News Is Fox News Fair and Balanced ? (different than last poll)

[Hepth]

Exactly. In addition, I grant that media sources make errors, large and small, some careless and some because of bias. That is all a different matter from how they choose to go about repackaging wire reports. My objection in this particular thread is to the suggestion that some how FN has any kind of monopoly on errors because, as far as I can tell, FN covers stories and angles that previously were willfully ignored by legacy media.

I had just noticed ONLY Fox doing this for this one specific report. I subsequently asked about how common it was, as I figured something like this, if "wrong" by any means, would have been noticed much earlier. As I see that its standard reporting fare, I don't thing Fox is to blame at all for the modification of said wire.

On the other hand, its an obvious interjection of blatant opinion into an otherwise sound news article. While I agree that "Scientists" as opposed to "Some scientsts" is a valid change, well, both are misleading. The first implies that "all" do, while "some" implies that "many, but not majority" do. When it fact it should say "Nearly all scientists" or "Overwhelming majority of scientists" as wasn't the numbers of dissenters in the single digit percentile. So technically both articles have some slant in that point of view. Fox just changed it from left slant to right slant.

Ah the media...

 

[WhoWee]

I had just noticed ONLY Fox doing this for this one specific report. I subsequently asked about how common it was, as I figured something like this, if "wrong" by any means, would have been noticed much earlier. As I see that its standard reporting fare, I don't thing Fox is to blame at all for the modification of said wire.

That's why I posted the News Corp link above - in case anyone wants to compare the comparable stories across all News Corp media?

 

[mugaliens]

Which wasn't in the original article.

You mean Fox is actually doing more investigative reporting than merely repeating what's on the AP wire? Oh, heaven forbid! Can't have any reporting not sanctioned by the AP! (shudder)

Is this common practice?

It is among the better news agencies, the ones where the reporters actually find some if not most of their own content.

 

[Hepth]

You mean Fox is actually doing more investigative reporting than merely repeating what's on the AP wire? Oh, heaven forbid! Can't have any reporting not sanctioned by the AP! (shudder)

Well, no need to don an insulting tone. This isn't the Fox News web comments where one has to jump to overly obtuse sarcasm in order to be defensive. Though I'd be hesitant to call these changes "investigative reporting". The comment about AP doesn't really make much sense given the context of this topic, where Fox DID use AP's wire with only very slight changes. If you're going to somehow now claim that AP is an unusable source then why do they consistently use it?

It is among the better news agencies, the ones where the reporters actually find some if not most of their own content.

So NOT Fox then? As this is a demonstration of them NOT finding their own content, but mildly changing another reporter's rather than have an independent reporter at the conference? I'm not sure I see your argument in this case.

 

[mheslep]

I had just noticed ONLY Fox doing this for this one specific report. I subsequently asked about how common it was, as I figured something like this, if "wrong" by any means, would have been noticed much earlier. As I see that its standard reporting fare, I don't thing Fox is to blame at all for the modification of said wire.

On the other hand, its an obvious interjection of blatant opinion into an otherwise sound news article. While I agree that "Scientists" as opposed to "Some scientsts" is a valid change, well, both are misleading. The first implies that "all" do, while "some" implies that "many, but not majority" do. When it fact it should say "Nearly all scientists" or "Overwhelming majority of scientists" as wasn't the numbers of dissenters in the single digit percentile.

Well I'll grant any such news article is 'misleading' if one attempts to draw precise conclusions from it. "Nearly all scientists" is still wrong. The correct phrase would have to be nearly all "climate researchers most actively publishing in the field", which then prompts the question about how narrow the field is, etc. Not so easy to write a news article. I think 'Some scientists' is a fair shot for the venue.

 

[skippy1729]

Fascinating, the winner (so far) is people who watch Fox once a year or less but know that is less balanced that the other news providers. I think this poll tells more about the people responding to it than it tells about Fox news. I watch Fox and MSNBC. They both have a bias but Fox is much more balanced. I don't keep a running count but I see many more liberals on FOX than conservatives on MSNBC.

Skippy

 

[mugaliens]

Astute observation, Skippy. :) It's quite common for humans to loathe or fear that with which we're unfamiliar.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Fascinating, the winner (so far) is people who watch Fox once a year or less but know that is less balanced that the other news providers. I think this poll tells more about the people responding to it than it tells about Fox news. I watch Fox and MSNBC. They both have a bias but Fox is much more balanced. I don't keep a running count but I see many more liberals on FOX than conservatives on MSNBC.

Skippy

I watched enough Fox for a time to see that it is not a reputable news organization. There is no reason to continue watching once this determination is made. Likewise, I know that Richard Hoagland is a nut, so I have no need to follow his continuing saga. You seem to suggest that it is worth spending time on Hoagland as long as I tune into the Sunday morning evangelicals for my science.

It is sad that this is seen as some kind of balance.

I watch neither Fox or MSNBC. And it only takes a few minutes of viewing to remind me of why I watch neither.

 

[cobalt124]

I voted "Unbalanced but similar to other news programs, and I watch Fox News rarely (yearly or less)" - I've never watched it effectively. I don't need to to make a judgement because I've made it by reading the threads about it, so my rule of thumb not to touch anything owned by Rupert Murdoch applies here. There's bias in the lot of them, so to make the best of a bad job I would always choose publicly funded news broadcasting that was accountable to the public, and minimise the politics, power playing and profit making in news broadcasting.

 

[rethunk]

Why would anyone even include:
"Unbalanced unlike most news programs, and I watch Fox News regularly"
on the poll? No one's going to tick that except to be perverse!

 

[xxChrisxx]

All American news channels are hilariously biased one way or the other (well, some more than others). They also seem to spend rather a lot of the time sniping at each other.

NBC vs Fox seems the most common.
EDIT: I voted to be perverse.

 

[cobalt124]

Which leads us back to the thread "News as Entertainment" (if it still bothers anyone anymore, me included). We just seem to be entertaining ourselves at the expense of knowing what our elected governments are up to.