Fox news has taken a lot of criticism from President Obama but they aren’t really any different than their cable news brethren when it comes to partisanship.

From the New York Times

The Obama White House’s decision to challenge Fox News appears driven equally by strategy and frustration. It is also a test case for politicians in both parties.

That is because partisan fragmentation throughout America’s news media and their audiences has grown significantly. Future Republican presidents will have to decide, as Team Obama has, how to buck or accommodate that trend.

Fox News has attracted the most attention because of its “fair and balanced” challenge to its competitors and its success. But the audiences of its competitors have tilted sharply in the other direction. (This reporter is chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and hosts “The New York Times Special Edition,” a program on MSNBC.)

Press critics worry that the rise of media polarization threatens the foundation of credible, common information that American politics needs to thrive. Will Feltus, a Republican specialist in voter targeting, does not.

If it complicates the choices facing leaders in Washington, Mr. Feltus argues, it also decentralizes political communication in a way that is both inevitable and healthy in the information age. “I feel no hand-wringing about it,” Mr. Feltus said. “People are smart enough to understand what color filter is over the lens.”

Roots of a Trend

The evolution of political news on television, in print and on the Internet has a certain back-to-the-future feel. As the American Revolution approached in the 18th century, wrote William David Sloan and Julie Hedgepeth Williams in the book “The Early American Press, 1690-1783,” journalists “were expected to be partisan — intensely partisan.”

Mr. Feltus charted the rising partisanship of television news audiences using data from Scarborough Research, a partnership of the Nielsen Company and Arbitron Inc.

In audience surveys from August 2000 to March 2001, Fox News viewers tilted Republican by 44.6 percent to 36.1 percent. More narrowly — 41.4 percent to 39.4 percent — so did the audience for MSNBC. The audiences of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central leaned Democratic.

Four years later, amid the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, the audience data had shifted. Fox News viewers had become 51 percent Republican and just 30.8 percent Democratic, while MSNBC viewers leaned Democratic by 41.7 percent to 40.4 percent. Viewers of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central grew slightly more Democratic.

By 2008-9, the network audiences tilted decisively, like Fox’s. CNN viewers were more Democratic by 50.4 percent to 28.7 percent; MSNBC viewers were 53.6 percent to 27.3 percent Democratic; Headline News’ 47.3 percent to 31.4 percent Democratic; CNBC’s 46.9 percent to 32.5 percent Democratic; and Comedy Central’s 47.1 to 28.8 percent Democratic.

 

The fact that the cable networks tilt to one side or the other really isn’t that surprising.  Fox is clearly conservative overall though they have peppered the network with liberals to give the appearance of being even handed.  While the White House dismisses this as just sugar coating at least they have aired people with different points of view.  That rarely happens on the other cable networks particularly their opinion shows. 

Obama came into office promising not just hope and change but what he referred to as the need to heal the country after some acrimony during the Bush presidency. 

However by calling out Fox News he and his aides look more like a bunch of whiny kids that didn’t get their way.  Fox would have been a minor annoyance during his presidency but now they have taken center stage and supplanted more important news.  Or maybe given the problems the administration is having with health care and climate change legislation that was the point.  Create a new villain and make the administration the victim to garner sympathy. 

Based on the results so far all this strategy has achieved is to divide liberals and conservatives further apart which doesn’t bode well for the administration or the Democrats.

Post #2437

 

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