BlogWood: MT Archives

Fox News fair and balanced morning memo

In case anyone missed this, it's a must read from Jim Romenesko's blog. A little inside info from a former Fox News editor:

From MATT GROSS, assistant editor, New York magazine: As a former editor at Foxnews.com -- and therefore clearly a disgruntled ex-employee -- let me just say that the right-wing bias was there in the newsroom, up-front and obvious, from the day a certain executive editor was sent down from the channel to bring us in line with their coverage. His first directive to us: Seek out stories that cater to angry, middle-aged white men who listen to talk radio and yell at their televisions. (Oh, how I'd love to stick quotation marks around what is nearly a direct quote.)

What followed was a dumbing-down of what had been an ambitious and talented news operation. Stories could be no more than 1,000 words, then 800 (I heard it was reduced further after I left, in March 2001). More and more effort was devoted to adapting FNC "scripts" into Web stories, which meant we were essentially correcting the errors of FNC "reporters" who couldn't be bothered to get the facts.

To me, FNC reporters' laziness was the worst part of the bias. It wasn't that they were toeing some political line (though of course they were; see the embarrassing series on property rights from 2000), it was that the facts of a story just didn't matter at all. The idea was to get those viewers out of their seats, screaming at the TV, the politicians, the liberals -- whoever -- simply by running a provocative story.

The bizarre and sad part of this was that, at the Website, most of the reporters, editors, and producers were liberals -- and not only liberals but young, energetic, ambitious, talented journalists. Some of my friends still work there, and some of them no doubt wish they could leave for a better job elsewhere. Why don't they (and why didn't Charles Reina)? Well, despite the Bush administration's clear success in revitalizing the U.S. economy, the job market for journos is still pretty poor, especially if your portfolio is full of badly reported 600-word clunkers. (Sorry, guys.)

But what do I know? I haven't worked there in two and a half years -- I haven't voluntarily watched FNC since then -- so maybe things have changed. But from what Reina wrote, and what I experienced, it doesn't sound like it.