In its recent poll of where people get their news, Politico.com
offers an apparently new definition of the word “objective.”
The poll
data show that 81% of respondents receive information
and news about the mid-term elections from cable TV, with 71%
getting info and news from “national broadcast TV news and their
websites.” Other major sources were:
Conversations with friends/family: 79%
Local TV news and their websites: 73%
Newspapers: 72%
Radio: 58%
Websites and blogs (other than the national/local news sites):
39%
Political ads: 37%
Much to the dismay of liberals, the cable news breakdown
looks like this:
Mainly CNN: 30%
Mainly Fox News: 42%
Mainly MSNBC: 12%
Other cable news channel/website: 9%
Politico, which like most “establishment” news
sources staffed by the usual journalism school graduate suspects,
feels a need to criticize or insult the obvious dolts who are
handing Fox News this media victory:
The results of the poll…also reflect a trend that many
commentators and media analysts find disconcerting: Voters are
turning to media sources that reinforce their political worldviews
rather than present them with more objective reporting that might
challenge their assumptions.
Sure, Politico says this trend is
“disconcerting” to “many commentators and media analysts”…but
that group of course includes Politico, which
doesn’t attempt to quantify what “many” means and if “many” even
represents more than a small percentage of such
“analysts.”
In any case, the most objectionable part of the article
was its use of the word “objective” to imply that if we turned to
CBS News or a newspaper or presumably Politico.com
we would get “objective” reporting as opposed to whatever it
is we get from Fox.
Does anybody really believe that before the advent of Fox
News and widespread availability of cable news channels, Dan Rather
or Tom Brokaw was giving us “objective” news? Remember Dan Rather,
the guy who tried to bury President Bush with a forged document?
The earliest major cable news outlet, CNN, was and remains
decidedly left-of-center.
A Harvard study of news
coverage of the 2008 presidential primary season
found CNN to be the most negative toward Republicans among cable
news channels: “The CNN programming studied tended to cast a
negative light on Republican candidates — by a margin of
three-to-one.” Believe it or not, MSNBC had a higher percentage of
positive stories about both Democrats and Republicans than either
CNN or FOX, as it simply pandered to both parties. As for Fox, the
study concluded “any sense here that the news channel was uniformly
positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not
manifest in the data.”
Also within cable news channels CNN, Fox, and MSNBC, Fox
had the highest percentage of “neutral” stories about Republicans
(just slightly above CNN). Also, while Fox had a higher percentage
of negative stories about Democrats than either CNN or MSNBC, it
had a higher percentage of neutral stories than negative stories.
Taking just the difference between positive and negative stories
about both parties for all three networks, Fox rated as the most
neutral.
As far as the major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC),
“The tone of coverage in the 30-minute evening newscasts was much
more positive toward the Democrats than Republicans.” And for the
networks’ morning broadcasts, “the shows produced almost twice as
many stories focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans
(51% vs. 27%).”
Also worth noting is that the most pro-Democrat bias among
various forms of media was in newspapers: “Fully 59% of all stories
about Democrats had a clear, positive message vs. 11% that carried
a negative tone. That is roughly double the percentage of positive
stories that we found in the media generally.”
So, back to “objective”: The idea that people should tune
into stations (or read other news sources) beyond Fox News in order
to get more objective news is, at least according to the Harvard
study and the apparent decision of millions of viewers, ridiculous.
Fox has shown that it lives by “fair and balanced” which, in the
eyes of those only used to seeing liberal propaganda masquerading
as news, might seem subjective and conservative. But that’s a
problem with Politico’s perception and that of its quoted
“analysts.” While the dominant liberal media see Fox as a
problem, viewers are obviously seeing it as a solution.
The reason people are flocking to Fox is not, as
Politico would have you believe, that they are
aiming to reinforce their already-existing views. It’s that people
recognize, in large part because Fox News has given them something
to compare to, the pervasive liberal bias in the media.
Coincidentally, Gallup released a poll just a few days
after the Politico poll showing that “distrust
in U.S. media [has edged] up to a record high,”
with a record high 57% now saying “they have little or no trust in
the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.”
Forty-eight percent of Americans believe the media is too liberal,
tying the previous record, while only 15% believe the media is too
conservative (you have to wonder who those people are.) Also, only
33% believe the media’s political leanings are “just about right”,
tying the record low.
Democrats/Liberals trust the media most.
Republicans/Conservatives trust it least. Even among Democrats,
however, 22% think the media is too liberal with 26% thinking it’s
too conservative. Among Independent and Republican voters, those
numbers are 45%-15% and 76%-6%, respectively.
Only in a world where war is peace and black is white are
national broadcast news or newspapers “objective” and Fox News not,
but that’s the world of Ivy League journalism schools, newspaper
editorial boards, and CBS’s newsroom. So when you hear the liberal
media telling you, Mr. or Mrs. Fox Viewer, to tune in elsewhere for
“objective” news, don’t be fooled. They’re not encouraging you to
be better-informed. They’re only trying to save their own skins
from your overdue recognition of the unforgiveable bias to which
they’ve subjected Americans for at least the past half
century.
