International News Broadcasters

So i am writing this paper, comparing the different broadcasters, how they present the news, the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and Fox News. My book has pretty good coverage of the first three, so i think i'll manage that bit, but if u have any interesting views on Fox News, and i am sure u do because well, they are the odd one right, there is a reason they are left out of my textbook  , but yeah, so if u have any views in Fox News i'd be interested in reading them, especially if u compare them to e.g. the BBC  (i know a bit about fox news though, so i am not totally blank on this  )

right now i am collecting facts, but i'll start writing the text as soon as i have read about them and stuff

If you ask me, I wouldn't put CNN any higher than Fox. They're both pretty much par for the course when it comes to American 24 hour news entities.

Well, Fox News motto is "fair and balanced" and they're almost the complete opposite of that. From the impression I've gottten they are the quintessential political news service. Mixing politics with news is more normal in America though, and I think MSNBC is sometimes refered to as the liberal counterweight to Fox News. And I do think they at least have some seperation between actual news reporting and commentary. That's an important seperation generally in news.

I would say the BBC is almost the polar opposite, as they pride themselves on their unbiased news reporting. Wether that is an ideal or a reality is of course a question though. Petty has been critisising the BBC a bit in the Freedom thread for what he feels is a slight bias in the reporting of the Scottish independence issue.

But the Americans can probably give you a more in depth view.

American 24 hour cable news services don't really make a distinction between reporting news and punditry. Almost all of their shows are hosted by pundits, whose priority is putting their own opinion out there rather than reporting on the facts. FOX News is generally considered the worst offender in this. The perspective endorsed by their reporters is generally far-right (by European standards, just right-wing by American standards), nationalist, and extremely hostile to anything they brand as "socialism". There was a widely-circulated study a couple years ago that found that FOX News viewers are the least informed of any group of news viewers in the country, including those who don't watch any news at all. The most informed were listeners of NPR, National Public Radio, which is largely government-sponsored, and which FOX has argued for shutting down because they don't like government spending like that.

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/

You can't talk about FOX News without talking about Rodger Ailes,  a Republican political strategist who almost single-handedly reinvented TV news for maximum ratings and political spin. Here's one quote:

Ailes is credited with the "Orchestra Pit Theory" regarding sensationalist political coverage in the news media, which originated with his quip:

    If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, 'I have a solution to the Middle East problem,' and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?

Eldorion wrote:American 24 hour cable news services don't really make a distinction between reporting news and punditry.  Almost all of their shows are hosted by pundits, whose priority is putting their own opinion out there rather than reporting on the facts.  FOX News is generally considered the worst offender in this.  The perspective endorsed by their reporters is generally far-right (by European standards, just right-wing by American standards), nationalist, and extremely hostile to anything they brand as "socialism".  There was a widely-circulated study a couple years ago that found that FOX News viewers are the least informed of any group of news viewers in the country, including those who don't watch any news at all.  The most informed were listeners of NPR, National Public Radio, which is largely government-sponsored, and which FOX has argued for shutting down because they don't like government spending like that.

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/

the numbers in there were rather contradictory.

I tried watching FOX news a long while back. I have stopped.

It is like watching some historical video about indoctrination. They plaster 'Fair and balanced' over every spare few seconds in an effort to force people to actually believe it. The pundits pretty much spend their time agreeing with each other and I don't think they actually have any of their own opinions.... but if one did they would make a slot on the o'reilly factor with him taking up 90% of the time slandering and discrediting his 'guest' without ever having a discussion.

If you want news, don't bother with FOX.

I find it interesting that you're saying there's no real seperation between the pundits and the reporters in American 24 hour news, Eldo. Here that's a very strict separation. Though commentators seem to play a larger and larger role in news reporting here as well.

I'm not really sure I have all that much faith in people who are being paid to have opinions. Particularily when you hire a second group that's not allowed to.

Bluebottle wrote:I find it interesting that you're saying there's no real seperation between the pundits and the reporters in American 24 hour news, Eldo. Here that's a very strict separation. Though commentators seem to play a larger and larger role in news reporting here as well.

I'm not really sure I have all that much faith in people who are being paid to have opinions. Particularily when you hire a second group that's not allowed to.

Just to be clear, I dislike the punditification of American news and I think it's had a very negative impact on both the news media and on society as a whole.  But I'm not clear on how one could stop that since pundits are popular (for understandable reasons: people like having their preconceptions reaffirmed).  Better funding for public broadcasting (assuming they'd have rules about objective reporting) would probably be a good first step, but I don't think that's likely to happen.

"People like having their preconceptions reaffirmed."

Yeah, I think that strikes well at the heart of the matter.   

It can probably also be seen as a symptom of the rolling 24-hour nature of news these days, as Petty referenced above. You need something to fill those countless hours with.

That, and it's simply cheaper to make facts up than than to send an army of reporters out into the real world to track them down like they used to.

And I guess the billion dollar question is, who needs 24 hour news anyway?

News channels   

Obviously.   Anyone else?

is it "the BBC are" or "the BBC is"?

In American English it would be "the BBC is", but in British English it would (usually) be "the BBC are". The same is true for all collective nouns.

Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences#Formal_and_notional_agreement

ok, then i'll be using are thanx ^^

Glad to help.

Would be 'are' anyway as BBC would be plural, it's not a single entity. You have BBC England/Scotland/NI and Wales as well as BBC Worldwide, the distribution arm but which for reasons of the main BBC being a public body is a separate business. But they are also the BBC.

hm.. ok.

also, anyone care to read through my paper before i hand it in? tips and shit, mainly grammar  

pm me if you like Norc. Unless its like 20 pages long or something.

nah,two  thanx  i'll just write the conlusion.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Would be 'are' anyway as BBC would be plural, it's not a single entity. You have BBC England/Scotland/NI and Wales as well as BBC Worldwide, the distribution arm but which for reasons of the main BBC being a public body is a separate business. But they are also the BBC.

All of the regional channels are still part of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It'd only be plural if you're referring to the various channels but not the corporate body that oversees them.

Is the BBC a collective noun, I wonder.

A BBC of BBCs?