A new analysis of President Obama’s press conferences during his first term shows that he clearly favored the mainstream media over Fox News by a fairly wide margin.
The Smart Politics analysis was conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier and covered the 36 solo press conferences Obama held during his first four years in office.
Fox, which was once referred to as the research arm of the Republican Party by former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, was called on less than half as much as ABC News.
ABC News, which was called on 29 times, was followed closely by CBS with 28, the AP with 27, NBC with 26, Bloomberg with 20, Reuters with 17 and CNN and The New York Times were tied with 16. Fox was ninth with just 14 opportunities to quiz the President.
When it comes to looking at individual reporters, Fox fares a little better, ranking sixth, but it badly trails the better known reporters from the mainstream media. Chuck Todd and former ABC Chief White House Correspondent Jake Tapper topped the list with 23 questions each. By comparison, Fox’s Ed Henry asked just 9 questions.
The results of this analysis not only confirm Obama’s disdain for Fox News, but also his strategy of avoiding the tough questions as much as possible.
Don Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media and its sister organization Accuracy in Academia. As the son of Reed Irvine, who launched AIM in 1969, he developed an understanding of media bias at an early age, and has been actively involved with AIM for over 30 years.
