Owen Gibson Thursday June 19, 2003 The Guardian
Fox News: deemed to show 'range of opinions'
Television watchdogs have thrown out all of the complaints they received about news bias during the Iraq war, including those against notoriously pro-war US channel Fox News.
Viewers had complained that Fox News broke the independent television commission's "due impartiality" rules throughout the conflict with its pro-war stance, which helped it leapfrog rival networks CNN and ABC News in the ratings.
But the ITC said it believed the channel, criticised for its cheerleading during the war, did not contrevene its regulations on impartiality.
It said its code requires broadcasters to show "due impartiality" but that it also makes it clear that the term "[due] should be interpreted as meaning adequate or appropriate... it does not mean that the broadcasters have to be absolutely neutral on every controversial view".
Fox's flag-waving patriotism was unrelenting throughout the conflict, from the reporters embedded with the American "heroes" and "liberators" on the front line in Iraq to the Rumsfeld-lauding talk show hosts back at New York HQ.
Fox's star interviewer, Bill O'Reilly, told viewers the US should go in and "splatter" the Iraqis, while reporters also railed against anti-war protesters over footage of Saddam's statue being pulled down when US troops entered Baghdad.
The BBC director general, Greg Dyke, last month hit out at the "gung-ho" stance of Fox News and other US news providers during the conflict.
"Commercial pressures may tempt others to follow the Fox News formula of gung-ho patriotism, but for the BBC this would be a terrible mistake. If, over time, we lost the trust of our audiences, there is no point in the BBC," he said.
The ITC said that while the complaints raised an important issue with regard to the stance of non-UK broadcasters beamed into the country by satellite, Fox and other overseas channels - including Arab stations - were found not to have broken the ITC's rules on impartial reporting.
If the ITC had ruled against Fox News it could have fined the broadcaster or even forced it off the airwaves. In all, the commission received 81 complaints of bias by news reporters during the war, including nine against Fox.
"The ITC is alert to the current debate about the nature of re-transmitted foreign news channels, including Arabic services we license. It raises important questions which need to be considered in the context of global trans-frontier broadcasting and we are doing just that," said the ITC today.
It said it accepted that "overseas channels will sometimes view events from their own particular perspective" and that was within the rules as long as "differing opinions are also acknowledged on the service."
It added: "Our own monitoring of Fox News suggests that a range of opinions are heard on the station."
In 1999 the ITC revoked the licence of Med TV, a channel aimed at the Kurdish diaspora, for failing to conform to the impartiality rules
The commission's programme code says broadcasters must ensure "due impartiality is preserved on the part of the person providing the service as respects matters of political or industrial controversy or relating to current public policy".
Impartiality is not required in every programme as long as a broadcaster can show impartiality "over time".
An ITC spokesman said that there was no need for overseas channels to be completely balanced in their reporting, as long as they represented a range of views in their entire schedule.
The Fox show Hannity and Combs, a discussion programme that pits a liberal thinker against a right wing opponent, was one such example, it said.
"The fact is, there is no general inquiry into Fox. All we've done is respond to nine complaints and after investigating them, found that they did not contravene our code," the spokesman added.
Some senior media figures believe the rules for broadcasters other than the BBC and ITV should be relaxed, particularly in a multichannel age when viewers can see dozens of different points of view at the flick of a remote control.
Chris Shaw, the controller of news and current affairs at Channel Five, and Roger Mosey, the head of television news at the BBC, have suggested smaller broadcasters could have more freedom to air opinionated news programmes.
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