Fox News and MSNBC and Fox News

Over the years I've had many friends inquire as to why me, a fairly liberal person, watches Fox News and listens to talk radio.  I've had many reasons and they all still play a role in why I continue such an act of masochism.  Part of it relates to me being, at my very core, a contrary person.  Ever since I was little I had to be different, could never do anything the way the other kids were doing it.  I hated liking something that everybody else liked because it seemed to lessen the value I had on it, as if I was only going along with the crowd, I wanted something pure, something I truly like for myself, it took me until about the 17th year of my life to find it in gaming friends and about my 22nd to find it in local friends.  I've been aware of this for years now, and I am aware that it is not a real reason to like or dislike something, so I try to focus it and I'm usually successful, but not always, such is life.  Anyway, listening to such harshly different media outlets fits perfectly in that sense.  I take in what they are saying and because it is the predominant opinion surrounding me at said moment, I am able to focus this counter-populism feeling towards dissecting and analyzing the argument, or even on some days, just firing myself up.  It doesn't always work, sometimes I get irritated and turn the channel, other days I get inspired and make brilliant new observations I've never noticed before.   There is, however, one thing that came out of this, unintentionally, at least at first, that has now become the primary reason I keep a portion of conservative media in my life. That reason is that by exposing yourself to differing viewpoints, you help ground yourself in your own viewpoints and it helps you spot holes in your argument that you and those with like minds around you might not have seen, or even, random number generator forbid, show you that you are wrong.  I have seen this with one acquaintance who works in D.C. at a libertarian cause promoting organization.  He is a very intelligent person, he has a bachelors degree from the same college that I attend and to his credit never falls to name calling or any illogical fallacy like it during discussions.  However, outside of the few discussions we have on facebook on each others posts, it is pretty clear that he is surrounded constantly by those with like minds and as a result has begun to get a sort of tunnel vision on political reality, suffering from a sort of groupthink.  That is not to say that he just inserts himself into a social circle and sponges the intellectual climate and makes it his own, he came to his conclusions prior to this, is very capable of forming a coherent argument, but I think he enjoys the company of like minded individuals as opposed to scholarly discussion and banter, and his position suffers as a result.  This is exactly the kind of thing that I never want to see happen to me, so I watch fox news, I listen to Hannity, Limbaugh and Beck, I take in what they say, compare it to presentations I've seen, heard or read elsewhere and try my best to reach the truth.  In the process of exposing myself to so many sources, it is not hard to tell where the integrity lies and the lies harm integrity and that is why I believe it is categorically false to even imply that Fox News and MSNBC are of the same make when it comes to media outlets.

So let's start off at the obvious starting point, that Fox News is the right wing news source for America and that MSNBC is the equivalent left wing source.  I don't think this assertion is completely wrong, it is obvious that the powers that be in both lean a certain direction, or at the very least, lean in said direction as part of a profit motive, but I think it is somewhat lazy.  I've observed both sources throughout the day and there is a stark difference in programming.  While Fox takes a much heavier hand towards hosted shows, directed by individuals, MSNBC clearly has a much more panel oriented system.  As you watch throughout the daytime hours on Fox, you will notice a very solo oriented vibe on most of the shows and while some may have panels, they are clearly heavily weighted in one direction and the odd ball out liberal is often pushed to the side or clearly not given equal credence as the others.  Conversely, on MSNBC, you see a panel setup for entire shows or at the very least a portion of a said show devoted to such discussion.  That, however, is not where the difference ends, within this panel style setting  there is almost always someone acting as the mouthpiece of each side and they are not dismissed simply because of their viewpoints.  In the majority of these shows, the mouthpieces are really just that, acting on the behalf of their party, and that is not a terrible thing, though it does wear on the listener and become quite obvious at times even making it rather entertaining to see them jump through hoops (both sides) to defend their view.  But then you have the Dylan Ratigan show.  To this day, I think that the DRS is probably the only show I've consistently seen where the host sits everybody down and genuinely says "I want to hear and understand what you think about this, how you came to that conclusion and how you feel about the other viewpoints being expressed."  It is a true roundtable discussion that you really don't see anymore.  I think Fox's closest equivalent is the O'Reilly Factor and there all you have is the host badgering people when they suggest he might be wrong.  But you don't really get that a whole lot with MSNBC, in fact, this last week, I was struck by a move Chris Matthews pulled on his show that even caught one of his panelists off guard.  As they were closing down the segment, Matthews had set time aside to apologize on air to a republican strategist because he had expressed, of screen, that he had felt jipped in a prior appearance.  The strategist who was there for a different issue was clearly caught off guard and Matthews made a point of saying that on his show people are welcome to express their viewpoint and he didn't want to reach the point where his show didn't allow that.  He then proceeded to give the person the time needed to present the argument and left it with that.  You don't see that sort of thing happen at fox news, when they admit they were wrong with something, they don't point it out for people to see.  At best, you will get a brief apology on the host's section of the website and to be fair, if the offender was Bill O'Reilly, he has been known to offer corrections of himself, though they always seem very smug and unapologetic.

Next up, Mislabeling.  I think this is probably the most egregious and overt thing a news outlet could do and in this instance, Fox News takes the cake.  It may have happened once or twice, but it happens so frequently and in such clearly calculated places at Fox that it is clearly an attempt to taint the story.  In fact, I'm not even sure Fox bothers apologizing for it these days.  In case you're not familiar with what I am talking about, whenever a news story happens or press conferences are being held, Fox will observe what party the person being speaking is and then proceed to change their party alignment to present Republicans and conservatives in a better light.  There is no better example than what Fox tried to pull with the recent voter referendum in Ohio.  So, in case people aren't aware, I'll dive into that a bit to give a little better perspective.  Ohio's current governor is John Kasich, a republican who used to be all up in it at Fox News.  One of the first things he did upon coming into office along with majorities in the state house and state senate as to roll back collective bargaining rights of unions.  Since democrats had absolutely no power to prevent this it was pushed through basically unobstructed, until it met the Ohio populace that is.  The Ohio populace is VERY worker and union friendly, this did not sit well with them, this made all the more obvious that when the signed petitions were presented for verification, there were so many that the state government had to make sure that the floor of the building they were being brought to could support the massive weight of all the piles and piles of paper.  Needless to say, the referendum won in a landslide and the law was repealed, a huge slap in the face of the Ohio Republican Party.  Along with this, Kasich, who had barely won his election in the first place with 49% of the vote, was being ravaged by dismal approval ratings and polls saying that if the previous election as re-held again, he'd lose handedly.  So, Kasich, like any governor after such a resounding defeat, held a press conference to concede that he was wrong, and to his credit, he did admit he over reached, but thats not the issue here.  Fox News, seeing this coming decided that it was time to break out the old mislabeling machine and promptly declared him the Democratic Governor of Ohio.  Image compliments of Dailykos.

I think that is enough for tonight, I put significant more thought into this post than my normal blog posts and while I could go on and on about why they are not the same, I think everyone reading gets the idea.  I don't claim that MSNBC is infallible and that everyone should just go watch it because it is right and everything else is wrong, but it clearly has a better understanding of how journalistic integrity works as well as...well...facts.