CNN, Fox have more fact-based reporting than MSNBC

What's bad for the goose is bad for the gander... Looks like what Fox started, others will emulate, with consumers the losers.

I saw that story and the provocative title, and the devil is in the details--footnote 1 reads:

An individual story was considered commentary or opinion if 25% of the time if that story included opinionated statements. Otherwise, the story was coded for being a factual reported piece.

It's not fact vs. fiction like that title leads one to believe, it's straight reporting vs. commentary. It's not "Maddow and O'Reilly are equally truthful" it's "MSNBC has more Maddow-like stuff than FOX News has O'Reilly-like stuff."

Um, Cheeze, that what I said in my title...

Robear wrote:

Um, Cheeze, that what I said in my title...

Right, and that's the problem with that title: the phrase "factual reporting" is misleading. Like I said, if someone says "factual reporting" the natural inclination is to think the opposite of that is "non-factual reporting" not "commentary and opinion."

edit: maybe there's an assumption here that's causing confusion. As I saw it, the complaint about Fox News was never "oh, it's all insightful conservative commentary that deals with the facts honestly in making a conservative case on the issue that engages the audience's intellect." Commentary and opinion is not necessarily bad; conversely, 'straight reporting' is not necessarily good: just because there's no overt, explicit commentary or opinion, that doesn't mean the facts aren't being manipulated.

Goose and gander, this isn't the right sauce. The big criticism wasn't that Fox was full of commentary and opinion, it's that it was full of misleading news, whatever you want to 'code' it.

This whole thing is confusing. In fact the quoted sentence doesn't even make logical sense in English.

An individual story was considered commentary or opinion if 25% of the time if that story included opinionated statements. Otherwise, the story was coded for being a factual reported piece.

Is it meant to read:

An individual story was considered commentary or opinion if 25% of the time that story included opinionated statements.

?

Or maybe:

An individual story was considered commentary or opinion if 25% of the content of that story was opinionated statements.

That really is messy. How can a story have more than "one time"?

I agree with Cheezepavillion's point that when someone reads "fact" they think "accurate" as opposed to a dry reporting format.

I'm with Cheeze on this. I'm fully aware that MSNBC is primarily analysis and commentary on the news, not straight news coverage. But it's also more honest than doing a news show that slants the coverage. MSNBC is pretty darn upfront with the fact that what they air is a liberal take on the news of the day. And there is a place for that.

The title of the thread seems to imply, not that Robear meant it this way, that Fox is more truthful than MSNBC. Obviously that is not what is being measured.

Jayhawker wrote:

The title of the thread seems to imply, not that Robear meant it this way, that Fox is more truthful than MSNBC. Obviously that is not what is being measured.

Yeah, in case it wasn't clear in my earlier comments, that title (or some close variant of it) is the way it's being reported on a lot of internet sites.

That's why I phrased it the way I did. Perhaps the edit is better?

CNN, Fox air more news coverage versus analysis than MSNBC.

Yeah, to me the opposite of "fact-based" would be "lie-based", not "opinionated".

Jayhawker wrote:

CNN, Fox air more news coverage versus analysis than MSNBC.

I think that's the optimum headline.

bnpederson wrote:

Yeah, to me the opposite of "fact-based" would be "lie-based", not "opinionated".

Yup!

Other than that, it's sort of a non-story, isn't it? I mean, you take away the controversy and this isn't even really a P&C thread anymore! :p

"Facts" and "Lies" are not opposites, really, as is often noted by humorists. But "Facts" and "Opinions" definitely are.

But in any case, the dichotomy is laid out in the article.

Also, you can take that for good or ill. Fox has limited editorial content, but they also have a lot of pieces where one person is telling you what another person wrote on.

They had on this "author" who was mostly taking excerpted quotes from scholarly articles and books, and piecing them back together like some Davinci code. And then selling it as a researched text. When the author was put to gentle questioning about some controversial parts of the book, she retreated to "well I did not do the research, it speaks for itself."