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Fox News Channel (FNC)
When it debuted in 1996, one of its on-air hosts said:
The "Channel was launched (because) something was wrong with news media....somewhere bias found its way into reporting....Fox....is committed to being fair and balanced (covering) stories everybody is reporting - and....stories....you will see only on Fox."
Later the Columbia Journalism Review said several former Fox employees "complained of 'management sticking their fingers' in the writing and editing stories to cook the facts to make a story more palatable to right-of-center tastes." But it hasn't hurt ratings.
As of Q 1 2009, FNC was the second highest rated cable channel in prime time total viewers. CNN ranked 17th and MSNBC 24th. The O'Reilly Factor has been #1 rated on cable news for 100 consecutive months and gained 27% more viewers year-over-year. Glenn Beck increased 90% over the previous year. Overall, FNC topped CNN and MSNBC combined in prime time total audience.
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) said "Fox's signature political news show, Special Report with Brit Hume (now with Bret Baier) was originally created as a daily one-hour update devoted to the 1998 Clinton sex scandal." In the past year, it gained 39% more viewers.
As for accuracy and being "fair and balanced," FAIR (in summer 2001) called FNC "The Most Biased Name in News," yet according to Murdoch in March 2001:
"I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel."
In FAIR's Seth Ackerman article and later ones, FNC's blatant manipulation of the news is exposed. For example, Bret Baier's "Political Grapevine" is a right-wing "hot sheet" featuring a "series of gossipy items culled from other right-wing" sources. It and other reports are blatantly partisan propaganda against "liberal media bias," progressives, environmentalists, anti-war activists, civil rights groups, and others to the left of their views.
According to FAIR, the commentary on political punditry programs like The O'Reilly Factor, the Sean Hannity Show, and The Beltway Boys is so slanted that it's like watching "a Harlem Globetrotters game (knowing) which side is supposed to win."
FNC's Bill O'Reilly
His official bio calls The O'Reilly Factor "a unique blend of news analysis and hard hitting investigative reporting dropped each weeknight into 'The No Spin Zone." He also hosts a syndicated radio show, writes a weekly column carried in over 300 newspapers, and authored several books that according to New York Times writer Janet Maslin were "either (done) with a collaborator or (O'Reilly) was born with a ghostwriter's gift for filling space with platitudes...." With good reason, Maslin called him "one of the most controversial human beings in the world...."
In an October 2008 report titled "Smearcasting," FAIR called him an "Islamophobe" for spreading "fear, bigotry and misinformation" along with 11 other popular figures, including Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin (another FNC regular), David Horowitz, and Pat Robertson.
After 9/11, FAIR said O'Reilly proposed attacking a list of Muslim countries "if they did not submit to the US - starting with Afghanistan."
On air he said:
"The US should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble - the airport, the power plants, their water facilities and the roads....If they don't rise up against this primitive country, they starve, period."
