Unmasking Fox News: Exploring the Reliability of Mainstream Media

Billions of people in the world rely on the news to inform them what is going on in the world. People use many different ways to get their news such as the news channel, news papers, news app on their phones, or social media. One main thing that people do not notice is that all news can travel from many different areas, many different ways, and can be said in different ways as well. With so many ways to get news, there have been some doubts whether certain news broadcasters are mainstream media or alternative media, Fox News being one of them. Fox News, like most news broadcasters, have a purpose to deliver news to their audience. So the question is, is Fox News mainstream? What is their purpose of delivering news and how do they do it?

According to Wikipedia, mainstream media is a term that is used to “refer collectively to the various large mass news media that influence many people, and both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought.” Wikipedia also defines alternative media, “media that differ from established or dominant types of media in terms of their content, production, or distribution.” Technically, Fox News is mainstream media because it is professional, established, and consistent. However, this does not mean that it is super reliable. According to The Washington Post, “In the roaring election year of 2016,, Fox News finished as the No. 1 channel in all of cable, besting not only competitors like MSNBC and CNN, but also more general-interest destinations such as ESPN.” This quote confirms that Fox News is indeed a mainstream media. If it was not, then it obviously would not have been the number one news channel in all of cable, let alone a reliable news channel from the beginning. However, just because it is considered mainstream media does not mean that it is the most reliable news channel. When finding out whether a news channel is reliable or not, it is important to look for the behind the scenes of that channel. So looking for who they really are, what they do, what their purpose is, who pays for them, and what kind of stories they have.

Although Fox News is a very large and popular news channel, that does not mean that it is not reliable. According to Media Bias Fact Check, they overall rated Fox News to be strongly right-biased “due to editorial positions and story selection that favors the right.” Fox News is overall a conservative news channel, meaning that it is biased. This is because if it overall takes one side, then it will only show the story of one side and not the other. This is one big reason why it is not reliable news because if it is very far to the right of the bias spectrum, then the chances of them showing stories on the far left or even the middle of the spectrum is very low. Meaning that they are not showing the full side of the story, meaning that they are only showing what they want to show and what they believe in. Business Insider stated that “Overall, the only two media organizations Republicans surveyed said weren’t biased were Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.” Since the Republican Party is known to be conservative, and Fox News is a conservative news channel, it would then be Republicans who would vote Fox News to be biased because they are delivering them the news that they want to hear and that they believe in. Finally, according to a statistic from Debate on whether Fox News is reliable or not, 36% say it is reliable whereas the rest 64% say it is not reliable.

In conclusion, as seen by various news sites, websites, and statistics, it can be concluded that although Fox News is mainstream media and a very popular news channel, it is not very reliable. It is very biased since it is on the far right side of the bias spectrum meaning that it is conservative. According to many news sites and audience members, they too agree that Fox News is not very reliable.