The Fox News frame

Today was a fascinating day to be a media watcher and scholar. As I tuned in most of the day to watch Fox News Channel’s wall-to-wall coverage of America’s Tea Party events all over the U.S., I found myself marveling in the role FNC was playing in this event.

At some point in the past month, FNC went from coverage to full-on promotion. In the past week they heavily promoted the live team coverage from tea party events from all over the U.S. As we got closer to today, more phrasings such as “come celebrate with us” came out of the mouths of FNC anchors.

It was clear as this thing went along that Fox News was going from news gatherer and broadcaster to a stakeholder in this nationwide event. I won’t debate the logic of the protest itself, but the event was pretty newsworthy on the whole. But as for Fox News’ behavior, I found myself thinking of what I teach my students. Straight from Kovach & Rosenstiel’s excellent The Elements Of Journalism: Read more