THE HYPE:
I'm not just angry that Fox's video system isn't user-friendly enough for me to figure out how to embed video. Fox News is known for their share of oddities in reporting. Like the episode of Fox and Friends when, after making jokes about asking interns to find video from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the reporters showed Fredrick Douglas instead of Stephen Douglas. Or the reporter who calls a room full of Pennsylvania voters “pretty even” after all indicated they were Obama supporters. On-air gaffes are what makes live-reporting so much fun! But what about the edited segments? In the post-election season, has Fox been “Fair and Balanced?”
WHAT THEY SAY:
http://www.foxnews.com/video-search/m/21439660/the_old_new_guard.htm?q=barack+obama
Fox headlines are always kind of different from other news outlets. They tend to be phrased in the form of a question, frequently with somewhat sketchy implications in wording. The process of crafting language for a story is called “framing,” where reporters determine what information to include and how to present the information. It’s like a picture frame—the reporter determines what’s in view. Most headlines on Fox tend to associate Obama with over-zealous philosophies. Examples of such headlines include “The ‘Old’ New Guard,” linked above, which evokes images of civil rights leaders in an attempt to affiliate Obama with their ideology by contiguity.
WHAT THEY DON'T:
Ultimately this complaint stretches to all forms of media. Fox is probably one of the worst at issuing retractions, particularly because commentators on Fox tend to cling to stories even after they are proven false. Fox has a particularly bad habit of recycling falsehoods, from misrepresentations of Obama's healthcare plan in the election cycle or the current notion of an "Obama recession." The secondary complaint is the high frequency of "nobody said that" commentary...the video above stemming from a Media Matters report documenting specific instances of race-baiting in the campaign cycle. The third dimension of the issue is the use of images from an upcoming story without a statement as to whether the story is fact or fiction. This dominated Fox's coverage of the Ashley Todd lie, and has been used frequently since.
THE BEAT:
Two important concepts to keep in mind are the impact of media and the psychological principle of priming. When Fox News uses these open-ended questions or leaves off complete details, they are playing mind-games with unsuspecting viewers. Even if viewers hear retractions, the mere repetition of these images is enough to grant them some semblance of credence. Memory is a constructive process, and when viewers who believe these notions see these images, they may hold onto them while losing the source of the information. Crafting these open-ended questions leaves viewers to draw conclusions before playing the story, and then reinforce those notions. It is irresponsible for media of all sorts to proclaim high journalistic standards they cannot embody.
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