FOX NEWS AND CNN

By: Elaine Blakley and Kelly Bowman

CNN is a twenty four hour news network. It combines reporting the news with news analysis and news talk shows. Its main agenda is to report international and national news. Fox News Network is also a twenty four hour news network. It combines reporting the news with news analysis and news talk shows. Its main agenda is also to report international and national news. Both networks have a runner along the bottom of the screen that runs up to the minute news twenty four hours a day.

               While CNN is known as being a more liberal news outlet we did not see much evidence of that. During the week leading up to the election each candidate was represented equally (CNN, 2004). There might have been someone who would fight for a candidate but there was always a rebuttal side given. There are shows such as Crossfire where two people who are on opposites sides of the political spectrum argue over positions that each party are discussing in the political world. Their website also showed easily accessible articles about each candidate. All in all they were a fairly balanced news network.

               Fox News Network is known as being a very conservative news network. We definitely saw evidence of this while watching Fox News. Bill O’Reily a conservative talk show host interviewed President Bush. While he asked John Kerry for an interview, John Kerry declined. Sean Hannity from Hannity and Colmes (a Crossfire type of show) also interviewed President Bush. Both of these interviews took place right before the election. While John Kerry was asked and declined, the fact remains that all the viewers saw was two President Bush interviews within the course of two hours because these programs air back to back. They replayed the interviews on the eve of the election. These two shows also had Ann Coulter (a conservative author) as a frequent guest and

 Republican Ex-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the week leading up to the election. Dayside with Linda Vester had celebrities for President Bush. There was no rebuttal of celebrities for John Kerry. This is not to say that the Fox News network never says anything bad about conservatives. They have news programs that report the facts with no opinions. They also give rebuttals most of the time so that each side is equally represented. The glaringly obvious difference between the two networks was on election eve. While Fox News gave President Bush Ohio right away giving him 269 electoral votes and John Kerry 211 electoral votes. CNN held out so that President Bush had 249 electoral votes and John Kerry had 211 electoral votes (CNN Election Results 2004).

               These two networks definitely differ on how they report the news. There is much more basic reporting without opinion on CNN. Fox News also reports the news but they have many more shows where the hosts and guests have very strong opinions. It is not necessarily bad that these two networks have such a different way of reporting news. It is just important that the viewer understands the difference and realizes that they may be getting a biased view of what is going on in the world. However, if they were to watch both networks, perhaps their views on the world would be almost perfectly balanced.