2004 Annual Report - Cable TV Content Analysis

Much of the popular discussion of cable surrounds the question of ideology, and whether Fox News is, as advertised, fairer and more balanced than the other networks or, as some critics allege, it is a more ideologically conservative network.

This study does not attempt to quantify this. Ideology, to some degree, is in the eye of the beholder and is a difficult matter to pin down with numbers.

But a close look at the journalistic makeup of cable news suggests that the more manifest "Fox Effect" on cable news is economic - an orientation toward using fewer people to produce news by focusing on fewer topics, doing fewer edited stories and airing more live reports.

CNN was more likely to do taped packages (18 percent of total airtime versus 8 percent for MSNBC and Fox News). This is especially true during early evening, when CNN's "Politics Today" and "Lou Dobbs Tonight" are shown. During that time, 29 percent of the CNN news hole is edited packages (compared with 14 percent taped packages in the early evening on Fox News and 10 percent on MSNBC).

By contrast, voiceover videotapes, reports in which the anchor comments while the screen shows silent video, are a specialty of Fox News. In the course of a day, Fox News presents an average of 11 each hour (CNN and MSNBC each average eight), reaching a dizzying peak in the anchor Shepard Smith's "Fox Report," whose hour contains a daily average of 46 voiceovers, as many as ABC's Peter Jennings would deliver in 10 half-hour newscasts.

Story Types on Cable News
Percent of All Time

	CNN	Fox News	MSNBC
Edited Package	18%	8%	8%
External Interviews	28	36	33
Internal Interviews	8	9	10
Standups	22	22	20
Anchor Reads	13	15	16
Live Events	8	7	8
Banter	2	3	4
External Source	0	1	1

Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Beyond that, however, the similarities among the networks are bigger than the differences. The topics on the three networks, for instance, are remarkably similar. And, the three networks are virtually indistinguishable in the level of repetition, the percentage of new stories through the course of the day and the level of substantive updates.

They are virtually identical in the level of national versus international stories.

They are also similar in the sourcing of their stories. At each of the networks only between 22 and 26 percent of their segments cited and identified at least two named sources. They differed little in the use of anonymous sourcing. At CNN and Fox News, about a quarter of the stories (23 percent each) relied on anonymous sources. The number was only slightly lower at MSNBC, 19 percent.