It continues to boggle my mind how people can take O'Reilly seriously despite his numerous shows of extreme bias regarding political issues. He's proven time and time again to have (at least on his show) an incredible far right viewpoint on issues, and his criticism of the Obama campaign and administration prove no different.
The piece regarding Obama's unfair media advantage is another subject where this is clearly visible. The O'Reilly factor is seen as particularly geared towards a specific type of audience: older, white and Republican. This concept, added to the fact that FOX and most FOX news programs can also be seen as heavily slanted to reflect the Republican party's views, makes it easy to put out a piece about unfair media advantage through other networks (which viewers of FOX would peg as Democratic-biased - which wouldn't be completely untrue) and helps sway audience opinion against Obama. I think it's hilarious that next to the video, O'Reilly's slogan is "No party lines, no distortion, no spin political coverage," as it's utter bologna.
I disagree with the piece. As Obama has received unfavorable coverage throughout his administration from all networks. FOX News is also in on it, with pieces like this claiming to try and reveal bias, but using it as an opportunity to paint Obama in a negative light by making it seem like the reason he's viewed positively is ONLY because of liberal bias. In turn, the piece also paints itself as the only fair network, and with a piece like this their intention seems to be to sway public opinion against the "favorable" candidate.
Sidenote: I used to work at a marine base in my hometown during election time and I cannot count the times that I'd been recounted O'Reilly quotes on Obama that were completely untrue and completely biased against our now President.
I do agree that the mud slinging is going to get incredibly intense this time around, so in a way I am thankful for a right-biased organization like FOX. The public needs to see all sides of the story, and though all sides can be seen as biased the audience needs to be able to look at all viewpoints in order to make their decisions on who to back. It's going to get very interesting.
In regards to Cable News coverage this past week, I think the most prominent example can be the Amanda Knoxx story.
She was recently acquitted of the murder of her roommate in Italy. She had been incarcerated for about 4 years before being released this week on account of experts deeming the evidence used against her lacking. The media had a field day with the story.
From what I gathered, all major news outlets made the coverage of the Knox story their bread and butter for the week. I don't think I was able to tune into any of the cable news channels without some sort of update, expert interview, family comment or press conference filling the screen. If the coverage wasn't directly blatant, there was also a slight mention, a rolling ticker or announcement of "coming up next in the Amanda Knox saga."
Many articles have popped up regarding the coverage, and I feel those can be correlated with some of the articles linked on our course module. As with the first reading, in which the point that Jautz had juiced the ratings of his network by making it more tabloid driven, this seems to be the case with major networks and Amanda Knox. I think it's a fairly successful and effective model in cases where you have a human face to an issue, it makes people invested in the outcome (and this story seems to be proof of that).
From what I could gather, all networks covered the Knox case adamantly. Nevertheless, I spend more time on news sites websites than I do their channel, so I was also able to see to what degree it was covered online. FOX NEWS had a ticker indicating live feed of the verdict and a huge headline and photo on the main page. Likewise MSNBC, CNN and CBS also littered their main page with coverage of the trial and her release.
I think it's more indicative of the actual story than the network's biases that the coverage played out like this, as it seems EVERYONE wanted to know what happens. There's that one motto that if you have a pretty, white female missing, then it's nationwide news. This time, it seems that the feeling extends to being released from prison as well.
