U.S. News, May 30, 2012
Fox Airs 4-minute Video Attack on Obama

It’s not quite a political ad but it sure looks like one.

Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” aired a four-minute video today attacking President Obama. The video is made in the same style as the most negative of political ads, complete with frightening music, graphics and voiceovers. Obama’s words are juxtaposed on screen with images of a dystopian America.

I watch Fox, CNN, and MSNBC all the time. And I can tell you that not one of these news outlets is unbiased. In fact the reason I watch all three of them in steady rotation is so I can find some sort of truth to what is going on in our country.

To conclude Fox is unbalanced is not hard to do. I am sure the most avid viewers would be able to concede that. You have to look no further than their primetime line up to see a political partiality. Greta and O’Reilly merely cover conservative issues, while Hannity outright promotes them. The morning shows are not balanced either. Though they have many non-political guests, the political guests they do have are conservatives.

In contrast to Fox’s coverage and opinions, it might seem that CNN is balanced or impartial. But CNN is guilty of a liberal bias that defines impartial in the media today. The most balanced media outlets have a subconscious tendency to demonize conservative thinking and romanticize liberal thinking.

The greatest example of this unconscious bias is the coverage of the Tea Party and Occupy movement within the media. The Tea Party helped fiscal conservatives win 2010 mid-term elections. The Occupy movement has done nothing but destory property. The Tea Party has had a few ambiguously racist signs and some town hall shouting matches. The Occupy movement has had rape, murder, public defecation, ramped anti-Semitism, assaults on the police, and assaults on its own members. Yet the two movements are given a moral equivalency in the media that is downright inexplicable.

Maybe Fox is balanced in this way. Maybe its coverage, though conservative leaning, is a counter balance for news in this country as a whole.

To be fair, not all bias in the media is liberal. The media usually has a conservative bias when it comes to foreign affairs. Your average outlet will treat the U.S. in a favorable light in most issues abroad. In the beginning of both the Afghan and Iraqi wars, news casters, reporters, and pundits were practically cheerleading the war effort. They subscribed, along with congress and our allies, that the missions were laudable and practicable. But when the wars became unpopular they scapegoated the Bush Administration along with everyone else.

Speaking of fair, it is the one claim that Fox News can make accurately in reference to the Fair & Balanced motto. All of the shows, save maybe Hannity, have almost as many liberal contributors and guests as conservative contributors and guests. And they are all given a fair amount of time to speak, except for maybe O’Reilly, who tends to talk over his dissenters. I do not see the same effort from CNN to bring in both sides. And at MSNBC there is absolutely no dissenting opinion.

You have to give MSNBC credit though. They never claim to be fair or balanced. That is one feather in their cap. But that might be the only one. Their stories and opinions are so outrageous at times, routinely making news out of the slightest Republican impropriety, and then descending into name calling, conspiracy, satire, and insult. There is a little of this with Hannity on the other side, but not to the level of a full slate of MSNBC zealots.

Fox dominates the ratings, and not by just a little. It does this in part because they ARE relatively fair, if not balanced. And people want fair more than balanced. They want to see issues discussed in an open forum, even if the issues at hand are those of conservatives. Fox also does well because of its production quality – they just have better shows. They have better graphics, more talent, more varied and creative segments. But do not be fooled. The main reason Fox crushes its competitors is as simple as this – conservatives watch the news, liberals don’t.

It is a popular notion among people that don’t follow the news, that Fox is a corrupt right wing news propaganda outlet. Again, this is because so called neutral coverage in the media leans a little left. When Fox leans a little right, it sticks out, and is easily demonized. The same people might demonize MSNBC for how far left they go, except that MSNBC does not have the exposure of Fox. No one watches it, so no one talks about it.

Also, people who don’t follow the news usually have liberal views rather than conservative ones because liberal thinking tells you cynical things that are easy to understand, like:

The rich are bad
The government owes you this
America is a racist country
America is an imperial aggressor

However conservative thinking tells you all the things that you might understand better if you followed the way the world works, like:

The rich aren’t an enemy to our own prosperity
Someone has to pay for everything the government gives you
Not everything that happens is motivated by race
No land nor treasure was sought overseas, just security

As for the Fox video on Obama, it is definitely opinionated and unprofessional. Yet everything in it is true to some extent. If they gave it an analytical narration without all the attitude and effect, it would have been perfectly fine. But the language, the sounds, and the implications were all negative and insulting. Just because the President sucks and the rest of the media outlets are on his stick, doesn’t mean you can smear him like that in a piece, and pretend it is news. It’s not fair, let alone balanced.

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