Originally Posted By skinnerbox Great clip from Friday's broadcast of The Daily Show where Jon Stewart does the compare/contrast of Fox News' coverage of the RNC and DNC Conventions: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/09/jon-stewart-fox-news-rnc-dnc-conventions_n_1868382.html" target="_blank">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...382.html</a> Anyone who watches this video clip and still thinks Fox News is unbiased is definitely swimming in some pretty deep dissonance.
Originally Posted By ecdc I think the narrative has shifted from "Fox News isn't biased" to "Well everyone else is liberally biased, so someone needs to be biased for conservatives." To which I repeat my same argument: If MSNBC says 2+2=4 and Fox says it equals 5, then one of them is right and another is wrong, no matter how many blowhards they may have. I tend to forget just how toxic Fox News is until I see something like this from Jon Stewart. It truly is amazing. An entire 24 hour news station dedicated to making its viewers hate the President of the United States. It's something else. I'm sure they'd take issue with that designation, but when their anchors are like this, what's the practical outcome for their viewers beyond just totally despising the President?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 You've got to be kidding. First of all, you need to distinguish news programming from commentary programming. Ed Schultz, for example, is a commentator. He presents HIS TAKE on the news of the day, same as his 8:00 counterpart on Fox, Bill O'Reilly. I'm fine with someone offering his/her take on the news, as long as they're upfront that that's what it is. Despite O'Reilly insisting he offers "no spin," I don't think even he expects anyone to believe that (though I suppose some do). He's a commentator, just like Schultz, and I'm fine with that. Then at 9:00, Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow metaphorically duke it out. But during what are ostensibly news shows, not commentary (which are disappearing), there's no question that MSNBC plays it pretty much down the middle with people like Andrea Mitchell, while Fox remains slanted even though they're supposedly presenting "just the facts." I DO mind commentary when masquerading as news, which is what Fox does. Again, when it's presented as commentary, that's fine. That is, when it's factual. And that brings me to my second point. Fox often just plain gets things wrong. And I don't mean in my opinion... I mean objectively, factually wrong. In both their news and commentary shows. This has been exhaustively documented. When MSNBC gets something wrong, which they do, I've always seen a correction, usually the next day. Fox usually just pretends it didn't happen and doesn't correct it - leaving its viewers to think the lie (intentional or not) they presented was true. This is what makes them such easy fodder for the Daily Show, for instance. So enough with the false equivalency, let alone calling MSNBC worse. MSNBC is more honest when saying commentary is commentary, and they're are simply more factually accurate. And the word is "biased," past tense.
Originally Posted By ecdc I've noticed an interesting thing: No one, apparently, watches Fox News. At least, when I notice someone speaking or writing as if they are Fox News viewer, and I point it out, they inevitably insist they don't really watch Fox "very often" of "hardly at all." After a friend of mine went off about Saul Alinksy after he'd been discussed on Fox News, he still insisted that's not where he heard it from, but couldn't say where. It's obviously just my anecdotal experience. It's as if Fox News viewers know how they're perceived, and can't even own up to where they get their information.
