Not FOX News, that’s for sure:
NEW YORK (AP) — On a winter day when bomb blasts at an Iraqi university killed dozens and the United Nations estimated that 34,000 civilians in Iraq had died in 2006, MSNBC spent nearly nine minutes on the stories during the 1 p.m. hour. A CNN correspondent in Iraq did a three-minute report about the bombings.
Neither story merited a mention on Fox News Channel that hour.
That wasn’t unusual. Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months of the year, and considerably less than CNN, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The difference was more stark during daytime news hours than in prime-time opinion shows. The Iraq war occupied 20 percent of CNN’s daytime news hole and 18 percent of MSNBC’s. On Fox, the war was talked about only 6 percent of the time.
I guess FOX executives just don’t want to trouble the beautiful minds of their audience with all that negativity.
(cont.)
And I think we now know what FOX News listeners mean when they claim CNN is the Communist News Network, don’t we. Or as one conservative commentator in the thread to this war supporter’s blog post stated (without knowledge of the disparity in coverage, I might):
Funny, from watching CNN and FOX it was almost like watching reports on 2 different wars… ( well… almost)
Indeed. Or as one FOX News representative — oh, excuse me, one CNN representative (no FOX News spokesperson would respond to requests to comment on this story) — stated about what this study revealed regarding the disparity in war coverage between FOX and all other broadcasters:
“It illustrates the danger of cheerleading for one particular point or another because they were obviously cheerleaders for the war,” said Jon Klein, CNN U.S. president. “When the war went badly they had to dial back coverage because it didn’t fit their preconceived story lines.”
FOX News? Preconceived story lines? Perish the thought. Why they would never try to slant the news toward Republicans — would they?
Damn Liberal Bias! Truly fair and balanced news reporters would never report about the manner in which FOX scripts and manipulates what their viewers learn about the day’s current events. No news network should have to have their buttocks bared in public like this. It’s just so insensitive, don’t you think? Besides, FOX has other priorities:
Fox’s business interests may depend on less negative news about Iraq.
If Fox’s audience is dominated by Republicans who are disgusted about hearing bad news on Iraq, it would stand to reason that you’d want to feed them less of it. Bill O’Reilly touched upon that idea on the air one night last December, telling viewers that the lowest-rated segment of his show the previous night was when Iraq was discussed. Ratings jumped at talk about Britney Spears, he said. […]
So with less on-air attention being paid to Iraq during the first few months of the year, what filled the void for Fox? PEJ’s report said the network gave the death of Anna Nicole Smith significantly more air time than its rivals.
Yes, because there’s nothing like coverage of Britney Spears latest misdoings to stir the hearts (and groins) of Fox’s principal demographic: White Republicans Americans, ages 55 and older. Maybe “Giving Americans what they want — More Britney and Paris!” should be their new slogan, eh?
I know all my older white male Republican friends wouldn’t mind.
Project for Excellence in Journalism
