Fox News: Fair and Balanced?

Our scientifically-conducted national telephone survey results are reported below. This box contains a ballot for our companion online poll, which provides unscientific results.

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Fox News: Fair and Balanced?

Posted on by Larry Register

Fox News’s mantra is bringing you the news in a “fair and balanced” way. What do you think? Is Fox News “fair and balanced”? In a Poll Position national scientific telephone survey 46% said Fox News is “fair and balanced”, 38% said it is not and 17% had no opinion.

Fox, considered to have a conservative slant, scored well with Republicans but not so well with Democrats. Republicans considered Fox “fair and balanced” by a 77% to 9% margin with 14% not having an opinion. Democrats did not agree with 63% saying Fox is not “fair and balanced” to 17% saying it is. Twenty percent of Democrats did not have an opinion. Independents were almost evenly divided on the question with 44% saying Fox is not “fair and balanced” to 41% saying it is. Fifteen percent of Independents did not have an opinion.

African-Americans and whites also differed on the Fox question. Among whites, 51% said Fox is “fair and balanced”, 35% said it isn’t and 14% had no opinion. African-Americans countered with 45% saying Fox News is not “fair and balanced” to 40% saying it is. Fifteen percent of African-Americans had no opinion.

Hispanics were most skeptical of the Fox claim. Forty-seven percent of Hispanics said Fox is not “fair and balanced” with 25% saying it is and 29% not having an opinion.

Poll Position’s scientific telephone survey of 1,123 registered voters nationwide was conducted October 16, 2011 and has a margin of error of ±3%.   

What do you think?  Vote in our online companion poll and comment below.

The online companion poll in which you can vote provides unscientific results, meaning it’s a tally of participating Poll Position users, not a nationally representative sampling.

Poll Position is committed to transparency and upholding the highest professional standards in its polling, explaining why we provide you with the crosstabs of our scientific polls. Crosstabs provide a breakdown of survey participants by age, race, gender, and political affiliation. Here are the crosstabs for this poll: Poll Position crosstabs – Fox News.

You can learn more about our polling methodology here.

Disclosure: I worked at CNN for 20 years.

3 thoughts on “Fox News: Fair and Balanced?”

  2. I believe Fox News is MORE fair and balanced than any other cable news network, as well as the Big 3 networks. They make an honest effort to present both sides, especially with their straight news shows. Commentary, however, is just that…commentary and usually to the right, though they too bring on leftists guests and some hosts.

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