Monday, June 08, 2009

Murdoch: ‘If we weren’t fair and balanced, we wouldn’t have the number one network in news.’

By Amanda Terkel

Today, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch sat down with Fox News host Neil Cavuto for a softball interview. At one point, Cavuto asked Murdoch if he feels like Rodney Dangerfield — “not getting that respect” — even though Fox is “pretty much the envy of the world right now.” When Cavuto asked about perceptions that Fox isn’t fair and balanced, Murdoch said that those allegations were “obviously not true”:

If we weren’t fair and balanced, we wouldn’t have the number one network in news — by a very wide margin. People believe we’re fair and balanced, and they love us.

Watch it:

There’s no proof that the American public is tuning into Fox because it genuinely believes the network is fair and balanced. After all, a 2008 poll found that just three percent of O’Reilly’s viewers identified themselves as liberal. Twenty-four percent called themselves moderates, and 66 percent said they were conservative. Similar numbers were found in the survey for Hannity’s show. Media watchdog group FAIR has called Fox “the most biased name in news,” and a Fox News vice president admitted that the network’s job was to be “the voice of opposition” to the Obama administration.

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