The LA Times’ [tag]Ron Brownstein[/tag] suggests today that [tag]Fox News[/tag] may be the most successful company in the history of capitalism to make triumph “with just a wink and a nod.” Brownstein then poses what has become Question #1 in the Democrats’ media conundrum: ignore the network or reach out to its viewers?
Fox cloaks itself in the mantle of objectivity with the nudge-nudge insistence that it — and it alone — provides “fair and balanced” coverage of the news. Then it advances its financial and ideological interests by promoting lurid accusations from conservatives against Democrats, accusations that are routinely debunked later by the mainstream media. Many Fox reporters are fair. But overall the network — through its language, its news decisions and its hosts — generally functions more like a cog in the Republican message machine than as a conventional news organization that attempts to abide, however imperfectly, by the traditional standards of (yes) fairness and balance.
Fox’s possible participation in the Nevada debate, one of several the state party is sponsoring before next January’s presidential caucus, presented Democrats with a conundrum that may become increasingly common for both sides as they navigate a media landscape in which overtly partisan sources of information are proliferating.
Democrats, with justification, consider Fox tilted against them. Yet the network has a large audience, at least some of whom may be open to Democratic arguments (though exactly how many remains subject to spirited dispute). The question the party faced was whether access to Fox’s viewers was worth the validation the network would receive from hosting a Democratic debate.
In this case, Brownstein never gets around to answering the question he raises, instead noting that both sides of the argument have merit. This all seems pretty familiar — on the one hand, it’s generally wise to share a Democratic message with people who ordinarily aren’t hearing from Democrats. On the other hand, as one party strategist said, “They are in business to promote the Republican Party and to hurt the Democratic Party, and they have every right to do that, but to the extent that their pretense of objectivity can be challenged, it should be.” So why would Dems ever want to legitimize FNC?
Brownstein argues, “[T]he network has a large audience, at least some of whom may be open to Democratic arguments.” I’m not sure either part of this sentence is true.
Paul Waldman explained that Fox News has had some success, but it’s not quite right to say it has “a large audience.”
People sometimes forget that cable news actually has a pretty small audience. For instance, the highest rated show on cable, “The O’Reilly Factor,” gets about 2.5 million viewers. That’s compared to around 4.5 million for “Meet the Press,” and around 10 million for each of the top-rated nightly news programs (currently NBC and ABC are locked in a tight battle for first).
Yes, Fox’s total viewership is higher than just those who watch their top show. But the number of people who get their news from Fox and only from Fox is extremely small. And after all, if Democrats were to boycott Fox, it is only those viewers whom to whom they would have no access. How many people could that be? A million? Maybe, at most. That would leave only 199 million voting-age adults for Democrats to persuade.
And who, exactly, are the people who watch Fox News but not any other channel, don’t read newspapers, and don’t get news from the internet? (OK, I know of one person who definitely falls into that category, but he’ll be going back to Crawford before long.) Something tells me not too many of them are open to voting for Democrats.
Matt Yglesias is willing to go so far as to argue that some Fox News viewers may be open to Dems’ arguments, but going on Fox News isn’t the way to do it.
The problem, though, is that this can’t be done because Fox News is run by the people who run Fox News.
As I well recall from my appearances on the Hugh Hewitt showing, appearing on hack-controlled media outlets is not an effective method of persuading the audience. The rules are rigged. A debate organized and run by a Republican Party propaganda outlet is not, in practice, going to provide the opportunity for Democrats to persuade Fox-loving conservatives anymore than appearing on Hannity and Colmes contributes to the creation of a balanced and vigorous public sphere. Television is especially tricky for providing the illusion of unmediated reality while, in fact, allowing a thousand different kinds of mediation. Thinking that you can beat television professionals whose job is to make you look bad on a television network that they control is just hubris. Nobody’s that smart. Nobody’s that clever. Nobody beats the producers.
Brownstein’s piece is actually quite good in capturing the nature of the debate, but he points to two main arguments for the outreach side — large audience, possible Dem pick-ups. Both of these are wrong.
Can Dems please stop trying to play a game they can’t win?