Why Most Journalists Dislike Fox News: It’s Not the Reason You Think
According to Dee Rambeau, July is Media Orchard’s “Pick on Fox News” month — so since July is almost over, I thought I’d better get in one last lick.
This may be hard for people who have never been journalists to understand, but I do not dislike Fox News because my politics are left of Roger Ailes’. I dislike Fox News because it undermines the efforts of all journalists who work hard to be objective in their coverage of the day’s events.
Ailes smirks that Fox News is “Fair and Balanced” when everyone at that network knows that it has a political agenda that comes down from on high. That smirk not only makes Fox News a liar — it also mocks the integrity of all journalists who have committed their lives and careers to the ideals of objective journalism.
Let me explain something to those of you who have never been reporters; for most journalists, integrity is everything. Say what you will about reporters’ ethics, but I know from experience that you’ll hear more serious discussion of ethical questions in a newsroom than you’ll ever hear in a boardroom. Most reporters care passionately about what they do — and just as passionately about doing it right.
Journalists, in general, don’t enter the profession to make money. If money were their goal, they would apply their college educations and insatiable curiosity in more profitable directions — such as becoming political operatives.
Young people enter journalism, for the most part, because they want to make a difference. Their egos are fed not by the money they make, but by the impact they have. Journalists have impact by covering controversy and causing change. If change is anti-conservative — in the true sense of the word “conservative” — it is not anti-Republican.
Republicans and Democrats have worked together peacefully and productively in newsrooms for years, because they have always used the same rulebook. When I was a reporter in Lynchburg, Va., I remember covering a series of stories on a politically charged issue with a reporter who was as Republican as they come. I don’t think we discussed our personal politics once while writing that series — because we both were more committed to the discipline of journalism than to our politics.
While more individual journalists may tend to hold so-called “liberal” views than so-called “conservative” views, none of Fox News’ competitors — not CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN or MSNBC — issues dictates from the executive suite about how stories should be covered. Only Fox News does that. None of Fox News’ competitors has a political filter for hiring talent. Only Fox News has that.
That’s why “Fair and Balanced” is an example of the Big Lie. And why all of us — no matter our politics — should be a little bothered by that. It’s certainly why virtually all journalists who take objectivity seriously dislike Fox News.
One last point: This phenomenon works both ways. I once worked at an alternative weekly — one with its own set of political views. In that setting, I was the staff “conservative.” I once wrote an article that the chain’s editorial chief thought was too “conservative” in tone, and — in so many words — he told me as much.
Having been trained in daily newspaper newsrooms — where it was about what you learned from your reporting, not what you believed beforehand — I was shocked by the complaint. It wasn’t long before I left that alt weekly.
So when I knock Fox News, it’s not because I worry about its politics. No, I worry that the ratings success of Fox News will undermine the profession of journalism generally in the public’s mind, so that any reporter who endeavors to cover stories objectively will be greeted with a Roger Ailes-inspired smirk.
This is spot on. If you don’t like Fox News content, don’t watch (I don’t). But I’m afraid this is the future of profit-driven journalism (which means no journalism at all) unless we demand better.
‘Fair and balanced’ is the biggest joke around.
Basically, they ‘balance’ what they perceive to be mainstream media bias by putting out their own slanted POV.
And the only reasons Colmes is on the network is so they can feel they’re balancing out their 98% GOP views.
But hey, why let facts get in the way of their message though.
The Colmes thing is tokenism at its silliest. I’m guessing that guy is really depressed when he goes home after work.
Okay Scott. I will stop picking on you about your politics. Based upon our email exchanges, we’re probably both about a foot or two apart from one another right in the middle of that hot, steamy Texas road.
I will argue about the network bias though. There might not be a “command from on high” at CBS or NBC or The New York Times, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a calculated editorial bias. The evidence is so overwhelming. Fox’s egregious error is to admit it.
The “integrity” of reporters that you speak to is an ideal…much like a young attorney’s ideals when they start working for the public defender’s office. Once they discover their “power” to make real money they make the move. Once a journalist realizes their “power” to influence, off come the gloves and integrity is often sacrificed at the expense of ego.
Dan Rather anyone? He reeks of something but I’m quite sure it’s not integrity.
Dee:
You say, “Fox’s egregious error is to admit it.”
My whole point is that they don’t admit it, Dee. If they would just admit it, I’d be on my merry way.
In any case, I agree that many of our views are probably similar. Peace bro’.
back at ya. I was counting the “smirk” as an admission…
Scott, thanks for an excellent description of what really happens in newsrooms regarding the integrity of (most) journalists. It’s something those who haven’t been in a print newsroom may never believe. I understand — when I was a reporter, I thought all PR people were unethical and biased. It wasn’t until I worked for a PR agency that I learned most PR people are indeed ethical and have integrity. As for Fox, I’m with you — I don’t hate them for what they say, I hate them for pretending to be a legitimate news organization.
Scott, did you see this article in the Post about bias? Fascintating. Here’s an excerpt:
The tendency to see bias in the news — now the raison d’etre of much of the blogosphere — is such a reliable indicator of partisan thinking that researchers coined a term, “hostile media effect,” to describe the sincere belief among partisans that news reports are painting them in the worst possible light. …
Even more curious, the hostile media effect seems to apply only to news sources that strive for balance. News reports from obviously biased sources usually draw fewer charges of bias. Partisans, it turns out, find it easier to countenance obvious propaganda than news accounts that explore both sides.
Nicole,
I had not seen that; what a great piece.
It reminds me of my dad, who always told me that the national commentators were biased against his Redskins. Only the local commentators were “fair.”
“It reminds me of my dad, who always told me that the national commentators were biased against his Redskins…”
My dad said the same thing about the Bills, except it was the refs who were biased.
;-p
I have never detected bias on Fox News. The notion that objectivity is itself biased can stem only from a leftist so hopelessly sheltered that he doesn’t even know where the “middle” is. if you line up all the voters in america, the guy standing at the exact median point voted for my president. if you want hard-core bias on tv, particularly oif you’re an anti-semite or self-hating jew, turn on cnn any time day or night. let’s hope israel’s target list isn’t exhausted yet.
Thanks for that highly reasoned assessment.
You’re fussing over a slogan while viewers are seeing news not shown elsewhere. The television audience isn’t fooled by self-reporting reporters regarding lack of bias. Poll after poll has shown this to be accepted wisdom. Fox’s large audience relative to it’s cable competition is democracy’s answer.
Just because people prefer news that tells them what they want to hear, that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing for journalism or for our democracy.
I have a question. Just how is it that you know that Fox Executives force their ideology from “on high”? I am a liberal democrat who has worked at Fox for 8 years. I have produced hundreds of shows and nobody has told me to have any ideological slant ever. My personal politics have never come up, and I’ve never been put in any position by management that made me feel unconfortable. If anything, it is that they give complete freedom to the hosts to espouse whatever the hosts wish… that is where a conservative slant may come in. But I find it interesting that you are so positive that at Fox management forces the newsto be reported a certain way… when I have not seen that in my 8 years there.
-EF
90% of the programming on Fox is clearly editorial, and there is no such thing as “biased” in an editorial product, as any newspaper editor will gladly tell you.
You’re right about one thing, journalists don’t go into it for money. But you can spare me that “insatiable curiosity” bullshit. They do it for power. They want to frame the way the world looks to the public.
CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and MSNBC don’t have to issue dictates on how stories are covered because they all agree with Pinch Sulzberger’s doctrine of a “flexible urban viewpoint” being forced on us all.
You’d have a little more credibility if you’d apply the same standard to the New York Times editorial product that you apply to Fox News.
“They want to frame the way the world looks to the public.”
I’ve never known a single journalist who was motivated by that goal. Doesn’t sound very motivating to me.
EW,
Where the conservative slant “may” come in?
Here’s another reason to not like FOX: Watching it makes you measurably stupider. See the PIPA poll on percentages of people who believe(d): 1) Saddam had something to do with 911; 2) There were WMD in Iraq; 3) There were connections between Saddam and al Qaeda.
A very nicely put together assessment. I find it discouraging that most of the people who wish to challenge your views don’t have the confidence in their point of view to post with their name instead of hiding behind anonymity. I also find it depressing that their assertions ignore your point about Fox’s success being bad for the future of news’ vital role in a free society and instead focus on their idea that balance is a litmus test to find the middle ground of opinion about an incident instead of the truth of what happened.
>>”They want to frame the way the world looks to the public.”
>>I’ve never known a single journalist who was motivated by that goal. Doesn’t sound very motivating to me.
Yeah, and I’ve never known a single politician that was in it for the power either. They just want to do good for the public.
Saddam connected to al-Qaida? Where on Earth would Fox News and the “idiot Fox News watchers” get that “fallacious” idea? Let’s see, maybe…
State of the Union Address January 28, 2003: “Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody, reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaida.”
BBC Profile: “It is during this period that Zarqawi is thought to have renewed his acquaintance with al-Qaeda. He is believed to have fled to Iraq in 2001 after a US missile strike on his Afghan base, though the report that he lost a leg in the attack has not been verified. US officials argue that it was at al-Qaeda’s behest that he moved to Iraq and established links with Ansar al-Islam - a group of Kurdish Islamists from the north of the country. He is thought to have remained with them for a while - feeling at home in mountainous northern Iraq.”
Justice Department indictment of Bin Laden - Spring 1998: “Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.”
Letter to Congress by CIA Director George Tenet: “Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank. We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad. We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs. Iraq’s increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad’s links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.”
ABC News - August 25, 1998: Before the pharmaceutical plant was reduced to rubble by American cruise missiles, the CIA was secretly gathering evidence that ended up putting the facility on America’s target list. Intelligence sources say their agents clandestinely gathered soil samples outside the plant and found, quote, “strong evidence” of a chemical compound called EMPTA, a compound that has only one known purpose, to make VX nerve gas. The U.S. had been suspicious for months, partly because of Osama bin Laden’s financial ties, but also because of strong connections to Iraq. Sources say the U.S. had intercepted phone calls from the plant to a man in Iraq who runs that country’s chemical weapons program.
Joe Lieberman on MSNBC’s Hardball: “I want to be real clear about the connection with terrorists. I’ve seen a lot of evidence on this. There are extensive contacts between Saddam Hussein’s government and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. I never could reach the conclusion that [Saddam] was part of September 11. Don’t get me wrong about that. But there was so much smoke there that it made me worry. And you know, some people say with a great facility, al Qaeda and Saddam could never get together. He is secular and they’re theological. But there’s something that tied them together. It’s their hatred of us.”
* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary.
* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq’s Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam’s son Qusay, and met with officials from Saddam’s mukhabarat, its external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on February 6, 2003.
* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.
* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Mr. Powell.
* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam’s men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraq’s mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is “thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq,” the Guardian reported.
* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to Jane’s Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Jane’s reported that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaeda’s No. 2 man. (Why are all of those meetings significant? The London Observer reports that FBI investigators cite a captured al Qaeda field manual in Afghanistan, which “emphasizes the value of conducting discussions about pending terrorist attacks face to face, rather than by electronic means.”)
* As recently as 2001, Iraq’s embassy in Pakistan was used as a “liaison” between the Iraqi dictator and al Qaeda, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
* Spanish investigators have uncovered documents seized from Yusuf Galan — who is charged by a Spanish court with being “directly involved with the preparation and planning” of the Sept. 11 attacks — that show the terrorist was invited to a party at the Iraqi embassy in Madrid. The invitation used his “al Qaeda nom de guerre,” London’s Independent reports.
* An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as “Abu Mohammed,” told Gwynne Roberts of the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Laden’s fighters in camps in Iraq in 1997. At the time, Mohammed was a colonel in Saddam’s Fedayeen. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad. At that vast compound run by Iraqi intelligence, Muslim militants trained to hijack planes with knives — on a full-size Boeing 707. Col. Mohammed recalls his first visit to Salman Pak this way: “We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queuing for food. (The major) said to me: ‘You’ll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Laden’s group and the PKK and Mojahedin-e Khalq.’”
* In 1998, Abbas al-Janabi, a longtime aide to Saddam’s son Uday, defected to the West. At the time, he repeatedly told reporters that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.
*The Sunday Times found a Saddam loyalist in a Kurdish prison who claims to have been Dr. Zawahiri’s bodyguard during his 1992 visit with Saddam in Baghdad. Dr. Zawahiri was a close associate of bin Laden at the time and was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989.
* Following the defeat of the Taliban, almost two dozen bin Laden associates “converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there,” Mr. Powell told the United Nations in February 2003. From their Baghdad base, the secretary said, they supervised the movement of men, materiel and money for al Qaeda’s global network.
* In 2001, an al Qaeda member “bragged that the situation in Iraq was ‘good,’” according to intelligence made public by Mr. Powell.
* That same year, Saudi Arabian border guards arrested two al Qaeda members entering the kingdom from Iraq.
* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, Mr. Powell told the United Nations. His specialty was poisons. Wounded in fighting with U.S. forces, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When Zarqawi recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawi’s Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawi’s cell in Iraq, Mr. Powell said. His accomplice escaped to Iraq.
*Zarqawi met with military chief of al Qaeda, Mohammed Ibrahim Makwai (aka Saif al-Adel) in Iran in February 2003, according to intelligence sources cited by the Washington Post.
* Mohammad Atef, the head of al Qaeda’s military wing until the U.S. killed him in Afghanistan in November 2001, told a senior al Qaeda member now in U.S. custody that the terror network needed labs outside of Afghanistan to manufacture chemical weapons, Mr. Powell said. “Where did they go, where did they look?” said the secretary. “They went to Iraq.”
* Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent to Iraq by bin Laden to purchase poison gases several times between 1997 and 2000. He called his relationship with Saddam’s regime “successful,” Mr. Powell told the United Nations.
* Mohamed Mansour Shahab, a smuggler hired by Iraq to transport weapons to bin Laden in Afghanistan, was arrested by anti-Hussein Kurdish forces in May, 2000. He later told his story to American intelligence and a reporter for the New Yorker magazine.
* Documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center show that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden. According to a London’s Daily Telegraph, the organization offered to recruit “youth to train for the jihad” at a “headquarters for international holy warrior network” to be established in Baghdad.
* Mullah Melan Krekar, ran a terror group (the Ansar al-Islam) linked to both bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Krekar admitted to a Kurdish newspaper that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan and other senior al Qaeda officials. His acknowledged meetings with bin Laden go back to 1988. When he organized Ansar al Islam in 2001 to conduct suicide attacks on Americans, “three bin Laden operatives showed up with a gift of $300,000 ‘to undertake jihad,’” Newsday reported. Mr. Krekar is now in custody in the Netherlands. His group operated in portion of northern Iraq loyal to Saddam Hussein — and attacked independent Kurdish groups hostile to Saddam. A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told a United Press International correspondent that Mr. Krekar’s group was funded by “Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad.”
* After October 2001, hundreds of al Qaeda fighters are believed to have holed up in the Ansar al-Islam’s strongholds inside northern Iraq.
To the Fox staffer questioning the directives-from-on-high comment, this appeared on Romenesko last October:
“The roots of Fox News Channel’s day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct,” writes Charlie Reina, a former Fox News producer. “They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel’s daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it.”
Charlie Reina has other personal issues that would leave him less than trustworthy on the matter, in my own view.
Scott, I’ve posted your article on my site, being careful to give proper attributions. Plus a little extra love.
Care to give the Pusuit a shout out? I don’t mind! B.
No bias EXCEPT at Fox?
Ok, as an exercise, count the positive minutes of GOP primary coverage versus minutes of positive coverage of the democrats. CNN’s discussion of the meaningful GOP primary in Florida digressed in less than three minutes into a) Clinton’s run at the non-delegates, and b) negatives of all the GOP field.
C’mon, the very language that Clinton and Obama are reported on is sickening. Plans to bring us together? Please, Bush actually did that in texas. The media reported it with a smug condescension. How can a 100% liberal (as noted by several ‘progressive’ think tanks) with NO experience bring anyone together? What evidence is there that the man can do so? What conservative values is he bringing to the table that tells me he’s planning to compromise with me, not in spite of me.
Yes Fox news has orders from on high, to buoy the republican agenda. The other networks are owned by corporations, some of their reporters may be liberal, but any judgements made from on top probably would be conservative. Thats how corporation are. Whether it is abc, msnbc, cbs, or cnn, we are tragically uninformed. Fox news is the worst, but the other networks aren't much better. We are choosing between eating not enough, and having what we eat be junk food (fox news), or simply just not eating enough. Either way we a re starved for information on the happenings of our world