Saw this on MSNBC. The memo was leaked by a Fox News insider...
Huffington Post has obtained an internal Fox News memo written by the network's Vice President of news. The memo details Fox's game plan the day Democrats won control of both the Senate and the House.
The fact is, daily life at FNC is all about management politics. I say this having served six years there - as producer of the media criticism show, News Watch, as a writer/producer of specials and (for the last year of my stay) as a newsroom copy editor. Not once in the 20+ years I had worked in broadcast journalism prior to Fox - including lengthy stays at The Associated Press, CBS Radio and ABC/Good Morning America - did I feel any pressure to toe a management line. But at Fox, if my boss wasn't warning me to "be careful" how I handled the writing of a special about Ronald Reagan ("You know how Roger [Fox News Chairman Ailes] feels about him."), he was telling me how the environmental special I was to produce should lean ("You can give both sides, but make sure the pro-environmentalists don't get the last word.")
But the roots of FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it.
These are not isolated incidents at Fox News Channel, where virtually no one of authority in the newsroom makes a move unmeasured against management's politics, actual or perceived. At the Fair and Balanced network, everyone knows management's point of view, and, in case they're not sure how to get it on air, The Memo is there to remind them.
News experts are outraged about this, and calling for heads to roll. When you start instructing news people to cover with a certain slant, follow a certain script, etc, it becomes acting instead of reporting.
knapplc wrote:I must be missing the part where it said what Fox is doing differently than CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and any other major or minor "news" source.
Except The Jon Stewart Show and The Colbert Report, they tell it like it is.
knapplc wrote:I must be missing the part where it said what Fox is doing differently than CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and any other major or minor "news" source.
Except The Jon Stewart Show and The Colbert Report, they tell it like it is.
Amen, brother!
Those two "news" shows may be the most honest sources of news out there. At least with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report they make no bones about being slightly left-of-center.
If all of the other "news" providers would declare their left- or right-leaning agenda up front I may have more respect for them.
knapplc wrote:I must be missing the part where it said what Fox is doing differently than CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and any other major or minor "news" source.
Except The Jon Stewart Show and The Colbert Report, they tell it like it is.
Amen, brother!
Those two "news" shows may be the most honest sources of news out there. At least with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report they make no bones about being slightly left-of-center.
If all of the other "news" providers would declare their left- or right-leaning agenda up front I may have more respect for them.
knapplc wrote:I must be missing the part where it said what Fox is doing differently than CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and any other major or minor "news" source.
CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS do not put out memos instructing anchors and reporters the slant to report from.
If you write a script and direct the talent to act a certain way, it becomes acting instead of reporting.
Fox will just play it off as nothing like always....but if anyone didn't already know Fox News was corrupted, biased, and crooked, they have probably been living under a rock.
eman wrote:Fox will just play it off as nothing like always....but if anyone didn't already know Fox News was corrupted, biased, and crooked, they have probably been living under a rock.
Crooked and biased - at times...they should cut the "fair and balanced" crap and just call it what it is. Even as a conservative, that has always turned me off. Fox is the alternative to the liberal fixtures in the other common media - they are just as biased as any other media, just on the other side. I normally can't stand to watch anything because they are just as hypocritcal as CNN or MSNBC.
Corrupted? I don't think catering to your audience in both content and presentation is corruption, unless you want to call all media outlets corrupt. They all do it. News is ratings driven...not "news" driven. Anyone who believes otherwise has been, as you said, living under a rock.
knapplc wrote:I must be missing the part where it said what Fox is doing differently than CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and any other major or minor "news" source.
CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS do not put out memos instructing anchors and reporters the slant to report from.
If you write a script and direct the talent to act a certain way, it becomes acting instead of reporting.
They don't put out memos that you and I know of maybe, but there is absolutely a slant to the way they report the news. Anyone who thinks any of the major anchors from any of the major news sources is actually anything more than a stuffed shirt reading a script - essentially an actor - has not been paying attention to the state of the news in the past 20-30 years.
I'm not condoning what Fox is doing. You couldn't pay me to watch Fox News. BUT, the end result of what they're doing is no different than what any of the other news sources is doing and has been doing since Watergate.
Which simply leaves the question - who is reporting on this memo, the Pot or the Kettle?
The Balanced Man wrote: CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS do not put out memos instructing anchors and reporters the slant to report from.
They don't have to, it's assumed.
Edit: Let me expand a little on this. If the memo is accurate, which I can't tell from the image of it, what Fox is doing is wrong. But it's also wrong to pretend that Fox is somehow alone in slanting the news. The other news people who are supposedly horrified by the memo are probably doing the same things themselves, they're just more discreet.
Last edited by Goatwhacker on Thu Nov 16, 2006 8:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by The Balanced Man » Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:29 pm 
