Network bias provides alternative
By Timor Brik
Fox News. These two words elicit extreme reactions on both sides of the political spectrum. To the right, it is one of "fair and balanced" news reporting and to the left, which is likely most people reading this, it represents right-wing propaganda. It is not the flamboyance of O'Reilly or the moustache of Geraldo that has made Fox News the highest rated news network on TV; it is CNN and the nightly network news. When four channels were churning out similar messages every night, the emergence of Fox created an alternative. The criticism came when the alternative was clearly giving a right-of-centre based reporting of the news. The difference between Fox, MSNBC, CNN and the rest of the news channels is that Fox is almost proudly conservative, whereas others maintain their independence. The question then is an issue we discussed in a class I had last week: can they call themselves a news network?
The problem with Fox and others is that opinion shows have become so diluted within the actual news broadcasts, one often cannot tell where Anderson Cooper 360 or Hannity ends and when the news broadcast begins. Someone in class attributed this to the 24 hour news cycle, and I believe they are correct. The networks often have to look for news to fill their non-stop broadcasts. Journalists feel they can shape the message instead of report on it. Fox was the first to declare Bush President in 2000, while CNN had the graphics announcing the historic election of Obama already produced when he announced his candidacy.
We saw this type of history-making moments in the lead up to the Iraq War and now a steady increase of reporting on Iran. Fox News is perhaps more explicitly conservative than the other networks are liberal and thus we question their journalistic integrity. To be fair, journalistic integrity in general disappeared when news reporting required profits in order to survive. So do we ignore Fox as the White House has done or even ban them on account of being unfair and unbalanced? I would argue no; not only because of obvious First Amendment issues, but also because Fox was born as an alternative to the mainstream media. It provided something people desired. As Fox continues to establish itself as a part of the media, it has resulted in alternatives to itself, which is evident in the humor in the form of the Daily Show and Web sites whose sole purpose it is to monitor the Fox News Channel. In full disclosure, I am a conservative who occasionally watches Fox, but only as much as I do CNN and the nightly news. Instead of denouncing Fox or any other news channel I encourage you to watch as many of them as you can. Diversify your sources of information and you will find opinions that challenge your ideas rather than echo them. If you are aware that certain news sources are promoting a certain ideology, then you can watch them more critically rather than agreeing in unison with everything said by the talking heads on TV.
Timor Brik is a senior political science major.