Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has historically presented overly negative news coverage of Republicans presidents and their causes, like the Iraq war, as evidence of liberal bias. But what happens when the MRC's favorite news channel, Fox News, is accused of overly negative news coverage of President Obama? Why, that's just "historically normal."
A Jan. 26 MRC item by Rich Noyes highlights a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (which he describes as "non-partisan" despite admitting that he's a former employee) noting Fox News' highly negative coverage of President Obama. But rather than admitting that Fox News has a bias, Noyes framed it as, according to the headline, "historically normal scrutiny," claiming that Fox News merely offered "scrutiny roughly equal to that provided by the old networks in the past."
Indeed, the word "bias" appears nowhere in Noyes' item. Nor does Noyes use the word "balance," even though the CMPA found that overall coverage of Obama was almost evenly split between positive and negative coverage, demonstrating further how far out of the mainstream Fox News' coverage of Obama is.
