PBS on FNC: Does Fox Have Conservative Bias?

by Brent Baker

Space today does not permit an adequate evaluation of the Tuesday night assessment on PBS’s NewsHour of the three cable news channels. But the premise behind one piece of evidence for how FNC tilts to the right requires immediate exposure: That when FNC features analysis from Eleanor Clift that does not count as delivering a left-of-center perspective.

Like many in the media, the creation of FNC led the NewsHour’s Terence Smith to suddenly discover TV news bias, conservative bias — not anything liberal about ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC or PBS. He pressed FNC’s Brit Hume about whether FNC has “a distinctly conservative slant on the news?”

Smith explained why PBS contracted with an outside expert to assess the cable news channels: “Is Fox's appeal explained by its programming or its politics? To find out, the NewsHour commissioned Andrew Tyndall, the publisher of The Tyndall Report, a newsletter that monitors television news, to do a content analysis of the evening programming on the three cable news networks. He found sharp differences.”

Tyndall succinctly summed up his findings: “CNN is the reporters' network; Fox News Channel is the opinion makers' network; MSNBC is the confused network.”

Later, in outlining how FNC’s selection of guest analysts demonstrates its rightward tilt, Tyndall propounded: “It's interesting that of the panel of six journalists, six print journalists that we saw appearing on that panel during the week we looked at it, three were from explicitly right-wing publications and three were from mainstream publications. None was from an explicitly left-wing publication.”

The posted version of Tyndall’s report further clarifies his finding: “Of the six in-house journalists from the print media, three were from middle-of-the-road publications (Roll Call, Newsweek, Fortune), and three were from explicitly conservative publications (Washington Times, Weekly Standard twice).” For this section of the report:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/cablenews/analysis_interviews.html

Okay, so who are the six? All but one are regulars on Special Report with Brit Hume. Let’s start on the conservative side: From the Washington Times: Bill Sammon; from the Weekly Standard: Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol. And from the “middle-of-the-road publications”: From Roll Call, Morton Kondracke; from Fortune, Jeff Birnbaum; and from Newsweek…Eleanor Clift!

Tyndall reviewed January 21 to 25 and I did some digging and figured out that Clift, who is on the payroll as a “Fox News contributor,” appeared January 22 on FNC’s show then on at 10pm EST, War on Terror, hosted by Laurie Dhue.

So because she works for a “middle-of-the-road publication” she doesn’t count as a proponent of liberal analysis? With mainstream news operations packed with liberals there’s no need to go to “an explicitly left-wing publication” to locate a liberal analyst. Think Margaret Carlson, Al Hunt, Jonathan Alter etc. But if you want a conservative analyst from the print media you have to go to a conservative columnist or staff member of a conservative publication.

For links to Tyndall’s study as well as video and a transcript of the March 5 PBS NewsHour story: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/cablenews/index.html.

(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)