I've heard this explained by a comparison. If you have a block with four burger joints and one taco joint, you'd expect the taco joint to be the most popular.
Not saying this is correct, but I thought it was an interesting analogy.
So one might expect the taco joint to be the most popular.
But explicitly the parent is saying that the taco joint is more popular than all of the burger joints _combined_. Which is not what I would have guessed.
If we are talking cable, I believe it. I haven’t had cable for the last couple of decades, I would venture that not many liberals, who tend to be younger, have cable. If you were going to start a cable channel now, who would you pander to: the audience that doesn’t have that much cable (liberals) or the audience that does (conservatives).
That is only measuring people who still have cable. It doesn’t tell you anything about those that don’t watch cable news at all. All we can tell is that the 60+ group prefers Fox.
I did say liberals tend to watch less cable because they tend to be younger, it doesn’t mean that liberals in general have a propensity for cutting the cord.
Most people don't get their news from cable news. Fox has a near monopoly on conservatives, and even they they capture a relatively small audience.
fox's highest rated show is 4.8 million viewers.
ABC and NBC each get 10 million viewers for nightly news, cbs gets 6 million viewers. CNN and MSNBC have lower ratings, but there are a alot of mainstream-to-liberal sources of news to choose from. Liberals tend to like John Oliver and the Daily Show over fox news.
And the 11 O'clock local news still tends to get a lot of views, I think more than all of those others put together.
I was all set to post a comment about how I dream of an honestly fair and balanced news channel, unlike Fox, CNN or MSNBC. I was going to post some outrageous headlines from each site right now. Surprisingly, the front page of foxnews.com was pretty sane and sober, remarkably so — and by far better than cnn.com or msnbc.com.
I am honestly stunned. I really expected Fox News to be as much of a dumpster fire as CNN or MSNBC. Certainly their video coverage, every time I have walked in front of a TV playing them, has been horrible. And I could swear that maybe six or seven months ago I walked by someone with a browser open to the Fox News site, and it was just execrable.
Maybe they are trying to turn over a new leaf?
That said, I still dream of truly fair news channel. Not opinion masquerading as news: actual, trying-to-be-objective news.
You'll never see a fully "fair" news channel, for two reasons:
- Humans will bring their implicit biases to any reporting they do; I feel like it's better for the reader to make implicit biases explicit, and call out where the writer feels uncomfortable.
- If you try to cut humans out of the loop and replace them with algorithms, you're creating two problems: algorithms will have implicit biases from their creators, and there will be attempts to game and dupe the algorithms.
You can make a fair news channel if you give a news channel the right incentives. You need to create a news outlet where biased reporting is an actual scandal.
The problem in the US is that news outlets are expected to be biased and so they take full advantage of that to make their news more entertaining.
These news channels are driven by add revenue. And divisive, incendiary reporting is the best way to get people to keep watching.
What about wire services? AP and reuters reports are so brief and to the point they read like the wikipedia paragraph that will shortly plagiarize them.
Apart from that, you are perhaps asking for data devoid of biased analysis. You can keep up with current events like this on your own. There is plenty of public data on anything that you can analyze yourself and draw your own conclusions. Instead of reading business news, read SEC filings. Instead of reading about coronavirus, graph the raw data and make your own models. Skip the sensationalist science and health articles, and go right for the peer reviewed article. Open that layer on GIS yourself. Ignore medium blogs and read the actual documentation. Become your own data scientist.
This all takes a lot of mental effort and time, which few people have, so most people actually prefer to read summary articles from biased sources that reinforce their existing world view.
Fox News has definitely not turned over a new leaf. Here's an example from the Fox homepage that impressed you so much. It's about the latest developments from the CHAZ:
This seems like a straightforward and believable article. There's infighting at the Zone because a bunch of anarchists have diverted from the core message about police brutality targeting blacks and other minorities, and now the BLM camp is pissed off. Right?
But wait, even though the title unambiguously states that BLM protestors are blaming the autonomous zone for hijacking the core BLM message, the article instead explains that the quote about "hijacking the message" actually comes from a woman who is speaking on behalf of the African American Community Advisory Council, and she's the one being booed and heckled by protestors.
So what's the African American Community Advisory Council? Probably some BLM-related thing, right? After all, if the title of the article states that "Black Lives Matter protestors" are accusing the CHAZ of "hijacking the message" while the actual quote came out of the mouth of someone from the African American Community Advisory Council, then surely Black Lives Matter == African American Community Advisory Council.
Right?
I mean sure, technically they must be two separate things because they have two separate names, but surely they're closely connected. Just to be positive, let's find out. Type that name into a search engine and click on the first result:
Wait, the African American Community Advisory Council is actually a department of the Seattle city government. And they "work collaboratively with the police."
So Fox News saw a story about a city government employee scolding protestors. This employee works in a department that is closely aligned with the police and sides with the police, but because the department has a name that evokes blackness, that was enough leeway for them to write a false headline that intentionally confuses the reader into thinking that this is a story about internal conflict and infighting among the protestors.
Sure enough, the bovine reader comments at the bottom of the page confirm the success of this tactic:
"Even the idiots can't agree. What will they do now??"
"I guess nobody told BLM that you can't negotiate with terrorists."
"Leftists arguing over whose riot it is???"
"Eating their own"
Fox News knows that they can trust Fox News readers to glance at the headline, skip the article, feel confirmation of their biases and preconceptions, and tuck another false anecdote in their pocket to use as ammunition in case they get in an argument with a family member, coworker, or person online.
Here's a reminder that we should never be passive consumers of of a biased narrative!
I didn’t catch this when I looked yesterday, but apparently they photoshopped an image of a person holding a gun into an image of the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone [0]. “Fair and balanced” indeed.
Are we seeing the same front page of foxnews.com? The top story is about the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone, and the biggest text on the page says "Clueless in Seattle".
No, I do not see that anywhere on the page. I do see '"YOU HAVE HIJACKED THIS"
Black community activists clash with Seattle anarchists over BLM message, seized district' and other stuff like 'Washington restaurant apologizes after police officer finds derogatory acronym on receipt' and 'Seattle mayor, police chief deny making call to abandon police precinct.' It's mostly sane news.
I wonder if it shows different things to folks without ad blockers, JavaScript blocking &c.?
Agreed, though: 'Clueless in Seattle' has no place on a news site.
I took too long writing my other comment, but it's all the more relevant given the fact that you were misled by the very article headline that I chose to single out.
Fox News often changes headlines. The original is usually the best/most informative. Throughout the day the headlines seem to get more and more click-bait.
I'm somewhat confused about the TV media landscape, as there are cable news channels, Fox / CNN / MSNBC, but there are also the big 3 networks, ABC / CBS / NBC, which also air news and are also available on cable.
