SOTM 2006: More Opinion on Cable
Media Blog
Stephen Spruiell Reporting
The State of the Media 2006 report found more opinion on cable TV than other forms of media. The section on cable news points out some instances of anchors coming right out and stating their opinion, such as this exchange between CNN's dueling O'Briens:
<<< The opinion on May 11 came in various forms. On the morning programs it came from journalists trying to be informal. After a piece about global warming on CNN’s “American Morning,” for instance, the anchor Soledad O’Brien offered, “So that videotape there, and really what’s happening on the glacier, is definitive proof that there’s global warming.” The correspondent Miles O’Brien takes her one further. “Yes, but it’s just one more little piece. There’s a big stack of evidence now . . . The real question is, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to stop using SUVs?” >>>
But it also points out some more general ways in which, according to the report's authors, opinion seeps into news coverage. Specifically, the report labels Fox as the "clearly American" channel:
<<< Another difference on Fox in the morning is that it has abandoned the more disinterested neutral voice of traditional broadcasting. It is a clearly American channel, with the U.S. government frequently referred to in the first person plural — "we" and "us." In Fox’s lead story of the morning, the case of the grenade in Georgia , E.D. Hill, speaking not of herself or Fox News but of American officials, said, “Our people haven’t been able to look at it. So they (Georgian officials) keep counseling us. We haven’t been able to say it’s a hand grenade. We don’t know what it is exactly.” >>>
Is that a matter of opinion, or is it just a fact that the anchors reading the news also happen to be Americans? Personally, I find it kind of silly when "clearly American" anchors and reporters on other channels pretend to be citizens of the world. I appreciate the honest approach at Fox.
media.nationalreview.com
stateofthemedia.org
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