Fox News Channel

Fox News Logo

The Fox News Channel is a US cable and satellite news channel. It is part of the Fox Television Stations Group, a subsidiary of Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Roger Ailes was named Chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group on August 15, 2005.

Fox News was started in 1996 by Murdoch and Roger Ailes. The two of them perceived a need for a news organization that offered more balanced reporting, one where the facts from all sides would be presented. Main-stream media "Political Correctness" was banished, with the news anchors calling terrorists, what they were (terrorists), instead of referring to them as "militants". It seems to have paid off. As of February, 2007, polls show that over 20% of Americans say their main source of news is the Fox News Channel.

While Fox News claims to be "Fair & Balanced", a claim which it backs up by having bipartisan shows like Hannity and Colmes, and daily guest pundits from all sides of the political spectrum, it is widely understood to be more sympathetic to conservative and Christian views. Despite this, Fox News characterizes itself as reporting the news in an unbiased manner and then allowing the viewer to decide; "We Report, You Decide" is another of their on-air slogans.

Fox News has dominated the ratings of other cable news shows.[1] Launched by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and former political consultant Roger Ailes as a refuge for viewers fed up with real or perceived liberal bias elsewhere in the media, Fox is the undisputed ratings champion of cable news. It's been trouncing CNN, MSNBC and CNBC for years, and it sometimes draws a fatter audience share than all its competitors combined. Fox News prides itself in its motto: "News, Fair and Balanced. We Report, You Decide".

The far-left isn't happy about that slogan. Even before an angry Bill Clinton exploded at "Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace in September of 2006, accusing him of "a nice little conservative hit job" after getting lightly pressed (for Wallace) about his record on fighting Al Qaeda, Democratic politicos and advocates have relentlessly attacked the cable network, accusing it of being a Republican propaganda mill. Al Gore has likened Fox to a right-wing "fifth column." Leftist groups, including MoveOn.org, funded the semi-documentary "Outfoxed," which purports to expose the channel's nefarious Republican agenda, and petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to ban Fox's use of its famous "Fair and Balanced" slogan as deceptive advertising. It was denied.

A recent comprehensive study by UCLA political scientist Tim Groseclose and University of Missouri-Columbia economics professor Jeffrey Milyo found Brit Hume's "Special Report" — Fox's most straightforward news show — more centrist than any of the three major networks' evening newscasts, all of which leaned left. [2] The program is a model of smart news television.

And although it's true that the network's opinion shows (as opposed to its news shows) are, as they're supposed to be, frequently bombastic and opinionated, it's equally true that Fox's biggest super-star, Bill O'Reilly, is not a mainstream Republican. He regularly charges the oil companies with price-gouging and attacks big business for squashing the little guy. Who can say what host Greta Van Susteren's politics are? She mostly covers the lurid murder-of-the-day stories. Geraldo Rivera has always been Liberal on most issues, with the exception of being a strong supporter of the military and stiff penalties for perverts.

Liberal commentators go in and out of the Fox studios all over America, every day — some of them, like host Alan Colmes and news analyst Marvin Kalb, and Eleanor Clift affiliated with the channel. There's no doubt, of course, that Fox News is more conservative than CBS, ABC, NBC or CNN. But, after all, that was its founding mission.

Anti-Elitist

Fox's real ethos is not Republican but anti-elitist — a major reason it connects with so many Americans and annoys so many coastal elites. "There's a whole country that elitists will never acknowledge," Ailes once observed. "What people resent deeply out there are those in the 'blue states' thinking they're smarter." This anti-elitism shows itself in Fox's pro-U.S. stance in covering the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and its broadcasters' use of terms such as "terrorist" instead of the PC "militant" to refer to … well, terrorists. Since the Vietnam War era, mainstream journalists have tended to see such blunt language and side-taking as unsophisticated, a betrayal of journalistic objectivity, or perhaps their own ingrained biases against government in general.

Another aspect of Fox's anti-elitism: Christians, far from being seen as lunatics or extremists — as too often is the case in the mainstream media — actually get some respect. "We regularly have on the Rev. Franklin Graham, Dr. James Dobson and other religious leaders, just as we put on Pat Ireland and Eleanor Clift," Ailes said, continuing, "Most Americans believe in God and have that as their foundation in life. So why shouldn't we have as guests people that they like, respect and want to hear from?" Ailes said he didn't get "too worked up" by a Pew Foundation study that showed that Fox has more Republican viewers than CNN, CNBC or MSNBC and that his reporters and anchors insert their opinions into stories far more than competitors do. Numbers might have something to do with it: Fox is beating the combined audience of the other three. But Ailes dismissed Pew as a "liberal lobbying organization." He said, "Most polls today are not taken to provide information to the public but to get press for the organization taking the polls. I took a poll of Pew, and 98% of my organization found that they were biased", Ailes said with a wink. [3]

In response, Project director Tom Rosenstiel said the study "was not a poll. It was a content analysis designed by a four-university research team and executed at the University of Alabama." One plus for Fox, he said, was that researchers found Fox News stories were more forthcoming about sourcing than their cable rivals. [4]

Fox Versus The Leftist View

"What really frustrates liberals about Fox, though, is simply that, along with talk radio and conservative blogs, it has helped shatter the left's near-monopoly on news and information. Fox's opinion-driven programming gives conservatives and liberals a chance to get a fair hearing for their ideas. But Democratic politicians and activists who go on Fox also must defend their views, often against tough questioning, something that happens less often on the networks, where most journalists are left-of-center, survey after survey has shown", said columnist Brian Anderson. "Even more significant, Fox came on the scene a decade ago as a professional news organization that could define and report news as something different from what the elite consensus says it is. To take one of many examples, the corruption of the United Nations' oil-for-food initiative in Iraq, initially downplayed by the mainstream media because of their sympathy for internationalism, was uncovered — deemed newsworthy — on Fox."

All this wouldn't matter if Fox News wasn't so influential. But it is. According to the Pew Research Center, more than 20% of Americans now claim to get news from it, and lots of them (37%) are Democrats or independents. The network's success has also sparked a "Fox effect," leading some competitors to become more open to right-of-center opinions: MSNBC's "Scarborough Country," hosted by former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, is a prime example. Until a few years ago, Democrats never had to deal with all these mediatized conservatives. [5]

Ailes said Fox News has no agenda. His charge to his reporters and anchors is simple: "If you make a mistake, get on the air as fast as you can and admit it. ... Do your homework. Make sure you reach out to a point of view you don't agree with to be sure you have some balance in your piece, because journalists, despite the public perception, are not empty-headed fools. They actually come to the job with some ideas and biases." When asked whether the media have a "conscious bias," Ailes said: "I don't know whether it's conscious or not. I think people who are biased to the left and right are by and large honest people who bring their life experience to whatever their beliefs are. I don't think there's some conspiracy of bias to the left, but I do think that New York and Los Angeles have different views than many people that I know from other parts of the country." [6]

Roger Ailes, Fox News Channel CEO, Talking About Fox News

This is a transcript of Ailes speaking to the Television Critics Association, which will be enlightening to readers digging into the Fox take on reporting and its reaction to controvery about its mission.

From Anchor To Press Secretary

In April, 2006 the White House selected Tony Snow, Fox News Anchorman, to be the new White House press secretary. "Snow, who in his roles as a pundit on Fox News and elsewhere has rapped Bush on several occasions, joined the White House only after extracting a promise that he would become an adviser to the president on day-to-day strategy...the former columnist will be the first outsider to become part of Bush's revamped inner circle.", said the Washington Post.

External Links

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