{"id":447,"date":"2007-05-25T16:23:47","date_gmt":"2007-05-25T23:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=447"},"modified":"2007-08-30T09:41:29","modified_gmt":"2007-08-30T16:41:29","slug":"fox-news-war-what-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=447","title":{"rendered":"Fox News: War? What War?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Project for Excellence in Journalism<\/a> just published the results of their study of news coverage for the first quarter of 2007. The breakdown of stories covered, and the amount of time dedicated to those stories, reveals the priorities of the three main cable news networks. The standout amongst the statistics is that Fox News broadcast significantly less coverage of the war in Iraq than MSNBC or CNN. In fact, Fox devoted less than half the airtime to the subject than MSNBC, whose coverage led the pack.<\/p>\n

Percent of Newshole Devoted To Four Major Stories on Cable TV<\/strong>
\nDec. 31, ’06 – Mar. 31, ’07<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nIraq War Total<\/strong><\/td>\n2008 Presidential Campaign<\/strong><\/td>\nU.S. Attorney Firing<\/strong><\/td>\nAnna Nicole Smith<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
MSNBC<\/td>\n31<\/td>\n14<\/td>\n8<\/td>\n6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
CNN<\/td>\n25<\/td>\n7<\/td>\n4<\/td>\n4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Fox News<\/td>\n15<\/td>\n9<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n10<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
All Cable<\/strong><\/td>\n23%<\/strong><\/td>\n9%<\/strong><\/td>\n5%<\/strong><\/td>\n7%<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

There is probably no one who would dispute that the war in Iraq, and the Washington debates fueled by it, is the single most important news event of the year (and several preceding years). It dominated the media producing about three times as much coverage as the next most covered story. And yet Fox relegates it to an also-ran, preferring to spend nearly as much time on Anna Nicole Smith as on the war.<\/p>\n

Fox also minimized the most serious parade of scandal that has faced the U.S. Justice Department since the Nixon Administration (see John Mitchell<\/a> and the Saturday Night Massacre<\/a>). Practically ignoring the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the firing of U.S. Attorneys by a partisanly-motivated Justice Department, the 2% of airtime Fox afforded the affair was half of what CNN gave it and a quarter of MSNBC’s scheduling.<\/p>\n

The one area in which Fox excelled was in coverage of departed pin-up\/heiress, Anna Nicole Smith. Fox’s coverage of Smith approximately doubled the coverage of CNN and MSNBC. Now we know why they had to leave the war footage on the cutting room floor.<\/p>\n

These results are an affirmation of the Fox slogan, “We Report, You Decide,”<\/em> so long as you leave out the first part. However, this may be consistent with their programming strategy which appears to be to drain their reports of as much substance as possible so that you are left unable to decide.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> The PEJ also released a study<\/a> this week that measures the coverage of the presidential candidates. While there was more time spent on Democrats, don’t be too hasty drawing conclusions:<\/p>\n

“…nearly two-thirds of the election coverage (61%) was specifically about candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. This was nearly three times those that focused on Republican candidates (24%). Another 13% dealt with both parties. […] conservative talkers, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage were the most Democratic focused of all-75% of their time on Democrats and only 13% focused mainly on Republicans.”<\/span><\/p>\n

So while there was more “coverage”<\/em> of Democrats, that extra focus really translates into more time bashing them. If you weren’t already confused, the right-wing media machine is more than happy to further muddy the waters.<\/p>\n

O’Reilly Responds<\/a>: ThinkProgress has a transcript of O’Reilly explaining that the reason Fox has less coverage of Iraq is because another bomb going off “doesn’t mean anything.”<\/em> The rest of the transcript is equally as disgusting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Project for Excellence in Journalism just published the results of their study of news coverage for the first quarter of 2007. The breakdown of stories covered, and the amount of time dedicated to those stories, reveals the priorities of the three main cable news networks. The standout amongst the statistics is that Fox News […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-ratings"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-7d","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":565,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=565","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":0},"title":"Fox Buries Iraq War News","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/21\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The Project for Excellence in Journalism just published the results of their study of news coverage for the second quarter of 2007. Continuing the trend from the first quarter, Fox News had far less coverage than its cable competitors. Proving that it simply doesn't consider the war in Iraq a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":402,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=402","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":1},"title":"Fox News Implementing A Slow Growth Strategy","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/6\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Continuing a pattern that goes back more than a year, Fox News is again underperforming its peers. The latest Nielsen data comparing the first quarter of 2007 with the same period of 2006 shows Fox growing at the slowest rate of any of the cable news nets. This comes at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":453,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=453","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":2},"title":"MSNBC Growing Faster Than Fox, CNN","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/31\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The all-important May ratings (PDF) period has produced what is becoming a predictably recurrent theme: MSNBC is growing faster than any of its cable news rivals. Primetime M-F CNN FOX HLN MSNBC Persons 2+ -13% -2% +14% +51% Persons 25-54 +8% +14 +22 +40% Total Day CNN FOX HLN MSNBC\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2527,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=2527","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":3},"title":"Fox News Caps Flow Of Oil Spill Stories","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/26\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism analyzed the coverage of news stories about the Gulf Coast oil spill. 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Many of the programs achieved their highest ever ratings in 2017, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Fox News MSNBC","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-racist-smears.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-racist-smears.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-racist-smears.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10939,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10939","url_meta":{"origin":447,"position":5},"title":"New Study: The Fox News Obsession With ObamaCare Is Nearly Off The Scale – Literally","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/20\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Pew Research Center conducted a study to measure how the major cable news networks covered the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) as compared to other breaking news like the typhoon in the Philippines. 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