Fox News, the Con/Republican Network...
Following are five facts the majority of Americans are aware of. But like with most issue the truth bears repeating. Often. Again, and Again, and AGAIN. And so we take the time to reprint excerpts from the NPR article for your consideration.
5 facts about Fox News
Fox News, the influential cable network launched by Rupert Murdoch in 1996, holds a unique place in the American media landscape, particularly for those on the ideological right. While Democrats in the United States turn to and place their trust in a variety of media outlets for political news, no other source comes close to matching the appeal of Fox News for Republicans.
Below are five facts about Fox News and how Americans feel about it. All findings are based on recent surveys from Pew Research Center’s Election News Pathways project, which focuses on what Americans hear, perceive and know about the 2020 presidential election and how these attitudes relate to how and where they get news. (You can use this interactive tool to explore the data from these surveys yourself.)
1 Around four-in-ten Americans trust Fox News. Nearly the same share distrust it.
Among all U.S. adults, 43% say they trust Fox News for political and election news – similar to the shares who say they trust CBS News (45%) and PBS (42%), according to a November 2019 survey. At the same time, 40% of adults say they distrust Fox News – the highest share out of the 30 media outlets asked about in the survey, ahead of CNN (32%) and the Rush Limbaugh radio show (29%).
2 Republicans trust Fox News more than any other outlet. Democrats distrust it more than any other outlet.
Around two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (65%) say they trust Fox News for political and election news. No more than a third of Republicans say they trust any of the other news organizations asked about in the survey, including network sources such as ABC News (33%), CBS News (30%) and NBC News (30%). Conservative Republicans are especially likely to say they trust Fox News: Three-quarters say this, compared with around half of moderate or liberal Republicans (51%).
Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 61% say they distrust Fox News for political news. That’s considerably higher than the shares of Democrats who distrust other outlets, including the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity radio shows (43% and 38%, respectively) and Breitbart News (36%) – though this also reflects the fact that Fox News is more well-known to the public than these other outlets. Liberal Democrats are far more likely than conservative or moderate Democrats to say they distrust Fox news (77% vs. 48%).
3 On an ideological scale, the average Fox News consumer is to the right of the average U.S. adult, but not as far to the right as the audiences of some other outlets.
As part of the November survey, the Center grouped the audiences of 30 news outlets on a scale based on the self-described ideology and partisanship of those who said they had gotten political news from each outlet in the past week. (You can read more about this classification system in this Q&A.) Based on this scale, the average audience member for Fox News is more likely than the average U.S. adult to be conservative and Republican. But the average audiences for four other outlets in the study – the Daily Caller, Breitbart News, and the Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh radio shows – are to the right of the average Fox News viewer.
4 People who cite Fox News as their main source of political news are older and more likely to be white than U.S. adults overall.
Americans ages 65 and older account for around four-in-ten of those who say their main source is Fox News (37%), compared with 21% of all adults, according to the November survey. And around nine-in-ten who turn to Fox News (87%) identify their race and ethnicity as non-Hispanic white, compared with 65% of all adults.
5 Those who name Fox News as their main source of political news stand out in their views on key issues and people, including President Donald Trump.
Fox News consumers tend to have an especially positive view of the president, which may not be a surprise given that 93% of those who name the network as their main source of political news identify as Republican or lean to the party.
One striking example is in perceptions of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. In a March 2020 survey, 63% of those whose main source of political and election news is Fox News said Trump is doing an excellent job responding to the outbreak. No more than a quarter of those who cited other news outlets as their main source of political news said this. Fox News regulars were considerably more likely than Republicans overall to describe Trump’s handling of the outbreak as excellent (63% vs. 47%).
For me the most telling is #2 on the list. A majority of Fox News consumers, 65%, trust Fox News and only 30% even bother to read and digest news and opinions from other sources. Is this because they are gullible and easily lead by ideologues and charlatans (Hannity, Fox and Friends, Gutfeld, Limbaugh, Trump, et all). Or is it because they know something only Foxers know?
For more on this story don't forget to CLICK HERE.
A tour de force, or magnum opus that fills in the blanks of what we suspect
ReplyDeleteand feel we know. FoxNews is the pivotal epicenter of the problem of news vs
opinion. IMO, they, Breitbart and Antonine Scalia are the progenitors of what
future historians will term the near collapse of American Democracy. Of course,
it cannot sustain..it's too preposterous, shallow and yes, stupid, to last.