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Flawed Study Finds Fox News Fairest of All
Is Fox News really more "fair and balanced" in its election coverage than the big three broadcast networks? That would seem to be the top-line takeaway from a new study, but don't get too worked up over it.
The study, by George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs, examined 481 election news stories aired between Oct. 1 and Dec. 15 of this year on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News. It found that Hillary Clinton received the most intensive and negative coverage of any candidate, by a wide margin. Some 58 percent of the comments about her were evaluated as negative, compared to 39 percent for Barack Obama and 33 percent for John Edwards. Among Republicans, Mike Huckabee received the most favorable coverage, and John McCain the least favorable.
The study's authors also looked at the proportion of positive to negative coverage for the parties as a whole, broken down by network. Here's where the surprises come in: Fox News, widely viewed as conservative, was evaluated as almost perfectly balanced, with 51 percent of its stories about Democrats and 49 percent of its stories about Republicans rated as positive. Taken together, the three broadcast networks were notably more negative, particularly towards Republicans.
Why do I advise you to take all this with a grain of salt? Because the methodology is funky: Unlike ABC, CBS and NBC, Fox is a 24-hour news channel. Since it doesn't have a nightly newscast per se, the study's authors looked only at the first half-hour of Special Report with Brit Hume. In other words, they didn't even consider the second half of Special Report, which is where the opinion and commentary are usually found, much less the rest of Fox's punditry-heavy lineup. So to say that "Fox is most balanced," as opposed to "part of one Fox show is balanced," is pretty misleading.
The narrow focus also explains why "campaign coverage has been relatively issue oriented." Why do I feel like they wouldn't have said the same thing had Hannity & Colmes been considered?
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