Comparing Fox News with another American news network proved somewhat difficult because America’s two other largest news channels are CNN and NBC. Like Fox News, CNN is also owned by a huge media conglomerate, Time Warner. The same story goes with NBC news which is owned by the giant corporation, General Electric. Fox News, CNN and NBC news each had very similar stories and presentations when it came to broadcasts about Nadya Suleman.
Therefore I wanted to compare Fox News to a slightly smaller news source, CBS News. CBS was once merged with the media conglomerate Viacom however the two companies split in 2006 (CBS, Viacom Formally Split, CBS News, 2006, n.p.). Although the organisation CBS has many media outlets, these media outlets are a network of related television and radio stations, as well as some publishing companies (CJR's guide to what the major media companies own, Columbia Journalism Review, 2008, n.p.). Therefore CBS is not really an organisation which has many different, unrelated assets like News Corp, making these two organisations quite different.
I chose to use the Fox News and the CBS News websites in order to view past video broadcasts about Nadya Suleman and compare them. In this comparison I will start by looking at what videos were available on the websites.
On Fox News, the video broadcasts about Nadya Suleman or octomom available were:
• What Rosie O’Donnell thinks about octomom
• What author Ann Coulter thinks about octomom
• Nanny agencies offering to help octomom
• Octomom’s filmed argument with her mother broadcasted online
• Octomom’s 911 “I’m going to kill myself” call
• Octomom could lose her babies to the hospital’s custody
• A psychologist and a therapist’s opinions about the situation
• Life and Style magazine editor’s opinion about the situation
• Whether or not octomom gave her son a black eye
(Top Videos, Fox News, 2009, n.p.)
CBS News on the other hand, had some similar stories yet some quite different ones:
• Legislation to regulate fertility clinics
• Octomom’s 911 call
• Exclusive interviews with Nadya Suleman’s mother, Angela Suleman
• Fired nanny speaking out
• The Suleman home facing foreclosure
(Video, CBS News, 2009, n.p.)
In comparing these two media outlets, looking at what sort of video broadcasts about Nadya Suleman were available on the websites, it came across as though Fox News definitely had a particular point of view; that Nadya Suleman did the wrong thing. Also much of Fox News seems to be based on different opinions of people who tend to feel the same way, for example I could not find any stories which blamed the government’s legislation regarding fertility clinic policies. This starts to prove that Fox News is bias.
CBS on the other hand appeared more unbiased; they had the story about the fertility clinic legislation, as well as the exclusive interviews with Angela Suleman about several different topics. These interviews were also unbiased as they covered Nadya’s mistakes, but Angela also spoke of the fact that Nadya is a wonderful mother.
Next I want to compare the quality of news that these channels broadcast news and one of the things that was most obvious to me was the fact that Fox News seems to have poorer quality sources of information than CBS News. For example, with news about Nadya Suleman, although Fox had some interviews with topic related people such as a psychologist and the therapist, most of their interviews (which can appear more like gossip chats) were, in my opinion, with non credible sources such as Rosie O’Donnell, an author, and the editor of a style magazine. Although it’s a controversial topic which does cause a lot of debate, it seems as though Fox’s coverage of octomom mainly consists of gossip/opinion sessions rather than actual news. CBS on the other hand seemed to have more newsworthy stories such as the interviews with Angela Suleman and the news about fertility clinic legislation.
Kauffman (2004, n.p.) writes that
“Fox News uses the ‘talking head’ format for 83% of its evening broadcasts. The network can choose its own ‘experts’ to comment on the news. Usually, these experts hold an opinion in line with the network's pro-Republican Party bias. Though ‘liberal’ or Democratic Party representatives may also appear as talking heads, they are always outnumbered by speakers holding the Fox News viewpoint. The majority of experts or interviewees on the Fox News Channel are in line with the network's views”.
Kauffman also makes the entertaining statement that a “Fox News Channel regular is mentally unstable columnist Ann Coulter… [who’s] appearances on the Fox News Channel are great theater, but devoid of reality” (2004, n.p.).
I also found it interesting that Fox News had quite a lot of borrowed footage. For example, one of their broadcasts was about NBC’s interview with Nadya Suleman. Fox’s segment was named ‘Fox and Friends’ because the broadcast was about their friend NBC’s footage. Fox’s broadcast of octomom fighting with her mother Angela was also not their own footage but taken from radar.com, where all of the news channels got it from.
Fox’s video broadcasts about octomom were mainly Fox reporters talking to others about the issue, but not those involved in the situation. While CBS and Fox both had interviews with the nannies of the octomom, CBS news on the other hand had the exclusive interviews with Angela Suleman and everything was their own footage.
That brings me to another factor about the quality of Fox News, most of the interviews on the channel are via live video and there are very little real face to face interviews, unlike CBS which has many face to face interviews as mentioned above. For example when Fox interview the Angels in Waiting nanny service spokesperson she is there via live satellite, in an interview where she is offering the octomom help. However when CBS interview the same women and another nanny, they are there in the studio in person, this time talking about how Nadya Suleman no longer wanted the nannies.
Kaufman (2004, n.p.) writes that the Fox News channel has become so popular because it’s entertaining. The channel is “colorful, positive and engaging with good-looking anchors and an up-beat style… [using] flashy graphics and triumphant music to punctuate its programs”.
I found this to be true when studying Fox’s presentation. All broadcasts involve a spinning Fox News logo in the corner of the screen, a music introduction for each segment, a flashy segment name and the title of the broadcast in a banner across the bottom of the screen in which the text often changes and constantly glistens to remind you of what you’re watching. Not to mention the bright changing backgrounds behind the news images.
Kauffman (2004, n.p.) also points out the interesting fact that
“the Fox News channel uses patriotism to sell its newscasts. With a digitized American flag constantly flying in the upper left corner of the screen, Fox News always places the United States in the positive light. The network's intention is to make the viewer feel patriotic for watching the network. The Fox News TV screen is filled with red, white and blue in both the text and backdrops”.
CBS on the other hand has more classy features in my opinion. CBS does use the broadcast title banner but it is not as annoying as the Fox News banner. Also a lot of Fox News reporters are featured in front of news room tv screens and flash to various news photos etc but in CBS news, most of their broadcasts start with a lot of good quality video footage, often with a reporter at the scene and their voice behind the footage. It’s fair to say that CBS get much more time to prepare these sort of things as they are not a 24 hour network like Fox News, however CBS definitely appears as a much higher quality news channel because of it.
Kauffman (2004, n.p.) also writes that Fox use some interesting methods to mutate the news, such as leaving out important facts, repeating certain words or names to really emphasise their angle on the issue, using the most unflattering images and also warping statistics so things sound different. For example when Fox reported how many U.S. soldiers had died in Iraq they did not compare the number with anything else like how many soldiers were there, creating unrealistic data.
Also, just to let know you, while studying these video broadcasts on these news channel websites, I also had Fox News on the tv and every so often I would look to see what they were broadcasting and yet again there were the colourful, flashy different segments with some strange photos shown here and there. There was often several reporters laughing together at a panel and one time I looked at the tv and the Fox News team were looking at different pieces of fashion, very important indeed.
Check out Fox News videos at http://www.foxnews.com/video/ and search for octomom
Check out CBS News videos at
http://search.cbsnews.com/?q=nadya+suleman&x=0&y=0&num=10&type=Videos&newsvideo=1&offset=0