Political Balance in Fox News

Abstract

In the era of media prosperity, Fox News, as the most significant political news provider in the United States (According to Pew Research Center’s research, 16 percent of participants consider Fox News their primary source of political news, which is higher than any other media), influences the political orientation of voters to manipulate election results through various means, such as overemphasizing, reporters’ interpreting, and disregarding news, etc. In order to make their reporting seem more objective and reliable, politically biased media may gain credibility for themselves by covering more news with different political perspectives during non-significant times, which is called political balancing. In order to verify whether political balancing exists in the mainstream media, sixty Fox News reports during the period of 2016 election were randomly selected and analyzed. According to the result, Fox News put statistically significant more positive coverage of Democrats after the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, won the 2016 election. The findings of this research are substantial since awareness of the media’s political balancing will benefit voters in making rational choices for consequential elections. Meanwhile, political balancing could be necessary for researchers conducting studies of journalism.