While reviewing both Fox News and MSNBC, I tried both to find comparative narration in opinion and objective based reporting, and found it quite difficult. Whether on TV or the internet sites for the respective news outlets, it was a strenuous activity to find reports that provided commentary on an exact issue. I noticed that several times, when on the websites, one would have articles surrounding what they projected as an important news bulletin, while the other would have no mention of such details, no matter how deeply I searched.
An example, provided by MSNBC, was a report titled, “Reid pledges vote on bill to protect gay, transgender employment rights.” MSNBC, with their agenda towards the more liberal, hard-left view, provided several articles on the subject. When searching through the Fox News catalog, with the strong right, conservative agenda, I was unable to find any mention of such an event. Even on the home pages of the respective news outlets, there was obvious bias just in the listing of their titles and main headlines.
On the MSNBC homepage (www.nbcnews.com), the word democrat, or some variation of it, was mentioned 9 times, while variations of republican was only listed twice. In both instances of the word republican, it was in a headline with a negative connotation, such as stating that Republicans voting against Social Security. On the Fox News webpage (www.foxnews.com), republican was mentioned 11 times, with democrats only mentioned four times, and all of those four were in negative connotations. One such example is refuting that a democrat representative “falsely claimed” that no republican voted for Social Security.
One of the main articles focused on this weekend was that of the American government spying on some of it’s closest allies. The United States National Security Agency has been under fire lately for it’s spying on some of the United State’s closest allies. The allies that have been spied on by the National Security Agency include France, Germany, Spain, and Israel, among others. There are several varying viewpoints, as well as some very comparable ones, on both of the sites.
Both MSNBC and Fox, in a similar fashion, portrayed the spying in a lightened manner, citing sources that say, “everyone does it.” Each used their own sources, MSNBC choosing to focus more on the newspaper citing and official representatives, while Fox News decided to go with spy “experts” and academic sources. Each seemed to downplay the actions taken by the National Security Agency, citing sources that would back the United State’s actions by portraying it as a common and necessary action for all major world powers.
The Fox News coverage on television portrayed a different picture than that of their website. On the Fox News Channel, they seemed to point the finger towards the Obama Administration, implying that their actions stepped over the boundary of ethical information gathering, with no mention of previous spying by other administrations. They cited the tapping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone, specifically as an overstepping of boundary.
MSNBC refuted this through their own coverage, stating that Merkel’s phone was tapped for more than ten years, according to their sources, and downplayed the actions as only one instance of being caught in several decades of “spy games” and information gathering. They chose to not focus directly on the democratic centered Obama Administration, but rather focused on the sources from allied countries stating that the US is not the only one taking those steps. They focused on the fact that the only reason the United States and the National Security Agency are at the forefront of this issue is because of the US’s advanced technology in comparison with their allies, and the further reach they have due to those advancements.
Upon further research into the lack of objective journalism in todays major media outlets, I found a study organized by The Pew Research Center (www.stateofthemedia.org), under their annual report titled, “The State of the News Media.” In this study, several members of the research center followed the three major American news giants, including CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. According to their research, MSNBC is actually the most opinionated of the three, showing 85 percent of their broadcasts are opinion and commentary, with only 15 percent dedicated to “factual reporting.” Fox News was found to have 55 percent of their broadcasts based on opinions, while 45 percent was factual reporting. CNN was the only network to have more reporting than commentary, with 54 percent of their broadcasts listed as factual reporting, and only 46 percent listed as opinion or commentary based.
As stated in the movie, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, Rupert Murdoch skewed Fox News’ reporting towards a hard right agenda, based on his own political views. Several of Fox’s reports were focused towards Murdoch’s support of the republican, conservative viewpoint, while belittling the more liberal, democratic opinions. Yet that movie is rather outdated, having been made in 2004. Since that movie’s production, Fox News has had it’s viewership skyrocket, while MSNBC had fallen to the wayside. Following Fox News’ example, MSNBC has skewed to the left, supporting the liberal viewpoint as a counter to the conservative Murdoch network. Many sources believe this is not so much from the political views of the leading members of NBC, but more for ratings.
