Blog prompt #9

Several times in class we’ve discussed the issues of fairness and balance as they relate to science journalism.  Interestingly, the catch phrase of Fox News is “fair and balanced.”  However, a recent study (click here for a summary) suggests that exclusive Fox News viewers know less about certain issues than those who watch only CNN or “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”  In fact, people who watched no news outperformed those who watched Fox News.  Does this mean that “fairness and balance” leads to a misinformed audience OR that Fox News viewers are less informed than others because their source of information is not “fair and balanced” but rather has different goals OR might it mean something entirely different?  How might the goals of a media outlet affect their audience’s knowledge?

First off, there is a paramount, obvious problem with the idea that those who don't watch fox news being better informed than those who do. Those people who dont specifically "watch" any news are most likely people who get the majority of their information about the news and current happenings in the world from the internet. Fox news is a news network, which has the inherent problem that they physically cannot cover everything that happens in the world in the span of 24 hours that they have to broadcast. Especially because once you consider actual broadcast time, they have on the order of 2-3 hours in a given day to be able to broadcast everything that happens. They can fit five to six major stories into the hour they have, maybe four or five more minor events or stories. They have other programs on at any given time than the news. Sometimes something especially pertinent or newsworthy will break and overshadow everything else, but usually not. The internet, on the other hand, has millions of people posting on events at any given time as well as ALL of the major news networks running their own sites, blogs, stringers, clips, and the like. And thats not even including all that ends up on youtube, video sites, and other miscellaneous places. 

Fox may be Fair and Balanced in what they do end up reporting, but they simply dont have time to cover everything. So even if they do cover things in a balanced light, the things they cover are more likely to be ones that follow and forward their ends, goals, and ideals. Mostly, people being less informed than those who dont watch the news at all is a symptom of people attempting to get all their information from a single source, when theres too much going on for a single source to adequately report. The goals of the media outlet affect what they actually present, which in turn affects the audiences knowledge especially. If the outlet decides not to report on something, or simply not to report everything about it, then everything they know is compromised. People with different sources of news have completely different frames of reference, because two different networks arent going to phrase things exactly the same, and are going to give different emphases for their viewers to take in. Its not a matter of unbalanced or unfair, its a matter of time available versus content happening.