Many people say that Fox "News" is the best possible source of news. For example, see Vice-President Dick Cheney's hotel suite demands require that all televisions be pre-tuned to Fox "News" (and given that hotel televisions tend to always reset and come up on the hotel promotional channel, that means they need to be left turned on for his arrival).
We can gather statistical data with Google's site:example.com search directive, which only return pages in the specified domain and provides data for statistical analysis. In the below test done 4 April 2007, Fox "News" is statistically most similar to Pravda.
| Fox "News" | Said by its devotees to be the very best source. |
| CNN | Cable News Network, the first big satellite news channel, and thought by Fox fans to be nearly Trotskyite in their politics. |
| NPR | National Public Radio, thought by Fox fans to be entirely Trotskyite. |
| BBC | British Broadcasting Company, run by foreigners and therefore suspicious. |
| Pravda | The classic Soviet-era newspaper, whose name means "Truth" and which rarely contained much. Also run by foreigners. Not nearly as Trotskyite as it once was. |
| Hamid Karzai | President of Afghanistan |
| Pervez Musharraf | President of Pakistan |
| Moqtada al-Sadr | Prominent Iraqi "firebrand cleric" who has given US and allied forces a lot of trouble from around 2003 through the time of this test. |
| Bashar al-Assad | President of Syria |
| Ehud Olmert | Prime Minister of Israel |
| Hugo Chavez | President of Venezuela |
| Juan Evo Morales Ayma | President of Bolivia |
| Nouri al-Maliki | Prime Minister of Iraq |
| Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | President of Iran |
| Gerald Ford | Former President of the U.S., died about 3 months before the below data was collected. |
| Anna Nicole Smith | American celebrity, nude model, died 2 months before the below data was collected. |
| Britney Spears | American celebrity, singer, shaved head. |
| Jessica Simpson | American celebrity, appeared in some movies. |
| O.J. Simpson | American celebrity, wields a mean knife, no known relation to Jessica. |
| Pamela Anderson | American celebrity, nude model. |
Web sites have differing designs, so the absolute counts of pages mentioning one given public figure can't be compared meaningfully across sources.
The below table shows absolute numbers and percentages.
The absolute number is the result of asking Google,
for example:
"Harmid Karzai" site:bbc.co.uk
The top of the first page returned estimates the number
of pages in that domain mentioning that figure.
The percentage is the result of summing the page counts
for all searches for that news source
(that is, along one column in the table)
and calculating the percentage represented by one search.
Put another way, if the set of public figures used here were the complete set of newsworthy figures, the percentages along one column show how that news source balances its coverage.
49.9 - 100.0% Very high
5.0 - 49.9% High
2.0 - 4.9% Medium
0.6 - 1.9% Low
0.0 - 0.5% Very low percentage of pages mentioning this public figure.
| BBC | CNN | NPR | Pravda | Fox | ||
| Hamid Karzai | 12,200 10.7% |
6,540 6.2% |
626 9.0% |
214 0.3% |
1,470 0.4% |
President of Afghanistan |
| Pervez Musharraf | 8,660 7.6% |
7,340 6.9% |
331 4.7% |
196 0.2% |
950 0.3% |
President of Pakistan |
| Moqtada al-Sadr | 3,160 2.8% |
398 0.4% |
530 7.6% |
94 0.1% |
48 0.0% |
Prominent Iraqi "firebrand cleric" |
| Bashar Assad | 2,350 2.1% |
1,370 1.3% |
154 2.2% |
41 0.5% |
180 0.1% |
President of Syria |
| Ehud Olmert | 14,900 13.0% |
5,650 5.3% |
1,040 14.9% |
541 0.6% |
1,290 0.4% |
Prime Minister of Israel |
| Nouri al-Maliki | 2,790 2.4% |
3,090 2.9% |
939 13.4% |
63 0.1% |
1,900 0.6% |
Prime Minister of Iraq |
| Hugo Chavez | 11,500 10.1% |
7,870 7.5% |
897 12.8% |
1,460 1.7% |
4,280 1.3% |
President of Venezuela |
| Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | 10,500 9.2% |
15,300 14.5% |
710 10.1% |
3,010 3.6% |
5,310 1.6% |
President of Iran |
| Juan Evo Morales Ayma | 3,470 3.0% |
743 0.7% |
213 3.0% |
488 0.6% |
372 0.1% |
President of Bolivia |
| Gerald Ford | 1,040 0.9% |
6,410 6.1% |
649 9.3% |
122 0.1% |
1,670 0.5% |
Recently-deceased former President of the U.S. |
| O.J. Simpson | 669 0.6% |
6,090 5.8% |
464 6.6% |
52 0.1% |
9,510 2.8% |
American celebrity, knife-wielder |
| Jessica Simpson | 4,120 3.6% |
1,950 1.8% |
26 0.3% |
1,440 1.7% |
55,000 16.4% |
American celebrity |
| Anna Nicole Smith | 717 0.6% |
18,700 17.7% |
130 1.9% |
5,620 6.7% |
34,500 10.3% |
American celebrity, nude model |
| Pamela Anderson | 17,500 15.3% |
779 0.7% |
27 0.4% |
47,000 56.2% |
47,000 14.0% |
American celebrity, nude model |
| Britney Spears | 20,800 18.2% |
23,400 22.1% |
251 3.6% |
23,300 27.9% |
172,000 51.3% |
American celebrity, recently bald |
| BBC | CNN | NPR | Pravda | Fox |
Statistically, Fox "News" and Pravda are very similar.
Compared to the evil "main-stream liberal media", Fox "News" has much less coverage of those foreigners with hard-to-remember names.
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