English, Featured, Media, TV

When the news are biased

An attentive observer could come to the conclusion that the conflict in Iraq was solved a long time ago, the next elections would still be years away and all political issues resolved. At least one will get this impression when tuning in to either MSNBC or FOX News these days.

While President Bush is announcing his “new way forward” in Iraq, presenting a new ambassador to the U.N. and a new Director of Central Intelligence, the news is reporting about what?

An objective observer will proclaim that it is almost astounding what is happening in cable news television these days, where all you can see, or hear about, is the never-ending feud between the news channels themselves.

The dispute is summed up quickly. Since its emergence in American households, Fox News proclaims that the majority of the American news establishment is liberal and therefore sees itself as counterpart and true advocate of free and balanced reporting.

Until now, CNN, MSNBC and the news staffs of the “Big Three” cared little about those propositions, but stood by and watched how Fox News and its strategy of attacking anything that seems “liberal” took over the ratings and passed the cable news competition.

In a research paper for New York University, I cited a Roper Poll of 1992, which found out that 92% of the reporting press had voted for Bill Clinton, whereas only 43% of the country did. Even though this poll is still disputed, we can safely assume that journalists tend to lean more towards the Democratic Party. The question remains if this is reflected in their coverage, and therefore influences their readership.

Furthermore, another study found out that Republican candidates for President got newspaper endorsements 86.7% of the time since 1948, whereas Democrats only received 13.3%.

To sum up, reporters tend to lean towards Democrats, their publishers tend to be more conservative. How much influence does the boss have on his employee, and how much influence does he have on his readers? At the end, no one is contented when their product is labeled partisan.

For Fox News, this strategy of attack as always worked in their favor because they could rally their viewers behind their fight against a common enemy: the liberals and their press. “Rally the troops” is not only a military term but is more often used in politics, especially in the Republican Party.

Though, the times have changed. The majority of Americans is favoring a new strategy in Iraq and Washington and Fox News is losing its enemies. The people they used to attack were, at the end, right in their observations, and the audience knows it.

Time to find new combatants, or, go back to the old ones. After years of dominating the ratings, Fox News sees itself threatened by MSNBC, which is more popular than ever.
Especially Keith Olbermann and lately Joe Scarborough lead the wave of popularity on MSNBC. As third-tier cable news channel they only saw one chance to increase their ratings, and that was to attack the leader: Fox News.

If you hate Bill O’Reilly - the successful evening host on Fox News - then we want you as our viewers. And because they were more than successful with that strategy and with everything working against Fox News in the moment, the latter has found its new enemy.

Everything started with NBC News’ announcement to officially call the conflict in Iraq a “Civil War”. Bill O’Reilly went on the attack and described all of NBC’s staff as irresponsible, liberal journalists that hate President Bush. MSNBC did not want O’Reilly to get away with it and fired on all cylinders in all their evening shows.

What transpired these next couple of days makes you feel sorry for the uninformed viewer, or even worse, for the viewer that tunes into a news show to actually hear about news. Rather than seeing a host talking about what happened around the world, the viewer saw a talking-head that prattled about another host on a different channel.
MSNBC could not be happier about the current situation, which seems like the best publicity for the smallest of the three 24/7 cable news channels.

Ultimately, they still trail Fox News in millions of viewers but find their names in every show of their rival channel. On the other side, Fox News is rejoiced because they finally found their new common enemy since their last, the Democratic Party, won the midterm election by a great margin. In the meantime they can justify their excessive patriotic and conservative coverage by shouting: the others do it as well.

The loser in this contest is the viewer and to quote myself from my research paper: “All of the media has to be challenged in their coverage, because no one can say to be fully objective in their doings. Be it by trying to defame someone else, or by hiding from the responsibilities to the public. After all, it is us who should decide what to think and how to think about it, and not some talking head on the TV screen.”

Discussion:

1) Are MSNBC and Fox News doing their audience a favor in playing a watchdog role on each other?

2) What are the dangers of a society that only hears news about how partisan the news are?

3) How can the media be saved from this battle and what would have to happen in order to do so?

Additional Information:
> Media Matter’s clips on the feud between MSNBC and Fox News
> PBS Frontline documentary “News War”
> MSNBC’s Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points as Podcast

Works Cited:
Niven, David. Tilt? The Seach for Media Bias. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002.
Strasser, Franz. Bias in American Media. New York University. New York, N.Y., April 2006.