Propaganda, Persuasion, or Journalism?

Abstract

The scholarly literature on Fox News has largely focused on the network’s ideological disposition, assuming Fox News to be a journalistic operation. However, a handful of scholars have challenged those assumptions. Conway, Grabe, and Grieve found one of the network’s prime-time programs to be practicing propaganda, not journalism. This article seeks to further the work of Conway et al. by employing a qualitative textual analysis of Fox News’ prime-time coverage of health-care reform in 2009 and 2014 to determine whether the network’s programs worked within the traditional values of objective journalism, aside from the network’s ideological disposition, or whether the programs’ practices were more consistent with propaganda or the rhetorical concept of persuasion. The study finds that in both periods, Fox News’ prime-time programs employed multiple themes based on nonfactual premises to oppose health-care reform, which were more in line with propaganda than journalism or persuasion.