“I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel.” -Rupert Murdoch (Salon, 3/1/01)It was early Tuesday morning in the underground, and the shocking events were unfolding through the magic of live TV. “Anyone mind if we change it from Fox News to CNN?” somebody asked. Out of the 40 somber students present, not one person raised an objection. Why could that be?

“It seems like everybody at Guilford knows Fox news is biased,” says sophomore Ryan Maher. “No wonder people wanted to watch CNN instead.”

For years, conservatives have touted Fox News Channel as being an oasis of objectivity in a desert of liberally biased news channels. By wrapping itself in slogans such as “We Report, You Decide” and by adamantly denying any tilt towards the right, Fox News Channel seems to have manufactured a reputation of impartiality.

However, a recent report from the analysts at Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) confirms the suspicions of many Guilford students and blasts that reputation of impartiality into smithereens.

The report starts with a statistical study of interviewees on the network’s “signature political news show” Special Report with Brit Hume. While Special Report’s intent is to provide leveraged political analysis, FAIR found that out of 56 partisan guests in a five-month period, 50 were Republicans and six were Democrats.

Also, 65 of the show’s total 92 guests were avowed conservatives. Conservatives outnumbered all other points of view, including non-political guests, by over 70 percent.

In the five months of FAIR’s study, Special Report had only 8 female guests and 6 people of color. That’s 91 percent male, 93 percent white. And among the few non-male and non-white guests, FAIR found a startling homogeneity of ideals: “Seven of the show’s eight female guests were either conservative or Republican, although women in general tend to be less conservative and more Democratic than men. Although African-Americans and Latinos show an even more pronounced progressive tilt, five of six people of color appearing on the show were either conservative or Republican; the sixth was an Iraqi opposition leader championed by congressional Republicans.”

But Special Report with Brit Hume is not the only show that came under criticism from FAIR. The O’Reilly Factor with Bill O’Reilly (Fox’s “star performer”) has run a shocking 56 segments about Jesse Jackson. That means one out of every 12 shows featured racially charged segments with titles like “How personal are African-Americans taking the moral failures of Reverend Jesse Jackson?” and “Has Jesse Jackson lost his moral authority?”

According to FAIR, it’s not just the specialty programming that seems to be infected with right wing bias: it’s the news programs as well. In 1996, Fox’s news anchor Tony Snow endorsed Bob Dole for president in a Republican National Committee magazin. Snow also gave a speech before the Republican Youth Caucus at the 2000 Republican National Convention, after which Trent Lott followed up with a cheer of “How about Tony Snow in 2008?”

Some conservatives have tried to validate Fox’s conservatism by pointing to the abundance of “liberal” mainstream media outlets like CNN. FAIR used CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports as a comparison to Fox’s Special Report. According to the results, 38 out of 67 guests on Wolf Blitzer Reports were Republicans. That’s 57 percent: a “modest but significant tilt towards Republicans.”

If you wish to learn more, FAIR’s entire report can be found online at www.fair.org along with other statistically based reports of media bias and inaccuracy.