Mitchell Bard

The Correspondent, the Comic, and the Combatant The Consequences of Host Style in Political Talk Shows

Tailored within the increasingly competitive news environment, political talk shows have adopted a range of styles, heralding a rise in “combatant” and “comic” hosts to complement the conventional “correspondent.” Using an experimental design to rule out self-selection biases, this study isolates the impact of host style on media judgments. In comparison to the other styles, the correspondent host increases perceptions of informational value, enhances host and program credibility, and reduces erosion of media trust, while a comic host mitigates some of the negative impact compared to a combatant host. Implications for media accountability and democratic functioning are discussed.

Filmed in Front of a Live Studio Audience: Laughter and Aggression in Political Entertainment Programming

Shows blending humor and information are on the rise, and many such shows incorporate live studio audiences. Using two separate experimental studies, we test whether audience laughter on humorous political talk shows affects audience perceptions. We find that the effects of audience laughter depend on context, boosting perceptions of host and program credibility when a host is unknown, while reminding viewers of the comedic intentions and appeal of a known comedic host. If humor allows the hosts of comedic political talk shows more freedom to pointedly question their guests without turning off viewers, it may better engage and inform audiences.

The Role of Differing Host Styles in Fox News’ Prime Time Coverage of Health Care Reform in August 2009:

Much research has looked at individual Fox News programs as a means to ascertain how the network operates in a variety of contexts, but nearly no attention has been paid to the role of individual program hosts. The host plays an important role in branding news programs and thus directly affects a network’s self-presentation and credibility. This host-based, meso-level study examines how the three Fox News prime time hosts employed differing approaches toward furthering the network’s themes opposing health care reform in August 2009.

Even a Celebrity Journalist Can’t Have an Opinion: Post-Millennials’ Recognition and Evaluation of Journalists and News Brands on Twitter

Post-Millennials have exhibited decreasing levels of news usage but increased consumption of news via social media, more pronounced than the changes in older cohorts. These changes raise questions about the role of media skepticism and the recognition and evaluation of journalists and nonjournalist information sources. This study employs an experimental design to examine how media branding influences Post-Millennials’ assessments of credibility, objectivity, and evaluations of the individual and information presented on a Twitter feed. Results demonstrate the continued value and weight of traditional news sources while at the same time providing insight into the limits and boundaries of actors within those systems.

Propaganda, Persuasion, or Journalism?: Fox News’ Prime-Time Coverage of Health-Care Reform in 2009 and 2014

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.