Breaking or Broken News?

Fair and balanced they say -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
A lot of my conservative friends gravitate to FOX News for their news blurbs. I hear, "FOX is the only one that tells it like it is." The mainstream media (that apparently would be ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC) are just hopelessly liberal. With the likes of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, FOX definitely marches to a conservative beat. It was founded in 1996 by entertainment media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and helmed by CEO Roger Ailes, a GOP strategist. As the only channel for read-meat conservatives, FOX News still gets a trifling sub-20% ratings share. How can that be in a center-right nation that twice put W. Bush in the White House?

I'm going to jostle some cherished notions by suggesting that personal bias is only one parameter at work here; there is also this thing called quality. Here are a couple of angles to check out. I'm comparing FOXNews.com to msnbc.com. I'm also referring to web sites and TV channels somewhat interchangeably since the web sites seem to reflect the TV stance.

BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
Since 9/11 all the news channels seem to run "breaking news" marquees to garner viewership. Why is it that FOX News seems to have them more frequently and over less earth-shaking events? If it's not major or it's a re-hash of news already-aired, it doesn't need to be flashed as "breaking".

FLUFF and STUFF
Looking at today's MSNBC.com web site, they have this layout... Major headlines, more (national) headlines, local, US & World, politics, business and stock ticker. Entertainment, health, science and other topics are selectable on a side bar.

FOXnews.com has on their web site: major headlines, features and faces (showbiz articles), a large ad that looks at first like FOX news content, US, world, business, politics, entertainment, and then many other topics (the web page is very long). What we have with FOX is crummy web page design, emphasis of commercialism over content and an obvious relationship of FOX news to its entertainment forbears.

Gee, why would I prefer one over the other? What I want with my news is a fairly accurate, unfettered, uncluttered presentation without any editorial bent (liberal or conservative). Too often FOX news veers between National Examiner (titillating showbiz fluff) and the Drudge Report which features sledge hammer over-emphasis on, yes, conservative topics. If nothing else, the cheesy Hannity and O'Reilly ads at the bottom of their mega page convey that image. And yes I have drudgereport.com as one of my own sidebar links -- they do have original stories from time to time and I actually go for some alternate views.

So there you have it -- fair and balanced. If FOX News can hide its conservative wolf-ness a little better, the readers will come. Else, we darned progressives will keep looking at those Obama-loving mainstream sites.

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