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Launched on October 7, 1996 to 17 million cable subscribers, the nascent network quickly rose to prominence in the late 1990s as it started taking market share away from the Cable News Network (CNN). It has since surpassed CNN to become the number one news channel in the United States.
Every hour from 9AM to 3PM Eastern Time, the FOX News Channel broadcasts Fox News Live providing a wide-ranging assortment of hard news, guest analysts, and interviews. In primetime, the network presents a slew of personality-driven news-talk shows such as Special Report With Brit Hume, hosted by political reporter Brit Hume from Washington, D.C. The network bills The Fox Report With Shepard Smith as the signature evening newscast, offering various reports on the day's events hosted by Shepard Smith. The network's top-rated show is The O'Reilly Factor, hosted by the opinionated journalist Bill O'Reilly. In addition, conservative Sean Hannity and liberal Alan Colmes, both radio talk show hosts, debate political issues of the day on Hannity and Colmes.
The network syndicates Fox News Sunday hosted by Tony Snow to Fox Network affiliates across the United States. From time to time, FOX News also produces a newsmagazine show for its Fox affiliates called The Pulse.
The channel is now available internationally, but unlike CNN's international service it tends to concentrate on domestic issues which might be seen as less newsworthy outside North America.
Like the rest of FOX, it is owned by Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. It is a sister channel to Sky News, which is based in the United Kingdom.
The CEO, Chairman, and President of FOX News is Roger Ailes, formerly a political strategist for Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Previously, Ailes ran the CNBC network for the NBC network and produced campaign TV commercials for Republican political candidates. His work for former President Richard M. Nixon was chronicled in the book The Selling of the President: 1968 by Joe McGinniss.
Several FOX News anchors have expressedly partisan conservative backgrounds. Managing editor and host Brit Hume is a contributor to the conservative American Spectator and Weekly Standard. Daytime anchor David Asman previously worked at the The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Manhattan Institute, a conservative thinktank. Sunday host Tony Snow is a conservative columnist and former chief speechwriter for the first Bush administration.
FOX asserts that it is less biased and more factual than other American networks, using promotional statements such as "fair and balanced" and "we report, you decide". Their commentators argue that other news channels are dominated by a liberal bias.
Meanwhile, critics contend that it is FOX who is biased. Pointing to examples of allegedly unfair presentation, the large number of conservative staffers, and leaked memos, these critics paint a picture of an avowedly-partisan news organization that spins stories to the right while publicly claiming to be "fair and balanced".
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a left-leaning media watchdog group, released a report titled Fox: The Most Biased Name in News. Some highlights: A study of guests on the network's signature political show, Special Report with Brit Hume, found that 89% were Republicans, 65% were conservatives, 91% were male, and 93% were white. By comparison, on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports only 57% of the guests were Republican and 32% were conservatives. And since 1998, one out of every 12 episodes of The O'Reilly Factor has featured a segment on Jesse Jackson (usually with themes like "How personal are African-Americans taking the moral failures of Reverend Jesse Jackson?").
A study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that viewers of Fox News were more likely to hold misconceptions than viewers of any other network. A staggering 80% of Fox News viewers believed at least one of three misconceptions about the War in Iraq, more than any other radio or television news source. And this behavior persists even after adjusting for viewership and political preference. Worse still, the viewers who watched the news more carefully turned out to have more misconceptions.[1]
In addition, FOX News has been accused of placing an undue emphasis on conservative news stories. Critics claim that the network sometimes dedicates whole segments and shows to conservative stories they feel have been downplayed, and for a time had an entire show, Only On Fox, dedicated to doing just that.
A report in the Los Angeles Times on November 1, 2003, quoted Charlie Reina, a Fox News producer for six years, saying that Fox News executives require the network's on-air anchors and reporters to cover news stories from a right-wing viewpoint and distributed a daily memo explaining what stories they wanted highlighted and what spin to place on others. A Fox spokesman called Reins' remarks the "rantings of a disgruntled former employee".
FOX and their supporters maintain that FOX is only perceived as being 'right of center' only because they are not 'left of center', as they claim the rest of the media is. They point to programs such as Hannity and Colmes as an example of the network's balance. On that program, Sean Hannity, a conservative radio talk-show host debates Alan Colmes. Although some claim he is liberal, Colmes is a self described moderate ("I'm quite moderate," he told a USA Today reporter; Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, page 84). Critics agree with this assessment, and point out that Colmes on most issues and that he isn't given as much time to talk as Hannity is, and further that Colmes is often reticent to challenge conservative guests or his co-host, while Hannity regularly attacks liberals.
Meanwhile, another prominent FOX program, the O'Reilly Factor, hosted by Bill O'Reilly, is also cited as a program with a heavily conservative slant, a charge O'Reilly denies, preferring to call himself a populist.
"In case you're counting, that's two hard-core conservatives (Brit Hume and Fred Barnes) and two centrists (Mort Kondrake and Mara Liasson). Imagine a game of political seesaw, with two people sitting on one end, and two others sitting in the middle. See how balance works on Special Report with Brit Hume?" - Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them Programming
Ownership
Bias