The Fox In The Spin House
by UAW Region 8 Webmaster John Davis

In the south we have a saying that goes “you can’t let the fox watch the hen house.” Every southerner knows this means that you can’t trust the predator with the prey. There is a new saying that could go “there’s Fox in the Spin House” based on a cable news network. That fox is the Fox News Network. The network calls themselves “Fair and Balanced” but in actuality they are far right of that.

Fox News was launched in 1996 by media mogul Rupert Murdoch with the slogan “we report and you decide.” However, the information contained in most their reports are so slanted that it is impossible for a person to make a decision based on their info alone. Fox has developed a reputation of distorting the facts and slanting coverage of the news until it could easily be called “The Propaganda Channel.”

For example, at the Fox affiliate in Tampa Bay, reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre uncovered a story about supermarkets in Florida selling milk produced with a synthetic growth hormone produced by Monsanto that boost milk production. The hormone causes infections in cows resulting in antibiotics for treatment. However, the monitoring of the effects of the antibiotics was not adequate to protect the public from harm. This concern was the basis of the story that Wilson and Akre assembled. However, as they prepared to air the first installment of their investigative report, the reporters were notified the piece was being postponed. It seems that Monsanto had contacted Roger Ailes, head of Fox News and questioned their reporting on a subject that was a “highly complex scientific subject.” Wilson and Akre offered to work with Fox lawyers to make certain the story would not produce any liability for the network and tell the story objectively. The reporters stated that Fox in-house legal counsel Carolyn Forrest told them the story was not worth going to court with even though the facts were true. According to Wilson he was offered $125,000 if he would just go away and never tell anyone about how the story had been handled. The reporters continued pushing their opinion that the public had the right to know the truth. Station manager David Boylan’s response was “We paid $3 billion for these television stations. We will decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is.” For more information on the issue visit www.foxbhgsuit.com.

If the name of Fox News President Roger Ailes sounds familiar, it should. He was a veteran of both the Nixon and Regan campaigns and was responsible for George H. Bush’s media strategy in the 1988 presidential race. He helped turn the former Vice-President’s double digit deficit in the polls into a win. Fellow Bush aide Lee Atwater once described Ailes as having two speeds – attack and destroy. Following his stint as media specialist for the elder Bush, he went on to produce the short lived Rush Limbaugh tv-show before landing at Fox.

Fox uses the new idea of “news commentary” rather than traditional investigative journalism. The Columbia University School of Journalism and the Pew Charitable Trust conducted a study of TV news networks in 2004 called the Project for Excellence in Journalism. This study covered news reporting and viewer numbers for all of the major news networks. A non-partisan conducted the study to track trends in journalism and viewers methods for accessing the news. While the study showed the number of people tuning in to watch Fox’s nightly broadcast was up 53% over the previous year, the numbers for the quality of the news were not as optimistic. The study found that the War in Iraq had resulted in an increase of interest in all the news channels, with Fox seeing the greatest bump. The platform of news commentary rather than news reporting allows a broadcast to concentrate on a small core group of stories so the stories can be repeated throughout the day. This means small updates each day to this core group rather than building new stories. Then, the anchors provide their own commentary (opinions) on the issue as opposed to providing the details and allowing the viewers to form their own opinion. It is this segment of news reporting that Fox places their greatest emphasis. The study found that Fox uses their in-house panel of “experts” to provide commentary at twice the rate other networks use news commentary. What the public ends up getting then is the sensationalism and slanted views of these commentators. With CEO Ailes’s past history the slant is evident in the reporting. The bulk of Fox news stories are political in nature with many national issues being ignored because there is no political spin to add.

On January 27, 2006 Fox reporter Neil Cavuto of the show Your World ran a segment on the up coming trial of former Enron CEO Ken Lay on charges of defrauding his employees and stockholders. Cavuto opened the reporting stating “Ken Lay, crucified in the press over Enron’s collapse. Aren’t ya innocent until proven guilty?” That is funny, because on January 30, 2006 on the same show Neil Cavuto ran a segment on the report that Ford Motor Company was closing 14 plants and laying off 30,000 workers. On that show Cavuto stated, “American auto makers are trying to get in on the road to recovery ….. so what if the unthinkable happens and America never, ever gets its mojo back in motor vehicles? Is that such a big deal?” The same guys who feels sorry for poor Ken Lay whose golden parachute landed him safety with millions while his workers saw their lives savings evaporate doesn’t see the big deal with 30,000 auto workers losing their jobs. Jane Skinner of Fox’s Studio B reported on the same day that, “Ford’s stock was up after the restructuring and was receiving a smooth ride on Wall Street.” She then added this was a nice bounce back after Fridays stunning sell off that sent the Dow south by more than 200 points.” Again, it appears to be ok for thousands of hard working Americans to lose their jobs as long as Wall Street sees a bounce. We must remember that the 30,000 Ford workers losing their jobs are not long time Bush family friends like Ken Lay and Fox News CEO Roger Ailes are.

Following the Florida recount of the votes in the 2000 election, Republican Senator Trent Lott stated, “If it hadn’t been for Fox, I don’t know what I’d done for the news.” This from the same elected representative who stated in 2002 that “In 1948 my state was proud to have voted for Strom Thurmond’s segregationist ticket. If the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years either.” Those remarks led to Lott being removed as Majority Leader in the Senate.

One man’s truth is another man’s lie and fair and balanced must be that – fair and balanced. It is laughable to think that Fox News lives up to their slogan “we report and you decide.” If you take the information that Fox “spins” each night as truth, then the joke could be on you.