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Posted on 09/20/2004 12:21:16 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
DAVID LANGWORTHY says there's a reason viewers are flocking to Fox News, and it has a lot to do with the 'mainstream' media's performance.
In this season of polling numbers ad nauseam, several in particular jump out and grab you like a line from a swift boat veterans ad: They're the ones showing the remarkable ascendancy of Fox News as a source of information in the political world. This is truly consequential.
A June 2004 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reports that since 2000, the number of Americans tuning into Fox News has jumped from 17 percent to 25 percent, while other cable outlets' audience shares were flat at best.
The summer's Republican convention marked yet another milestone for Rupert Murdoch's "fair and balanced" network. For the first time, more convention viewers watched Fox than tuned into any of the three major broadcast networks.
I don't ever expect to be fully "Hannitized," but I'm a Fox fan, at least after hours. I'm also a devotee of National Public Radio and, occasionally, Pacifica Radio.
I believe it's part of my job as an op-ed editor to hear the divergent viewpoints offered by these news sources.
During afternoons spent selecting and editing content for the Chronicle's Outlook pages, I have my radio tuned into KUHF-FM and the news broadcast of National Public Radio's All Things Considered. This is a matter of longstanding habit, but also a tool for professional survival. I cannot count the times the NPR voice coming out of my office radio has alerted me to changes affecting Outlook content.
At home it's another story. I click my remote to 360, the DirecTV channel for Fox News, and I usually keep it there, with an occasional jump to CNN (or Fox Sports Southwest since the Astros started winning again).
As entertainment, I think the Fox nightly lineup of commentators — Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, even Greta Van Susteren — wins hands down over CNN.
Evidently, a lot of other folks agree. According to the Pew Survey, Fox's O'Reilly Factor has almost twice the audience of CNN stalwart Larry King. Why? Because it's more entertaining.
But my errand here isn't to play entertainment critic. I'm fascinated by Fox because, as a card-carrying member of the "mainstream" media, I believe we are doing our part and more to feed the Fox beast.
A while ago on these pages, we carried an opinion piece ("Where is media swarm looking into Dem 527 groups," Outlook, Sept. 2) by Benjamin Ginsberg. He is the lawyer who came under intense, connect-the-dots scrutiny because he represented both the Bush-Cheney campaign and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Ginsberg's main gripe is that there are the same connections on the Democratic side that received nowhere near the media attention that his did. In the op-ed, he supplied chapter and verse.
I can't help but agree with Ginsberg. The 527s on the Kerry/Democratic side have been given a virtual free pass compared with the swifties, and people notice it.
Those same folks vote with their remotes for Fox News.
Which brings us to the Dan Rather/CBS handling of supposed memos from George W. Bush's days in the Texas Air National Guard. At the very least, CBS' handling of this story suggests what the theater folks call "a willing suspension of disbelief." In its eagerness to nail Bush on his military service, CBS checked its professional skepticism at the door. Where was the network's vetting process?
These incidents and the way they were handled by the mainstream media during the summer of Campaign 2004 will be fodder for journalism ethics classes a generation from now, if not sooner. It won't be a pretty picture.
Meanwhile, they grow Fox's audience. Try as we may, we in the mainstream media cannot belittle Fox News or wish it and its imitators away.
Is it fair and balanced? For my money Fox news coverage is as down the middle as CNN's — or CBS's. Hannity, O'Reilly and the rest of the network's commentators aren't — but they're not paid to be. Is Fox a major force in setting the political agenda? Without a doubt.
So I would encourage more of my colleagues in the mainstream media to take a look at Fox regularly, as a matter of professional duty. It is an eye opener.
It raises some honest questions about where the real political "mainstream" lives.
Langworthy, the Chronicle's Outlook editor, is a member of the Editorial Board. (david.langworthy@chron.com)
A liberal who watches FOX NEWS? After all the SHUT UP FOX rallies in New York earlier this month you'd have thought liberals would shun it like the plague. I guess its growing on them. Those rallies bought FOX a ton of free publicity no advertising can buy.
He should watch (everyone should) Brit Hume's Fox News show, "Special Edition." It is the best news/analysis show on the air.
Absolutely. Hume and Gibson are about the only redeeming value Fox holds for me anymore.
Fox and Friends is decidely "right" minded.
2nd the motion. All those in favor say 'aye'.
And he gets it too. Admitting that Fox News reports news down the middle is a large leap for Mainstream media types.
Is he assuming the two are mutually exclusive? Please! Do NOT condescend!
SOME of us here are not so rabid that we don't do both. I often listened to NPR when I commuted, in order to get the talking points of the day. (Well, I had to blend in, no?)
I won't be like one of those libs who think FOX is so tainted they'd never watch it. ;o) It was interesting to listen about the 2000 election on NPR (who also carries BBC after hours) with "their" slant. This was, of course, before I got FNC on my cable.
When I get back to reality, though, I NEVER miss Special Report.
"He should watch (everyone should) Brit Hume's Fox News"
Amen bump
"...Hume and Gibson..."
Yup. Hands down the best.
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