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What's Up With Fox News?
by Dale Brown, 2007

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT TheBigFiveOh.com Blog @ Yahoo.Com, Saturday February 10, 2007

As I preach all the time, I think it's important to regularly expose yourself to differing points of view. You need perspective and context to make an informed decision about almost any topic, and the best way to get it is to read and listen to media sources that generally oppose one another.

Perfect example: I watch all three of the major cable news outlets: Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. My favorite is Fox News. But Fox is more business and Wall Street oriented, so when the business shows are on Saturday mornings I'll flip over to one of the others; when MSNBC is doing their "Doc-Blocks" (mostly life-in-prison shows--seen one, seen 'em all), I'll try CNN. And yes, I flip around to watch my favorite "news-babes." Greta Van Susteren...no way. Contessa Brewer...yes! Candy Crowley...are you kidding? Julie Banderas...anytime!

So I was over on MSNBC this morning because I don't watch Fox's stock market shows, and it was time for Sen. Barack Obama's big announcement that he's running for President. MSNBC was covering it like an inauguration, as if Obama had already won the 2008 election! I was quickly tired of the endless praise and genuflecting before Obama's altar by Chris Matthews and his fellow commentators, so I'd flip back and forth between them and Chris Wallace at Fox News.

And I noticed something weird: the image of Barack Obama on Fox News was significantly worse than his image on MSNBC. While the camera image on MSNBC was steady, well balanced, close-up, and sharp, Fox's camera image was terrible--the camera was jumping around as if it was being held by hand or there were hurricane-force winds out there; the color contrast was nearly flat and quite washed-out; the point-of-view was very wide, making Obama look smaller and showing the TelePrompTer screens; and it even looked out of focus. It was uncomfortable to watch for more than a few seconds.

Was this done on purpose to unconsciously force viewers to turn off the speech? If so, it didn't work--at least with me--because I turned over to MSNBC to watch the rest of it. But do networks that definitely lean a certain way politically actually tell their directors to muddy up the pictures or audio to make the person they disagree with look or sound bad?

There was no question that MSNBC covered Barack's speech like a major national news event, like the State of the Union, and Fox covered it like an ordinary breaking news story; it was also obvious that Chris Matthews was going out of his way to heap praise and promise on Obama, while Chris Wallace's slant was more anticipatory, as if saying that now Obama has to show us something because he's in it for real. But I was frankly offended that Fox would actually deliver a less-than clear, crisp camera image just to make a political point.

I'll be on the lookout for other outfits that do the same to Republicans, but I was shocked and irked. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Presidential politics is serious business in America, and the news networks have as much a stake in the outcome as we citizens do.

Learn how to use that "channel-jump" feature on your TV's remote, and use it!

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