Media Critics: MSNBC Is Not a Left-Wing Fox News
November 30, 2010 10:18 am ET by Joe Strupp
You hear it all the time - MSNBC and Fox News. One is the opposite ideological wing of the other. The two bookend the political and ideological debate on cable television.
But is that really fair? Is it right to say that Fox is the right-wing MSNBC and visa versa?
Media experts and public opinion data indicate it is not.
Those who cover media and follow television news contend that Fox News has a clearer political bent than MSNBC, strong ties to the Republican party, and a clear conflict with the paid employment of at least five potential GOP presidential candidates.
There is also the matter of News Corp.'s recent $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association. Add to that the leadership of Roger Ailes -- a veteran, hard-line Republican operative -- and the differences are much stronger than some would like to admit.
"Intellectually, are they more honest than Fox, I think they are," Eric Deggans, media critic for the St. Petersburg Times, said of MSNBC. "I saw that Fox was more consistent in reflecting a right wing tilt than MSNBC was in reflecting a liberal tilt. I think Fox is much more evolved in what it does than MSNBC does, in reflecting a political bent, it being right-wing."
Deggans added: "Fox seems to violate tenets of fairness more often. I have written a thousand columns criticizing Fox News, I have criticized MSNBC when I think they make mistakes or go too far. I have criticized Fox more often. I have a problem with how Fox's ideology seeps into the way they report the news, in a framework that is already tilted toward the right. That makes the product unfair."
Alex S. Jones, executive director of the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, agreed.
"There is no question that the affinity between Fox and the Republican Party goes all the way to Rupert Murdoch, which in my view is not a good thing," Jones said. "One is sort of unrelentingly partisan and the other is more of an equal-opportunity basher. They are not equivalent, they are both advocacy, but not equivalent."
Jones also pointed to the recent suspensions of Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough for donating to political candidates, noting that Fox has a far worse record of such conflicts and no punishments.
"I think that MSNBC is right and Fox is wrong about allowing people to make campaign contributions -- that is just a bad idea," Jones said. "In my experience, the people who are the sort of signature voices of MSNBC, Maddow and Olbermann, tend to be more broadly critical and include Democrats in their criticism. They don't seem to be averse to criticize their own. That is not true with the voices of Fox News. Never a discouraging word is heard."
James Rainey, media reporter at the Los Angeles Times, said a key difference is the degree to which Fox News overlaps opinion with news.
"One of the big questions on all of these is how much the opinion stuff bleeds over into what is supposed to be news, particularly with Fox it is clear it does bleed over," he said. "Particularly if you watch Megyn Kelly. I have been severely admonished by the Fox spokespeople that there is absolutely no opinion, that they play it extremely straight during the day segment. You can watch these shows and it is clear that there is a sharp point of view on many of them. On Megyn Kelly and on Fox & Friends."
He noted Kelly's prolonged interest in the New Black Panther case of alleged voter intimidation: "There could have been some bad behavior, but it is a matter of proportion. To watch her program you would have thought this was the end of democracy as we know it."
Rainey also pointed to Ailes' impact, adding: "There is no other news operation that I know of that has a Roger Ailes in charge, someone who is steeped in political activism and political rhetoric. His philosophy pervades everything they do at Fox. If there is someone equivalent to Roger Ailes at MSNBC, I would like to see who it is."
Jeff Bercovici, a veteran media writer at Forbes, agreed that Ailes' influence is a key distinction between the networks.
"One big difference between the two of them is that there is no real Roger Ailes at MSNBC, no equivalent of him and he sets the tone at Fox and gives the marching orders. At MSNBC, their approach and ideology is emerging from trial and error."
Some research also indicates Fox News' slanted coverage and political conflicts are apparent to at least some viewers.
A report put out one year ago by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that Fox News was viewed as the most ideological network:
The Fox News Channel is viewed by Americans in more ideological terms than other television news networks. And while the public is evenly divided in its view of hosts of cable news programs having strong political opinions, more Fox News viewers see this as a good thing than as a bad thing.
Nearly half of Americans (47%) say they think of Fox News as "mostly conservative," 14% say it is "mostly liberal," and 24% say it is "neither in particular." Opinion about the ideological orientation of other TV news outlets is more mixed: while many view CNN and the three broadcast networks as mostly liberal, about the same percentages say they are neither in particular. However, somewhat more say MSNBC is mostly liberal than say it is neither in particular, by 36% to 27%.
The perceptions of those who regularly tune into these news networks are similar to those of the public. Nearly half (48%) of regular Fox viewers say the network is mostly conservative. About four-in-ten (41%) regular viewers of CNN describe the network as mostly liberal and 36% of regular MSNBC viewers say the same about that network.
Media experts contend that such a view is not surprising, given Fox's slanted tilt and GOP conflicts.
"Are Fox News and MSNBC the same? The short answer is no," declared Pam Fine, journalism professor at the University of Kansas and a former managing editor at The Star-Tribune in Minneapolis and The Indianapolis Star. "Fox is run by a former political operative and the company is unabashed in its support for Republican candidates ... Another important question is which organization does a better job of providing consequential reporting on events and issues? MSNBC would have to be given the edge."
Tim McGuire, Frank Russell Chair for the business of journalism at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said the comparison is not a surprise given how viewers respond to news outlets they agree with, but made clear it is not fair.
"Certainly, you can make the argument that Fox is more outrageous about its opinion and its approach," McGuire said. "I certainly find a difference; as a news man I see a huge difference. There is no doubt that Ailes has found success."
"It's got no credibility for me at all. I simply don't turn it on," he said of Fox. "I believe it subverts anything connected with journalism. I don't believe it has presenting factual information in a comprehensive manner as its goal. Fox tips on the propaganda side most of the time."
Ed Wasserman, a journalism professor at Washington and Lee University and a veteran columnist for The Miami Herald, said he cannot understand the comparison.
"I bristle when I hear the comparisons because what I see on MSNBC is interesting and fairly honest and there is a fundamental dishonesty at Fox," he said. "Fox's approach is very reflective of contemporary conservative politics, which is changing the subject."
Kent Collins, chair of radio and television journalism at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, agreed.
"Fox is more pervasive in its political leanings, so much of its programming, the majority of it, is very clearly biased and shows favoritism for Republican and conservative ideas and positions and people," he said. "You see this not in just the obvious commentary by its key folks, but also in more subtle ways with the way headlines, teases and supers are written, particularly the crawls across the bottom."
Forbes' Bercovici said it comes down to basic factual accuracy:
"It is my rough, anecdotal sense that most of the real howlers in terms of taking liberties with the facts you see on Beck and O'Reilly. I don't recall an instance where someone called out Olbermann or Maddow and they were just making it up. I can remember that for Beck and O'Reilly."
"MSNBC has a lot of NBC News DNA and resources. MSNBC sticks closer to the facts."
Also, with the exception of Lawrence O'Donnell, I don't know of any former Democratic officeholders that MSNBC has hired or put on their payroll.
But fact of the matter is: ALL of these cable "news" channels are corporate owned, hence why I don't watch them. 90% of their coverage is just politics and not actual news.
Yes, but MSNBC is honest about their tilt. They never said they were "fair and balanced". They practically admitted their bias with their new "lean forward" ad campaign. Fox News pretends to be something it isn't, which is deceptive and wrong, in my opinion. That just lies to people and insults their intelligence (whatever amount of intelligence Fox viewers have).
Brian Williams was an intern with the Carter Admin also.
Keep drinking the kool aid.
Mission Accomplished: A look back at the media's fawning coverage of Bush's premature declaration of victory in Iraq
April 27, 2006 12:45 pm ET
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On May 1, 2003, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln aboard an S-3B Viking jet, emerged from the aircraft in full flight gear, and proceeded to "press[] flesh," as The Washington Post put it, as he shook hands and hugged crew members in front of the cameras. Later that day, Bush delivered a nationally televised speech from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln in which he declared that "[m]ajor combat operations in Iraq have ended," all the while standing under a banner reading: "Mission Accomplished." Despite lingering questions over the continued violence in Iraq, the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction, and the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein, as well as evidence that Bush may have shirked his responsibilities in the Texas Air National Guard (TANG) during the Vietnam War, the print and televised media fawned over Bush's "grand entrance" and the image of Bush as the "jet pilot" and the "Fighter Dog."
Chief among the cheerleaders was MSNBC's Chris Matthews. On the May 1, 2003, edition of Hardball, Matthews was joined in his effusive praise of Bush by right-wing pundit Ann Coulter and "Democrat" Pat Caddell. Former U.S. Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-CA) also appeared on the program.:
MATTHEWS: What's the importance of the president's amazing display of leadership tonight?
[...]
MATTHEWS: What do you make of the actual visual that people will see on TV and probably, as you know, as well as I, will remember a lot longer than words spoken tonight? And that's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?
[...]
MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically [...], the president deserves everything he's doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That [...] if you're going to run against him, you'd better be ready to take [that] away from him.
[...]
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Bob Dornan, you were a congressman all those years. Here's a president who's really nonverbal. He's like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. I remember him standing at that fence with Colin Powell. Was [that] the best picture in the 2000 campaign?
[...]
MATTHEWS: Ann Coulter, you're the first to speak tonight on the buzz. The president's performance tonight, redolent of the best of Reagan -- what do you think?
COULTER: It's stunning. It's amazing. I think it's huge. I mean, he's landing on a boat at 150 miles per hour. It's tremendous. It's hard to imagine any Democrat being able to do that. And it doesn't matter if Democrats try to ridicule it. It's stunning, and it speaks for itself.
MATTHEWS: Pat Caddell, the president's performance tonight on television, his arrival on ship?
CADDELL: Well, first of all, Chris, the -- I think that -- you know, I was -- when I first heard about it, I was kind of annoyed. It sounded like the kind of PR stunt that Bill Clinton would pull. But and then I saw it. And you know, there's a real -- there's a real affection between him and the troops.
[...]
MATTHEWS: The president there -- look at this guy! We're watching him. He looks like he flew the plane. He only flew it as a passenger, but he's flown --
CADDELL: He looks like a fighter pilot.
MATTHEWS: He looks for real. What is it about the commander in chief role, the hat that he does wear, that makes him -- I mean, he seems like -- he didn't fight in a war, but he looks like he does.
CADDELL: Yes. It's a -- I don't know. You know, it's an internal thing. I don't know if you can put it into words. [...] You can see it with him and the troops, the ease with which he talks to them. I was amazed by that, frankly, because as I said, I was originally appalled, particularly when I heard he was going in an F-18. But -- on there -- but the -- but you know, that was --
MATTHEWS: Look at this guy!
CADDELL: -- was hard not to be moved by their reaction to him and his reaction to them and --
MATTHEWS: You know, Ann --
CADDELL: -- you know, they -- it's a quality. It's an innate quality. It's a real quality.
MATTHEWS: I know. I think you're right.
Later that day, on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Matthews said:
MATTHEWS: We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like [former President Bill] Clinton or even like [former Democratic presidential candidates Michael] Dukakis or [Walter] Mondale, all those guys, [George] McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits. We don't want an indoor prime minister type, or the Danes or the Dutch or the Italians, or a [Russian Federation President Vladimir] Putin. Can you imagine Putin getting elected here? We want a guy as president.
On the May 7, 2003, edition of Hardball, Matthews asked former Nixon administration official G. Gordon Liddy what he thought of the response to Bush's landing on the Abraham Lincoln. Looking at the footage, Liddy commented that Bush's flight suit made "the best of his manly characteristic." From the May 7 Hardball:
MATTHEWS: What do you make of this broadside against the USS Abraham Lincoln and its chief visitor last week?
LIDDY: Well, I -- in the first place, I think it's envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man. And here comes George Bush. You know, he's in his flight suit, he's striding across the deck, and he's wearing his parachute harness, you know -- and I've worn those because I parachute -- and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those -- run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman's vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn't count -- they're all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.
MATTHEWS: You know, it's funny. I shouldn't talk about ratings. I don't always pay attention to them, but last night was a riot because, at the very time [U.S. Rep.] Henry Waxman [D-CA] was on -- and I do respect him on legislative issues -- he was on blasting away, and these pictures were showing last night, and everybody's tuning in to see these pictures again.
The above from MMFA
http://mediamatters.org/research/200604270005Your text to link here...
The PIPA Knowledge Networks Poll was taken on October 2, 2003.. it polled Fox News viewers, PBS viewers, and NPR listeners and asked simple factual questions...
when asked Did the U.S. find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq..
33% of Fox News viewers said Yes
11% of PBS-NPR viewers said Yes
when asked Does World Opinion Favor the US Invasion of Iraq..
35% of Fox News viewers said Yes
5% of PBS-NPR viewers said Yes
when asked Has the US Found Links between Iraq and al-Qaeda..
67% of Fox viewers said Yes
16% of PBS-NPR viewers said Yes
these are fairly simple questions with simple answers.. yet the more people consume Fox News the less they know the truth and the facts..
the poll is quite well-known and was praised by the Seattle Times, Inter Press Service, Knight Ridder, etc."
A "tenet" is not the same thing as a "tenant".
I'm sure someone will come along to refudiate my argument and point out that "tenant" in this context is perfectly cromulent.
hey foxpac, its time to come out of the closet!!!!
Oh wait, I know: Lib argument 130-E
"Americans are stupid".
If a million people listen to a lie, it doesn't mean the liar is telling the truth.
Aside from the differences between the content and practices of the two stations, compared in a vacuum, there's a bigger difference I see that has to do with the relationship to the audience. I think it's relevant, as any media source has no meaning without looking at it in the context of its target audience.
I'd be classified as generally liberal on most issues. I don't watch a lot of TV news/opinion shows, but I like parts of Olbermann and Maddow's shows ( the more in-depth reporting stuff, not so much with the fluff and infotainment that seems to be required to stay on TV), and I try to catch at least parts of their shows when I have time.
But I usually watch these after I've looked at news items on internet news sites, in newspapers ( dead tree or online) or on CSPAN, BBC, etc.
I'll also try to watch some Fox when I can, and listen to right wing am radio.
I don't know any - not one- person who swears by MSNBC as their sole source of information. I know a lot of people who I'd call pretty liberal, and some of them don't watch the station at all, as far as I know, some seem to watch occasionally, as one of many sources, as I do.
Compare this to the Fox/ Tea Party types, who show up at rallies holding signs making it clear where they get their news. From Fox, and only from Fox.
They'll say as much in interviews. They only watch Fox.
It's in comments at websites, people proudly proclaiming that they don't trust any media source except for Fox and their kindred spirits ( right wing blogs and am radio).
MSNBC may have some personalities with a decidedly liberal slant. The difference is, they're not a cult. Fox is.
This is another thing Fox has been pretty successful at, framing unsourced hearsay, opinion and propaganda on one side, and credible sources or facts on the other, as "he said, she said".
Faux viewers also listen to a lot of AM right (hate) wing radio. (Only one liberal station out of about a dozen, with very weak signal in my area)
They also believe those hateful, viral emails that often end with, "If you love Jesus", or "If you are not ASHAMED OF GOD," then you will forward this to all your church friends.
Many of those emails say things like Barry Obama is the Anti-Christ.
Immigrants Murder and Rape babies, etc.
Keep talking about those e-mails and maybe try to debunk if you can.
(I used snopes and factcheck.org against many of them until a viral e-mail went out "proving" them to be "LIBRUL" web sites......)
I guess the truth has a liberal bias.
This line gets me LOL:
. Anyone who watches TV -- this means everyone, this means you -- seems to think they are a "media expert" or calls themselves that, says they have an 'opinion' which is 'well-informed,' "expert" opinion.
More of us should read media maven Danny Schechter's work: The More You Watch the Less You Know (Seven Stories). Watching TV actually disqualifies (most) opinions of it. (Death is like that, too. Dying actually disqualifies (most) opinions of it.)
I thank heavens for MediaMatters and the internet. MMfA is where I can 'see' what's on TV without wasting my life actually watching it; such as 'seeing' what is said here by the media experts Joe Strupp lined up for interviews and quotes. The internet is where I can watch the news. Do notice that 'news' and 'what's on TV' are vastly different things.
Certainly I watch TV sometimes. I try to limit myself to only live TV, nothing that was pre-recorded; (including avoiding programming that is 3-hour delayed from East Coast to West Coast airing). By that simple condition, (watch only live TV), my viewing time was reduced about 95% from my old habit ... uh, more than 95% ... so now I only watch surveillance cams on the internet, and there is barely anything to see.
I have watched some TV so I have an expert opinion, too, like everyone else and just as good. (For years, I worked in the 'manufacture of' TV commercials and TV programs, but I'm leaving that experience out of this.) Speaking as a media expert, my opinion is that the TV content is entirely saturated rightwing imperiousness, authoritarianism verging on totalitarianism. (Founding example.)
The out-of-bounds rightwing FOX is decidedly guilty of treason against America by its high crimes of broadcasting seditious speech, countenancing insubordination and fomenting public unrest -- meaning, and on purpose, to subvert the Domestic Tranquility of America's constituted 'mission statement.'
The other TV channels' contents are less than FOX's rightwing severity, yet all are far-right of a sociopolitical balanced-concern center sense. Opinions which pose one channel, any channel, as 'liberal' and FOX as 'conserative' are opinions which prove, per Schechter, watching more produces knowing less.
Here is what 'liberal' is: World Socialist Web Site - wsws.org and it is not even very leftwing. Utter communism is leftwing, and fails as surely as utter capitalism fails. Socialism is that sense of 'balanced-concern center' among sociopolitical governance parts of some private rights, mainly labor, and some common (public) rights, mostly capital, dynamically shifting for balance in the temporal vicissitudes of Time, set-backs, and advances. The dynamic of shiftings is, requires, the 'eternal vigilance' that is the 'price of liberty' in governance.
Where TV loses Truth and takes America's mind with it, or vice versa, is in programming of the belief you can own land, water, or air. The land, water, and air is NOT your own; you canNOT 'own' or 'possess' land, water, or air. Even if we validate organized religion's term 'dominion' for humankind of Earth -- and I don't, I acknowledge the concept termed 'communion' of Earth -- that still does not confer 'ownership' (possession) of land, water, or air. It is totally specious and untrue to think a human can possibly own the land, the water, the air -- just ask any other life form on the planet, or off it.
Working to establish and conclude in the mind that 'image is everything, substance is nothing,' as TV works to do, by a one-way (broadcast) imposition of a central transmission to distributed receivers, can never work in Truth. Olbermann, Maddow, (she sure out-classed everyone else on MSNBC's panel for election night coverage, didn't she?), can not even say or allow a guest to say 'socialism', nevermind even think 'humankind does not own the land, water, or air.' That's how far "MSNBC is Not a Left-Wing" ('FOX News' ... the two channels are not even comparable, FOX News is not TV programming, it's advancing terminal brain disease).
IMO.
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To be fair, I probably disagree with many if not most views and positions held by Media Matters; but what I REALLY hate is censorship. Unfortunately I have found the FOX new site to be the most highly censored site of a dozen or so on which I regularly post comments. My posts are on point, never derogatory in nature, and are often meant to provide perspective or a parallax view to make people think. It is interesting that virtually the same posts on the same subjects are routinely shown on Reuters, Huffington, CNN, Blaze, The Telegraph, MSNBC, CBS, etc.
Recently a small thread got past their "censors" in which the particularly high rate of censorship (certain posts not appearing relating to a particular view) was discussed by several people. However, after a few moments, that thread magically disappeared.
Today's post was in relationship to a "feeding frenzy" to "kill the messenger" (WikiLeaks) for publishing leaked intelligence. I pointed out that this is a slippery first amendment slope (even though WikiLeaks is not even a U.S. based entity) and, should we have gone after and shut down media outlets for publishing leaked stories like "Abu Ghraib", CIA interrogations, etc. (Personally I may not like that they were published, but don't believe the media should be blamed.) FOX would not allow the post to appear, yet the same type of article with the same "feeding frenzy" postings on "The Blaze" DID post the full comments.
Perhaps someone like Media Matters should consider a section called something like "FOX Censored" where the point-relevant posts that are not allowed on FOX could be posted along with an article reference to the story to which it pertains. It might be an interesting experiment to see just how many people (apparently there are quite a few), have the same experience with posting on FOX.
YIKES!!!!
"Fox is run by a former political operative ..."
Ailes never stopped being a poltical operative.
Ailes...the father of the Fox Republicans.
How can this "expert" speak condescendingly of Fox News and then say that he never watches it? Liberals are absurd.
Eric Deggans, media critic for the St. Petersburg Times,
Alex S. Jones, executive director of the Shorenstein Center on
Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University,
James Rainey, media reporter at the Los Angeles Times,
Jeff Bercovici, a veteran media writer at Forbes,
Pew Research Center for People and the Press,
Pam Fine, journalism professor at the University of Kansas and a former managingeditor at The Star-Tribune in Minneapolis and The Indianapolis Star,
Tim McGuire, Frank Russell Chair for the business of journalism at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication,
Ed Wasserman, a journalism professor at Washington and Lee University and a veteran columnist for The Miami Herald,
Kent Collins, chair of radio and television journalism at the University Of Missouri School Of Journalism.
Each of these people agrees with me. “Fox News” is not news.
The science and the evidence are clear; nobody can logically
refute the facts.
Who are THESE morons?
-----------------------------
*shakes head*
An honest news organization might mistakenly report that a president's trip is costing $200 million a night, but you can be sure it would issue a correction once it learned the facts. Has Fox ever corrected its reports on that? Or on death panels? Madrassas? The list it too long to repeat.
Fox's goal isn't to inform -- it's to persuade. That fact alone takes it out of the news realm and into propaganda.
And Mr. Strupp, you're not so bad yourself.