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| PUBLIC'S
VIEW OF THE PRESS |
The media plays an essential role in
any modern state. In a democracy, the press is supposed to serve
the public's interest, acting as a watchdog. The public's trust
in the media is crucial to a functioning democracy. A lack of
trust can be equally as telling. Here are articles about the public's
view of the media from each of the last three years.
Articles:
Public
Faults Media on Military Issues, Poll Finds
Editor & Publisher,
8/24/2005
The American public may be more interested in national security
than ever, but they feel that the media and the U.S. military
keep them poorly informed about what they need to know. At least
that's what a new poll shows, which finds that 60% of Americans
believe they do not get enough information about military matters
to make educated decisions.
Study:
Journos, public hold divergent views on media
By Joe Strupp, Editor and
Publisher, 5/24/2005
A major survey released Tuesday by the University of Pennsylvania's
Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that the public and working
journalists have sharply different views about press freedom,
bias in news, and journalists' rights. "This study reveals a worrisome
divide between the public's view of journalism and journalists'
own views of their work," said a former Washington Post ombudsman.
Public's
cynicism about media has become a pressing concern
By Mark Jurkowitz, Boston
Globe, 4/14/2004
At a time when public distrust of the news media appears to be
at a dangerously high level, there is evidence of a deep and fundamental
disagreement between those who produce news and those who consume
it. Although most journalists believe quality and values are vital
elements of their work and see themselves as providing an important
civic function, the reading and viewing public seems to think
of journalism as a bottom-line-driven enterprise populated by
the ethically challenged.
Trust
in media keeps on slipping
By Peter Johnson, USA Today,
5/27/2003
Public confidence in the media, already low, continues to slip.
Only 36%, among the lowest in years, believe news organizations
get the facts straight, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows. Trust
in the media has dropped from 54% in mid-1989—about the time
of the fall of communism— to a low of 32% in December 2000,
during the post-election confusion over George W. Bush and Al
Gore. |
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| PUBLIC
MISINFORMATION AND MISCONCEPTIONS |
Since September 11, 2001 one of the
biggest ongoing stories surrounding U.S. military actions has
been the public's misconceptions of essential facts concerning
the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York to the presence
of chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq and everything in between.
Here are some articles that explore these issues and whose to
be held responsible for widespread public misinformation.
Articles:
Media
Must Explain Lack of 9/11-Saddam Link
By Greg Mitchell, Editor
& Publisher, 9/11/2003
On this second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks,
there is much to think about, especially in New York City under
pure blue skies so cruelly reminiscent of that day. One of many
things for the press to think about today is a simple fact: more
than two-thirds of all Americans, two years after the tragedy,
continue to think that Saddam Hussein was personally involved
in the attack, despite the fact that no credible evidence has
surfaced which links him to the crime (and even his indirect al
Qaeda associations are unproven or marginal at best).
Why
the Media Don't Call It as They See It
By Paul Waldman, Washington
Post, 9/28/2003
True or false: Saddam Hussein helped plan the Sept.11 attacks.
As those who read or heard President Bush's recent statement on
the issue are aware, that assertion is false. Then why have so
many Americans -- 69 percent, according to a Washington Post survey
last month -- been telling public opinion pollsters they believe
it is likely that Saddam was involved? The administration's critics
think they know whom to blame for this: President Bush and those
who work for him. I think they're right. But I would also name
an accessory: The nation's media, which have yet to find a clear
and effective way to report incorrect impressions and untruthful
statements, particularly those that emanate from the White House.
The
Hazards of Watching Fox News
By Jim Lobe, Inter Press
Service, 10/3/2003
The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong
you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its
aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington
this week. And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox
News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions
about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of
Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
For more stories on Fox News click here.
Remember
our first priority
By J. Max Robins, Broadcasting
& Cable, 2/7/2005
A Knight Foundation report issued last week found that nearly
three-quarters of American high school students are clueless about
the First Amendment and that more than a third of them thought
it would be a good idea if journalists received prior approval
from the government before they report anything. Then there is
the one-third who think news organizations need even more restrictions
on what they produce. |
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| THE
STATE OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM |
Making
Connections: Why is the news so bad? What can progressives do
to fix it?
By Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke, In These Times,
4/14/2005
This issue of In These Times, will explore the contours of the
current media landscape, map the contested territory, and chart
the dissimilar conservative and progressive media strategies.
'Liberal
media' shoulder no blame for mess in Iraq
By Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/27/2005
In the wake of Newsweek's retraction of its Koran desecration
story, some conservative media know exactly why this error occurred.
"The press corps suffers from its own Vietnam syndrome," proclaimed
the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. "This is part of a basic
media mistrust of the military that goes back to Vietnam and has
shown itself with a vengeance during the Iraq conflict and the
war on terror." Conservative columnists and talk shows accuse
the media of undermining the troops. This is utter nonsense. It
bespeaks the kind of defeatist mentality conservatives try to
blame on their favorite bogeyman, the dratted "liberals." Those
who decry a press corps infected with "Vietnam syndrome" appear
to be gearing up for a blame game over "who lost Iraq?" Setting
the media up as future fall guys won't make the current bad news
improve.
American
TV's information gap creates a new world of danger
By James Robinson, Observer, 4/10/2005
US networks seem to regard foreign news as an expensive turn-off.
Veteran CBS foreign correspondent Tom Fenton believes the virtual
absence of foreign news has had a devastating effect on the quality
of public debate in America. More than 80% of Americans cite the
broadcast media as their main source of news, so the network's
blinkered approach to the world is potentially far more damaging.
Also see:
Osama
Who? When No News Is 'Bad News'
By Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, 1/24/05
Fantasy
Island
By Eric Alterman, The Nation, 1/27/2005
Washington Post writer Paul Farhi cleverly compared the content
and structure of George W. Bush's second inaugural address to
The Rascals' classic ditty "People Got to Be Free." It worked,
but a better title for the speech might have been borrowed from
Green Day's current smash, "American Idiot." The gap between the
world's "reality based" community and the fantasy being sold us
by our benighted leadership, with the help of a quiescent Fourth
Estate, may never have been wider.
Under-Used
Power of the News
By J. Max Robins, Broadcasting & Cable, 1/24/2005
Media coverage of the devastating tsunami in South Asia and the
outpouring of aid spurred by images of the catastrophe is testament
to the power of journalism. Sadly, however, the attention paid
to that tragic event and its aftermath is the exception, not the
rule, in TV news. If you want proof, look at Doctors Without Borders'
list of the year's Top 10 Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories.
In a host of African countries, North Korea, Colombia, Chechnya
and elsewhere, lives are being cruelly cut short by a staggering
array of woes, but we remain largely ill-informed about them.
Last year, the Big Three nightly newscasts didn't air significant
reports on any of these regions, save Chechnya and North KoreaŃand
the latter drew attention because of its nuclear threat, not its
humanitarian crisis. But they did devote plenty of attention to
Martha Stewart and Janet Jackson.
The
'Media Party' is over
By Howard Fineman, MSNBC, 1/13/2005
A political party is dying before our eyes Ń and I don't mean
the Democrats. I'm talking about the "mainstream media," which
is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain)
of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news
outlets (led by the internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes); and
by its own fraying journalistic standards. At the height of its
power, the AMMP (the American Mainstream Media Party) helped validate
the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president.
But all that is ancient history.
After
the Peaks of Journalism, Budget Realities
By Jacques Steinberg, New York Times, 6/14/2004
Late last month, John S. Carroll, the editor of The Los Angeles
Times, traveled to New York for a luncheon to celebrate the five
Pulitzer Prizes that his paper won this year. Ten days later Mr.
Carroll drove to a very different gathering, one that had been
hastily arranged. There, they argued before two senior Tribune
Company executives that a series of proposed budget cuts threatened
to derail some of their plans and stall the momentum that came
with the Pulitzers. The two editors lost. "Although journalism
is important," said John Janedis, a research analyst who covers
the newspaper industry for Banc of America Securities, "at the
end of the day, investors care more about the number of newspapers
you sell and the ad rate increases you get, rather than the number
of Pulitzer Prizes."
Treading
on the Thin Line Between TV News and Show Business
By Jacques Steinberg, New York Times, 7/12/2004
Since the day CNBC began broadcasts in April 1989, Sue Herera
has been a steady presence on the cable channel, chronicling the
news from the business world with a tone that is often sober.
So it might have been something of a shock last week for viewers
to see her kiss a man square on the mouth at her anchor desk and
to hear her purr as she was implored "to make hot Spanish love
right now.'' |
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| CRITIQUES
OF U.S. WAR COVERAGE |
Journalists
didn't bother vetting Iraq war rationale
By Michael Ryan, Houston
Chronicle, 8/28/2005
The news media are failing to acknowledge their own responsibility
for the invasion of Iraq, even as they report with glee Cindy
Sheehan's antiwar protest outside George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford.
But the news media ought to explain why they broke their moral
covenant with the American people to provide complete, balanced,
fair and accurate information about the charge to war. Coverage
of the administration's high-profile pitches to promote war was
so blatantly unbalanced, the media sometimes looked like an arm
of the Bush propaganda machine.
Why
Few Graphic Images from Iraq Make it to U.S. Papers
By Barbara Bedway, Editor & Publisher, 7/18/2005
In May, the Los Angeles Times released a survey revealing how
few photographs of wounded or dead American service members
in Iraq were appearing in U.S. publications. The Times' survey
of six months of coverage found almost no pictures of Americans
killed in action at a time when 559 Americans and Western allies
died. But according to photo services, pictures are sometimes
transmitted and left unused.
Missed
opportunity: 'Downing Street Memo'
By Paul Janensch, Hartford Courant, 6/16/2005
The leaked 'Downing Street Memo,' saying that American intelligence
was being "fixed" to support an invasion, made a big splash
in Great Britain, yet was given little attention in American
media. Digging up information about the planning for the war
is time-consuming and might draw the ire of the Bush administration.
Stories about the trial of a pop star and the disappearance
of a young woman are more dramatic, safer and a lot easier to
do.
Bare
truths about the war, from a small paper
By Ned Stafford, Editor & Publisher, 6/15/2005
A daily in Lexington, Ky., Tuesday quoted at length the angry
words of the mother of young man killed in Iraq. She accused
President Bush of "lying," and read an angry letter she had
send to the White House. Would these honest, hard-hitting words
appear in one of the major newspapers? Or are they failing to
reflect the growing anger in Middle America about this war?
Not
fit to print
By James C. Moore, Salon.com, 5/27/2004
When the full history of the Iraq war is written, one of its
most scandalous chapters will be about how American journalists,
in particular those at the New York Times, so easily allowed
themselves to be manipulated by both dubious sources and untrustworthy
White House officials into running stories that misled the nation
about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The Times
finally acknowledged its grave errors in an extraordinary and
lengthy editors note published Wednesday.
The
Washington Post's creeping hawkishness
By James P. Pinkerton, Salon.com, 8/4/2004
Remember the days when the Washington Post was the enemy of
the Republican administration in the White House? Those days
are gone. Today, the neoconservative voice of the Post's editorial
page is one of President Bush's most valuable allies. It's possible,
of course, to find more hawkish voices than that of the Post,
but none have the same wide circulation or impact -- and none
have the Post's liberal reputation. Which is a gift to the neocons,
who can say, "Even the liberal Washington Post agrees with us!"
Very,
Very Dirty Pictures
By Mark Morford, San Francisco Gate, 12/3/2004
This is what you won't see in the paper. This is what you won't
see on CNN or on MSNBC or CBS News or on any major media Web
site anywhere and especially no goddamn way ever in hell will
you see it within a thousand miles of Fox News. You aren't supposed
to see. You aren't supposed to know. You are to remain ignorant
and shielded, and, if you're like most Americans, you have been
very carefully conditioned to think Bush's nasty Iraq war is
merely this ugly little firecracker-like thing happening way,
way over there, carefully orchestrated and somewhat messy and
maybe a little bloody but mostly still patriotic and good and
necessary and sponsored by none other than God his own angry
Republican self. |
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| JOURNALIST
ABUSE, IMPRISONMENTS & KILLINGS |
While much was made of program of embedding
jounalists into military units during the Iraq war, since the
invasion began there have been a number of stories to come out
where journalists covering the conflict have been abused, mistreated
or even killed by troops.
Articles:
Iraq
Worse Than Vietnam -- in Number of Journalists Killed
Reuters,
8/28/2005
More journalists have been killed in Iraq since the war began
in March 2003 than during the 20 years of conflict in Vietnam,
media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Sunday.
Since U.S. forces and its allies launched their campaign in Iraq
on March 20, 2003, 66 journalists and their assistants have been
killed, RSF said.
Another
Reuters Staffer Killed by U.S. Forces in Iraq
Reuters,
8/28/2005
A Reuters Television soundman was shot dead in Baghdad on Sunday
and a cameraman who was wounded was still being questioned by
U.S. troops 12 hours later. Iraqi police said the two, both Iraqis,
were shot by U.S. forces. A U.S. military spokesman said the incident
was being investigated. The cameraman was being held and questioned
because of "inconsistencies in his initial testimony", he added.
U.S.
Rejects Media Concerns about Iraq Detentions
By Alastair Macdonald, Reuters,
8/25/2005
The U.S. military rejected on Thursday concerns aired by Reuters
and other media organizations in Iraq about its detention of journalists,
saying it would not consider the special nature of their work
in reporting conflict. International media rights groups have
joined Reuters in seeking an urgent explanation for the arrest
of a cameraman working for the news agency, who has been held
incommunicado for more than two weeks and is now in Baghdad's
Abu Ghraib prison.
The
victim and the killer
By Phillip Robertson, Salon.com,
7/27/2005
Yasser Salihee was an Iraqi journalist. Joe was an American sniper.
On June 24, 2005, fate brought them together on a Baghdad street.
Guild
chief under fire for comments about attacks on journalists in
Iraq
By Joe Strupp, Editor and
Publisher, 5/19/2005
Linda Foley, national president of The Newspaper Guild, has drawn
criticism for comments she made about the killing of journalists
in Iraq. Foley said that she was outraged by "the cavalier nature
of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq.
I think it's just a scandal." Foley told E&P that her words were
taken out of context by critics and said her original intent was
to discuss how journalists are often scapegoated for their coverage.
Reuters
challenges US on Iraq deaths
By Ciar Byrne, The Guardian,
1/27/2004
Reuters has written to the US defence department expressing frustration
at its failure to address concerns about the safety of journalists
in Iraq, and demanding answers over the death of two of its staff
and the detention of another two at the hands of US troops. David
Schlesinger, Reuters' global manager, asked the American government
to retract a "highly charged and erroneous" statement issued following
the arrest of two Reuters journalists earlier this month in which
it accused "enemy personnel posing as media" of firing on US forces.
He also repeated a request for a copy of the US military's report
into the death of the Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, who was shot
by a US soldier in August 2003.
'Criminal
neglect' led to media deaths
By Jon Henley, The Guardian,
1/16/2004
The deaths of two journalists in an attack by an American tank
and troops on the Palestine hotel in Baghdad were the result of
"criminal negligence", for which Washington must bear at least
some responsibility, Reporters sans Fronti¸res said yesterday.
In a report on the shelling which killed a Reuters cameraman,
Taras Protsyuk, and Josˇ Couso of the Spanish television station
Telecinco, the international media watchdog said it was "inconceivable"
that the US government and military command were unaware that
up to 200 journalists had been working in the Palestine before
the April 8 attack.
US
military 'brutalised' journalists
By Luke Harding, The Guardian,
1/13/2004
The international news agency Reuters has made a formal complaint
to the Pentagon following the "wrongful" arrest and apparent "brutalisation"
of three of its staff this month by US troops in Iraq. The complaint
followed an incident in the town of Falluja when American soldiers
fired at two Iraqi cameramen and a driver from the agency while
they were filming the scene of a helicopter crash. The US military
initially claimed that the Reuters journalists were "enemy personnel"
who had opened fire on US troops and refused to release them for
72 hours.
Media
protest treatment in Iraq
By Mark Jurkowitz, Boston
Globe, 11/13/2003
The Associated Press says soldiers in Iraq detained one of its
photographers and a driver in late September near the site of
the Abu Ghraib prison. Knight Ridder says its photographer at
the scene of the Nov. 2 downing of a Chinook helicopter had photographs
destroyed by the US military. Reuters, which had a cameraman killed
in August in what the US military called an accident, says another
photographer was detained last month by Iraqi police alleging
to be acting on orders from US forces. Amid growing reports of
journalists being harassed and intimidated by troops policing
postwar Iraq, representatives of 30 media organizations have signed
a letter to the Pentagon raising concerns about what they view
as an increasingly hostile reporting environment. |
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| THE
WHITE HOUSE VS. THE PRESS |
George W. Bush's administration has
shaky relations with the press. The Bush administration has held
a record-low number of press conferences of any modern presidential
administration. There have been many complaints from reporters
and news organizations about a lack of access to the key players
in the administration, including President Bush. There have also
been scandals surrounding journalists on the administration's
payroll, staged press conferences with fake reporters sent out
as real news (click here for more on VNRs),
leaks of covert intelligence agents from within the administration
and many others. Here are some articles that document the Bush
White House's relationship with journalists.
Articles:
Operation
Iraqi Infoganda
By Frank Rich, New York
Times, 3/28/2004
Real journalism may be reeling, but faux journalism rocks. As
an entertainment category in the cultural marketplace, it may
soon rival reality TV and porn. Television is increasingly awash
in fake anchors delivering fake news, some of them far more trenchant
than real anchors delivering real news. This phenomenon has been
good news for the Bush administration, which has responded to
the growing national appetite for fictionalized news by producing
a steady supply of its own.
Case
Shines Harsh Light on 'Pundit Industry'
By James Rainey, Los Angeles
Times, 1/8/05
If the public was not already doubtful about the independence
of the pundits who jam 24-hour news stations, it may become so
following the revelation that a popular conservative commentator
was paid $240,000 to promote President Bush's No Child Left Behind
Act. Several media analysts said the disclosure Friday that Armstrong
Williams had a contract to promote the education law should cause
reexaminations on several fronts: government in its use of tax
money to promote political causes, news outlets in screening opinion
makers for bias, and news consumers in scrutinizing information
thrown their way.
Group FOIA's Feds Over Propaganda
By Bill McConnell, Broadcasting
& Cable, 1/11/05
Following revelations that the Bush administration paid a conservative
commentator and columnist to tout the president's "No Child Left
Behind" program, a citizens' watchdog group has filed Freedom
of Information Act requests with 22 federal agencies seeking contracts
with public-relations firms that might have set up similar arrangements.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Tuesday filed
a series of Freedom of Information Act requests to 22 government
agencies, including all cabinet agencies.
Team
Bush declares war on the New York Times
By Eric Boehlert, Salon.com,
10/19/04
During the closing weeks of the 2000 presidential campaign, at
a campaign rally, George W. Bush spotted a veteran political reporter
and turned to Dick Cheney, standing next to him on the platform,
to remark, "There's Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the
New York Times." "Oh yeah, big time," replied Cheney. Unbeknownst
to them, their locker-room exchange was caught by an open microphone.
Four years later, nobody connected with the Bush-Cheney campaign
appears even slightly concerned about being caught denigrating
the Times; they're more than happy to do it on the record, as
the White House has all but declared open warfare on the nation's
leading newspaper.
Bush
'Visits' O'Reilly on Fox News
By Dan Froomkin, Washington
Post, 9/23/04
Don't expect hardballs. President Bush sat down with Bill O'Reilly
yesterday for what Fox News is billing as an interview. But even
President Bush said it was "just a visit." Bush spent about half
an hour with the unabashedly conservative commentator, who is
a ratings star for the network. Bush's last on-camera interview
with a reporter was with NBC's Matt Lauer in August. That led
to a one-day media maelstrom when Bush said he did not think the
war against terrorism could be won. Before and since, Bush has
avoided hostile crowds and tough questioning.
Media
'too biased' for Bush
AFP,
5/15/2004
US President George W Bush mostly shuns news coverage because
he worries it might cloud his "clear outlook" with what he perceives
as a left-leaning bias, he said in a book excerpt published today.
"I like to have a clear outlook," he told the author in one of
two interviews. "It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention
to somebody's false opinion or somebody's characterisation, which
simply isn't true." The Washington Times today released a segment
of Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry
and the Bush Haters, which was written by its senior White House
correspondent, Bill Sammon.
U.S.
Protests Broadcasts by Arab Channels
By Christopher Marquis, New
York Times, 4/29/2004
The Bush administration, frustrated by what it calls "inflammatory"
reports by Arabic television channels, has in recent days protested
to foreign government officials, confronted Arab news executives
and put together a list of supposed abuses. Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell brought up American concerns about Al Jazeera,
a channel based in Qatar, with Qatar's foreign minister earlier
this week, saying "the friendship between our two nations is such
that we can also talk about difficult issues that intrude in that
relationship, such as the issue of the coverage of Al Jazeera."
State Department officials declined to say what action Mr. Powell
sought from Qatar, which finances the channel.
Bush's
Press Problem
By Daniel Cappello, The
New Yorker, 1/13/2004
In this week's New Yorker Ken Auletta writes about the George
W. Bush Administration's relationship with the American press,
and about how the President manages to keep reporters at a distance.
Here, with The New YorkerÕs Daniel Cappello, Auletta discusses
how that relationship affects the public.
Bush's
News War
By Richard Wolffe and Rod Nordland,
Newsweek, 10/27/2003
It started out as a little crowd control in Baghdad. But as U.S.
troops entered the streets to restore order earlier this month,
the protest turned ugly. Someone threw a homemade grenade at the
Americans, wounding 13 servicemen. According to the Oct. 8 Daily
Threat Assessment, the Coalition's internal casualty report, which
was shown to NEWSWEEK, eight soldiers were wounded seriously enough
to be evacuated to military hospitals. Yet at a press conference
the next day, there was no mention of the attack. Pushed by reporters,
U.S. officials would only say the incident was under investigation.
It was as if the ambush, and the casualties, had never happened.
In Baghdad, official control over the news is getting tighter.
Iraqi police refer reporters' questions to American forces; the
Americans refer them back to the Iraqis.
Ridder
finds journalists frustrated with Bush administration
By Katherine M. Skiba, Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel, 10/9/2003
One of the nation's leading newspaper executives took the Bush
administration to task Wednesday for what he termed an "unsettling
trend toward governmental secrecy." Tony Ridder, chairman of the
Newspaper Association of America, the industry's largest and most
important trade organization, said the resultant fear, frustration
and anger felt by many veteran journalists in the nation's capital
are "unprecedented, even going back to the dark days of Watergate."
|
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| FOX'S
BRAND OF JOURNALISM |
In 1996 News Corporation launched the
Fox News Channel to compete with the first major cable news station,
CNN. Fox News has been widely accused of a conservative, Republican
bias, especially during its 2000 election coverage and its ultra-patriotic
coverage of U.S. military action after the attack on New York's
World Trade Center. For our Media & War News Corp. section,
click
here.
Articles:
The
Fox of war
By David J. Sirota, Salon.com, 3/30/2004
The Bush administration's case for invading Iraq may have been
riddled with unreliable claims, but that didn't stop White House-friendly
Fox News from pumping it into America's living rooms. Before
the Iraq invasion, the Bush administration made many declarations
to build its case for war: There was "no doubt," as the president
said, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear
weapons, making it an imminent threat to America; Saddam Hussein
was working closely with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida; and the
invasion would minimize civilian casualties. While many intelligence
and military experts knew how hollow these claims were, there
was one place where the Bush administration was given an open
microphone: Fox News.
On
Fox News, No Shortage of Opinion, Study Finds
By Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, 3/14/2005
In covering the Iraq war last year, 73 percent of the stories
on Fox News included the opinions of the anchors and journalists
reporting them, a new study says. By contrast, 29 percent of
the war reports on MSNBC and 2 percent of those on CNN included
the journalists' own views. These findings -- the figures were
similar for coverage of other stories -- "seem to challenge"
Fox's slogan of "we report, you decide," says the Project for
Excellence in Journalism.
Also see:
Study
Finds No Media Bias on War, Hits Fox News as Most One-Sided
Editor & Publisher, 3/13/2005
CNN founder repeats Hitler jibe over Fox's rise to the top
By David Teather, The Guardian, 1/27/2005
CNN founder Ted Turner, never shy about speaking his mind, has
compared the ascent of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News to the rise
of Adolf Hitler before the second world war. The 67-year-old
billionaire also told the audience at the Natpe programme sales
market that Fox had become a propaganda tool for the Bush administration.
"There's nothing wrong with that," he said. "It's certainly
legal. But it does pose problems for our democracy. Particularly
when the news is dumbed down, leaving voters without critical
information on politics and world events and overloaded with
fluff. We need to know what's going on in the world. A little
less Hollywood and a little more hard news would probably be
good for our society."
Borsellino:
Weaning myself away from Fox News
By Rob Borsellino, Des Moines Register, 7/21/2004
I've got this Fox News problem. I'm hooked. I've always thought
it was kind of a personal thing, sort of like a victimless crime.
I'd only watch it in my room with the door closed or when I
was home alone. I never talked about it in public and - most
important - I never took it seriously. But then it got ugly.
Robert Greenwald: 'Fox News is an Example of What Happens When
We Have Extreme Media Control'
By Patrick Phillips, I Want Media, 7/12/2004
Robert Greenwald is the producer and director of "Outfoxed:
Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," a new 80-minute cinematic
denunciation of News Corp.'s top-rated Fox News Channel, which
will have its premiere July 13 at the New School University
in New York. Greenwald, a longtime politically active independent
filmmaker, says he was inspired to make the documentary after
observing the key role the news media had played in President
Bush's "ability to convince us to go to war" with Iraq, and
that Fox News Channel "was the leader of that."
Fox
News plans its own Iraq list
By David Hinckley, New York Daily News, 5/6/2004
Fox News host Chris Wallace plans a counterstrike Sunday against
his old ABC colleague Ted Koppel, claiming Koppel's controversial
roll call of slain U.S. troops on Friday's "Nightline" failed
to explain what they died for. "I'll take Ted at his word that
ABC did not intend it as a political statement or a ratings
stunt," says Wallace. "But when you look at all the factors
- the one-year anniversary of President Bush declaring major
combat over, the fact the U.S. has just had a rough stretch
there, all the promotion he did for it - I think it came out
that way." So Wallace says this week's "Fox News Sunday," "will
list the accomplishments of U.S. troops, such as ousting Saddam
Hussein and rebuilding the infrastructure.
News
Reports for Ultra-Short Attentions
By Warren St. John, New York Times, 3/28/2004
At 5:30 p.m. last Monday, Shepard Smith, the 40-year-old host
of Fox News Channel's "Fox Report," was hunched over his computer
in the company's bustling Midtown headquarters, poring over
the script for his evening broadcast, and searching for verbs.
Mr. Smith, let it be known, does not like verbs. Whenever he
finds one, he crinkles his brow in disgust like a man who has
discovered a dribble of food on his tie. He taps furiously at
his keyboard, moves the cursor to the offending word and deletes
it, or else adds "ing," turning the verb into a participle and
his script into the strange shorthand that passes for English
these days on cable news:"Amazon.com celebrating a birthday!
The Internet company 10 years old." "Texas! A school bus and
two other vehicles colliding in Dallas. The bus rolling over
on its side." Shepard Smith! Explaining to a reporter, why not
the verbs?
Simpsons
parody upset Fox News, says Groening
By Ciar Byrne, The Guardian, 10/29/2003
UK Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel threatened to sue the makers
of the Simpsons over a spoof news ticker, the show's creator
Matt Groening has claimed. Mr Groening said Fox News raised
the unlikely prospect of suing a show broadcast by its sister
channel, Fox Entertainment, because it wanted to stop the Simpsons
parodying its famously anti-Democratic party agenda. The alleged
row centred on a parody of Fox News' rolling news ticker, which
included headlines such as "Do Democrats cause cancer?" Mr Groening
said the news channel backed down because it would have caused
Fox to bring a lawsuit against itself.
Fox billboard sticks it to CNN again
By Tony Wilbert, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
10/8/2003
Paula Zahn's new show on CNN is performing so poorly that even
archrival Fox wants CNN to bring back Connie Chung. At least
that's what a comical new billboard Fox erected late Tuesday
catty-cornered to CNN Center says. "Come Home Connie. CNN Needs
You," the billboard reads. "Brought to You by Your Friends at
Fox News." "We thought this would lift the morale and bring
a few smiles to the faces of the CNN staffers in Atlanta," Fox
News spokeswoman Irena Briganti said Wednesday. |
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Bush
Defends Offering Video News Releases
By Richard W. Stevenson,
New York Times, 3/17/05
President Bush defended his administration's practice of providing
television stations with video news releases that resemble actual
news reports, saying that the practice was legal and that it was
up to broadcasters to make clear that any of the releases they
used on the air were produced by the government. The New York
Times reported on Sunday that at least 20 government agencies
have made and distributed hundreds of video news releases in the
last four years.
White House's ONDCP Nixes VNRs
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting
& Cable, 3/31/2005
The White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
says it will no longer use video news releases to promote its
anti-drug messages. ONDCP Director John Walters said that "ONDCP
believes that the GAO guidance on "prepackaged news stories" issued
to federal agencies on Feb. 17, 2005, sets forth a requirement
for viewer notification which is inherently incompatible with
contemporary newsgathering methods, thus rendering VNR's impracticable.
In any event, ONDCP has no plans to produce any further VNR's."
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