Fox News has never had a reputation for impartial reporting. For years, liberals had criticized the news channel for delivering a conservative, politically driven message that has misinformed viewers about events happening around the world. However, until recently, Fox News made few steps to correct the damage, until a controversy broke out last month.
In
mid-January, Fox came under scrutiny for releasing a fictitious story about “no-go-zones”
in Europe. According to Fox anchors, countries such as England and France were
filled with regions that were off limit to non-Muslims and operated under
Shari’a law. The story was obviously false, but Fox insisted on selling the
story of Steve Emerson, a “self-described expert on Islamist terrorism.”1
However, once the story was under scrutiny, Fox surprised many people by taking
blame for the sloppy journalism. “To be clear,” said Fox host Julie
Banderas, “there is no formal designation of these zones in either country and
no credible information to support the assertion that there are specific areas
in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion.”1
This
apology was much overdue. For obvious reasons, Fox News should never have
published a story that veered so far from the truth. Fox made the right
decision to apologize for its mistake, but it needs to realize that a single apology
will not make up for years of unreliable reporting. In its mission statement,
Fox claims that it stands for “tolerance, open debate, civil discourse, and
balanced coverage of the news,” but clearly Fox is not upholding its mission
statement.2 Instead, it is delivering a partisan message and a
conservative agenda.
To
be fair, Fox News is not the only news agency known for its biased coverage of
events. MSNBC is arguably just as biased, but it lies on the liberal end of the
spectrum. In their defense, partisan news sources are not necessarily
inherently bad, as long as they deliver high-quality news and tell all sides of
an issue.
Unfortunately, Fox News and MSNBC
are not living up to these ideals of journalism. In fact, the basic objectivity
of journalism is in danger as long as news agencies prioritize ideology above
quality news. According to PunditFact, a fact-checking project of the Tampa Bay
Times and Poynter Institute, 60% of the statements made on Fox News are at best
“mostly false.” MSNBC does not rank much better, as 46% of the statements made
on NBC/MSNBC are false. In comparison, 82% of the information told on CNN is at
least “half true.”3 The reason that CNN performs so well is that it
lies at the center of the ideological spectrum and makes a serious effort to
eliminate political biases. In comparison, Fox News and MSNBC are much more
likely to invite self-proclaimed experts and pundits with extreme political
views to speak on their talk shows.
All across the country, TV channels
are cutting back on the amount of quality news and replacing them with
ideological opinion pieces that are easily mistaken for hard fact. By embracing
this new style of journalism, Fox News and MSNBC demonstrate that they are no
longer committed to journalistic excellence but rather to selling an ideology
to a mass audience. Fox News was suffering from this corrupting influence when
it released a story about fictitious “no-go-zones” in Europe; it was so
concerned with its conservative, anti-foreigner agenda that it forgot to
fact-check its sources.
~~~
1 Mackey, Robert. “Fox News Apologizes for False
Claims of Muslim-Only Areas in England and France.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 18 Jan. 2015. Web.
1 Feb. 2015.
2 “Statement of Purpose.” Fox Nation. Fox News Network, 2015. Web. 1 Feb. 2015.
3 Wemple, Erik. “PunditFact ‘scorecards’ show
false statements on Fox News, NBC/MSNBC.” The
Washington Post. Nash Holdings, LLC, 8 July 2014. Web. 1 Feb. 2015.
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