Fox “News” Is . . . Gasp . . . Conservative

Filed in National by on October 30, 2009

A Pew Research Center finds that Fox “News” is viewed as the most ideological of the six television news channels. Forty-seven percent of Americans think that Fox “News” is conservative, while 36% of Americans think that MSNBC is liberal. What’s interesting with this poll is that Americans thoughts regarding the news channels stay pretty consistent between MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC, but when it comes to Fox “News” there is a huge vacillation.

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On a side note, what his survey does prove is that 14% of Americans are out-of-their-freaking-minds thinking that Fox “News” is liberal. h/t Talking Points Memo.

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Comments (23)

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  1. pandora says:

    I don’t mind FOX being conservative, they just need to own that term… and stop all this “Fair and Balanced” crap.

    And, LOL at that 14%. I can’t even imagine their thought process. Um… thought? Guess I just got the 14%.

  2. Scott P says:

    I agree, Pandora. I did a post on it the other day, basically pointing out that we have a long history of partisan journalism in this country, and that “neutral, unbiased” journalism is actually a 20th Century construct. I, too, have no problem with them being right wing, just admit it, and revel in it. Like when pro wrestling finally started calling itself “sports entertainment”. Maybe we can call FOX “news entertainment”.

  3. Rebecca says:

    I like “news entertainment” a very good description.

  4. Scott P says:

    As for the 14%, I hope that some of them were just messing with the pollers, like when I have to input info for delawareonline, and I’m an 85 year old woman from zip 90210 (hint: I’m not). Sadly, though, most of them are real. These are the people who scare me. They listen to all the crap the FOX people spew (even Beck!) and think it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Because since FOX is part of the government-controlled liberal mainstream media, whatever they say is wrong must actually be much worse. This is how paranoid conspiricy theories get enhanced and spread. Then they go back to their bunkers, chamber a round, and wait for the agents to come take them away to the camps.

  5. cassandra m says:

    This is Scott’s very good article.

    Partisan journalism really ought to be OK, it is way past time that journalists dropped the pretense to some objectivity and own up to whatever biases they are reporting from. If you go to places in Europe with strong newspaper traditions, you can tell something about someone’s politics (and sometimes class) from the newspaper they carry. When I was a kid in a town with multiple newspapers (and morning and evening editions) you knew something about the politics and class of the people carrying those papers for better or worse.

    At the end of the day, I think that the pretense of objectivity is the real cancer in journalism now and the thing that keeps undermining trust in news outlets.

  6. As usual journalists will probably get this all completely back-asswards and fall all over themselves to be “objective.” Don’t they get it – we don’t care if there’s a point of view, we just want to know what it is. Stop already with this he said-she said we can’t figure out who’s telling the truth stuff. One of the reasons I’ve mostly tuned out of cable news is their inability to call a lie a lie. It’s infuriating.

  7. Scott P says:

    I’m even willing to help them out. How’s this for a new motto — FOX News – The Right Way to View the World

    It’s either that or my second choice (which would probably be more popular): FOX News – Have We Mentioned Lately That Liberals Suck?

  8. nemski says:

    NPR – Left of the Dial
    CNN – Cowardly News Network

  9. Brooke says:

    I find it equally interesting that you have similar numbers of people who see the other outlets as conservative. Lovely bell graphing material.

  10. anon says:

    NPR = Now Playing Republican

  11. cassandra m says:

    Adding in here the Pew poll that finds viewers of Fox Noise about the most uninformed in the US.

  12. RSmitty says:

    NPR = Now Playing Republican
    Huh? Seriously? 🙄

  13. Mike says:

    I don’t have time to find a link just now, but someone ought to link here to last night’s very fine Fox News/Obama Admin take-down by Jon Stewart.

  14. Scott P says:

    I’m a little surprised that MSNBC didn’t rank higher in the liberal category. It’s probably mostly explained by the fact that MSNBC has more “I don’t know” votes. By percentage of people with opinions, it does get the highest liberal ranking. It’s surely the least known of the group by apolitical people. I guess if anything, it shows the right wing “Forget FOX, MSNBC is full of commies!” talking point is not catching on very fast.

  15. Von Cracker says:

    I’ve listened to a ton of NPR’s straight news programs, such as morning addition, talk of the nation and all thing considered.

    It’s not left or right – for the most part it’s ambivalent – meaning the hosts do not offer assessments. They do the bullshit “he said, she said” and everyone’s the more stupid for it.

    Regarding FoxNews though – its so-called straight news makes a bad habit of reporting on its own opinion shows’ falsehoods uttered the night before.

    Watch the Daily Show from last night. Caught red-handed and can’t explain your way out of it.

    MSNBC & CNN do not do that.

    Some people are saying Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990

  16. Von Cracker says:

    moderation?

  17. cassandra_m says:

    That was brilliant.

  18. NPR = Nice Polite Republicans

  19. Tom S says:

    does the opinion poll cover all programming or just the news shows? and why don’t they add up to 100?

  20. cassandra_m says:

    If you are looking at the chart nemski posted, it says pretty clearly that “Don’t Know” responses were not shown on the graph.

  21. Tom S says:

    well that’s a valid poll…lol

  22. cassandra_m says:

    Why wouldn’t it be? The only thing that is missing on the graphic representation of the data are the Don’t Know responses, which the creators of such graphs presume you can easily calculate. Perhaps they forget that repubs can’t do basic math.