December 3, 2001
Fox Portrays a War of Good and Evil, and Many Applaud
By JIM RUTENBERG
sama bin Laden, according to Fox News Channel anchors, analysts and correspondents, is "a dirtbag," "a monster" overseeing a "web of hate." His followers in Al Qaeda are "terror goons." Taliban fighters are "diabolical" and "henchmen."
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 Reuters When Rupert Murdoch, right, and Roger Ailes, announced the Fox News Channel in 1996, few would have predicted it would so dramatically change the landscape of television news. |
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 CNBC Geraldo Rivera |
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The network, owned by the News Corporation (news/quote) of Rupert Murdoch, has always had a reputation — one it disavows — of being politically conservative. But its demeanor since Sept. 11 has surprised even its critics. The network is encouraging correspondents and writers to tap into their anger and let it play out in a way that reminds some rivals and press critics of the war drumbeat of the old Hearst papers and the ideologically driven British tabloids.
The usual anchor role of delivering the news free of personal opinion has been altered to include occasional asides. On a recent edition of the network's 5 p.m. program, "The Big Story," the anchor, John Gibson, said that military tribunals were needed to send the following message to terrorists: "There won't be any dream team for you. There won't be any Mr. Johnnie hand-picking jurors and insisting that the headgear don't fit, you must acquit. Uh-uh. Not this time, pal."
Geraldo Rivera, now a Fox war correspondent in Afghanistan, has said that he would consider killing Osama bin Laden himself if he came across him. (In a live transmission from Taliqan on Thursday, he acknowledged carrying a gun for self- defense.)
So far, the journalistic legacy of this war would seem to be a debate over what role journalism should play at a time of war. The Fox News Channel is the incarnation of a school of thought that the morally neutral practice of journalism is now inappropriate.
It has thrown away many of the conventions that have guided television journalism for half a century, and its viewers clearly approve. The network's average audience of 744,000 viewers at any given moment is 43 percent larger than it was at this time last year — helped along by a sizable increase in distribution.
On some days, Fox draws an audience even larger than the audience of CNN, part of AOL Time Warner (news/quote); CNN is available in nine million more homes. In prime time, Fox draws a larger average audience than CNN even more often, a challenge to CNN that could become stronger as Fox's distribution grows.
The style and success of Fox News have already had an effect. Last month, CNN, showing concern about being outflanked by its competitor, took the extraordinary step of ordering its correspondents to mention the Sept. 11 attacks during any showing of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
Like the rest of the country, television journalism has engaged in a good bit of soul-searching since Sept. 11. Faced with covering a direct, large-scale attack on American soil, people at the other television networks have debated the merits of wearing American flag lapel pins in front of cameras and the danger of letting emotions get in the way of objective reporting. Others, like executives at the Reuters news agency, have cautioned writers and editors about using the word "terrorist."
Such hand-wringing has become fodder for conservative press critics. But Fox has not been saddled with such problems.
The network's motto is "fair and balanced," a catch phrase drafted to imply that it is objective while its competitors carry a liberal bias. But in this conflict, Fox executives say, to be unequivocally fair and balanced is to participate in the worst kind of cultural relativism. Giving both sides equal credence is to lose touch with right and wrong, they contend.
Fox denies that its reports are tinged with ideology. They simply reflect the new realities facing the nation, the network says.
"What we say is terrorists, terrorism, is evil, and America doesn't engage in it, and these guys do," said Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman. "Yet, suddenly, our competition has discovered `fair and balanced,' but only when it's radical terrorism versus the United States."
Fox does not suffer from the same affliction as competitors who are "uncomfortable embracing a good- versus-evil canvas," argued John Moody, the Fox senior vice president in charge of news. That, he said, is a relic of the Vietnam War and Watergate, watershed eras that infused journalism with an outmoded, knee- jerk suspicion of government.
The Fox News mantra of "be accurate, be fair, be American," Mr. Moody said, is appropriate for the times.
Brit Hume, the anchor of "Special Report," Fox's 6 p.m. news program, said he had avoided giving too much weight to reports about civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
"O.K., war is hell, people die," he said. "We know we're at war. The fact that some people are dying, is that really news? And is it news to be treated in a semi-straight-faced way? I think not."
The network says it has also shied away from showing too many reports looking into the genesis of Muslim hostility toward the United States.
Instead, Fox's reports simply take that hostility as a given. On Thursday, for instance, while introducing a segment about the popularity of American films in Islamic countries, a Fox anchor, Shepard Smith, said, "They hate what we stand for, so why do they love our movies so much?"
Mr. Ailes said the network held the government accountable when necessary. He said, for instance, that the network's top-rated talk show host, Bill O'Reilly, had regularly railed against Attorney General John Ashcroft (as ineffectual and overly secretive) and Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of United States forces in Afghanistan (as being ham- handed at public relations).
"We are not anti-the United States," Mr. Ailes said. "We just do not assume that America's wrong first."
It may be a good time to have that position. A survey released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center of 1,500 adult Americans found that 30 percent wanted their newscasters to take a pro-American stance during their reports.
Two executives at two networks were reluctant to argue against Fox's position that the rest of the media coverage of the war had relied on misguided evenhandedness, saying that could invite accusations of insufficient patriotism in the current climate.
But David Westin, the president of ABC News, said it was important for his journalists to maintain their neutrality in times of war. "The American people right now need at least some sources for their news where they believe we're trying to get it right, plain and simply," he said, "rather than because it fits with any advocacy we have."
Mr. Westin added, "Our people don't have to lead the American people to the conclusion they should reach about these horrible terrorist acts."
Alex S. Jones, the director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, said that by reporting the news with such an American perspective, Fox News was failing to explain the evolution of the other side's motivation against the United States.
"I think people need to understand what's going on on the other side of the equation, how the U.S. is viewed by its critics," he said.
Mr. Ailes said the Fox network did as much of that as was necessary.
"Look, we understand the enemy — they've made themselves clear: they want to murder us," he said. "We don't sit around and get all gooey and wonder if these people have been misunderstood in their childhood. If they're going to try to kill us, that's bad."
In the final analysis, Mr. Ailes said, "I don't believe that democracy and terrorism are relative things you can talk about, and I don't think there's any moral equivalence in those two positions." He added: "If that makes me a bad guy, tough luck. I'm still getting the ratings."