ESLIE H. GELB, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, watches international news obsessively, skipping from channel to channel. "I never watch a commercial," he said. Posted on 12/01/2002 12:50:24 PM PST by PianoMan
ESLIE H. GELB, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, watches international news obsessively, skipping from channel to channel. "I never watch a commercial," he said.
He now considers Fox News Channel often to be a more reliable news source for international reporting than CNN or the nightly network news. Fox, he said, provides a "fairer picture, a fuller version of the different parts of the arguments" over world affairs.
Mr. Gelb said he makes a distinction between Fox's news coverage and its opinion programs, like "The O'Reilly Factor," which he considers biased. But even here, he finds himself drawn to Fox. "CNN's commentary tends to be less biased and less interesting," he said.
A lot of other people who do not fit comfortably into the right-wing stereotype of Fox viewers apparently agree.
Last week, Fox News reported that its prime-time viewership had grown 17 percent for the month, compared with November 2001, while CNN's prime-time ratings fell 31 percent, continuing a pattern of dominance by Fox in the cable news wars. In the 24-hour cycle, Fox has a solid lead over CNN, and has left MSNBC in the dust.
While the total viewership of the three major network nightly news programs dwarfs that of the cable news channels, a more important statistic may well be that cable news is now a leading source of news for over half the country, followed by newspapers and local television. Network TV news was ranked fourth, in a survey conducted in January by the Pew Research Center.
And if cable news is now the nation's main news source, Fox — the self-described maverick outsider — finds itself in the peculiar position of being, arguably, the most powerful television news organization in the country, playing a major role in defining what is important and what is not.
Like it or not, Fox has become the establishment, with critics now bemoaning not just what they say is its bias but its dominating influence.
Fox's importance as a powerhouse was underscored last week when Al Gore named it first in a list of conservative news media that he said function as a "fifth column" in the larger media world. In an interview with The New York Observer, he complained of the influence now wielded by Fox, The Washington Times and Rush Limbaugh, among others, calling them "part and parcel of the Republican Party."
Undoubtedly, the popularity of President Bush and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress only enhance the outsider-into-insider transformation of Fox News. In his new book, Bob Woodward revealed that Roger Ailes, the Fox News president, sent a letter to President Bush after the terrorist attacks offering his advice.
But if Fox News were merely a Republican Party organ, it would almost certainly not have achieved the stunning popular success it has enjoyed since its start in October 1996. It has won a huge audience in a centrist nation where a majority favor stricter gun control and 80 percent think abortion should be sometimes or always legal, according to recent Gallup and CNN/USA Today polls.
So, why is Fox News now sitting so high?
Without doubt, its claim to offer "fair and balanced" news appeals to many people. In a conservative time, a time of war, Fox viewers like their news from a strong American perspective, with flags rippling in graphics and a pugnacity toward the nation's critics — the people John Gibson, host of Fox's nightly "Big Story," referred to last week as the peanut gallery. Such blunt speaking is a point of pride at Fox, which, for example, reports on "homicide bombers" in Israel, rather than "suicide bombers."
For the most part, Fox News is what William Kristol terms "the news network of Bush's America," the majority that approves of the way Mr. Bush is doing his job, especially since Sept. 11. Indeed, since the World Trade Center attacks, the number of people who list cable news as one of their prime news sources has increased substantially, which has proved a boon for Fox especially.
Mr. Kristol, a Fox News analyst who is editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said that Fox's audience perceives what is often termed "liberal bias" in other television news, but what he says should more accurately be called "liberal presumption and liberal condescension."
"On Fox, you can actually get a debate on abortion," Mr. Kristol said.
From the left, though, the Fox style of fairness is viewed as little more than a fig leaf for relentlessly hammering a conservative agenda. "I see it as a propaganda outlet," said Ruy Teixeira, a co-author of "The Emerging Democratic Majority," who occasionally fills the liberal seat on Fox talk programs. "They're the mouthpiece of this administration."
Mr. Ailes, who is regarded as the engine driving Fox's success, has promoted his network brilliantly with its constant "we report, you decide" mantra.
"Television is all about energy, and Fox has a lot more energy than its competitors," said Joe Klein, the New Yorker staff writer, who often covers politics, "and I hear of a lot more people moving in that direction."
Fox is the first television news network in the nation to be based on a niche — or, it appears, on two niches, which overlap somewhat, but are not the same.
One niche seeks an alternative to the news style of the major networks and CNN. For this audience, Fox has assembled a vigorous corps of reporters who cover the White House and foreign affairs in a way that appeals to viewers like Leslie Gelb. For instance, Mr. Gelb said that when allegations of massacres by Israelis in Jenin were first leveled earlier this year, Fox, unlike many other television news organizations, framed its reporting as "we don't know what happened." As it turned out, there was no evidence of a massacre.
But the bulk of Fox's ratings success is not from its hard news coverage. It comes from the other niche that apparently wants to see attitude — just not liberal attitude — on television.
The restraint of the Jenin massacre coverage is largely absent from the opinion portion of the Fox News lineup.
BRIT HUME'S "Special Report," a mix of news and talk, is ranked fifth among all cable news shows. Mr. Hume, a former star at ABC News, asks pointed questions of liberals and conservatives, but the tone of his program is still to the right of the more factual news programming on Fox.
But that rightward step becomes a gallop later in the evening, with "The O'Reilly Factor," which is the top-rated show on cable news, and "Hannity & Colmes," a pair of hosts ostensibly representing right and left, but which is dominated by the conservative Sean Hannity.
Indeed, four of the five top cable news programs are on Fox, with only "Larry King Live" representing CNN.
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, believes that Fox's strong and consistent personality is a huge part of its appeal, especially compared with what he views as CNN's floundering.
"There's no sense of uncertainty or experimentation on the air, like you now sometimes see on CNN," Mr. Rosenstiel said.
Fox argues that it is fair and balanced even in its opinion programming because it offers opportunities for liberals to express their views. Indeed, Mr. O'Reilly complains that he frequently has to beat the bushes to find liberals to argue with because so many are afraid to go on his show.
But Mr. Rosenstiel says he sees a core journalistic dishonesty in the Fox news style, as compared with other programs of opinion and analysis like CNN's "Wolf Blitzer Reports," Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" on NBC and Bob Schieffer's "Face the Nation" on CBS. The power of the host in such programs is enormous, because that person leads from topic to topic, and cuts off or extends debate.
"Blitzer and Russert and Schieffer are trying to cut it down the middle," Mr. Rosenstiel said. "Fox is not."
While Mr. Rosenstiel sees Fox as perhaps the forerunner of a more European style of broadcast journalism in the United States, he believes that there will remain a great opportunity for something that now does not exist in cable news.
"There is no newscast of record," he said.
Ergo, abortion must remain legal.
I don't think I'm seeing as many people bemoaning the fact that they can't get Fox.
It is their condescending, arrogant, insulated opinions that are causing liberal media to lose viewers. I hope they don't realize it until their stocks are so low that a consortium of conservatives can afford to buy them out.
Welcome to the wonderful world of the New York Times News Service! They usually charge based on the circulation of the subscribing paper. To their credit, they also aggregate and send out tons of stuff from lots of other papers around the country.
Of course, the Times itself owns a number of papers around the nation itself; I would presume they get access for free.
Also, I'm curious about the headlines over a NYT's article -- does the NYT retain any control over the content of the headers?
I seriously doubt it. Most wire services simply sell their data, and leave the individual subscribers to use as much or as little of it as they want.
And wire service articles get altered by the local paper every day. For example, look at an AP article in your local paper's sports section about some NFL team. It'll probably have a line or two somewhere in the middle saying something like "Joe Blow, the former star quarterback at [obscure local college]...." That wasn't in the AP article; the local sports editor shoved it in there to give it a bit more of a "local" feel.
Even better, wait until some really big story happens in your local paper's coverage area, and look for articles on that story with AP bylines. Those stories are usually massively altered by the local paper's reporters to include as much local info as possible, and sometimes just to crow. If there's a sentence in there that starts off, "This latest piece of important evidence, first discovered by the Orange County Register three days ago..." you can bet the house the AP didn't send out the story like that.
Anyone here remember when Ted Turner tried to buy one of the Big 3? They fought him tooth and tong because he was too conservative, and blocked his purchase. That is why he started CNN. I guess he has matured since then.
HA! What a pantload that statement was. Wolfie, Tim and Bob do more than their fair share of leading the topic to a liberal slant and cutting off effective speakers that they disagree with. Although I will say that Russert can ruin anybody's day with some of his tough questions. The libs still control probably 8 or 9 of the top 10 media outlets and they still whine.
Oh I know... "We have a Fox News Alert, another unknown actress did something stupid, we'll keep you updated".
There is an Alert every five minutes and 9 out of 10 times it is completely irrelevant.
This article explains everything wrong with the media. You can regularly turn on CNN and find former Klinton oficials working. The only reason FOX seems conservative is the viewer can actually hear conservative views on the shows and there are not just one or two token Republicans working at the network.
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