Next Time, Call a Spade a Hammer or Something
Howie Kurtz notes a study that concludes:
If you were watching the network evening news in June, July and August, you would have seen somewhat favorable coverage of John Kerry — six out of 10 evaluations were positive — and somewhat unfavorable coverage of President Bush.
If you were watching Fox News Channel’s 6 p.m. newscast, you would have seen about the same coverage of the president. But Kerry’s evaluations were negative by a 5 to 1 margin.
I love the specific example he gives of Fox being unfavorable to Kerry:
Some of the anti-Kerry comments come from the show’s commentators, not its reporters. On Thursday, after airing straightforward news reports on a speech by Iraq’s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, and Kerry’s criticism of the remarks, Hume asked his pundit panel for reaction. “Disgraceful,” said Charles Krauthammer. Michael Barone called it “bad politics.” Mort Kondracke accused Kerry of “pessimism.”
Ah. So much of the Fox News conservative bias comes from commentators telling the truth when Kerry has royally screwed up — which, lately, is more often than not.
The lesson is clear, Fox News. If you want to have a reputation as truly “fair and balanced,” then the next time John Kerry makes a disgraceful, pessimistic statement that reeks of bad politics — make sure your talking heads say something nice.
Isn’t Kondracke backing Kerry? Sometimes it seems like anyone who isn’t an asshat gets branded a right-winger.
Comment by Xrlq (6d213c) — 9/26/2004 @ 10:54 pm
Patterico: as long as the media is concentrating on a demonstrably failed tactic, in this case attacking the messenger, well that’s good news. It means they are burning their energy on irrelevance. Given their biases, what heartwarming news that is.
(shhh. Don’t interrupt them.)
Comment by ras (edf21c) — 9/27/2004 @ 12:51 am
I really love it when lefties “whine” about the bias of Fox news. To make the “stage” completely fair and balanced we need a dozen more news outlets favorable to President Bush.
Comment by salty sailor (4f3dbb) — 9/27/2004 @ 5:51 am
I have been surprised at how often Kondrake has been critical of Kerry. Juan Williams has been more reliably pro-Kerry but I haven’t seen him about a week.
Omitted from the report are reliably pro-kery, against all reason, commentators such as Susan Estrich and Geraldine Ferraro.
Comment by Justene (ddff14) — 9/27/2004 @ 7:19 am
Sigh… would some one close the coffin already?
“The Big Three may deride the newsreaders at Fox as blond bimbos, but millions of Americans learned long ago that there are probably more liberals on Fox than conservatives on PBS, NPR, CBS, ABC, and NBC combined — and the former are honest about politics in a way the latter are not.” Victor D. Hanson, “The Fall: A bankrupt generation is fading away”, http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson092404b.html
They’re already dead, they just don’t know it yet.
Comment by Whiskey Man (6dc959) — 9/28/2004 @ 2:05 am
Opinion≠Media Bias
Patterico brings up an interesting point. When people accuse Fox News of being biased to the right, they seem to use commentators like Hannity and O’Reilly as examples. However, they forget that commentators are supposed to be biased. In contrast,…
Trackback by Semi-Intelligent Thoughts (196bf7) — 9/28/2004 @ 8:08 am