To be fair, that map is a really old f-up. Outside of all the issues with Fox, I just wonder what process ends up with a map like that? After all, the digital world is full of labeled maps. Maybe an intellectual rights thing?

To be balanced, that map is really f'-ed up. What process ends up with a map like that? It *can't* be an intellectual property issue (we're dealing with Fox /snide). Seriously. It's an editorial oversight. INHO, one made by a very long habitual focus on the region at the map's center, with the country name du jour applied to the label. Generously, it's laziness, an organizational bias toward action at the expense of fact checking rigor. But that's what they're about. I won't bother with the less generous assessments.

Well, either that or Steve the graphics intern fucked it up.

Of course Steve the graphics intern screwed it up. People make mistakes. It's what we do.

You need to have a system in place to scrutinize everything. Double check everything by a fresh pair of eyes. It's seriously a tone set by management. Fox didn't have a second fresh set of eyes looking at that graphic. Whoever "double checked" Steve's work is the one who deserves the blame.

Mm, but even double and triple-checked items retain a certain amount of errors, which is one reason it's important to follow a broad range of news sources to truly understand events.

We would have to look at the overall rate of error in not just graphics, but headlines, the crawl, the DJIA and everything else broadcast 24x7 to make a determination of whether this single screen shot is indicative of a high overall rate of error.*

Who here has watched Fox News regularly enough to make that determination?

Who here is ready to make the call while admitting not watching? (Biggie you may step forward)


*actually, there is another way to know: if this shot is put forward as an egregious example of the worst of Fox News, that would be an indicator that Fox News is not that bad.

Who here is willing to make fun of Fox for its stupid error even though we make stupid errors all the time?

*Raises hand*

I posted it because it is a funny fuckup.

If we want to balance the abuse, NPR annoyed me in the fair and balanced department this week when Terry Gross presented Bob Spitzer as a writer of nuanced books about gun policy instead of a hardcore left-winger whose college classroom I was warned to avoid due to my libertarian tendencies and his willingness to award dissent with gpa crushing grades... but this is not (yet) a gun control thread.

I accept your call-out.

I don't watch Fox News. I have seen it, I have seen enough of it to have formed my opinion. In my opinion, they're much more about excitement and incitement than they are about anything else, especially including News. It is info-tainment, with the accent on the -tainment.

Fox and I have different working opinions of that word, News. I consider News to be facts (and opinions) about current events, about things that are happening that I don't know about, or don't know the newest or nuanced details about. What I get from Fox is much more sizzle than steak. I *especially* dislike their presentation style that slyly colors their presentation of facts with emotionally effective adjectives, clearly designed to persuade. I don't want to be fucking persuaded by my newscaster. Just tell me what happened. I also like to hear what it means, because I don't have expertise in every area, not even many areas. But don't tell me how to react or how to feel. How I respond is *my* business.

To add injury to this kind of insult, I've seen enough instances where opinion was presented as fact to seriously degrade their credibility. I find this offensive. Making shit up and presenting it on a network called Fox *NEWS* chaps my ass. They're effective, and I give them full credit for that. They have a lot of viewers (credit to their attractiveness) and a lot of believers (credit to minimally critical thinking habits of their viewers). But they're not a trusted reliable source of good factual information offered with a minimum of bias.

ALL "news" is biased. Some you can tell, some you can't.

If you can't, it means you share the bias. That's all it is.

Lest We Forget:

Dan Rather, the most trusted "news" man of the last decade, announced at the top of "60 Minutes", America's most trusted "news" program, two months before the election, that they had proof that George W. Bush was AWOL from the National Guard.

This proof was, unmistakably, a modern Microsoft Word document that they alleged came from a 1960s era typewriter.

But hey Fox News fucked up a label on a map, so, fuck them.

Lest we also forget. The primary bias of all news organizations has nothing to do with politics. The primary bias of news organizations is to make money. I see the Rather thing more as hoopla than political bias. Not that that makes it any better.

I also don't see anyone here particularly busting Foxes balls over this. It's a stupid mistake and people are going to point and laugh at stupid mistakes.

No, UT. News is not biased. News is just news. The modern presentation of news is biased, sure. And all the presentations have some kind of bias, and some amount of bias, agreed. Fox's bias is not my bias, and so it is obvious to me. Fox's bias is considerable, so it is obvious to everyone.



As for "fuck Fox", ... your words. Not mine. I said in all my posts here that the map represents a mistake. an oversight. this item by itself is not fuck-worthy. I did allow that my opinion of Fox as a news outfit is low. and although you pointed out that Dan Rather also made a mistake, I notice you didn't take issue with any of my assessments of Fox's style. Dan Rather's actions don't justify Fox's--you're not really trying to say that, are you? ABC (it was ABC, wasn't it? anywhooo) they got conned and went with it. they thought they had a scoop and went with it. I doubt Steve the Graphics Intern is trying to pull one over on Fox News, nor is he trying to rewrite geopolitical history with this successful and revealed submission of factually incorrect information.

I like what you said earlier about stuff needing to be double and triple checked, and that it still can be wrong. Heck. That's how we here know that this screenshot is wrong. We all checked it. We all checked it. It clearly got overlooked at Fox by ... by, well, everybody who looked at it. I don't think Fox was trying to convince me that Iraq is Egypt. but they do try to do that kind of thing enough that I have relegated them to advocate status. You're right, all the presentations have some kind of bias, and I strain to identify the motivations behind the other stories and sources I take in. Fox gets whacked by me for the strength of their bias and their feigned innocence about it.

the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch too, and there's a similar bias. The direction is similar but the intensity is not close. And the acknowledgment is not close. Thererfore, I trust WSJ for NEWS far far more than I do Fox.

No, I don't take issue with your assessments, although I think many people hate the FN opinion shows so deeply that they apply their filter to the regular news hours.

When I was watching cable for news I would turn on CNN, wait for something I believed was biased, and then switch to FN and do the same. The most educational moments were those where I switched and the other channel was covering the same news story, often with the same narrative.

We all make mistakes. But that one is equivalent to looking at a naked man and naked woman. And mislabeling them.

Funny - and so sad.

No, not biased. Even Fox News reporters were outside the NO stadium and convention center. Reporting that no food or water had been provided for three days. The Fox News anchorman literally mocked them. Denied that could be happening. We all know no food or water was delivered for four days. But White House spin on day three was that did not happen.

Why did Fox's anchor deny reality when all other news services were reporting a fact that contradicted White House spin? Fair and Balanced.

FN is the only news service that so reminds me of Radio Moscow in the 1960s.

Comment from someone who flew out of Cairo yesterday.

The city is in disarray but it isn't actually as violent as you might think from the news. Keep in mind that it is a city of anywhere between 16 and 32 million depending on the census and definition of city area. What I mean is that much of the city is unaffected directly by protesters and looting and fighting are less common that the news seems to be making out. That said, it is a pretty revolutionary moment. Keep in mind that any protest a fraciton of this size was heretofore unheard of for over thirty years, let alone crowds of this magnitude that have lasted for 8 days now.

Fox has aired incorrect information many times. For instance, when the Republican Florida Representative (Foley?) was caught sex-texting underage male congressional pages, he was identified as a Democrat. Whether these are innocent mistakes or not is questionable because of their bias. Just watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report - you'll see lots of examples.

I can think of only a couple times where the "mainstream media" has done the same type of thing: Candra Levy/Gary Condit, The Pickup or SUV that was purposely blown up, and the Dan Rather incident that you mentioned. There doesn't seem to be a consistent bias among these examples, considering that Condit was a Democrat.