Fox Vs. MSNBC

Shannon - posted on 06/23/2009

I don't believe any of them are "fair and balanced" in any way. I agree Fox gets laughed at for calling themselves "fair and balanced" but the truth is they are all biased. I think it depends on the host and the event to see who covers it more fairly. I'm not sure if I said that right - if Obama cures cancer then Hannity might not get into detail on the story but if Obama causes cancer then you'll surely hear just bits of it from Matthews. If a plane crashes in the Hudson you can watch either and get pretty equal coverage.

My theory, btw, on why Fox News has higher viewers is that the conservative base is much older on average than the liberal base (not talking about any of you girls!) and older people tend to watch lots of news while younger people turn to the internet and Comedy Central. Only a theory.

Sara - posted on 06/09/2009

I agree, there is no truly unbiased news source. I think my point was that when Fox becomes involved in organizing political events and then covers them as news, the cease being reporters. Plus, they try to push themselves as "fair and balanced" news when that is obviously not the case. I think that's why they get so much flack, is because they say they don't add any spin...

Traci - posted on 06/08/2009

Sara, Fox is no different from MSNBC or CNN, they just come from the other side of the aisle. MSNBC is GE, which just happens to be ready to make a whole lot of money on all those wind turbines and other hunks of junk that will "save the world" from the hoax that is global warming. They are also raking it in in this whole healthcare deal. GE execs are sitting in on policy discussions, no different than what Bush did. I fail to see how this is any different from what Fox has done.



On the whole "habeas corpus" thing...Lincoln did the same thing. As long as its temporary, big deal.



The wiretapping Obama approves of! He hasn't changed any of that. Maybe he sees that it works!



We'll have to agree to disagree on Medicare and Social Securtiy being mandatory gov't spending. Social Security is a ponzi scheme. It does more harm than good and is nothing but a joke. Medicare is a joke too. We can't afford it. Both of those programs take from the workers and give to non workers, they are unsustainable and a couple of the greatest travesties ever perpetuated on our wonderful country. So sad....



The tea parties were full of people who are sick of being taxed to death, it doesn't matter who "sponsored" them or not. They surely weren't started by Fox, one of the first ones were held in Chicago. Fox jumped on the bandwagon, but it wasn't their idea! They knew it would be great for ratings, and they were.



The whole point is that the other networks are no different from Fox, they are not objective...everybody has an angle. Fox has given Conservatives a small platform from which to cite and the left cannot stand that they are not as successful, hence all the whining from Olbermann, etc.

Christa - posted on 06/08/2009

http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=6G3fvNhdoc0



I put a space in the link so it will show up. :-)

Christa - posted on 06/08/2009

Wow Sara that was quite a mouthful. Maybe when I have more time I will come back and discuss the specifics with you, but the bottom line is we are all allowed to protest for whatever we think is right.



About Fox I don't think anyone has ever said it wasn't conservatively biased, but I do think it's more fair then MSNBC. Here is an interesting article that was written during the election about the coverage of the two candidates. http://journalism.org/node/13436





And here is a CNN reporter covering the Tea Party's. It's pretty clear where her bias is.







I think the point of all of this is that it is sad that in our society you can not get truly unbiased news.

Sara - posted on 06/08/2009

The "fair and balanced journalists" at Fox were fond of reminding the "liberal media" during Bush's Administration that journalists should be in the business of reporting news, not making it. Come to think of it, they spent President Bush's entire post 9/11 presidency portraying anyone who protested his policies as un-American, traitorous, homo-loving, God-hating, malcontented, and ungrateful hippies. But now that we find a Democrat in the White House, Fox News has suddenly become the bastion of First Amendment rights? That would be funny if it wasn't so pathetically ridiculous.



Fox News has always held itself up as the "fair and balanced" alternative to a liberal media gone wild; a "no-spin zone" where the discerning citizen could finally get the real story. Their conservative bias has always been apparent to anyone willing to take an objective look at their reporting. When Fox News sponsored partisan political rallies and then covered them as if they had been spontaneous, grass-roots manifestations of genuine civilian sentiment, they became no better than the MTV "reporters" who cover Spring Break Events at Daytona while encouraging their viewers to "come out and join the party." It was a shameful exhibition of naked partisanship.



In March and the beginning of April, they were really pushing those "Tax Day Tea Parties". Fox News sponsored the events and they were partisan. They lent their name to the rallies. The YouTube footage of Fox News broadcasts listed the events as "FNC Tax Day Tea Parties" (i.e., FNC, or Fox News Channel). When Coca-Cola, Fed-Ex, Tostitos, Doritos or some other corporation adds their name to an event, we understand that they have sponsored it and that they have done so because it is advantageous in some way for them to have done so. The Fox News Channel Tax Day Tea Parties were no different.



And if you think the liberal media would have done the same if a Republican were still in office let me remind you that when Cindy Sheehan set up Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas to protest the war and the neocon foreign policy of President Bush, at least CNN had the restraint to keep from smearing their corporate logo all over the event. They may have covered Camp Casey with a little too much glee but they didn't hype it, promote it, sponsor it, or send correspondents there as participants to speak at the rally in order to whip up crowds and increase publicity. And Cindy Sheehan was protesting a war that was killing American citizens and bankrupting the country.



Which brings us back to irony of the Tax Day Tea Parties. The Boston Tea Party of 1773, from which these modern Tax Day demonstrations borrow their name, was a spontaneous protest undertaken by a few colonists who were fed up with the mercantilist policies of the British Empire that allowed the East India Trading Company, perhaps the first megacorp and a British company, to import tea into the colonies, which would then be taxed by the British in order to pay for their war with the French. It was the American colonist who was forced to pay the tax, even though they neither had part in deciding to go to war with France nor representation in the British parliament that passed the Tea Act levying the tax. So, depending on how one views the Boston Tea Party historically, it was a protest against British tyranny and the denial of rights to those living in the American colonies, a protest against the political influence enjoyed by mega-corporations or an anti-war protest.



The Fox News Tax Day Tea Parties on the other hand were in protest of "higher taxes and wasteful government spending." Never mind the obvious irony of organizers buying up 1 million tea bags to be emptied by protestors into barrels to protest wasteful spending. And never mind the fact that 62% of the federal budget is made up of mandatory spending on things like Social Security and Medicare and another 20% is spent on national defense, none of which any Republican in his right mind would currently support eliminating for fear of alienating the AARP or military voters and their families. Where were these protestors when the Bush Administration was running up trillions of dollars in debt to fight the wrong war in the wrong place for the wrong reasons? Where were they when the Republican Party, which controlled Congress from 1994 to 2006 and the White House from 2000 to 2008, abandoned all fiscal responsibility while deregulating Wall Street and thus helping to facilitate the very economic crisis with which the Obama Administration is now trying to cope?



And speaking of violating American rights, where were these protestors when the Bush Administration ignored the constitutionally granted writ of habeas corpus to try American citizens as enemy combatants in military tribunals that even Republican members of Congress thought were unconstitutional? Where were they when the Bush Administration was advocating the use of torture on prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva Convention or conducting illegal wire taps on American citizens in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act? Where were they as it became increasingly apparent that "big oil" was making its undue influence felt in every aspect of American political life from foreign policy to environmental protection? And why wasn't Fox News as respectful of the First Amendment rights of those citizens who did choose to protest the policies I just mentioned? I think if we're honest with ourselves then we can admit we know the answers to these questions.



And what about Thomas Paine and the other Founding Fathers? Their names were bandied about by the Tax Day protestors ad nauseum. What would Thomas Paine have had to say about the tax policies of the Obama Administration? We know the Founders were capitalists but we also know that Thomas Paine - and I single him out because Glenn Beck of Fox News paid some curmudgeon to play him on one of his more ridiculous broadcasts promoting the Fox News Tax Day Tea Parties - did propose and support an estate tax, the revenue from which he wanted to be used to pay for public education.



It was also Thomas Paine that first proposed the kind of progressive tax system we have in this country today in which the wealthy would be taxed at a higher rate. He was also the first politician in America to promote antipoverty programs and suggested that a general fund be created from collected tax revenue to provide housing and food assistance for the poor.



It sort of makes me wonder if Glenn Beck has actually ever studied Thomas Paine or if he just remembered from high school American history classes that he was somehow involved in the American Revolution and once a wrote a pamphlet called Common Sense. If he had bothered to actually study Thomas Paine he might have run across this quote, "When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government." Those are Thomas Paine's words. Glenn Beck should look them up.

And by the way, anyone who calls a tax structure oppressive in a nation where it's still possible to amass the kind of wealth seen in this country is either deluding themselves or doesn't understand what the word oppressive means.



We know that Thomas Paine and many other Founders were fearful of the creation of an aristocratic class within American society, which tends to occur whenever too much wealth is concentrated within the upper classes. "Entitlement programs" and President Obama's proposed hike in the estate tax were two of the things protestors at the FNC Tax Day Tea Parties were most angry about and yet there is currently a greater concentration of wealth within a smaller percentage of the population than at any other time in American history since the 1920s, and a greater number of Americans either unemployed or living in poverty than there has been in 25 years.



But it turns out that Thomas Paine, the Glenn Beck-appointed mascot of the Tax Day Tea Party protests, actually supported all of the types of programs the protestors seem to be so angry about and once remarked that, "When, in countries that are called civilized, we see aged going to the work-house and youth the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government" and "why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor?" (Rights of Man).



It's starting to sound like Thomas Paine might have been one of those Obamaesque, European-style socialists (Western European style socialism usually advocates a mixed capitalist/socialist system, by the way) that make Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and the rest of the "fair and balanced" folks at Fox just mad as hell. The irony is simply too thick to stir with a teaspoon.



Regardless of what I think about the Tax Day Tea Party protestors or their agenda, I believe that people should be allowed to peacefully protest as they will. If liberals had the right to protest the policies of George Bush out of genuine concern for their country then surely conservatives should have the right to protest the policies of Barak Obama whenever they too become concerned. And I believe that people should be politically engaged enough to protest. And the news media, be it Fox News or CNN, ought to cover these protests with equal respect for the First Amendment rights of every American citizen and let the American public decide for themselves how they feel.



But when a news organization that is supposed to be in the business of reporting the news in as unbiased a fashion as possible crosses the line and acts as sponsor or promoter for these protests, they cease to be journalists. And the fact that the station sponsoring the Tax Day Tea Parties spent so much time criticizing, attacking and vilifying anyone who protested the policies of President Bush while he was in office makes their actions now that much more ridiculous. Fair and balanced indeed.

Brenda - posted on 06/06/2009

I agree with you Traci. I don't watch Fox exclusively, but I find their coverage more thorough and balanced.



I have to laugh about Matthews..."man-crushing" on Obama...lol I do think you sized them up side by side fairly accurately. But if I want the WHOLE story, I usually watch Fox News.

Christa - posted on 06/06/2009

I saw that thread too and they were wondering why FOX gets all the ratings. I actually think the answer is quite simple. It's the only network that gives any sort of the conservative side of the story. So most conservatives watch it. So has about 50% of the market share where the others, MSBNC, CNN, etc have to split the other 50%. Frankly I don't really watch any of it because they are all just talking heads in it for the ratings. I get my news from the internet that way I can read the story without the annoying commentary. :-)