Fox comes out of the closet
For a few precious moments yesterday I thought I could be all chuffed with myself for scooping Slate's Timothy Noah on a point relating to the Fox-Wall Street Journal-BBC attack story (see BBC to Fox News: "We're not leftie" (but you're pretty "rightie"). In a Slate piece titled Fox News Admits Bias! (subtitled "Its London bureau chief blurts out the political slant that dare not speak its name"), Noah basically makes the same point as I did: that Fox's Scott Norvell, London bureau chief for Fox News, had inadvertently let the cat out of the bag by admitting that Fox was in fact biased in favor of the right wing (shocker!). But it turned out I was to be disappointed on the "scoop" angle - I published my piece on May 31 at 3:09 p.m. ET, but Noah got his in at 9:40 a.m. Pacific Time (12:40 p.m. ET, or 2.5 hours earlier. Well, boo hoo for me! :-(
Also I got something else wrong in my blog: I said the Norvell attack on the BBC "propelled the story across the Atlantic". Not quite. In fact the piece was only printed in the Wall Street Journal's European edition. So it hasn't been read by State-side punters (including me - I haven't been able to get hold of a copy yet).
But I'm glad to receive some confirmation that it wasn't just me who spotted this chink in Fox's armour. And incidentally, I'm still left wondering why WSJ Europe would give an op-ed piece to a representative of the U.S.-based Fox News instead of UK/Europe-based Sky News. But anyway . . . I'm glad to see that Noah provides a fuller quote concerning just what Norvell "fessed up to" in May 20's Wall Street Journal Europe. Here's what Norvell said:
Thus, Noah notes, "Norvell clearly is using the example of Fox News to argue that political bias is acceptable when it isn't subsidized by the public (as his op-ed's target, the leftish BBC, is), and when the bias is acknowledged."
I think Noah concedes the point that the BBC is a left-wing organization. And just for the record, I don't! It is only "leftie" from the point of view of certain members of the global - often Americanized - business elite. The BBC is a repected public service broadcaster because it still represents - albeit imperfectly - a wide range of opinions in a diverse society (and a diverse world), and not just a tiny range of opinions among a business elite. And as Doctor Media and I have pointed out time after time, this provides a very different agenda for the BBC to pursue as it finds new public service ways to connect with its growing and mostly-happpy audience. And while report after report shows U.S. public confidence in its private news media (though not NPR) in the gutter, the BBC has retained public confidence and support, even after it was villified by the Hutton inquiry over the Andrew Gilligan/David Kelly affair. I could go on, but that'll do it for now.
Anyway, my apologies for not getting it quite right. Now I'm sorry that this piece didn't in fact run in the States - because maybe then we'd see more widespread response to what seems to be a major News Corporation gaffe - when one of its foot-soldiers is caught inadvertently telling the truth!
Also, for what it's worth, Slate's Noah seems to think that Norvell's admission is huge, comparing it "to the Vatican's belated admission, after 359 years, that Galileo had it right when he said the earth revolved around the sun." I'd definitely like to hear more media comment about this point.
Also I got something else wrong in my blog: I said the Norvell attack on the BBC "propelled the story across the Atlantic". Not quite. In fact the piece was only printed in the Wall Street Journal's European edition. So it hasn't been read by State-side punters (including me - I haven't been able to get hold of a copy yet).
But I'm glad to receive some confirmation that it wasn't just me who spotted this chink in Fox's armour. And incidentally, I'm still left wondering why WSJ Europe would give an op-ed piece to a representative of the U.S.-based Fox News instead of UK/Europe-based Sky News. But anyway . . . I'm glad to see that Noah provides a fuller quote concerning just what Norvell "fessed up to" in May 20's Wall Street Journal Europe. Here's what Norvell said:
- Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly. And those who hate us can take solace in the fact that they aren't subsidizing Bill's bombast; we payers of the BBC license fee don't enjoy that peace of mind.
Fox News is, after all, a private channel and our presenters are quite open about where they stand on particular stories. That's our appeal. People watch us because they know what they are getting. The Beeb's institutionalized leftism would be easier to tolerate if the corporation was a little more honest about it.
Thus, Noah notes, "Norvell clearly is using the example of Fox News to argue that political bias is acceptable when it isn't subsidized by the public (as his op-ed's target, the leftish BBC, is), and when the bias is acknowledged."
I think Noah concedes the point that the BBC is a left-wing organization. And just for the record, I don't! It is only "leftie" from the point of view of certain members of the global - often Americanized - business elite. The BBC is a repected public service broadcaster because it still represents - albeit imperfectly - a wide range of opinions in a diverse society (and a diverse world), and not just a tiny range of opinions among a business elite. And as Doctor Media and I have pointed out time after time, this provides a very different agenda for the BBC to pursue as it finds new public service ways to connect with its growing and mostly-happpy audience. And while report after report shows U.S. public confidence in its private news media (though not NPR) in the gutter, the BBC has retained public confidence and support, even after it was villified by the Hutton inquiry over the Andrew Gilligan/David Kelly affair. I could go on, but that'll do it for now.
Anyway, my apologies for not getting it quite right. Now I'm sorry that this piece didn't in fact run in the States - because maybe then we'd see more widespread response to what seems to be a major News Corporation gaffe - when one of its foot-soldiers is caught inadvertently telling the truth!
Also, for what it's worth, Slate's Noah seems to think that Norvell's admission is huge, comparing it "to the Vatican's belated admission, after 359 years, that Galileo had it right when he said the earth revolved around the sun." I'd definitely like to hear more media comment about this point.
posted by hdougie at 9:45 PM
1 Comments:
I don't know what it would take to get this story circulated more widely. Searches of Technocrati and Feedster show it's bubbling up in the liberal blogosphere. But will we see articles outside cyberspace about this? Unless a politician of some stripe mentions it, I doubt it.
Question: Does the audience for Fox really believe that the coverage is "fair and balanced," or are they as aware as we are that Fox cleaves to the GOP line, and they just like it that way?
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