On Fox TV - "News" Based on Opinion Not Facts. And Everyone has an Opinion - so Everything is Arguable

• Originally published by the Washington Post on March 14, 2005

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer


In covering the Iraq war last year, 73 percent of the stories on Fox News included the opinions of the anchors and journalists reporting them, a new study says.

By contrast, 29 percent of the war reports on MSNBC and 2 percent of those on CNN included the journalists' own views.

These findings -- the figures were similar for coverage of other stories -- "seem to challenge" Fox's slogan of "we report, you decide," says the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

In a 617-page report, the group also found that "Fox is more deeply sourced than its rivals," while CNN is "the least transparent about its sources of the three cable channels, but more likely to present multiple points of view."

The project defines opinion as views that are not attributed to others.

 Last March, Fox reporter Todd Connor said that "Iraq has a new interim constitution and is well on its way to democracy."

"Let's pray it works out," said anchor David Asman.

 Another time, after hearing that Iraqis helped capture a Saddam Hussein henchman, Asman said: "Boy, that's good news if true, the Iraqis in the lead."

 Fox legal editor Stan Goldman challenged the hiring of attorney Gloria Allred to represent Amber Frey (Scott Peterson's mistress), saying: "If you want to keep a low profile, Gloria is not the lawyer to represent you."

In an interview, Fox's executive daytime producer, Jerry Burke, says: "I encourage the anchors to be themselves. I'm certainly not going to step in and censor an anchor on any issue. . . . You don't want to look at a cookie-cutter, force-feeding of the same items hour after hour. I think that's part of the success of the channel, not treating our anchors like drones. They're, number one, Americans, and number two, human beings, as well as journalists."

CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson says the study "reaffirms what anyone watching CNN already knows: CNN's reporting is driven by news, not opinion." MSNBC declined to comment.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington-based research group, offers a three-part breakdown of cable journalists voicing their opinions. From 11 a.m. to noon, this happened on 52 percent of the stories on Fox, 50 percent on MSNBC and 2.3 percent on CNN. Among news-oriented evening shows, journalist opinions were voiced on 70 percent of the stories on Fox's "Special Report With Brit Hume," due in part to its regular analysts panel at the show's end; 9 percent on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann"; and 9 percent on CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown."

As for the most popular prime-time shows, nearly every story -- 97 percent -- contained opinion on Fox's "O'Reilly Factor"; 24 percent on MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Matthews"; and 0.9 percent on CNN's "Larry King Live." King devoted nearly half his time to entertainment and lifestyle topics, twice as much as O'Reilly and more than three times as much as Matthews.

The project describes cable news reporting as pretty thin compared with the ABC, NBC and CBS evening newscasts. Only a quarter of the cable stories examined contained two or more identifiable sources, compared with 49 percent of network evening news stories and 81 percent of newspaper front-page stories.

This, says the study, is in part because cable leans heavily on live reports, 60 percent of which are based on only a single identifiable source ("the White House said today," etc.). What's more, cable news is far more one-sided than other media outlets, with only a quarter of the stories involving controversy making more than a passing reference to a second point of view. By contrast, says the report, the network morning shows, PBS and newspaper front pages were more than three times as likely to contain a mix of views.

Cable networks "have gravitated, particularly as Fox has surged in the ratings, toward programs and somewhat less toward reporting," says Tom Rosenstiel, the group's director. He says opinion-laden journalism "probably is part of Fox's identity, but it's not true of all the programs."

As for the tone of Iraq coverage, 38 percent of Fox stories were positive, compared with 20 percent on CNN and 16 percent on MSNBC, the report says. But war stories were about as likely to be neutral on Fox (39 percent), and more likely to be neutral on CNN (41 percent) and MSNBC (28 percent).

 Despite its 24 hours of available air time, cable isn't exactly bursting with new news. Seven in 10 reports involve recycling of the same subject matter, with only 10 percent adding meaningful updates. "The time required to continuously be on the air seems to take a heavy toll on the nature of the journalism presented," the report says.

On the broadcast front, journalists offered no opinions on 83 percent of the evening news stories, 89 percent of the morning news reports and 97 percent of the pieces on PBS's "NewsHour." The biggest exception: campaign stories, where nightly news correspondents felt comfortable offering horse-race and other opinions 44 percent of the time.

One interesting contrast among the nightly newscasts: CBS was 50 percent more likely than NBC and twice as likely as ABC to air reports on disasters and other unexpected events (Dan Rather loved hurricanes). The "CBS Evening News" was also twice as likely to carry feature stories (such as the ethics of using high-tech duck decoys, or rising credit card debt) unconnected to breaking news .

The morning shows, which run at least two hours, still covered major stories less than the evening newscasts, the project says, devoting much of their time to Martha Stewart, Laci Peterson and other crime, lifestyle and celebrity topics. The morning programs were also more upbeat than not in their Iraq coverage, with positive reports 31 percent of the time and negative 19 percent. By contrast, 32 percent of Iraq stories on the nightly news casts were negative and 18 percent positive, while half were deemed neutral.

 The project, which examined 16 newspapers -- from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post to the Bloomington, Ill., Pantagraph -- praised them for offering longer and more deeply sourced stories. Overall, 7 percent of stories contained anonymous sources, down from 29 percent in 2003. But the figure was 20 percent for front-page stories at the biggest papers, compared with 7 percent at the smallest. Stories about the Iraq war were more likely to be negative (31 percent) than positive (23 percent), but just as likely to be neutral in tone (33 percent).

The newsweeklies continued a drift toward softer and broader coverage, the report says. Newsweek did six celebrity and entertainment covers last year to Time's one, while Time did two covers on sports, two on history and one on the environment (the thinner U.S. News & World Report took a more traditional hard-news approach). Newsweek ("The Secret Lives of Wives") and Time ("Low Carb Nation") also ran a number of covers on what the project says might be called "faux trends."

Marching Orders?
 
Speaking of Fox, a Detroit News story last week called it "consciously biased" -- without attribution -- and quoted onetime Fox producer Dan Cooper as saying: "In the morning, everyone is told what today's key issues are and how those issues are viewed by Fox News. The entire staff understands how the organization feels about them."

Cooper, whose job was eliminated weeks after the channel launched in 1996, says the quotes were "fabricated" and he "never said anything like that." He says his other, more neutral quotes were accurate -- except for one likening Fox to "talk radio" -- but complains that reporter Tom Long used the disputed comments after this loaded sentence: "But the clear bias of Fox News troubles many."

"I love Fox News," he says. "I watch Fox News all day long."

News Editor Mark Silverman told Cooper by e-mail that after checking Long's notes, "we believe his story accurately portrayed what you said to him" and "there is nothing for us to correct." Silverman offered Cooper either a letter to the editor or a longer op-ed piece, as long as it didn't criticize Long's article.

Rave Review
 
Why did Vanity Fair allow freelancer Sally Horchow to write a puffy item on a Hollywood group called the Proscenium Club? As MediaBistro.com noted, Horchow is one of the founders of the club, a supporting group for Los Angeles County's Music Center. Horchow gradually told her editor of her role, says spokeswoman Beth Kseniak, and "in retrospect we wished we had disclosed it."