FOX News
The neutrality of this article is disputed.The FOX News Channel is a 24-hour news channel launched in 1996 on United States cable and satellite networks as well as in syndication. It is available to 80 million subscribers in the U.S. and broadcasts primarily out of its studios in New York City.
Launched on October 7, 1996 to 17 million cable subscribers, the nascent network quickly rose to prominence in the late 1990s as it started taking market share away from the Cable News Network (CNN). It has since surpassed CNN to become the number one news channel in the United States.
Programming
Every hour from 9AM to 3PM Eastern Time, the FOX News Channel broadcasts Fox News Live providing a wide-ranging assortment of hard news, guest analysts, and interviews. In primetime, the network presents a slew of personality-driven news-talk shows such as Special Report With Brit Hume, hosted by political reporter Brit Hume from Washington, D.C. The network bills The Fox Report With Shepard Smith as the signature evening newscast, offering various reports on the day's events hosted by Shepard Smith. The network's top-rated show is The O'Reilly Factor, hosted by the opinionated journalist Bill O'Reilly. In addition, conservative Sean Hannity and moderate Alan Colmes, both radio talk show hosts, debate political issues of the day on Hannity and Colmes.
The network syndicates Fox News Sunday hosted by Tony Snow to Fox Network affiliates across the United States. From time to time, FOX News also produces a newsmagazine show for its Fox affiliates called The Pulse.
The channel is now available internationally, but unlike CNN's international service it tends to concentrate on domestic issues which might be seen as less newsworthy outside North America.
Ownership
Like the rest of FOX, it is owned by Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. It is a sister channel to Sky News, which is based in the United Kingdom.
The CEO, Chairman, and President of FOX News is Roger Ailes, formerly a political strategist for Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Previously, Ailes ran the CNBC network for the NBC network and produced campaign TV commercials for Republican political candidates. His work for former President Richard M. Nixon was chronicled in the book The Selling of the President: 1968 by Joe McGinniss. Managing editor Brit Hume is a contributor to the conservative American Spectator and Weekly Standard.
Several FOX News anchors have expressedly partisan conservative backgrounds. Daytime anchor David Asman previously worked at the The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Manhattan Institute, a conservative thinktank. Sunday host Tony Snow is a conservative columnist and former chief speechwriter for the first Bush administration.
Bias
FOX asserts that it is less biased and more factual than other American networks, using promotional statements such as "fair and balanced" and "we report, you decide". Their commentators argue that other news channels are dominated by a liberal bias.
Meanwhile, critics contend that it is FOX who is biased. Pointing to examples of allegedly unfair presentation, the large number of conservative staffers, and leaked memos, these critics paint a picture of an avowedly-partisan news organization that spins stories to the right while publicly claiming to be "fair and balanced". Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a left-leaning media watchdog group released a report, Fox: The Most Biased Name in News, that lays out their evidence for the alleged bias.
In addition, FOX News has been accused of placing an undue emphasis on conservative news stories. Critics claim that the network sometimes dedicates whole segments and shows to conservative stories they feel have been downplayed, and for a time had an entire show, Only On Fox, dedicated to doing just that.
A report in the Los Angeles Times on November 1, 2003, quoted Charlie Reina, a Fox News producer for six years, saying that Fox News executives require the network's on-air anchors and reporters to cover news stories from a right-wing viewpoint and distributed a daily memo explaining what stories they wanted highlighted and what spin to place on others. A Fox spokesman called Reins' remarks the "rantings of a disgruntled former employee".
FOX and their supporters maintain that FOX is only perceived as being 'right of center' only because they are not 'left of center', as they claim the rest of the media is. They point to programs such as Hannity and Colmes as an example of the network's balance. On that program, Sean Hannity, a conservative radio talk-show host debates Alan Colmes, who claims to be liberal. But critics respond that Colmes is quite moderate and even centrist on most issues and that he isn't given as much time to talk as Hannity is, and further that Colmes is often reticent to challenge conservative guests or his co-host, while Hannity regularly attacks liberals.
Meanwhile, another prominent FOX program, the O'Reilly Factor, hosted by Bill O'Reilly, is also cited as a program with a heavily conservative slant, a charge O'Reilly denies, preferring to call himself a populist.
