|
Many people say that Fox "News" is the only acceptable source of news. For example, see Vice-President Dick Cheney's hotel suite demands requiring that all televisions be pre-tuned to Fox "News". However, Fox "News" is mostly misinformation and celebrity gossip.
World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters in late 2010. Their study showed that Fox News viewers are significantly worse misinformed than consumers of other news sources. Additionally, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation. For example, 63% of Fox viewers believe that Barack Obama definitely was not born in the U.S., or that his birth place is unclear. 60% believe that world climate is not changing. See that late 2010 survey here, and also see earlier similar results from WPO's 2003 survey and also a 2009 poll by NBC and the Wall Street Journal.
But it's not just their continued pandering of right-wing nonsense. Fox "News" focuses much more on celebrities than other sources do. This can be measured by simply counting the number of pages on various news sites mentioning figures from world leadership and entertainment.
We can measure the coverage of topics using Google's
site:example.com search directive,
which only returns pages within the specified domain.
We can use that to perform various searches specific
to combinations of public figures and news organizations.
For example, the president of Afghanistan:
site:foxnews.com "hamid karzai"
or, someone Fox "News" finds much more important:
site:foxnews.com "miley cyrus"
| Hamid Karzai | President of Afghanistan |
| Asif Ali Zardari | President of Pakistan since September 2008 |
| Moqtada al-Sadr | Prominent Iraqi "firebrand cleric", one of the most influential Iraqi figures not holding any official government title. |
| Hu Jintao | Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China, 2002-present |
| Jalal Talabani | President of Iraq, 2005 to present |
| Nouri al-Maliki | Prime Minister of Iraq, 2006 to present |
| Bashar al-Assad | President of Syria, 2000 to present |
| Benjamin Netanyahu | Prime Minister of Israel, 1996-1999 and 2009 to present. |
| Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | President of Iran, 2005 to present |
| Felipe Calderón | President of Mexico, 2006 to present |
| Stephen Harper | Prime Minister of Canada, 2006 to present |
| Anna Nicole Smith | American celebrity and nude model, died in February 2007. |
| Britney Spears | American celebrity, singer, shaved her own head. Most recent successful album came out in 2003. |
| Jessica Simpson | American celebrity, has appeared in some movies. |
| Miley Cyrus | American celebrity, singer and Disney actress |
| Pamela Anderson | American celebrity, nude model. |
There are fifteen subjects in the list. I have highlighted the top five in each column with a green background, and shaded the bottom five with a grey background. Out of the fifteen subjects, the green highlighted ones are the five given the most attention by the given source, the grey ones get the least attention.
| BBC | CNN | NPR | Pravda | Fox | ||
| Asif Ali Zardari | 1,440 | 1,430 | 1,780 | 734 | 317 | President of Pakistan |
| Stephen Harper | 2,510 | 1,020 | 5,110 | 162 | 341 | Prime Minister of Canada |
| Bashar Assad | 1,440 | 1,270 | 1,880 | 252 | 415 | President of Syria |
| Moqtada al-Sadr | 781 | 2,290 | 1,190 | 121 | 663 | Prominent Iraqi "firebrand cleric" |
| Hu Jintao | 7,530 | 4,640 | 18,100 | 1,040 | 826 | Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China |
| Nouri al-Maliki | 1,090 | 955 | 2,490 | 115 | 1,020 | Prime Minister of Iraq |
| Felipe Calderón | 2,850 | 4,790 | 2,150 | 126 | 1,030 | President of Mexico |
| Benjamin Netanyahu | 6,470 | 5,950 | 10,800 | 583 | 1,210 | Prime Minister of Israel |
| Hamid Karzai | 8,820 | 7,010 | 7,870 | 454 | 1,560 | President of Afghanistan |
| Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | 5,700 | 6,430 | 4,940 | 1,060 | 2,190 | President of Iran |
| Miley Cyrus | 1,430 | 4,270 | 1,550 | 94 | 2,450 | American celebrity, singer and Disney actress |
| Anna Nicole Smith | 357 | 2,900 | 413 | 122 | 8,850 | American celebrity, nude model, dead since 2007 |
| Pamela Anderson | 904 | 1,620 | 1,490 | 202 | 9,370 | American celebrity, nude model |
| Jessica Simpson | 535 | 3,130 | 552 | 336 | 9,930 | American celebrity |
| Britney Spears | 5,810 | 9,350 | 3,240 | 583 | 12,800 | American celebrity |
| BBC | CNN | NPR | Pravda | Fox |
Fox "News" had 44% more pages just on minor celebrity Britney Spears (12,800) than on the current heads of state of Afghanistan, Canada, China, Iran Iraq, Israel, Mexico, Pakistan, and Syria combined (8,909).
And, almost exactly as many pages on long-dead nude model Anna Nicole Smith (8,850) than on all of those current heads of state combined (8,909).
"One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising, and news."
— Edward R Murrow, 1958
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
| © Bob Cromwell Feb 2012. Created with /bin/vi and ImageMagick, hosted on OpenBSD with Apache. Root password available here, privacy policy here. |
