From Rasmussen Reports, “News You Watch Says a Lot About How You’ll Vote” by Scott Rasmussen Fascinating stuff here. 87% of Fox News viewers plan on voting for John McCain. By way of comparison, 63% of MSNBC viewers plan on voting for Barack Obama. Yesterday, I posited that Keith Olbermann was lighting the way for a new era in cable news by catering to his audience’s bias. While I hate putting Fox News in the same breath as Olbermann, Fox was clearly the industry trailblazer in this regard. By stripping the news of the sometimes subtle and sometimes heavy-handed left wing bias that all the other networks showed with some frequency, Fox created a hospitable home for conservative viewers. Of course, Fox didn’t have to do back-flips to get to the right of the other guys. All of Fox’s shows get views from both sides of the political spectrum, something that Olbermann never does. By only moderating the conventional news presentation models slightly, Fox became tremendously attractive to right wing viewers. It’s little wonder that it took so long for someone to try the same thing on the left. Of course, getting to the left of the other networks required more extreme behavior, but that’s a challenge Olbermann has more than met. In doing so, his show has become a major success story, especially among those desirable young viewers. Fox’s and Olbermann’s success will provide encouragement for other news organizations. The New York Times today published a remarkably obtuse editorial that merits some attention. Writing about the Hamdan trial in an essay risibly titled “Guilty as Ordered,” the editors observed:
Naturally, the Times rushed this editorial into print before Hamdan was sentenced to a mere 5 ½ years in jail. The editorial also acknowledges that he was found not guilty of the more serious charge, and was indeed guilty of the charge that he was convicted of. And yet the editors ludicrously wrote, “Guilty as ordered.” This is fever swamp stuff. What’s more, it’s intellectually lazy/supremely idiotic fever swamp stuff. Take it from someone who reads the Daily Kos – something so intellectually incoherent and factually sloppy would never make it on to the Kos front page. And yet there it was, the lead editorial for America’s paper of record this morning. I have difficulty in believing that the Times editors have all been simultaneously beaten with a stupid stick. Instead, it’s more likely that the Times, whether consciously or unconsciously, is trying to follow the new news paradigm of looking for an audience among partisans.
