Microsoft Spinning Against OpenDocument Via Fox News

srwalter writes "As previously reported, Fox News previously ran an article by James Prendergast criticizing Massachussetts for switching to OpenDocument format. Today, Fox News has distanced itself from that article significantly. In a new front page story they post several emails in defense of Massachussetts and OpenDocument in general, as well as apologize for not acknowledging that Prendergast's organization is funded by Microsoft."

Comments

Re:Government != Role Model

[Feneric]

While I agree that a government is not equal to a role model, saying that the OpenDocument standard is virtually ignored by the constituents of Massachusetts is ill-informed. Many of the individual communities in Massachusetts made the switch in advance of the Commonwealth itself; Saugus is probably the best example as it probably made the switch first and has a lot of info online:

• Saugus' official take on the change
• The take on the Saugus blog

There's more info buried within the various Saugus sites, too. This isn't a change decreed from on-high, it's got quite a bit of grassroots support as well.

OpenOffice.org can write to MSWord format as well.

[Peter Simpson]

So, if the state chooses to install OOo Writer, they can read and output not only the Open Document format, but all the legacy documents written in MSWord. For $0 per workstation. Seems like a no-brainer to this MA resident.

In this case, it would appear that someone in Massachusetts state government is trying to do the "right thing".

For another example of someone in MA state government with a clue, surf on over to http://www.mass.gov/mgis/mapping.htm and check out the free online mapping resources. I can't believe it. Usually you have to pay through the nose for current high resolution geo-referenced aerial photography. Here, MA has put it all online for free. Nice going!

Re:Politics?

[Red Flayer]

"For the record, all my liberal friends tell me constantly that Fox News is oh-so-biased and CNN is oh-so-great, without EVER citing a single example for either case."

Then your liberal friends are morons. CNN is also skewed in its coverage.

Do you want examples? Are your fingers broken? Any search engine can help you out.

If you want a biased, but truthful, look at examples of conservative bias in the media, check out http://www.mediamatters.org/

Yes, Bill O'Reilly has lambasted Media Matters on his program... which is a pretty good recommendation, for my tastes ;)

Re:Politics?

[XorNand]

For the record, all my liberal friends tell me constantly that Fox News is oh-so-biased and CNN is oh-so-great, without EVER citing a single example for either case. It's just become conventional wisdom for them without question.

Glad you asked:

For each of the three misperceptions [about the war in Iraq], the study found enormous differences between the viewers of Fox, who held the most misperceptions, and NPR/PBS, who held the fewest by far. Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers. All the other media fell in between.

Not Fox's Fault

[merky1]

I emailed them mentioning that the original article was an opinion piece, and really didn't seem to follow the we report, you decide motto.

They actually emailed a non-automated response, and mentioned that the article was in the Views section, which indicated it was like reading an opinion column in the newspaper.

While I'll let Fox slide on that, they really do not do a good job of indicating that the article is an opinion, or that you are in the views section, unless you look at the banner add looking header of the page. I was thinking of emailing them back and mentioning a site design update to further differentiate opinion articles of this type from the usual news propoganda.

Conservative != Pro-Microsoft

[DesScorp]

There seems to be this assumption that if you're a conservative, than you're in bed with MS and hostile to Linux, Open Source, yada yada.

This is, plainly spoken, bullshit.

Go to a place like FreeRepublic, and you'll find a good deal of Linux advocacy and Microsoft distrust.

The most prominent popular culture conservatives don't run Windows, nor are Microsoft cheerleaders. Rush Limbaugh and Tom Clancy are OSX users, and Clancy is a longtime critic of MS software.

Re:Headline?

[VidEdit]

Hmmm...did Microsoft manipulate the news by funding the "think tank" that James Prendergast as executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership speaks for?

Yes.

That is the whole point of the organization. To add the false imprimatur of impartiality to Microsoft's propaganda.

Re:Politics?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Yes, I've read that before. Here's one, a study by Stanford and UCLA saying Fox News Special Report is the most centrist news program on television and Drudge Report of all sites is the most centrist online:

Two researchers have combined these two disparate ideas to come up with a measure of media bias that doesn't depend on journalists' own perceptions of where they fit on the political spectrum, or on subjective judgments about the philosophical orientation of think tanks. Tim Groseclose, of UCLA and Stanford, and Jeff Milyo of the University of Chicago used data comparing which think tanks various politicians liked to quote and which think tanks various media outlets liked to quote in their news stories to estimate two ADA scores for each media outlet in the study, one based on the number of times a think tank was cited, and the other on the length of the citation.

The media outlets were The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the three network news shows, Fox News' Special Report and The Drudge Report (the [Yale study is online here]).

"Our results show a very significant liberal bias," they write. "One of our measures found that The Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News' Special Report is the most centrist." And all three papers, plus NBC and CBS, "were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives." Fair and balanced, anyone? To use a simplified example, they say, suppose there were only two think tanks, and The New York Times cited the liberal one twice as often as the conservative one. Then the newspaper's ADA score would be the same as that of a member of Congress who did the same.

The estimated ADA score for Fox, based on citations, was 35.6. That puts it in the company of Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and a few points below the House median, 39.0. The two highest were The New York Times, at 67.6, and CBS Evening News, at 70.0. The average Republican in Congress has an ADA score of 11.2, and the average Democrat 74.1.

The authors say they expected to find that the mainstream media leaned to the left, but they were "astounded by the degree." So when people say, for example, that The New York Times may be tilted left, but people can compensate for that by watching Fox News, they don't take into account that the Times is much further from the center than Fox. "To gain a balanced perspective, one would need to spend twice as much time watching Special Report as he or she spends reading The New York Times."

Re:Politics?

[Buelldozer]

Ahhh but Bill O'Reilly isn't a newscaster, he has his own OP-Ed show is all.

The NEWS ITSELF at Fox News is pretty balanced IMHO, it's just the "commentary" shows that tend to be right wing in nature.