’s leadership?
The rubber-stamping fanboy dynamic is more dangerous than straight ideology in the context of cable news infotainment. Can’t say for sure who is guilty of being a fanboy (don’t watch enough to know).
Joe Loy
Jazz, notwithstanding that I Do watch enough to know, I still Don’t. Know, that is. / Moral: don’t watch the Cablebabblers. They Subtract from the Sum total of human knowledge. 🙂
Brendan, in your verycommendable Seventh Category I’d say that of the Big 3 Cableblabbies, MSNBC scores a resounding Least Worst. ;} Oh, sure, the Pinko Channel ;> racks up a maddeningly-high Unseriousness Quotient all by its Own socialist self BUT the Foxy Righties & the CNN Straddlers dedicate even More of their air to “stories” of sheer Fluff-&-Nonsense (not to mention Miscellaneous Fol-de-Rol 🙂 ~ leaving MSNBC the Cable of relatively more Info, less ‘Tainment. (Faint praise.) (Damn. 🙂 / Of course this is just one Fanboy’s opinion. 😉
Joe Loy
Screwed up the Italicizations there, can’t remember HTML no more, Bah. / I blame the Cablenewsies. Rotted my brain, by Golly. 🙂 Well, just read it like I was Emphasizing almost Everything. Which I prettymuch Do, anyway. ;>
dcl
At a basic level I would say there is nothing fundamentally wrong with “the party press”. After all, that is the standard of journalism that this country was founded on. The functional difference now, of course, is that the bias is covert instead of overt. (It is fairly obvious but the organizations try to claim independence and neutrality.) I think it is the false claim on neutrality that is the most harmful.
To vastly over simplify, we started with the party press then we had a brief golden age of fairly neutral and unbiased reporting before slipping back towards the party press. The problem now, of course, is that everyone still thinks, to some degree or another, of the media in the same terms they did the mystical unbiased media. That is they don’t think critically about the information they are presented with, or at least think that everyone else watching it doesn’t and is single sourcing and thats why the other side doesn’t see the “Truth”…. and… and.. and…
The wolf has returned in sheep’s clothing, as it were and now to mix my metaphor something fierce, we are now left with the foxes guarding the hen house.
I don’t think the present situation is particularly good. But I don’t think media bias, per se, is a serious problem for the country. I think the more serious problem is problem is that people are still trying to pretend that it isn’t or that it shouldn’t be.
Fox is biased, we all know this we all accept this. So is MSNBC. There is no reason to go around pretending that they aren’t or getting upset when they are. But it is rather silly of them to get bent out of shape when they get called on their bias. I think, to a certain extent everyone, including the ratings, would be better off if fox just out and said, they are the conservative news network and MSNBC said they were the liberal one. At a certain point, you say screw it I’m going to own this market.
I think I’ve started rambling, so what do people think, would we all be better off if the various media outlets started more explicitly “owning” their bias?
Sandy Underpants
The news business is pretty disgraceful across the board, but why would Obama want to appear on a network who’s highest rated programs, Glenn Beck and Hannity, do nothing but bash the president with innuendo and rumors? Glenn Beck has debates about Fema opening concentration camps with 2 loonies who he presents as well-reasoned people and then it’s basically 3 people on a set repeating the same things, legitimizing theories and statements that are totally insane. The death panels, Obama’s fake birth certificate, advocating blocking the president from speaking on television to classrooms across the country. Telling Americans they need to be scared of this administration and the government because they are bringing Socialism to the country and we’re going to be living in a Russian or Chinese style government soon. Why legitimize these tabloids by appearing on their programming? I don’t know how I would respond to someone questioning my citizenship or making a flunky organization like ACORN, who doesn’t seem to even have high school level employees working for them, out to be a Nazi Storm-trooper type action group.
If Fox wants to be taken seriously they need to drop biased crazy people like Beck and Hannity from their programming, or else they will be treated as the same illegitimate side-show that MSNBC is.
David K.
Glenn Beck also thinks that community service is un-American, that pretty much sums up how whacked out Glenn Beck is.
1. The GOP needs Fox News more than Fox News needs the GOP. The idea that the GOP gives the marching orders is absurd.
2. To the extent that the biases exhibited on Fox and the priorities of the GOP overlap, it might be because both have an interest in appealing to conservatives.
3. To the extent that Fox News covered the 2007 immigration debate with a pro-amnesty slant, well, so did the Wall Street Journal editorial page. As Tom Maguire observes, “The McCain-Bush de facto open borders approach was favored by Big Business Conservatives before Bush was a gleam in Karl Rove’s eye.”
4. Maguire also writes, “a better place to look for signs of Fox’s fealty to Bush — how did they handle the conservative rebellion in early 2006 over both Harriet Miers and the Dubai port deal?” Kaus counters by producing a transcript of Brit Hume and Fred Barnes describing Miers’s critics as an “elitist” bunch. So what? Conservative critics of Miers were being elitist, and rightly so. The conservative movement has often featured lively debates between its elitists and populists: More to the point, the “elitists” were well represented on Fox News, cf. multiple appearances by Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Laura Ingraham and David Frum in the days following the Miers nomination. As for the Dubai deal, I wrote at the time that it “split conservatives along a traditional fault line — the one that separates conservatives on issues like immigration and policies regarding foreign investment and international trade.” In other words, support for the administration’s position had more to do with that fault line and less to do with GOP water-carrying. Hugh Hewitt supported the deal, but so did David Brooks.
I grow so tired of this smear. National Review gets this kind of thing all the time. Last year, Jonah compiled a nice summary of our dissents from the Bush White House. One could compile a similar dossier in defense of Fox News, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t matter. No amount of evidence to the contrary will ever convince hard left-wingers that Fox News is the GOP’s propaganda arm. It has become a tenet of their faith, like Dick Cheney’s criminality and Rush Limbaugh’s racism.
Kaus also writes, “Suppose on October 25th, 2008 I’d discovered, without doubt, and with documentation, that Barack Obama cheated on his taxes. Would I publish it? Probably not.”
I like Kaus’s writing, but wow. If that’s the extent of your devotion to the Democratic Party, do you even need marching orders? I guess that’s why I find Kaus’s attempt to draw a distinction between Fox News and MSNBC — based on the latter’s “independence” — so phony.
Re: Joe Mama’s post of a post, I don’t think most people with a pulse need to see ‘unbiased’ phony studies to determine that Fox News ISN’T biased one way over the other. They’re still running positive Sarah Palin stories, including one just yesterday. No self-respecting news organization would give that unedecuted quitter-moron any respectable platform to ramble on.
Most importantly though, is that I know for a fact that the Bush Jr. White House sent out talking points daily for Fox News broadcasts (and talk radio simulcasts) on what topics to cover, what the spin was going to be, and how to push the agenda.
David K.
Joe, unfortunately he’s from Washington. He grew up in a town about 10-15 away from where I did, and was recently awarded the key to the city by the mayor (the town council distanced themselves and much protesting was done about it).
Why does Kaus ignore Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE which owns NBC and MSNBC who is an advisor to the Obama administration? Surely those ties are more troubling and likely to lead to less independence than Robert Murdoch’s ownership of Fox?
He makes a big deal that Robert Ailes worked in a Republican administration, but ignores all the former Democratic operatives working for the other channels.
He ignores the Pew report which shows that Fox News had the most balanced coverage of the 2008 presidential election.
In short, Kaus looks like a man desperately trying to justify President Obama’s Nixonian attack on Fox News.
Kaus bases his opinion that FNC is not independent on (1) the fact that it’s run by Roger Ailes, and (2) FNC’s coverage of the immigration debate, where FNC “initially seemed to try valiantly–against the beliefs of most of its audience–to push the Bush White House line in favor of ‘comprehensive’ legalization (while brushing aside its viewers’ views).” (1) deserves a big “so what?” for the reasons gahrie set forth above (not to mention that Kaus provides no explanation whatsoever for why Ailes can be told what to do by the Bushies but Keller and Olbermann for some reason can’t be told what to do by the Obama WH), so that leaves (2). As a watcher of FNC, I don’t recall a “push” for the Bush WH line on comprehensive legalization at all, but leaving that aside, the obvious question is whether FNC ever pushed back against the Bush WH line on something. If it did, then that would disprove Kaus’ theory. I’d have to do some digging, but I seem to recall many on FNC talking pretty disparagingly about Bush’s bailouts. I’d also be curious about how FNC covered the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Honestly, I don’t watch Fox News (or any cable news channel, for that matter) enough to have a well-supported opinion on the issue. I mostly liked Kaus’s post for the categories of analysis he created, described, and distinguished from one another — Neutrality, Independence, Accuracy, Fairness, Discipline, and Willingness to Suppress — rather than for his application of those categories to this particular situation. Is Fox more or less independent than MSNBC, the NYT, etc.? I don’t know. But I do think the parsing and separate analysis of these journalistic traits is very helpful. Though I would add a seventh category, albeit one that virtually no broadcast outlet would score well in (NPR is the only exception I can think of) — the category of Seriousness. I might do a full-fledged blog post on this at some point.
I think Joe Mama makes a good point re: whether FNC pushed back on suspiciously non-Republican actions from the Bush Administration. I personally don’t recall, as I don’t watch the cable newsies much.
It seems that, given the for-profit, infotainment aspect of those channels, its a bit much to expect them to act like Edward R. Murrow, telling us the Truth whether we want to hear it or not. These days, if we don’t want to hear it we’ll change the channel, which is decidedly bad for business.
Seems like you have to concede ideology from various cable news channels, but I’d add one more to the list: internal controls. IOW, does Fox News stick to its ideological guns by opposing Republicans when they leave the reservation, or are they mere fanboys, rubber-stamping anything that comes down the line from their party’s leadership?
The rubber-stamping fanboy dynamic is more dangerous than straight ideology in the context of cable news infotainment. Can’t say for sure who is guilty of being a fanboy (don’t watch enough to know).
Jazz, notwithstanding that I Do watch enough to know, I still Don’t. Know, that is. / Moral: don’t watch the Cablebabblers. They Subtract from the Sum total of human knowledge. 🙂
Brendan, in your verycommendable Seventh Category I’d say that of the Big 3 Cableblabbies, MSNBC scores a resounding Least Worst. ;} Oh, sure, the Pinko Channel ;> racks up a maddeningly-high Unseriousness Quotient all by its Own socialist self BUT the Foxy Righties & the CNN Straddlers dedicate even More of their air to “stories” of sheer Fluff-&-Nonsense (not to mention Miscellaneous Fol-de-Rol 🙂 ~ leaving MSNBC the Cable of relatively more Info, less ‘Tainment. (Faint praise.) (Damn. 🙂 / Of course this is just one Fanboy’s opinion. 😉
Screwed up the Italicizations there, can’t remember HTML no more, Bah. / I blame the Cablenewsies. Rotted my brain, by Golly. 🙂 Well, just read it like I was Emphasizing almost Everything. Which I prettymuch Do, anyway. ;>
At a basic level I would say there is nothing fundamentally wrong with “the party press”. After all, that is the standard of journalism that this country was founded on. The functional difference now, of course, is that the bias is covert instead of overt. (It is fairly obvious but the organizations try to claim independence and neutrality.) I think it is the false claim on neutrality that is the most harmful.
To vastly over simplify, we started with the party press then we had a brief golden age of fairly neutral and unbiased reporting before slipping back towards the party press. The problem now, of course, is that everyone still thinks, to some degree or another, of the media in the same terms they did the mystical unbiased media. That is they don’t think critically about the information they are presented with, or at least think that everyone else watching it doesn’t and is single sourcing and thats why the other side doesn’t see the “Truth”…. and… and.. and…
The wolf has returned in sheep’s clothing, as it were and now to mix my metaphor something fierce, we are now left with the foxes guarding the hen house.
I don’t think the present situation is particularly good. But I don’t think media bias, per se, is a serious problem for the country. I think the more serious problem is problem is that people are still trying to pretend that it isn’t or that it shouldn’t be.
Fox is biased, we all know this we all accept this. So is MSNBC. There is no reason to go around pretending that they aren’t or getting upset when they are. But it is rather silly of them to get bent out of shape when they get called on their bias. I think, to a certain extent everyone, including the ratings, would be better off if fox just out and said, they are the conservative news network and MSNBC said they were the liberal one. At a certain point, you say screw it I’m going to own this market.
I think I’ve started rambling, so what do people think, would we all be better off if the various media outlets started more explicitly “owning” their bias?
The news business is pretty disgraceful across the board, but why would Obama want to appear on a network who’s highest rated programs, Glenn Beck and Hannity, do nothing but bash the president with innuendo and rumors? Glenn Beck has debates about Fema opening concentration camps with 2 loonies who he presents as well-reasoned people and then it’s basically 3 people on a set repeating the same things, legitimizing theories and statements that are totally insane. The death panels, Obama’s fake birth certificate, advocating blocking the president from speaking on television to classrooms across the country. Telling Americans they need to be scared of this administration and the government because they are bringing Socialism to the country and we’re going to be living in a Russian or Chinese style government soon. Why legitimize these tabloids by appearing on their programming? I don’t know how I would respond to someone questioning my citizenship or making a flunky organization like ACORN, who doesn’t seem to even have high school level employees working for them, out to be a Nazi Storm-trooper type action group.
If Fox wants to be taken seriously they need to drop biased crazy people like Beck and Hannity from their programming, or else they will be treated as the same illegitimate side-show that MSNBC is.
Glenn Beck also thinks that community service is un-American, that pretty much sums up how whacked out Glenn Beck is.
Stephen Spruiell calls baloney on Kaus:
Sandy U & David K, we Constitution Staties are ashamed to acknowledge that the execrable Beck made his broadcasting bones right here in Connecticut. May God forgive us. ;>
Re: Joe Mama’s post of a post, I don’t think most people with a pulse need to see ‘unbiased’ phony studies to determine that Fox News ISN’T biased one way over the other. They’re still running positive Sarah Palin stories, including one just yesterday. No self-respecting news organization would give that unedecuted quitter-moron any respectable platform to ramble on.
Most importantly though, is that I know for a fact that the Bush Jr. White House sent out talking points daily for Fox News broadcasts (and talk radio simulcasts) on what topics to cover, what the spin was going to be, and how to push the agenda.
Joe, unfortunately he’s from Washington. He grew up in a town about 10-15 away from where I did, and was recently awarded the key to the city by the mayor (the town council distanced themselves and much protesting was done about it).