Back in March, when folks inside the Netroots and elsewhere were working to shut down a proposed Democratic presidential debate to be held on Fox News, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman released the following data about the network he had culled in 2004.
Instead of providing "fair and balanced" reporting, Fox has created an audience ignorant of the facts, but fully supportive of management's ideology.An audience that decides for itself, based on "fair and balanced" coverage, ought not to reach monolithic conclusions. Yet, in our 2004 polling with Media Vote, using Nielsen diaries, we found that Fox News viewers supported George Bush over John Kerry by 88 percent to 7 percent. No demographic segment, other than Republicans, was as united in supporting Bush. Conservatives, white evangelical Christians, gun owners, and supporters of the Iraq war all gave Bush fewer votes than did regular Fox News viewers.
A newer set of data released today by the Norman Lear Center and Zogby International offers similar findings.
Compared to all other respondents, conservatives were more likely to watch only two channels out of the 24 highest-rated networks: Fox and Fox News. While no one should be surprised to hear that conservatives like to watch Fox News (70% watch it daily, opposed to 12% of moderates and liberals), many may wonder why the Fox broadcast network is their second favorite channel, with over twice as many conservatives watching it daily, compared to all other respondents.[...]
Fox News wins the prize for the most politically divisive TV channel (70% of conservatives watch it daily and only 3% of liberals).
Now I can't see how this data, which was in the field in late June and had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.6 percentage points, is exactly right, or at least explained exactly right. There's just no way that 70 percent of conservatives -- or by Zogby's estimate about 25.9 percent of American adults -- watch Fox News on a daily basis. The O'Reilly Factor, the network's most popular program, draws about 3 million viewers on a good night, a far cry from the 55 million or so people that would make up a quarter of American adults.
Nonetheless, the proportions found by the survey are worth noting. Fox News' viewership really is just Republican and conservative. In such a case, what reason is there for Democrats to go on the network? Democrats and progressives don't advertise in The Weekly Standard. They don't contract with Richard Viguerie to send direct mail to conservative activists. So why, then, should Democrats and progressives feel a need to effectively do the same thing by going on Fox News? Perhaps if Democrats and progressives wanted to reach the Republican and conservative base they would have a reason to go on Fox News. Otherwise, I just don't see much of a reason.
|
|
|
Permalink :: 13 Comments :: Post a Comment
|
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account right here. It's quick and free.
