Posted on 12/17/2019 4:21:52 AM PST by EyesOfTX
What in the hell is going on at Fox News? – On Monday, Fox News came out with yet another poll whose findings are, to say the least, difficult to explain. The poll, conducted by Braun Research out of Princeton, NJ, finds that voters favor the impeachment and removal of President Donald Trump by a margin of 50% to 46%. The poll’s sample of “1000 registered voters” was conducted from December 8 through December 11, basically a week ago.
Four other current polls, by Qunnipiac, CNN, NPR/PBS/Marist and USA Today/Suffolk – all notoriously slanted in favor of Democrats – all find that equation reversed, with voters opposing impeachment and removal by margins ranging from 3% to 6%. Other than NPR/PBS/Marist, all were conducted more recently than the Fox News poll, which may help to explain things. Why Fox waited five days after its poll was completed before reporting on it is a mystery.
But here’s the deal: This conduct and reporting of clear outlier polls by Fox News has now become a very clear and consistent pattern. Coincidentally or not, that pattern began to emerge in 2018 right around the time that former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was named to a seat on Fox’s board of directors. Probably just a coincidence, but damn, that was also around the time we began to see a decidedly anti-Trump slant emerge on Fox’s daytime “news” programs outside of the Shep Smith hour, which had always been a leftist love-fest.
Coincidence or not, it’s been an interesting pattern to observe. True, Fox did part ways with the insipid Mr. Smith recently, but nobody believes that was due to any concern within management about Smith’s leftist slant, which had been a consistent feature of the channel’s programming throughout the 21st century. But the anti-Trump bias across the remainder of the channel’s daytime programming remains ingrained, and growing.
Back to this latest poll, its’ sample breakdown is very odd, consisting of 46% Democrats, 41% Republicans and just 12% independents. Why Braun would choose to over-sample both Ds and Rs so significantly is hard to explain, since every estimate with any validity says that well over 30% of the public identifies as independents. But that breakdown has to be intentional.
Braun provides no information about where the sample came from geographically within the United States, but there is a big, big difference between a “Republican” living in Rhode Island or some other coastal state and a “Republican” living in Oklahoma or Louisiana or anywhere else out here in Flyover Country. If the poll’s GOP sample consisted mainly of “Republicans” like Mitt Romney or Arnold Schwarzenegger or William Weld or John Kasich, then the poll’s outlier result is entirely explainable.
Regardless, Fox’s on-air talent spent the entire day reporting the results of this clear outlier poll as if it were a real news story, which brings us to the main problem with news outlet-sponsored polls: They are conducted not to accurately gauge real voter attitudes, but to create “news” stories. Fox got to spend all day on Monday reporting the “news” that its own poll shows more voters than not favoring the removal of a duly-elected President from office. That no doubt boosted the channel’s ratings a bit and may have even helped with their street cred among their corrupt media peers.
Never mind that the poll’s results stick out like a sore thumb among those of every other poll released in the last week, Fox’s objective related to the poll – filling a significant amount of air time with a contrarian result – was achieved.
That’s not really “news” as most Americans would define it, but that is what Fox News has now become. The only question remaining for viewers to ask is “Why?”. Unfortunately, the answer to that question is not clear.
Yet.
That is all.
kill your television ... stop paying the people that want you dead ...
They have devolved into main stream media.
mockingbirds and leftists took over FOX. It’s crap, Jim.
Paul Ryan, Chris Wallace, Bret Baier, Howie Kurtz, this list right here explains a good deal of it.
It’s not just Ryan.
He’s not an outlier.
Check out the board and upper management.
No doubt Fox polls are bad, but they’ve been bad for a very long time....they didn’t start getting bad in 2018.
Deep State took over FNC.
Paging biz journos: The story of what happened to News Corp and why would make interesting telling....
Paul Ryan is achieving about as much positive for conservative principles on the Fox board as he did while Speaker of the House - somethin’ close to nuthin’. A totally worthless windbag, loser to Joe Biden! in a ridiculous VP debate, about the only thing he achieved as Speaker was to lower tax rates which benefitted him and his Bushite friends.
I watched a bit of Laura Ingraham last night - what a waste of time. She had a blurb about how the Democrats are running into an iceberg - complete with scenes from a movie about a ship doing just that. Oh so supposedly amusing. Except it was stupid - we are in very dangerous times with the rats trying to throw out a POTUS with phony made up charges because they don’t want him elected again. What’s funny about that?
We all know the deep state wants POTUS gone - and that includes Republicans - so dangerous to have those few people in Congress in charge of over 300 million of us and trillions of dollars which they spend without regard to where the money came from.
Save yourself misery - don’t watch FOX for the sake of your intellect.
During the day and on weekends it is trash.
Hannitus Interruptus, Tucker and Laura are the only shows worth watching.
I watched the part where Rudy told her to hush up and stop interrupting him. I liked that part. A lot.
Quit watching Fox News the minute they hired Geraldo.
Its not just Fox News. Take a look at Forbes which used to report from a small ‘c’ perspective especially around the economy and business.
They have somehow hired new, work, liberal reporters. I cannot even stand to read their site anymore
Actually Geraldo has been a voice of reason there lately.
definitely an element of anti-Trump bias at Fox, whether in the polls it chooses to push, or in programs presented by Wallace & Kurtz in particular.
however, Tucker/Hannity/Ingraham/Justice/Gutfeld & more, incl the Fox Business presenters, are still miles ahead of the FakeNewsMSM.
They’re trying to suck in middle viewers,,, prove they’re Fair and Balanced.
The competition is complete Leftist drivel
Kind of what the Republicans kept trying to do the last 2 decades attempting to seem nice ... which didn’t work
“”””””’I watched the part where Rudy told her to hush up and stop interrupting him. I liked that part. A lot. “””””””””
I saw that. Finally someone had the seeds to tell her to shut up so he could finish a sentence.
True, true.
But what happened, why and when, to News Corp is especially interesting. Blockbuster interesting if anyone can get the details. Then get them published.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.