Conservative Historian/Economist: "How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics"

[Statistikhengst]

This thread should be especially interesting for Conservatives to read.

The Historian/Economist's name:

Bruce Bartlett (photo source)​

Let's start with his bio:

Bruce Bartlett - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Bruce Reeves Bartlett (October 11, 1951) is an American historian whose area of expertise is supply-side economics. He served as a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and as a Treasury official under George H. W. Bush.

Bartlett has written several books and magazine articles critical of the administration of George W. Bush, whose economic policies he believes significantly depart from traditional conservative principles.

There is a lot more at his WIKI worth reading.

And now, to his newest paper:

Here is the ABSTRACT, here is the DOWNLOAD link and here is the direct .pdf-in-browser link.
The site, Social Science Research Network, may ask you to activate a free account, as do many .pdf-reader sites.


The .pdf is 18 pages long and it has 64 research links (electronic footnotes) attached to it.

The paper is highly critical of FOX news, not because it is a strongly conservative leaning news-outlet, but because, in Bartlett's opinion, it has pretty much taken control of the GOP.

Bartlett goes through the historical advent of Conservative media, also in radio.

Here is the text from the ABSTRACT:

The creation of Fox News in 1996 was an event of deep, yet unappreciated, political and historical importance. For the first time, there was a news source available virtually everywhere in the United States, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with a conservative tilt. Finally, conservatives did not have to seek out bits of news favorable to their point of view in liberal publications or in small magazines and newsletters. Like someone dying of thirst in the desert, conservatives drank heavily from the Fox waters. Soon, it became the dominant – and in many cases, virtually the only – major news source for millions of Americans. This has had profound political implications that are only starting to be appreciated. Indeed, it can almost be called self-brainwashing – many conservatives now refuse to even listen to any news or opinion not vetted through Fox, and to believe whatever appears on it as the gospel truth.

You can tell from his choice of words that he is a Conservative and believes very much that, up to the advent of Rush Limbaugh's talk radio circuit and FOX NEWS, the media had a very strong Liberal media bias, and he lays out a couple of practical reasons why, for instance, on pages 2-3, where is talks about print newspapers and the tendency toward ideological competition between two large newspapers in any one given city.

On pages 4-5, he discusses the rise of Conservative talk radio, with Rush Limbaugh as the leading figure in the movement.

On pages 6-7, he gives the most current data on what kind of audience trusts FOX News the most.

On pages 9-10, he lists other studies that show clearly that FOX has used certain techniques in reporting to show a decidedly right-wing tilt:

Buoyed by its success as an explicitly conservative network, it appears that right-wing bias, including inaccurate reporting, became commonplace on Fox. For example:

• A study of network coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in 2005 found that Fox was alone in supporting the Bush administration during a period when the wars were going badly by any objective standard. It concluded that “scholars should consider Fox as alternative, rather than mainstream, media.”32

• Fox instructed its on-air talent to avoid using the term “public option” when discussing health reform and are required to say that global warming is merely a theory “based on data that critics have called into question.”33

• A 2010 study found that Fox actively spread rumors and inaccurate information about a proposed mosque planned for lower Manhattan.34

• A 2012 study found that Fox takes a dismissive tone toward climate change and interviews a much larger number of doubters than believers. Fox viewers are much more likely to be skeptical of global warming.35 A 2014 study found that 72 percent of references to climate change on Fox in 2013 were misleading.36

• Fox consistently downplays gun violence.37

Fox’s bias is so bad that even some conservatives can’t stomach it. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress, has said, “There are certain shows on Fox I can’t watch. Because they’re totally not fair and totally not balanced.”38 And Fox’s slipshod handling of facts was even acknowledged by Newt Gingrich during the 2012 campaign. “One of the real changes that comes when you start running for President – as opposed to being an analyst on Fox – is I have to actually know what I'm talking about,” he said. “It's a severe limitation,” Gingrich added.39 It is widely known among public relations professionals that Fox has an “enemies list” of people who are not permitted to be interviewed on the network.

The numbers at the ends of sentences in the above quote are footnote numbers, all linked in the .pdf.

On pages 11-15, he produces data, in table-format, from a number of studies that show across the board that a great many people are seriously misinformed by the information provided on FOX.

The studies include:

-Iraq misperceptions, including WMDs
-the ACA, also known as Obamacare
-discrimination against Whites
-attitudes toward Muslims
-Pres. Obama's status as a US citizen

I want to especially point to the one study on Obama's status as a US-Citizen:

FOX is the only news-outlet of the four studied where less than a majority of viewers say that the statement "President Obama is not legally a citizen of the United States" is NOT true. In sum-total, according to Farleigh Dickinson, 60% of Fox viewers think that Obama is not legally a citizen.



The conclusion to his write-up:

Although this arrangement unquestionably aids Republicans in winning elections and votes in Congress, it is not without its downsides. One is that Fox now exercises such powerful control over the GOP that it has become the party’s kingmaker in presidential primaries.56 Indeed, during the 2012 election cycle, a number of aspirants for the Republican nomination had been paid Fox commentators, including Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee.57 And woe to the Republican who runs afoul of Fox’s top brass or ignores their advice, as Mitt Romney did on one occasion in 2012.58 Fox is now so important in GOP primaries that candidates must put aside pressing campaign concerns when summoned to a Fox interview, where any error is magnified within the Republican bubble.59

Gingrich complained that Fox opted in favor of Mitt Romney early on. “I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through,” Gingrich said behind closed doors in April 2012. “In our experience, Callista [Newt’s wife] and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That’s just a fact.”60

It's pretty fair to say that Bartlett is a Conservative in the mold of the great William F. Buckley. He was strongly critical of Bush 43, because he believes that Bush's neo-con tilt led the Republican party astray, a sentiment I have often read from Conservatives here in USMB.

So, I think it would especially behoove those Conservatives, before getting angry or think that I am deliberately trying to demean FOX, to actually READ all of the document.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Download, read, then discuss. If you don't actually read it, then I will dismiss you from discussion immediately.

Let's see how many people can actually engage in a real, adult debate, just for once. This could be fun.

 

[Bleipriester]

Who cares? His second turn is over next year and then he will probably become suicide bomber of the Islamic State.

 

[chikenwing]

BFD

 

[PredFan]

Look, there's no denying that FOX has conservative leanings. They claim that they are Fair and Balanced, they aren't yotally but they are a lot more fair than the other media outlets who don't even try. NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, ate all unabashedly left wing dedicated.

Every time some left wing nutter derides someone for listening to FOX they show their partisan ignorance.

 

[Stephanie]

lol, Notice how everyone to the op is now a "conservative"...
They have tried for years to kill Fox news. And they are still freaking whining over it. Chaps their ass they are the Number One watched news channel. And not all their Pravda DNC propaganda channels like, ABC, NBC, CNN, pmsNBC, etc

they should try and be like this liberal/leftwing pos channel I guess:
snip;
UPDATE: MSNBC Apologizes and Pulls Disgusting Cop-Bashing Video
Posted by Kristinn Taylor on Saturday, May 16, 2015, 7:26 PM
After being called out by The Gateway Pundit, MSNBC took down a video mocking a police officer being dragged from a car by a suspect fleeing the officer.

MSNBC deleted their report but not before The Gateway Pundit saved a screengrab of it…


The video, which was posted Friday night, was removed Saturday afternoon from MSNBC’s Facebook and Twitter accounts within an hour of publication of The Gateway Pundit report.

The video was titled, “Does it count as a police chase if you take the cop along for the ride?”

MSNBC subsequently posted an apology to Twitter, but the statement did not state what precisely was being apologized for, nor was there an apology to the law enforcement community.

all of it here:
UPDATE MSNBC Apologizes and Pulls Disgusting Cop-Bashing Video The Gateway Pundit

 

[blackhawk]

S.S.D.D.