Friday, February 03, 2012

Is Fox News Ignoring Today’s Jobs Report?


By Alex Seitz-Wald/Think Progress

Today’s surprisingly good jobs report is dominating the news, except for at Fox News, which appears to be downplaying or ignoring the news that many view as favorable to President Obama. As Politico’s Dylan Byers noted this morning, while other major news outlets gave the jobs report top billing on their websites, FoxNews.com “bur[ied]” in a small boxwith other economic headlines. As of this afternoon, the story has been moved, but is still relegated to minor placement, and now runs with an borderline self-parody of a op-ed, titled, “The bad news behind the January jobs report.”
Meanwhile, on air, the network has largely avoided the jobs news. A ThinkProgress analysis of the cable networks (via Critical Mention) shows that Fox only mentioned the new unemployment rate 9 times through 2:30 this afternoon, far less often than its competitors. Notably, Fox’s less-ideological sister network Fox Business mentioned the rate three times more often:
Fox News — 9 mentions
MSNBC –18 mentions
CNN –17 mentions
CNBC –12 mentions
Fox Business — 27 mentions
In December, after another good jobs report, Fox displayed a misleading and inaccurate graphthat downplayed the drop in the jobless rate.

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