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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33226 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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I am not sure why you think that poll refers to the "liberal media," given that Fox News has been the #1 cable news channel for 20 years and that in Q2 of 2022, Fox had the top 8 cable news shows, and 9 of the top 10.

Fox News has been the #1 cable news channel for 20 years

And yet none of the CBS, ABC, or NBC newsmagazines or Sunday morning talk shows have taken note and even pivoted to neutrality. They remain staffed with left of center ex-Clinton and ex-Obama staffers with panels that, at best can be expected to have one milktoast Republican as a whipping boy.

That's a fair point, as it just refers to national media organizations and not particular organizations.

Reading the tea leaves, though, the high trust ratings are mostly sustained by Democrats in the same poll. It's unlikely that the organization Democrats are expressing high trust in is Fox, and the decline over the past several years is driven heavily by Republican and Republican-leaning adults, who are the primary targets of this strategy.

I like pointing to this, not because I think the study or survey is especially accurate -- the low quality of the methodology doesn't encourage! -- but because it's the sort of question people are asking when they ask this, and it says something when examined in close detail what that is.

It would be nice to see the leaners analyzed separately. Those are people whom both sides should be trying to reach, so it is their attitudes which should determine whether the strategy is wise.

How does Fox compare to CNN+MSNBC+ABC+NBC+CBS?

Well, based on the total data on the scribd document in the link to the Q2 2022 data, it looks like these are the audience totals (based on the third column, which appears to be how they are ranked):

CNBC 2132

CNN 6874

FBN 2446

FOXN 32390

HLN 288

MSNB 16002

NMX 2334

TOTAL 62466

But the point is not the exact percentages. The point is that, given that Fox is a very popular news organization, it is impossible to infer anything about the public views of "liberal media" from a poll that asks merely about "national news organizations." Perhaps those numbers are driven by declining trust in the "liberal media," or perhaps they are driven by a decline in trust in Fox News, or perhaps there has a decline in trust in all of the above. It is impossible to tell from that source.

My impression is that opinion in Fox had become extremely polarized by the mid Bush II years. Opinions on the other networks didn't really crater until the last 5-10 years. But at this point, almost no one has a generally favorable view of "the media". We might see a more nuanced picture if there were another question like "Is there any national televised news you think is trustworthy?"

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