Content Analysis on Barack Obama's candidacy coverage by Fox news (and Essay

Content Analysis on Barack Obama's candidacy coverage by Fox news (and minor comparison with other tv stations like abc) - Essay Example Fox News quickly parroted the charges" (Debunked Insight Magazine). After the rumor about Obama turned out to be false Fox News aired The Live Desk with Martha MacCallum in which MacCallum squarely places the blame of the rumor about Obama being a radical Muslim on the Clinton administration due to e-mails that were allegedly circulated on the internet by Clinton staffers. By placing the blame of the rumor on the Clinton administration Fox News smeared two democrats at once. Obama claimed that he was a Christian. Surely Fox News couldn't find fault with that, but they did. Fox News' Sean Hannity has alleged that the church Obama is a member of, United Church of Christ which is located in Chicago, is a racist church. On Hanninty's show on Fox News, Hannity made the accusation that Obama is a racist and he made implications to have the viewer believe that if Obama is elected President the whole country will be ran in a way to promote only a black agenda. During the 2004 elections, Senator John Kerry faced similar slander as Fox ran a story that a Communist organization supported Kerry for president, thereby tying Kerry to Communism. The story turned out to be a bunch of kids that were pretty much just joking about being a part of a communist organization in support for Kerry. Fox reporters repeatedly made accusations that Kerry flip flopped over important issues such as the Iraq war resolution. At Fox News "fair and balanced reporting" is incapable of happening when the opinion commentators are given the credibility by Fox as reporters of the news. In the book titled, Fair and Balanced My Ass!, written by Joseph Minton Amann and Tom Breuer, they write "So what we're seeing more and more in today's news business particularly at Fox, is that personality and opinion sell. Not reasoned and informed opinion but bluster ing, loud, obnoxious, in-your-face opinion" (11). Fox creates ideologies against liberal democrats in order to support a conservative republican agenda. In the book titled, South Park Conservatives, author Brian C. Anderson writes: "Watch FOX for just a few hours and you encounter a conservative presence unlike anything on television before 1996" (51). Fox news is opinion laden with shows like the O'Reilly Factor, The Grapevine, and Fox and Friends. And the opinions are all against democrats. The host of Fox and Friends, Steve Doocy is now famous for his blunder of a statement against Obama "Why didn't anybody ever mention that that man right there was raised - spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father - as a Muslim and was educated in a Madrassa" The reason why Fox Reynaga 3 News can get away with its slanderous ideologies thrown vehemently into American homes on a nightly basis is because the pseudo reporters are opinion commentators. According to the Associated Press' Stylebook 2002 and Briefing on Media Law, "The rationale behind the opinion privilege is that only statements that can be proven true or false are capable of defamatory meaning and that statements of 'opinion' cannot, by their nature, be proven true or false" (344). The many opinion shows circulating on Fox News have become very influential in