Fox News on pace for best year ever

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Interesting article on Yahoo this morning.

I'm curious if this is accurate, although I tend to doubt that "Goldberg" is without bias

 

Conservative news sources always do better when conservatives are out of power. The Clinton years practically made Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge. This isn't much of a surprise (if true, that is...Bernard Goldberg isn't terribly authoritative on much of anything). A disappointment, sure - but not a surprise.

 

Actually, the numbers are misleading. As in talk radio, ratings are based on how many people are tuning into your station at any given time rather than total listenership/viewership. Rather than aim for the broadest audience possible, conservative media outlets tend to aim for a core audience that is more or less always tuned in. They do this by sensationalizing and being controversial, because controversy sells. Because these people hang around longer than the traditional viewer/listener of MSNBC/Air America/CNN/CSPAN/NPR/etc, their ratings are actually much higher than their listenership would otherwise indicate.

To push things further, FOX is the only far-right 24 hour television news source on the market. Moderates and liberals, on the other hand are splitting their time between Network News, MSNBC, CNN, CSPAN, and even Comedy Central. Since more or less all of the hard-right viewers currently watching news are tuning in to FOX, FOX wins the ratings war because viewers of different ideological persuasions are splitting their time between several competing stations. FOX has 24 hour dominance because, for their target audience, they're the only show in town.

 

Yeah that too.

 

You also have to dig a little deeper than the headlines. As was discussed last night on MSNBC, FOX scores very well among white males. In fact, 46% (not a majority put a clear plurality) of all white males surveyed selected FOX as their network of choice. However, only 37% of women, 11% of Latinos and 5% of Blacks agreed.

The main thing this survey showed to me was that white males, a historically conservative voting group, are still conservative. Women are somewhere in the middle, while minorities still tend to go liberal. Where's the beef?

 

How liberal is CNN? That's what I usually watch (I got in the habit in the military -- CNN is in every situation room).

 

I would classify CNN as liberal leaning, but nothing in the realm of something like MSNBC or Huffington. I think it's pretty fair overall, I like CNN, and I'm liberal leaning, so my opinion is based on that.

 

I really don't think CNN is that liberal. Take a look at their biggest personalities: Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper, Wolfe Blitzer, Larry King, Campbell Brown. Arch conservative, mild liberal, too weak-willed to tell, non-political, and (I'd guess) mild conservative, respectively. Until recently, they also had Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck. And Tucker Carlson used to have his own show, before they fired him and he went to MSNBC. I think they've been going to pretty decent lengths to shed the "Clinton News Network" moniker, and/or compete with Fox News by appealing to conservatives. Then you start factoring in their regular commentators, and I'd say CNN bowls right down the center. Which makes it the least-ridiculous (and therefore, most watchable by serious people) of the cable news networks. In all my years of watching them, I've witnessed very few "what the F***!" overt bias moments, especially when compared to the other two. CNN seems to actually take the news business seriously (presence of Nancy Grace notwithstanding).

 

I think CNN has come to be re-defined as liberal leaning because "liberal" has come to be re-defined by conservative media outlets like FOX news. CNN is, in my opinion, more than deserving of its reputation for fair, balanced, and less biased news coverage. Media groups on both sides of the aisle present scads of evidence of editorial bias working in the opposition's favor when looking at CNN's coverage, and while 100% unbiased reporting is essentially impossible, I think that those complaints serve as ample evidence that CNN is doing a pretty good job of it most of the time.

 

I don't care much for CNN, since from where I stand, it's fairly conservative. I don't see MSNBC as "too" liberal, since it represents my views fairly well. In a larger sense, that would make my views "too" libreal, if I were to believe they were too liberal. It's much like anyone who watches FOX, which I never do: If they believed FOX was too conservative, then many of them would not watch it. The fact is FOX represents some people's view, and that's pretty much why there is a market for its programming.

But I've never believed this country was liberal, including its news. Liberals have, for the most part, been out of the mainstream, just as some conservatives have. I would not WANT to be seen as moderate, or "down-the-middle" in my views. That's the realm where corporate America resides, and, while I believe it has done a lot of good for society, much like religion, I don't feel it meshes well in politics. My views aren't just leaning liberal, but are solidly liberal, so I have no problem with MSNBC. I have nothing but respect for moderates, and I'm in no way trying to put them down, only that it's certainly not my gig.

I'm even stunned that MSNBC and FOX exist at all in a society that is so dominated by corporate think and corporate money, which thrives best in more moderate political climates. Notice what happened to Glenn Beck and his corporate funding for taking things too far. This is just my opinion, but FOX and MSNBC are where the political action is. Both sides feel that they occupy the moral high-ground in politics, so that's where the heat is generated, because you have people who have more of an intellectual and emotional investment in their political perspectives. When was the last time you read an interesting "moderate" political editorial?

Of course, you can always just take Sgt Friday's "sound" advice:



Don't you feel all better now? So grab a cold one, turn on the tube, be glad you are in America, and just "shut the hell up already."

 

Chandos, the other thing that needs to be pointed out is that there is a big difference between bias and misinformation. MSNBC often has a liberal bias* and they make no bones about that, but they don't traffic in misinformation. They also don't let the president get away with misconduct just because he's a democrat. Rather than sweeping his questionable decisions under the rug, they've been calling him on those them -- loudly -- on a daily basis.

FOX, on the other hand, has a proven track record of disseminating misinformation. If they merely had a conservative bias, I'd be happy to watch them once in a while. FOX has far and away the best presentation of any of the 24 hour news stations, and "bias" doesn't really bother me. If the quality of FOX's presentation weren't inversely proportionate to their journalistic integrity, I'd watch it once in a while.

* Often, but not always. Their morning show is run by a republican, after all, and they have a few other conservative commentators, most notably Pat Buchanan, on staff as well.

 

They also have some carry-over from their sister station, CNBC, which is fairly conservative. And their flagship station, NBC, is very plain vanilla. It seems GE has covered all its bases. Maybe there is something to corporate think after all.

 

Right...MSNBC never ever distorts information

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-d...ntion-black-gun-owner-among-racist-protesters

 

That's actually a point - any show which supplies opinions in addition to the new is always going to put a slant on things. When liberals hear Bill O'Reilly's slant, they say he is distorting information, and the same thing happens when conservatives hear Keith Olbermann.

 

The difference is, KJ, when liberals say that about Bill O'Reilly, they can usually prove it without much effort. Olbermann's a bit of a drama queen, but he has a far closer relationship with the facts.

 

Far, far closer. FOX news continued to repeat the outright lie that we found WMD in Iraq and that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaida for years.

 

Friendly FOX demonstration coverage. Party! This is just some good Americans out there, right?

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Hostile FOX demonstration coverage. Note the unsteady camera, and the hectic reporter - danger is in the air! The Leftists are ... marching!

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