Thursday, November 24, 2016

Looking for trouble

The fearless sages of the Ofcom Content Board have spoken. FOX News has broken their rules.

Nobody complained, but Ofcom decided to do some "routine monitoring" of the Hannity show during the Presidential election campaign, and decided that three one-hour episodes were in breach of their code.

During campaigns, Rules 5.11 and 5.12 require due impartiality from broadcasters in their coverage of major matters of political or industrial controversy and current public policy. "An appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes”.  Over a full 26 pages of transcripts and assessment, Ofcom reckons that, basically, 23 guests backed Trump, Hillary Clinton only appeared in clips, and Hannity said she was lying. Again and again.

FOX argued viewers knew what they were tuning in for with Hannity, a programme of 'commentary'. Ofcom was having none of it.

"Given the amount and nature of the critical statements made about Hillary Clinton and her campaign, we considered that a significant viewpoint which was not adequately and fairly within the programmes was that of Hillary Clinton or her campaign, or the Democratic Party more generally. How these alternative viewpoints could and should have been reflected within the programmes was an editorial matter for the Licensee, but we considered it was incumbent on FNN to do so in order to preserve due impartiality."

FOX News was created by Rupert Murdoch, and is owned by 21st Century Fox, part-inheritors of News Corporation, which in turn owns 39.14% of Sky, who re-broadcast FOX News here. I reckon they're quaking.





1 comment:

  1. You are joking ? The BBC has close to zero positive coverage of Trump and acres and acres of sneering how come that doesn't break the Ofcom imparetialioty rules Ofcom is doing Fox under.
    On radio 4 this week American writers are giving their view of the election in four episodes all 4 have voted for Hillary.
    The one today did point out her flaws but still voted for her.
    Tmw is episode 5

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