Conclusion

After taking the time to research and fact-check Fox News, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report our team has come to the conclusion that as a media consumer you are much more likely to be fed truthiness from Fox News than you would from any political satirist.

 Fox often uses strategies intentionally to frame a story in a certain light to agree with their personal opinions and persuade their viewers to develop those same opinions by making them feel that what they are hearing is right, whereas political satirists Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert use humor to light up the truth and to let us derive our own opinions from the facts. 

According to the citizen’s handbook written by Charlotte Ryan, “News frames make the world look natural. They determine what is selected, what is excluded, what is emphasized. In short, news presents a packaged world. Far from being an objective list of facts, a news story results from multiple subjective decisions about whether and how to present happenings to media audiences. The editors’ and reporters’ own perspectives, including their notions of audience interests, guide this process. As a result, stories covering the same happening may vary dramatically.” This quote sums up our thoughts exactly, and before doing this project we weren’t aware of how careful we all need to be about believing what local news channels are saying.
 

We proved on our truth vs. truthiness page that Fox News does a great job on highlighting the least important and sometimes false story points. As we, the public, view the media we need to use the theories given to us to know when news corporations are feeding us truthiness over truth. Every form of news uses gatekeeping, and not every viewer realizes there is a distinct reason why the same stories are being reported on all the main news channels. Each and every individual has their own opinions and point of views, but there are a chosen few behind the scenes all across our country picking out which news is important to cover and what is acceptable to leave out.

Cultivation is a key theory to speculate what the media is putting out to the public eye. A top story in one area of the U.S. might not be as appealing to an audience from a different part of the country. Considering different viewpoints and the possibilities of missing context is a good tool for detecting bias, but not every viewer should have to go into deep thought about every thing they hear on the news, nor will they.

Although some mainstream conservatives may not like some of the humor that Colbert and Stewart feed off of, our group has come to the conclusion that they fill up the time gaps with jokes rather than complete falsities.

After taking the time to research and fact-check Fox News, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, our team has come to the conclusion that as a media consumer you are much more likely to be fed truthiness from Fox News than you would from any political satirist. Truth can be found everywhere, but when it comes to Fox News you occasionally must dig to find it.

Individual Thoughts:

 “It was hilarious watching Fox videos all night long and then comparing them to what the satirists had to say, FOX NEWS IS SO DRAMATIC and point out the most random points to focus their whole report on. I still am following my dream of being a news reporter here in the future, but WOW I don’t want to be called a liar or drama queen. I won’t work for Fox. ;) haha!”

–Stacey Worster

"I’ve really learned from this that everything I hear isn’t true. Fact checking different videos and doing my own research has really opened my eyes to the fact that Fox News likes to just do their own thing and say what they want instead of being careful about their information. I feel like if they were doing this for a college class, they’d get an F."
–Tiffany Funk

"To be honest, this project scared me a little bit. I grew up watching Fox News because it was the easy and convenient channel to watch. Being professional news anchors, I thought that it was part of their job to be unbiased and deliver straight news. From this project I have learned that in all reality, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are the real "professionals" here!"
-Kelsey Schwab

"This project was very interesting for me. I had always heard that Fox News wasn't a very trustworthy site, but never understood why. I grew up in a relatively liberal household so we never watched much of Fox News anyway. It is appalling how much truthiness people believe. We have always been taught not to trust everything you read online, but this is the first time I've been told to question news sources too. Now I find myself constantly encouraging my friends to fact-check what they hear in the news."
- Kori Slager 

"From the beginning, I never really enjoyed watching Fox. After this assignment, I have more reason to dislike them. They like to throw their opinion into everything. When they report their news, they seem to be one sided and tend to disregard what others have to say if it's not in line of what they are saying. I feel as if I am watching Joy Behar and Elizabeth Hasselbeck fight on ABC's the View. They just plain distract from the facts. On the Daily Show and The Colbert Report, they joke around, but they address all sides of the matter and give factual information."
-Mandi West

All we have left to say to Fox is: