In the journalism game it is often pointed out that bias in reporting is as evident in slanted content as it is in the editorial decisions as to what gets in the paper or on the air. In other words, if you watch Bill O’Reilly interview uber-rightist media critic Bernie Goldberg, you can probably recognize the bias in that coverage. But you won’t witness the inverse bias of lefty media critic Jeff Cohen because O’Reilly won’t invite him in for an interview. The bias that O’Reilly is engaging in is his decision to filter out people like Cohen altogether.
Of course, it is much easier to observe bias when reading or watching a story than it is by having to figure out what has been kept from you. Especially because you often don’t know what you don’t know.
Fox News is adept at the discretionary editorial approach to bias. That’s why they regularly feature folks like Goldberg or Karl Rove or Ann Coulter, but rarely if ever give time to Michael Moore or Paul Krugman. And it isn’t restricted to personalities. Fox News serves as a veritable publicity machine for the Tea Party movement. However, a recent immigration reform rally in Washington that far exceeded the attendance of many Tea Parties was virtually ignored by Fox. Even in stories they deem worthy of coverage, they exercise a selective process for what their viewers are exposed to.
For instance, last February brought record low temperatures and snow storms to much of the east coast, including the Fox studios in New York. Everyone on the network took that as evidence that Global Warming was a hoax that couldn’t possibly be defended by anyone who had gone out of doors. How could climate change science be accurate if it was snowing outside during winter, they wondered on show after show? Of course, climate and temperature are two different things, but that played no part in their analysis. It was simply about the weather at the time.
So why have their been no reports on Fox in the past week that corroborate climate change science considering that the temperature in New York has just hit record highs? Obviously, if it is hot outside, and it isn’t even summer yet, the planet must be dangerously heating up. The reason you won’t see that story is because Fox News only jumps to conclusions that conform to their prejudices.
In another example, Fox News went to great lengths to criticize President Obama’s economic record when he had only been in office less than two months. They dubbed the market decline from inauguration day on January 20, through February “Obama’s Bear Market.”
In the following month of March the market gained over 1,300 points in a record setting advance, yet Fox News found an appropriately derogatory label: Obama’s Bear Market Rally. And now, after a year that saw a 36% rise in the market, Fox News isn’t even reporting on it all. Well, Neil Cavuto did do a commentary on how he was wrong about the administration’s policies, noting that the economy was performing quite well. He itemized actual market metrics that validated the improving environment. But he ended it with a smirk and a nod to the date: April Fools Day. And even though the data he presented was accurate, he turned the whole thing into a joke and scoffed at the notion that he would never say such positive things about this administration. There was no further discussion of the past year’s rapid market ascent.
That, my friends, is selective editing at its worst. If the facts of a story are contrary to your partisan prejudices, just refrain from reporting the story in way, shape, or form. Plus, no one can accuse you of inserting biases into a report that you never made. It’s a win/win for unethical media douche bags.
