Before we write off Fox News…

March 29, 2008

Most political observers, regardless of ideology, assume that there will be a Democratic House and Senate next year. It’s too soon to know what to expect from the presidential race, but it’s hardly a stretch to think that come January 2009, there will be a Democratic White House and a Democratic Congress for the first time in 16 years.

Given this landscape, what’s Fox News to do? Time’s James Poniewozik argues the Republican network, which has already seen its ratings plateau after Republicans lost Congress and Bush stopped trying, might be in trouble.

Fox hasn’t gone soft, but from watching its coverage lately, I get a sense that the haven for conservative hosts, and viewers alienated by liberal news, needs to figure out its next act. Fox News is not simply a mouthpiece for the Bush White House: it rose with Bush after 2000 and 9/11, was played on TVs in his White House and reflected the same surety and flag-lapel-pin confidence in its tone and star-spangled look. It was not just a hit; it was the network of the moment.

Now, with two Democrats locked in what seems like a general-election campaign and lame-duck Bush fading from the headlines, it has to figure out how not to seem like yesterday’s news. At times recently, the network has appeared uncertain about its focus. Its primary-night coverage has felt staid and listless. Sometimes it has gone tabloid with celebrity-news, true-crime and scandal stories (WEBSITES POSTING SEXY PICS LIFTED FROM FACEBOOK). At other times it has retreated into a kind of war-on-terrorism news-talgia, playing up threatening chatter and new missives from al-Qaeda leaders while its rivals are doing the election 24/7; flipping to Fox can feel like time-traveling to 2002.

Poniewozik’s argument is straightforward enough. In Bush’s America, with Republicans in ascension, Fox News became the official network of the federal government. Our leaders were anxious to dish propaganda, and the network was anxious to help disseminate it. If Republicans’ fortunes fall apart, the fate of the Republicans’ network should fall right along with it. At a minimum, staying relevant should be a real challenge.

As much as I’d love to agree with the thesis, I suspect the opposite is going to be true.

After all, who watches Fox News? Angry, conservative partisans who want a nationalistic network that tells them what they want to hear. As many have noted, the number one most reliable indicator for Republican performance in 2004 wasn’t NRA membership, country-club membership, or church attendance, it was Fox News viewership — these are the GOP die-hards who find credible news outlets offensive.

Yes, FNC’s ratings have slipped, but consider the landscape — Bush isn’t governing (he’s a lame-duck with no policy agenda), Congress isn’t up to much (thanks to GOP filibusters and White House vetoes), the war in Iraq continues to be a disaster (Republicans haven’t yet found a liberal scapegoat to blame this on), and the economy has come to a halt. There’s just not much for Fox News to tell Republican activists. Even the GOP nomination fight turned out to be rather dull.

But then imagine how thrilled they’ll be if Dems control the House, Senate, and White House. Fox News and its audience are their most content when they have a target for their rage. These guys want someone to be mad at, and come January 2009, they’ll have no shortage of options.

Poniewozik added:

News on Fox looks like a video game, full of bluster, blondes and blaring graphics. Ideology aside, Fox makes the news urgent, even when nothing’s going on.

True, but an Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate practically guarantees that plenty will be going on, and Fox News and its loyal Republican audience will be pissed about it.

It might be the best thing to ever happen to the network.

News on Fox looks like a video game, full of bluster, blondes and blaring graphics. Ideology aside, Fox makes the news urgent, even when nothing’s going on.

Sounds like FN is on the verge of doing a Britney. What’s the network equivalent of drunk driving without underwear then shaving its head and going into rehab lather rinse repeat?

Get out the popcorn!

  • Obama/Pelosi/Reid? Shouldn’t you make that Obama/Pelosi/Dodd? If the Dems want to advance anything in the senate, their first step should be to name a new majority leader.

  • Before I deleted that button on my car radio, it was my impression that Rush made his career with continuous Clinton-bashing. That was well before Monicagate and impeachment. Right-wing media will have plenty to obsess over during the Obama Administration.

    Fox Propaganda won’t be going away anytime soon. CB nailed it when he says “Fox News Propaganda and its audience are their most content when they have a target for their rage. These guys want someone to be mad at, and come January 2009, they’ll have no shortage of options.”

  • would it were so .. that fox would just vaporize in a cloud of noxious noise .. but alas … it will not come to pass .. hate and prejudice are it’s to main products ..and the market for neither is fading …

  • White House or not, Fox still has Newt and Santorum and a hundred others to fan the rage.

    Fox is just stumbling trying to figure out a way to sell McCain, who is perhaps unsellable. Plus their heart may not be in it, they just spent 8 years pumping up one buffoon. Also..doesn’t Murdock sorta like Hillary, strange as it seems? He may have told them to lay off her a bit.

    It’s a mid-life crisis. They’ll get through it.

  • well, for one, I’d expect “The Rush Limbaugh Report” and “Hugh Hewitt’s Manboobs” to make their network debut. I suspect they’ll drop all pretense at news and turn more into a televised version of wingnut talk radio, fanning whatever flames they can however they can.

    and if you don’t think that the other “news networks” won’t follow suit, you haven’t been paying attention. (Rachel Maddow suddenly won’t be an MSNBC regular any more, Tweety will blossom into the wingnut he’s always wanted to be, and Pumpkinhead’s “tough” questions will all of a sudden actually BE tough.)

  • “viewers alienated by liberal news”

    Bullshit.

    Show me “liberal news” other than Amy Goodman and Democracy Now or Air America, both of which have limited reach and audience. People need to face facts that any news that disagrees with Republican talking points is not liberal, it’s reality. Republicans need to quit making Stephen Colbert look like a sage with his saying “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Truth seems to have a well-known liberal bias as well. Maybe if Republicans wouldn’t spend so much time on the wrong side of history they wouldn’t think the news is so biased against them.

  • It’s too bad Poniewozik had to show that he, too, has been compromised; one of the million little often subtle ways the universe of information has been adversely impacted by the RIght’s far-too-successful intimidation techniques.

    I get a sense that the haven for conservative hosts, and viewers alienated by liberal news, needs to figure out its next act.

    Liberal news? Really? Any examples of that? No – just another false equivalence: if Fox is Wingnut News, it must be in response to Liberal News, right? Um, wrong. And he loses all credibility by first buying, and then worse selling that myth.

  • great minds and all that. 🙂
    i obviously type too slowly. or think too slowly.

  • petorado, don’t forget to throw in the INN Report on LINKtv and Free Speech. You can also see it at http://www.innworldreport.net The “talent” isn’t as good as Amy Goodman but they do facts only news reporting.

    How funny it is that the truth has a liberal bend.

    YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH! Nope, none of the Fox viewers can. It would make their little heads explode.

    Hmmm…the mind reels. 😉

  • Steve, you are one smart motherfucker.

    The Clinton Administration made Rush Limbaugh. If the Dems increase their majorities in the House and Senate with an Obama Administration, it will be a huge boon GOPTV.

  • Allow me to be positive for a minute: is it possible, even just a little bit, that people are getting tired of the vapid nature of the programming on Fox News? On either “Hannity and & Colmes” or “The O’Reilly Factor” a few months ago, for instance, there was a Republican commentator who said that the debate over something Rudy Giuliani said amount to people trying to trample his Constitutional right to free speech. Uh, no, I doubt that was the case. Now, I’ll admit, my memory of this is a little sketchy–there’s a small chance it was about someone else–but I’d bet that anyone who has watched the channel recently wouldn’t find it hard to imagine such a shallow meaningless analysis of an event.

  • lol .. i just punched in “shallow-meaningless” ..and a picture of sean hannity popped up .. shaking hands with chris mathews ..

    splrufff …

  • The Roman Empire didn’t fall to the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, Celts, Vandals, and huns overnight—it took a while.

    So, too, it will take a while for the Roger-n-Rupert Evil Muppet Empire to fall—but fall it will, as no empire is eternal. Its god (Reagan) is dead, buried, and rotting mercilessly in a coffin.

    Remember—the vast majority of human being who go through supermarket check-out aisles are completely capable of not picking up the National Enquirer, the Star, or any other of those dung-infested, crack-sucking, yellow-rag, “faux-news” tabloids. The vast majority of Americans will, likewise, continue to turn away from dung-infested, crack-sucking, yellow-rag, “faux-news” teevee….

  • Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine will finish FN because its viewers cant stand to hear reasonable alternative opinions, as has been mentioned. Does anyone doubt that we will be hearing a lot about militias when the Dems are in control again?

  • I can just hear the Faux Snooze pundits spew their venom after the new administration takes over:

    “Look what those godless communists in Washington are doing to our great nation. They brought the troops home from Iraq! They brought the deficit down and gave health care to poor people!! They repaired relations with our friends and reached out to our enemies, so now we can’t even nuke anybody!!! What are these people thinking????”

    Yeah, good times. For them and for us. Savor the irony.

  • The arrogance of the writers and commentators on this site is astonishing and frightening.

    Groseclose and Milyo’s study of media biases used ADA ratings associated with specific Congressmen to rate news networks. They noted that the news programs with ratings closest to 50 were the News Hour with Jim Lehrer and CNN News Night with Aaron Brown (both were just a hair left of center, around 56.) Fox News’ Special Report with Brit Hume was near 40, the only TV news to the right of center. ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News were a little farther to the left than Fox was to the right. The CBS Evening News was more than twice as far to the left as Fox was to the right.

    The results of the UCLA study suggest that it’s more likely, and a lot easier, for liberals to find news that plays to their biases than it is for conservatives. From what I’m reading here, it’s not conservatives who have trouble dealing with the facts.

    The simplistic claims by Benen and the commenters here, to wit, that Fox is for people who can’t take the truth, is so incredibly biased and self-congratulatory as to make real conversation impossible. It’s not possible, in your minds, that you’re as eager to have your ears tickled by familiar analyses as are those you oppose. “We’re objective,” you preen, “but they’re biased.” How does one speak to somebody who’s caught in this self-protective, self-congratulatory cocoon?

    Please don’t bother hurling that ridiculous PIPA study at me from the Univ of Maryland, that claims that Fox viewers are less well informed that other viewers. The study barely even made the attempt to defend the authors’ definition of “misperception” on the topics in the questionaire, and what attempts it made were laughable. That “study” can’t be taken as anything but an evaluation of how closely the respondents’ opinions matched the opinions of the authors. As research, it’s a sad joke, and ultimately says nothing more profound than “If you agree with US, you’re well-informed, and if you don’t, you’re poorly informed.” Apparently liberals are so fond of congratulating themselves on their erudition that they’ll call their own opinions “science” to support the pretense. Tellingly, when I tried to find the study itself, I found dozens of liberals citing its findings, but none who actually linked to it — apparently they cited it without reading it. This is liberals’ version of being “intellectually rigorous,” I suppose. Hilarious. And you call conservatives sheep.

    It’s the intellectual blindness and snobbery of the average liberal that makes true intellectual discourse in this nation impossible. How could you possibly even bother to try to listen to the point of view of somebody whom you’ve already labeled “Angry, conservative partisans who want a nationalistic network that tells them what they want to hear?” You guys need to come down off your high horses and start speaking to some of us as though we were your peers. You might find that we’re at least as well-informed as you, and an order of magnitude more aware of our biases.

  • Faux news and the whole Murdoch empire, such as it is, is mostly a money-making operation. Just as the Murdoch’s UK tabloids sell by having bare-breasted beauties sprinkled throughout, so he has tapped into that self-perpetuating paranoid element in American society that always has to hate someone. Fear, bigotry, sex, nationalism, jingoism: whatever it takes to fleece the gullible is what Murdoch and his minions will do. That Murdoch’s personal ideology, if we really know what it is other than making money, is reflected in his business activities is secondary to the bottom line.

    Murdoch may subsidize a losing operation for a while – as he has with the Weekly Standard – but ultimately he wants to see profit. Faux News would be too expensive as a losing proposition, I suspect, and it will have to find a way to gin up its audience and advertisers if viewers begin to disappear. Should Americans finally see through the cant, lies, distortions, and downright propanganda Faux News would be gone very quickly – unless, of course, O’Reilly, Hannity and Wallace were replaced by bare-breasted beauties sitting on top of the desk rather than behind it.

  • The Fairness Doctrine (which I’d heartily support bringing back) wouldn’t apply to Fox News. The Doctrine is a rule involving broadcasting over the air, and Fox goes on cable. The idea is that since there’s a limited amount of available broadcast bandwidth, and since the airwaves “belong” to the public, they should not be taken over and used for private partisan purposes (as we have indeed seen happen with AM talk radio). However since cable is a privately built and owned network, it doesn’t “belong” to the public in the wait over-the-air frequencies do, so there’s no rationale for imposing political balance requirements on it.

    What I would favor for cable would be an “a la carte” rule – it would force cable operators to offer a viable option for stripping out channels you don’t want. Thus non-conservative viewers would not be forced to support cable channels they disliked and strongly disagreed with (one reason we dropped our cable was that I hated the notion that I was paying a monthly fee to Rupert Murdoch).

  • Project much, Plumb Bob? Your study gets ripped apart here. An excerpt:

    In other words, the study rests on a presumption that can only be described as bizarre: If a member of Congress cites a think tank approvingly, and if that think tank is also cited by a news organization, then the news organization has a “bias” making it an ideological mirror of the member of Congress who cited the think tank. This, as Groseclose and Milyo define it, is what constitutes “media bias.”

    According to the study, the ACLU is a conservative group, while RAND is strongly liberal. An idiotic study.

  • I agree with the Carpetbagger that FOX News isn’t going anywhere.

    Conservatives absolutely suck at governing, but they excel at being outraged by the things liberals do. FOX News and Limbaugh and everyone on the right is really in their element when they’re fighting against the “terrible liberal elites” in power.

    If anything, I bet FOX News’ popularity increases once conservatives don’t control the White House because the die hard 29% will be bombarded by reality everywhere else.

    They’ll dial the crazy up to eleven (if that’s even possible to get crazier than they are now) and really milk their position as the defenders of the poor, average Americans being screwed over by the evil progressive agenda.

    As long as there are conservatives who are so intellectually lazy as to demand their worldview echoed back to them rather than accepting reality, there will be a thriving conservative media and FOX News will be at its forefront.

    The results of the UCLA study suggest that it’s more likely, and a lot easier, for liberals to find news that plays to their biases than it is for conservatives. From what I’m reading here, it’s not conservatives who have trouble dealing with the facts.

    Plumb Bob, maybe if it’s so easy to find a left of center newscast as opposed to a right of center one, then the center is really not where you think it is. Maybe all of those left of center newscasts are where they are because that’s where the facts are actually supported, and that position “left of center” is actually the center.

    It’s the intellectual blindness and snobbery of the average liberal that makes true intellectual discourse in this nation impossible.

    No. It’s FOX News and the rest of the incurious right wing media that make true intellectual discourse impossible. And if you’re the open-minded individual you claim to be, then you this is true. And if you refuse to believe it, then you’ve spent too much time watching FOX News.

  • critical reading ..and the ability to analyse.. coupled with reading comprehension are all skills you seem to lack mr. plumb bob ..

    and arrogance too ?? give it rest eh .. pfffbbllttt !!

  • #17 shows precisely the dangers of having too much lead (plumbum) in one’s head (bobbed, at that) or one’s bloodstream. There’s a very good reason lead paint is no longer used…

  • I agree, Fox should not be written off. A Democratic government would be the best thing which could happen for Fox in terms of improving their ratings.

    A network like Fox can work as the mouthpiece for the government if the government has solid support, but they are not going to thrive in the current atmosphere.

    One remarkable thing about Fox is the manner in which they changed from an opposition voice to a Pravda-clone overnight when Bush replaced Bill Clinton. They will do the same (in reverse) and probably thrive. There will be opposition to a Democratic government which goes beyond those who still support Bush despite all the evidence of his failings. Simply being critical of the government (regardless who is in power) is a stronger position for a network to be in than to be stuck supporting a government which failed.

  • Some of you must be getting different cable ratings than I am. Fox News ratings are 2 to 3 times more than MSDNC and CNN (Clinton news Network). Both are in the tank for Obama.

  • If it’s Clinton News Network then how could they be in the tank for Obama?

    You wingnuts need to watch that your puerile bluster doesn’t become just plain incoherent.

  • As long as there is a market for News Entertainment, there will be Fox News.

    The Fox Formula is actually quite brilliant, except for the fact that they are a partisan propaganda outlet. If they really WERE “fair and balanced”, actually embraced the concepts of the fairness doctrine, they would rule the airwaves. They could do it, too, and double their viewership.

  • I think one of the main prestige points Fox has going for it is its access. It will remain, I’m sure, just as partisan as ever with a Democratic congress and White House (God willing), but the perception of Fox as part of the power in DC may recede when it’s only the same old talking heads showing up, complaining about the evil leftists who won’t listen to them. For the last few years, Fox has been the bully on the media playground and that may change. It won’t change the actual newscape, but it might change in that the rest of the media may try for the appearance of fairness instead of having to compete with Fox for the tabloid crown.
    I know I’m chasing rainbows, but every once in a while I have to force myself into optimism.

  • After reading some of ‘Plumb Bob’s’ own blog, it’s obvious he’s a Bush supporter. He actually believed that Bush was speaking the truth about Iraq and what has been going on in Basra.

    Enough said. Although Plumb Bob seems to have a good grasp of the English language, and knows how to form sentences and paragraphs properly, as mentioned by previous posters, he needs to learn some critical thinking skills.

  • A significant number of Bush supporters are what I refer to as “tribal cavemen” or “tough by proxy”. When “your” team scores a winning touchdown and you feel good about it all day, that is being “tribal” or “tough by proxy” because of course you didn’t have anything to do with it, yet you count it as if it were your success. To fully grasp this demographic, you have to add a degree of meanness to it, as in “And we injured their quarterback!” or “The other team wimped out.”

    Also add in a degree of low cunning. Members of this element cheer for a sports team that wins by cleverly fouling the other team, or by inducing the referee to look the other way. Rush cooks up a scheme to screw the Democrats by sending Republicans to vote for Clinton in the primaries, or Ann Coulter says that people are trying to restrict her freedom of speech.

    You will recognize these people whenever you hear someone say, “Ha ha, screwed you! We won again!”

    For them, it is a tremendous boost to be on the winning side. By the time Bush/Rove stole the Florida vote in 2000, they knew which side was going to be the winning team, and they enthusiastically signed on. These are people who would never root for, or wait for, an underdog team; you will find no “Maybe next year” Cubs fans among them. To them, the losing team is “wimps and losers.” And, sure enough, the Bush team gave them a six-year winning streak, and played a strong defensive game (the Surge and filibusters) since the 2006 elections.

    When the Democrats become the winning team, these people will not cross over and become Democrats; but they will find that the contest is no longer fun, and they will go back to spending their time alone, pulling wings off flies.

    But for the rest of their lives, they will wait for some new vicious team to arise, just as the Reaganites laid low and waited for Bush.
    ———————————————————————————–
    Another demographic (perhaps more statistically significant) is the WW2 vets, steeped in patriotism but not politically active until 9/11 and Bush’s jingoistic demogoguery awoke them from the verges of senile dozing. Now, I love some of these old guys as individuals, but as a demographic: Suddenly electrified, and with a lot of time on their hands, they found “patriotism” on Fox, and immersed themselves in it. They began to agitate for everyone to “Support the President. The country is at war, dammit! We gotta push back the hordes of ravening barbarians, the Islamicists, the illegal immigrants streaming over the border, and, oh, yes, the infiltrating perverts.”

    In the same age bracket — A smaller but significant number of WW2 vets were politically active during the intervening years, in some cases having their consciousness kept alive by Nixon and Vietnam. More of them tended to be liberal or progressive; you see them in the movement today, and I honor them. The ones I refer to as “senile” are the ones who spent all those intervening years apart from politics, and basically hung around waiting for a demogogue to pluck them from the tree.

    Members of that generation, good and bad alike, are reaching the end of their years. Overall, they helped Bush a lot, but they are fading.

  • It’s easy to predict,come January 2009,that Fox will suddenly be transformed into a hard hitting crack team of investigative journalists.

  • Rupert M seeks and survives on being able to exercise power. With no power the GOP may find that Fox support is harder to get. Watching how Rupert manages to get close to power if the GOP has none would be quite a show

  • Its strange to read about the hatred you harbor against Fox. You preach compassion and forgiveness, and you do the oppisite with your anti Fox and Republican rant. The Air America radio program is laughable for certain, and your Randi preaches hatred with every breath. What is her problem?

  • I certainly get a laugh from reading some of the postings from the Loonie Left. I’m not sure if there is a brain among them. “Dung heap”? Now that is really cute. The man running for the highest office in the land is a true patriot and just happens to be running on the Republican ticker. also I don’t think it is necessary for him to “duck our heads and run for cover” ala Mrs. Clinton “mispeak”.

  • Just heard that the loonie leftist Rhodes was suspended because of her rantings.
    Gosh, what a shame. I will miss her quick wit and gracefull use of the English language. Another Don Imus perhaps?

  • What upsets me is that CBS, NBC & ABC are almost as slanted as Fox News. They may not be as obvious, but they certainly do baby Bush & McCain. Any negative news about them gets on air for a day or two but then they drop the story. John Kerry was swift boated night after night.

    But the media will continue to ask, “is Obama electable”. Even when the facts say he is, they’ll keep asking the question, until he is not electable anymore.

    What about the Keating 5 scandal McCain? What about his ties to Lobbyists? What about Ms. McCain being a drug addict that got fired from the charity she worked for.

    How come you made fun that Kerry married a rich woman but you don’t mention that McCain did the same thing.

    Or McCain’s horrible temper and PTSD? Do we really want his finger on the button?

  • will dole. when have you righty’s ever been right? You said the Iraq war was going well and you said the same about the economy. YOu were wrong on both fronts. Clearly the GOP is not fit to run the country. Anything you say is a joke.

    Randi Rhodes got fired? Just another reason why Hillary is no better than McCain.

  • talking to conservatives is like talking to a child in their terrible two’s. No matter how much sense you make, it doesn’t matter. I can lay out every single fact that proves that we are wasting time, money and lives in Iraq and neo con’s will disregard every fact I lay out.
    1. If we leave they win. 2. They’ll follow us home. 3. Saddam was an evil man. 4. We are much better off without Saddam. 5. It was worth it. 6. We had to show them not to mess with the USA.

    Just like a kid. You need to go to sleep. Why. Because you are tired and getting cranky. But I don’t want to go to sleep. But then you’ll be tired in school tomorrow. No I won’t, I promise. But you got tired the last time I let you stay up late. It won’t happen again. BLA BLA.

    GOP relies on spinning the conversation. That’s why I never let them ask me a question when I am looking for an answer. Answer the question first.

  • will dole. you don’t like that we preach one thing and do the opposite? we thought that you liked it when people did that. Why else would you vote GOP? They grew government, doubled the debt with pork spending and earmarks, they took rights away from us, they started wars, bailed out the banks, etc.

    If you don’t know, these are things the GOP says they don’t do. And clearly Republican voters don’t care what their officials do. They only care about what they say when they are campaigning.

    Try checking out McCain’s record rather than going by what he says during an election year. He will clearly say anything. He has flip flopped on every issue. Doesn’t that worry you? Aren’t you worried he’s going to reverse on everything once he is in office? Didn’t he try to leave the GOP twice?

    I think McCain is going to flip the GOP the bird if he wins. He won’t win, but if….

  • Why are you so terrified that ONE news organization, out of all the ridiculously liberal stations, has conservative views? Are you so insecure about whether your views are right that you NEED everyone to think EXACTLY as you do? People who are truly confident in their intelligence don’t have to shout down opposing viewpoints. The fact is that conservatives watch Fox, and liberals watch CNN. Just accept the fact that people may have their own thoughts, and that ideologies will always differ between the parties.

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