FAIR Blog » Fox Business Network

John Stossel, Free at Last

Peter Hart — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:14:24 +0000

Rupert Murdoch's latest hire John Stossel, speaking at a Michigan college:

I quit ABC a couple weeks ago partly because they didn't like what I was doing. They viewed it as too biased.

Yes, ABC promoted Stossel to 20/20 anchor, gave him regular "Give Me a Break" commentary segments and one-hour, factually challenged primetime specials...all because they didn't like him. It's scary to think what the network would have done if they did like him.

Can Shock Radio Save the Fox Business Network?

Gabriel Voiles — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:16:45 +0000

News Corpse blogger Mark Howard (8/10/09) calls the fact that "industry sources are reporting that Don Imus is in talks with the Fox Business Network to simulcast his Imus in the Morning radio program" a "de facto admission by FBN that they have failed to attract an audience capable of sustaining the network."

Howard sees further evidence of the network's struggles in that "they are approaching their second anniversary and still do not permit Nielsen to publish their ratings." And their rumored acquisition bodes ill for whatever credibility may remain:

Acquiring Imus would be a desperation play for eyeballs. While Imus suffered a devastating blow as a result of his "nappy-headed hos" remarks, losing his top-rated radio program and the MSNBC simulcast, he still has a smaller but significant fan base. However, for a business network to hand over the prime morning hours as the stock market opens to a shock jock with no business credibility tells you that they no longer consider business news their mission. They are grasping for any viewers they can round up.

"Remember," Howard urges, "this is the network that interviewed New York's Naked Cowboy on their first day of broadcasting. They haven’t come very far since then, have they?"

Media Keep Faith in Dow Jones as Oracle

Gabriel Voiles — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:32:30 +0000

Prefacing a Daily Show segment (3/4/09) with his version of current big-media reporting: "Recent opinion polls indicate that six weeks into Barack Obama's administration, the American public thinks they approve of his performance--but it turns out they're wrong," Jon Stewart runs clips of celebrity news figures like Fox's Sean Hannity asking, "How did the market react to this latest liberal spending spree? Well, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped almost 400 points," and of Fox Business Network's Neil Cavuto asking, "The Dow is down more than 1,500 points, nearly 3,000 since Election Day, now is this a vote of no confidence in this administration?" Mocking this common media canard, Stewart even calls the Dow

a real-time cause-and-effect precision barometer of how the president is doing. It's been that way for years. For example--little-known fact--Wall Street hated Ronald Reagan: Look at the numbers the day he got inaugurated. And they hated it when Truman announced we'd won World War II. And, to give you an idea of what a finely tuned measure of America's national mood the Dow is, when the Titanic sunk? Through the roof!

Stewart's take-away moral: "So what seems to be being suggested here is that opinion polls don't matter; the stock market is the only rational, objective indicator of a commander in chief's performance." Read the contrary evidence in FAIR's new Media Advisory: "What the Dow Isn't: Stocks Misused As 'Scorecard' of White House Policy" (3/5/09).

Stimulus Bill Progresses--Cable News Doesn't

Gabriel Voiles — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 11:45:18 +0000

The folks at Think Progress recently brought us "a report showing that, in the debate over the House economic recovery bill on the five cable news networks, Republican members of Congress outnumbered their Democratic counterparts by a ratio of 2 to 1." Now that the legislation "passed the House last week with zero Republican votes, shifting the focus to the Senate," a subsequent survey (2/6/09) finds that "though the venue has changed, the debate on cable has not improved much":

In a new analysis, ThinkProgress has found that Republican lawmakers outnumbered Democratic lawmakers 75 to 41 on cable news interviews by members of Congress (from 6am on Monday 2/2 through 11pm on Thursday 2/5)....

Though the imbalance is already stark, the tilt of the coverage would have been even more lopsided if the analysis had been broken down into whether a lawmaker who appeared on TV was a supporter or a critic of the economic recovery plan. Some of the most frequent Democratic guests this week were outspoken critics of the proposed stimulus plans, such as Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Kent Conrad (D-ND).

Found to be "particularly egregious" this week was CNBC, which "had more than twice as many conservatives, with 14 Republicans and six Democrats. Fox Business was even worse, hosting 20 Republicans for just four Democrats." Listen to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Dean Baker on Stimulus Package" (1/30/09)