Hacker News Reader

Comment by williamle8300 | Hacker News Reader

Can you give examples of Fox distorting things? I gave many examples of issues that the MSMs didn't seriously cover.

I don't believe that there isn't "true" objective coverage but Fox News with Hannity and Carlson are really providing coverage that is sharp, and enlightening. They're actually informing the public instead of participating in the media churn.

View on HN

How about Fox News reporting that the Canadian mosque shooter was a Moroccan Muslim who chanted allah Akbar while murdering people at the mosque? In fact he was a white Canadian citizen self described trump supporter.

To my understanding they didn't retract their erroneous position for more than 24 hours after accurate details were known. Many of their listeners still believe the shooter was a Muslim immigrant. Trump's press secretary, knowing this falsehood is widespread, has cited this incident as a reason to support the travel ban. The level of disinformation that comes from Fox News approaches that of Russian state run media.

Fox didn't invent that claim - Radio Canada reported it[1], and so did CBC. Of course, this claim was wrong, but it's not Fox's fault for repeating Canadian reporting the words of eyewitnesses. Of course, eyewitnesses are often unreliable so one has to be careful not to take it as the final truth. That applies to every "hot news" reports from any source. And certainly Fox is not responsible for anybody in the government using this claim to justify anything - they could as well use it if Fox didn't exist at all, since it was reported by the Canadian source.

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-mosque-gu...

Well -- none of the American so-called "biased liberal media" reported that false fact.

You are wrong to pretend this incident is an isolated case of biased reporting. It's part of a pattern of deliberately misleading reporting from Fox News that obscures the truth or over represents what is known.

If the media is biased to liberal side, it would be very reluctant to report on crime committed by somebody yelling "Allahu Akbar", at least this particular detail. In this particular case it worked to their favor, since the report turned out to be false. That doesn't mean the bias is good, it just means in one case this bias accidentally filtered out false information. There are plenty of cases where the same filter filtered out true information and passed on false information.

BTW, Reuters reported the same too[1]. So did The Times in UK[2]. Not exactly bastions of Republicans.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-mosque-shooting-sce... [2] http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/suspects-shouted-all...

> You are wrong to pretend this incident is an isolated case of biased reporting.

I'm not pretending anything of the sort. On the contrary, I am clearly stating this is not an evidence of Fox being biased, but of Fox relaying information from a reliable source, which they had no reason to suspect was wrong, but still turned out to be wrong. It happens.

If Fox reported "somebody committed a mass shooting, must be a Muslim" - without any evidence - that would be biased reporting, inventing facts with no basis. Making a mistake is not a proof of bias, per se - unless there's a pattern of mistakes that always points in one direction regardless of the evidence. Then it's the definition of bias.

You simultaneously argue that liberal bias accidentally filters out this mistaken report from left wing outlets, without acknowledging that fox's bias plays a role in poor framing of unverified salacious details that they are strongly motivated to publish -- and publish they do, early and regardless of accuracy, when it supports their desired narrative.

This is absolutely a pattern in their reporting - one of many ways in which they misrepresent events.

I honestly can't believe I have to argue the case that Fox News is a biased media outlet -- the argument has been made by better people than me in far more depth. I don't think Fox itself would even deny they are biased...

I would argue that presenting one (obviously biased) view as the ground truth would qualify as distortion. For example, consider how Fox reports news regarding separating religion from public, tax-funded institutions, such as removing the 10 commandments from schools, as infringements on religious freedom.

Of course, liberal news organizations distort the truth as well.

There's been studies showing people who watch Fox are uninformed. I actually think they're half decent this election cycle, completely unlike the Pravda they were for Iraq/GWB, but they publish more misconceptions and lies than the others (I do not believe for a second WaPo or CNN are unbiased)

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, it's a good question. I am not a fan of trump, but I also want to see and verify examples of Fox distorting things.

There is this hilarious O'Reilly report about Amsterdam (Yurop, of course, so not that relevant but it still shows complete disconnect from reality)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLJ56BfPoSg

Reply on news.ycombinator.com