My Attempt to be “Fair and Balanced”

This week was my “hello” to Fox News. I won’t lie- I have largely avoided the news network due to its reputation for being very conservative. Also, the few times that I have watched Hannity & Colmes and the O’Reilly factor scarred me for quite a while. Those shows had an aggressiveness in their discourse that I found unappealing. I may love catfights in my reality shows, but I don’t want to see them in my news. That being said, I tuned in to the Fox News Channel with the objective of being “fair and balanced” in my analysis (ha-ha) and to give this channel a fair shot. I found it difficult to be “fair and balanced” given me preconceptions- I wonder if this is a sign about how difficult it is to achieve human objectivity. But these are my initial impressions of the infamous network.

Let me start off by saying that I was pretty surprised by what I found when I actually tuned in. I would tune in around noon when I had a break from classes. Mainly, I paid attention to the type of news they were covering and the ticker at the bottom. I found that the news on the scrolling tickers was information that a large majority of the public would find vague or boring. Sadly, much or the scrolling news was international news dealing with what the rest of the world is doing. I find this as being a very xenophobic approach, but I know that this ethnocentrism is not confined to Fox. It seems to be more of a modern American trend. On another note, I was surprised at the number of ways in which Fox is very similar to other news networks. The daytime news did not seem to carry a very strong conservative slant. Instead, it focused on typical newsworthy information such as severe weather, homicides and investigations, etc. Information about the democratic race was kept to a minimum during these daytime hours. However, the anchors did seem to dwell on the fact that Barack Obama is currently on a beach vacation. I noticed the anchor sneered when she provided this tidbit. Part of me wondered why Obama’s going on vacation is worthy of being national news. Perhaps an attempt to get back at all those jokes about George Bush always taking vacations? I don’t know, but this was a very small conservative slant. Other information that was covered was live footage of flooding damage in the central U.S., because like all news networks Fox loves to play up natural disasters. The last thing I will say I noted during daytime viewing was the content of the commercials. Let’s just say the target market for these ads was overwhelmingly old. There were ads for the AARP, special bathtubs that provide easy access, and even Depends adult diapers. Perhaps these show the largely older (conservative?) make up of the audience.

At night, Fox News becomes slightly more contentious that during its daytime hours. However, the difference is slight and I still did not see an overwhelming slant and solid evidence for its “evil reputation.” I never heard “some people say” but I did see many question headlines. These headlines seem to be a way to say something outlandish while avoiding attack (what, its just a question!). The coverage of the Democratic race seemed to heat up, but the anchors avoided saying anything inflammatory. However, I got the impression that Fox is making a slight push to discredit Obama. The issue about his very afrocentric pastor and his church was brought to the forefront, as were remarks that this association was hurting the candidate. Hillary Clinton was also discussed, but nothing derogatory or praising was said. John McCain was mentioned once, and they showed his new campaign ad. At first I thought this was evidence of the conservative slant- they are showing one candidates ad during news time! But I soon found out the ad was a spoof that came from the Letterman show and that it made fun of McCain’s age. The news anchors laughed good-naturedly at this spoof. I thought this was refreshing but wondered if they had isolated any of their audience by mocking age.

All in all, I was impressed by what I saw on Fox and saw it more “fair and balanced” than I had originally thought. However, I am not sure if I just picked particularly easy-going times to watch the news or tuned in or a slower news day. When I watch next week, I will force myself to watch O’Reilly and I will reevaluate if there is a strong conservative slant.