Did anyone see O'Reilly's recent poll on how fair and balanced foxnews is?

Question

According to his polls CNN is most biased towards the liberal Media and Foxnews is the least biased and most fair and balanced.
What do you think about that?

I suppose I could find the link. He mentioned it on his show last night. I will try and search for it.

Civil, you're right not it wasn't his poll but it was mentioned on his show. That's what I meant.

Answer 1

Yep. Here's some info and a link. Harvard University was heavily involved in this study. FOX had NOTHING to do with it. :)

A new study released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard found that news organizations that claim to be the most "neutral" and "professional" are, in fact, not. Big newspapers, broadcast networks and National Public Radio (paid for by your tax dollars) actually produce more stories that are slanted in favor of Democrats. And get this, online news and talk radio have actually been more balanced.

Newspapers and TV broadcasts devoted much more time to covering Democratic candidates compared to Republicans, and the tone of the stories was much more in favor of Democrats

Edit: I'm reading the responses here and it's pretty clear that people don't bother reading. Good grief! Fox didn't conduct this poll. Where do some of these people come from?

Answer 2

From what I saw, it wasn't a poll but a study. It didn't say that Fox was fair and balanced, it said that they provided less negative coverage of the Republicans.

Fox News: The programming studied on Fox News offered a somewhat more positive picture of Republicans and more negative one of Democrats compared with other media outlets. Fox News stories about a Republican candidate were most likely to be neutral (47%), with the remainder more positive than negative (32% vs. 21% negative). The bulk of that positive coverage went to Giuliani (44% positive), while McCain still suffered from unflattering coverage (20% positive vs. 35% negative).

When it came to Democratic candidates, the picture was more negative. Again, neutral stories had a slight edge (39%), followed by 37% negative and 24% positive. And, in marked contrast from the rest of the media, coverage of Obama was twice as negative as positive: 32% negative vs. 16% positive and 52% neutral.

But any sense here that the news channel was uniformly positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not manifest in the data.

CNN: The CNN programming studied tended to cast a negative light on Republican candidates—by a margin of three-to-one. Four-in-ten stories (41%) were clearly negative while just 14% were positive and 46% were neutral. The network provided negative coverage of all three main candidates with McCain fairing the worst (63% negative) and Romney fairing a little better than the others only because a majority of his coverage was neutral.

It’s not that Democrats, other than Obama, fared well on CNN either. Nearly half of the Illinois Senator’s stories were positive (46%), vs. just 8% that were negative. But both Clinton and Edwards ended up with more negative than positive coverage overall. So while coverage for Democrats overall was a bit more positive than negative, that was almost all due to extremely favorable coverage for Obama.

I don't get an assertion that Fox is more fair and balanced than any other network out of that report but, as the newcasters do with everything, they can spin in however they want.

Thanks for the link Suthrn.

Answer 3

witchief..you and (ha,ha,ha)Ann Coulter's Nemisis.
must be room mates. She thinks Fox News and cnn are both heavily biased to the right after watching both shows. Are you kidding me?? and you go to youtube?

I don't think you know what fair and balanced means. How about having people on that have different points of view than you do.

Your more likely to find that on Fox News programs than on Cnn. Don C....for the Florida Supreme Court to over turn a verdict in favor of a republican news show,is in it's self astounding. Seeing as how their ALL DEMOCRATS, this is the same court that tried to change the election laws in Florida in the middle of counting ballots of an election.

Answer 4

So Fox News conducted a poll to Fox viewers and found that Fox viewers felt that Fox news was fair and unbiased??

Who thinks up this crap??

You know what would be so crazy??? If CNN gave a poll to CNN viewers and the results came out that CNN was actually the fair and unbiased one.

Go figure.

Answer 5

Most polls are lies. Anyone with a college education can tell you that a poll is the easiest thing to prove your point.
Example the poll you are talking about could easily changed to favor the one that does the poll. Did they only contact republicans or fox news viewers. Did they contact people from a right wing base party? How many polls did they conduct before they found 1 that supported their belief? They could have taken 10 polls and this was the only 1 that supported their belief. Could someone asking the question threw out people that did not answer their question the way they wanted? So as you can see these polls have to many factors to be taken seriously.

Answer 6

I will state that viewers of FoxNews are constantly told that foxnews is fair and balanced. Therefore they repeat what they hear and I believe a number of them believe FoxNews is fair and balanced. This is my view, if half of what a news program or article says does not disagree with my views then they are obviosuly not fair and balanced. When I watch foxnews it's much more then half of the program which infuriates me. Obviously not fair and balanced.

Answer 7

Of course its credible coming from O'reilly. I mean didn't you hear the latest breaking news a few weeks back....O'reilly said he went to sylvias restaurant in Harlem and black people were sitting there eating like normal people, no yelling or fighting and he could not believe this....this is shocking news, just ask O'reilly, lol, what a joke he is.

Answer 8

OReilly is a legend, in his own mind, I used to listen to him, I didn't like his style, when someone calls in to him, he lets them talk until he hears a key word, then jumps in and talks as if the other person is still part of the conversation, but in actuallity O'reilly has cut them off. I still listen to him now and again, but I prefer Lou dobbs.

Answer 9

a poll is merely opinions

and are they opinions of Fox viewers?

They probably don't realize

FOX SUED FOR THE RIGHT TO LIE

FOX asserted that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media. They argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves.


The Right to Lie in the "News"
If ever we needed to know why the biggest media consumers in the world are so badly informed, this pretty well tells it all. The Media Can Legally Lie.
According to Akre and Wilson, the station was initially very excited about the series. But within a week, Fox executives and their attorneys wanted the reporters to use statements from Monsanto representatives that the reporters knew were false and to make other revisions to the story that were in direct conflict with the facts.
Fox editors then tried to force Akre and Wilson to continue to produce the distorted story. When they refused and threatened to report Fox's actions to the FCC, they were both fired.
Akre and Wilson sued the Fox station and on August 18, 2000, a Florida jury unanimously decided that Akre was wrongfully fired by Fox Television when she refused to broadcast (in the jury's words) “a false, distorted or slanted story” about the widespread use of BGH in dairy cows.
[...] FOX appealed the case, and on February 14, 2003 the Florida Second District Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the settlement awarded to Akre. The Court held that Akre’s threat to report the station’s actions to the FCC did not deserve protection under Florida’s whistle blower statute, because Florida’s whistle blower law states that an employer must violate an adopted “law, rule, or regulation."
In a stunningly narrow interpretation of FCC rules, the Florida Appeals court claimed that the FCC policy against falsification of the news does not rise to the level of a "law, rule, or regulation," it was simply a "policy." Therefore, it is up to the station whether or not it wants to report honestly.
During their appeal, FOX asserted that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media. They argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves.
Fox attorneys did not dispute Akre’s claim that they pressured her to broadcast a false story, they simply maintained that it was their right to do so.
OK, pick your jaw up off the floor. That some court thinks they CAN is bad enough, that these people assert their right to do so pretty well kicks it all down the hole. And these guys wonder why their credibility is in the toilet and the net is burning them left right and centre.
Oh, and February 2003, 30 days before Iraq.

Answer 10

LOL, I've watched both stations and I have to say there isn't really much difference between the two. Both CNN and FOX are heavily biased to the right. What do you expect from corporate media? I do find it ironic that this is from a Fox news station that claims to be unbiased and then it polls exclusively from Fox viewers. LOL, one has to be a moron if he or she doesn't see this bias. It is way too funny. Bill Oreilly, what an actor.