But there is one myth it will dispel, namely, that Fox News is some blaring mouthpiece for all things Republican. Not so, says the study, especially when compared to other cable news programs, like CNN, which leans decidedly left. Here's the report's statement about Fox:
The programming studied on Fox News offered a somewhat more positive picture of Republicans and more negative one of Democrats compared with other media outlets. Fox News stories about a Republican candidate were most likely to be neutral (47%), with the remainder more positive than negative (32% vs. 21% negative). The bulk of that positive coverage went to Giuliani (44% positive), while McCain still suffered from unflattering coverage (20% positive vs. 35% negative).
When it came to Democratic candidates, the picture was more negative. Again, neutral stories had a slight edge (39%), followed by 37% negative and 24% positive. And, in marked contrast from the rest of the media, coverage of Obama was twice as negative as positive: 32% negative vs. 16% positive and 52% neutral.
But any sense here that the news channel was uniformly positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not manifest in the data.
Surely we can all be confident that left-wing claims that Fox News is really Faux News will cease. I mean, it is well-known that we more conservative folk have an implicit trust in our liberal friends' ability to base their arguments on sound facts and methodology.†
But perhaps some trenchant thinkers, like those found at the Daily Kos or the Huffington Post, will not read this study and hence will be spared much troubling apoplexy. Their ignorance is a merciful ignorance.
And, for fun, this screen shot from the report showing the balance between positive and negative commentary on talk radio, conservative and liberal:
Granted. I post this table merely to incite laughter. It's clear the samples were rather small. But I do love the 100% tallies in the liberal talk radio columns. That's pretty funny.
It's sad that two seconds after you read this, you will most likely return to a world driven by media that lie to themselves about themselves. Media bias? Who really cares?
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
†I have not read the full text nor have I analyzed the study's methodology. For now, I'll make an assumption that this study intends to be taken seriously and hence has not been done shoddily.
