tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/cable-news-93449/articlesCable news – The Conversation2023-05-04T12:10:32Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2044922023-05-04T12:10:32Z2023-05-04T12:10:32ZThe firings of Don Lemon and Tucker Carlson doesn’t mean the end of hyperpartisan cable news networks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523059/original/file-20230426-20-hol5pe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=684%2C19%2C3747%2C2750&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Then-CNN anchor Don Lemon speaks during a Democratic presidential debate in Detroit on July 31, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/moderator-don-lemon-speaks-to-the-crowd-attending-the-news-photo/1165418659?adppopup=true">(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Television host <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/the-view-celebrating-tucker-carlson-exit-mourn-don-lemon-termination">Sara Haines</a> of ABC’s “The View” spoke for many viewers when she celebrated the departure of right-wing television host Tucker Carlson from the Fox News Network.</p>
<p>“I am happy to know someone like him no longer has the platform he had built,” she exclaimed. </p>
<p>Similarly, CNN anchor Don Lemon’s ouster on April 23, 2023 – the same day as Carlson’s – generated an equal amount of celebration from conservatives. </p>
<p>One of them was <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/nikki-haley-trolls-don-lemon-over-firing-hawks-beer-koozies/">Nikki Haley</a>, the presidential candidate and former governor of South Carolina, whom Lemon had previously described as a woman past her prime when she <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/elections/100000008772357/nikki-haley-president-2024.html?searchResultPosition=2">launched her 2024 campaign</a>.</p>
<p>Lemon’s dismissal is “a great day for women everywhere,” Haley exclaimed. </p>
<p>In this age of hyperpartisan news programming, both Carlson and Lemon proved talented at providing perspectives that confirmed their audience’s view of the world.</p>
<p>It is not clear why Lemon and Carlson were fired, but in my view as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=YBntiP0AAAAJ">media scholar</a>, they were removed because they no longer provided the benefits their employers expected. </p>
<p>Instead, I believe they had become potential threats to the networks’ audience shares and advertising revenue. Rather than a victory for women or truth, I view these firings as an effort to sustain and grow corporate profits. </p>
<h2>Hyperpartisan news media</h2>
<p>The advent of <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520347878/the-anatomy-of-fake-news">cable news</a> in the 1980s created more channels for audiences to watch, and thus fractured the audience long dominated by networks NBC, ABC and CBS.</p>
<p>The internet, smartphones and social media <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Lets-Agree-to-Disagree-A-Critical-Thinking-Guide-to-Communication-Conflict/Higdon-Huff/p/book/9781032168982">further fragmented audiences</a>. As <a href="https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/hate-inc/">journalists</a> and <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520347878/the-anatomy-of-fake-news">media scholars</a> have noted, the solution for many media companies in the 1990s was to target their programming to a single demographic instead of trying to attract a larger, general audience. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2009.tb01921.x">Scholars</a> and <a href="https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/hate-inc/">journalists</a> note that in order to attract a targeted demographic, cable news media relied on hyperpartisan reporting that framed news stories as liberal versus conservative. This approach proved viable, as subsequent studies found that television audiences preferred news outlets that confirmed <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2018/05/15/fake-news-social-media-confirmation-bias-echo-chambers/533857002/">their political views</a> and attacked <a href="https://www.livescience.com/3640-people-choose-news-fits-views.html">their political rivals</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-165X.2009.tb01921.x">Liberal outlets</a> focused on <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520347878/the-anatomy-of-fake-news">confirming liberals’</a> <a href="https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/hate-inc/">views</a> by introducing <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/chris-hedges/empire-of-illusion/9780786749553/?lens=bold-type-books">caricatures</a> of conservatives who could be easily villainized. The inverse was true at conservative outlets.</p>
<p>By 2021, in my view, the unintended result of such partisan programming was that audiences perceived that the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/17/poll-we-have-met-the-enemy-and-it-is-us-459948">No. 1</a> threat to their lives was other Americans.</p>
<h2>Carlson’s duplicity</h2>
<p>In this cable news environment, Carlson started working at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/24/business/media/tucker-carlson-career-history.html">CNN</a> in 2000, moved to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna8049787#.W6cJZVInaRs">MSNBC</a> in 2005 and arrived at Fox News Channel in 2009, where he became a megastar with his own program, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” in 2016. </p>
<p>Whether it was accurate or not, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” provided far-right ideological content that drew an average of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/tucker-carlsons-exit-fox-news-may-be-ratings-bane-advertising-boon-2023-04-25/">3 million nightly viewers</a>, and Carlson became the highest-rated personality in cable news media. </p>
<p>Among Carlson’s falsehoods were that <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/dec/18/tucker-carlson/carlson-falsely-claims-immigrants-are-dirtying-pot/">immigrants were mostly</a> responsible for polluting a U.S. river; that the <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/aug/17/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-wrongly-says-united-states-ended-sl/">U.S. ended slavery</a> around the world; and that <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/aug/15/tucker-carlson/carlson-guns-dont-kill-people-bathtubs-do/">more children died</a> from drowning in their bathtub than accidentally from guns.</p>
<p>Whether he actually believed any of those falsehoods remains unknown. </p>
<p>What is known is that Carlson did not personally believe Donald Trump’s claims that he won the 2020 presidential election – and yet he publicly echoed rather than challenged Trump’s baseless assertions. </p>
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<img alt="A billboard shows an image of a white man wearing a necktie next to his words that read I hate Trump passionately." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523855/original/file-20230502-1802-jpfgdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523855/original/file-20230502-1802-jpfgdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523855/original/file-20230502-1802-jpfgdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523855/original/file-20230502-1802-jpfgdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523855/original/file-20230502-1802-jpfgdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523855/original/file-20230502-1802-jpfgdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523855/original/file-20230502-1802-jpfgdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An image of former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson and his view of Donald Trump are displayed on a billboard in West Palm Beach, Fla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/billboard-put-up-by-progressive-activist-group-moveon-that-news-photo/1479574560?adppopup=true">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/tucker-carlson-fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trump-5d6aed4bc7eb1f7a01702ebea86f37a1">In a text message</a> to Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s most ardent lawyers, Carlson wrote:</p>
<p>“You keep telling our viewers that millions of votes were changed by the software. I hope you will prove that very soon. You’ve convinced them that Trump will win. If you don’t have conclusive evidence of fraud at that scale, it’s a cruel and reckless thing to keep saying.” </p>
<p>But in a text message to his Fox News colleagues, Carlson was less hopeful:</p>
<p>“<a href="https://apnews.com/article/tucker-carlson-fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trump-5d6aed4bc7eb1f7a01702ebea86f37a1">Sidney Powell is lying</a>,” he wrote. </p>
<p>At the time, nearly 70% of <a href="https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/70-percent-republicans-falsely-believe-stolen-election-trump/">Tucker’s target audience</a> believed that the election was stolen. </p>
<p>As a result, despite knowing the 2020 election was not stolen, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/03/07/tucker-carlson-doubles-down-on-2020-election-fraud-claims-with-jan-6-footage-despite-fox-defamation-lawsuit/?sh=8679b345e75e">Carlson continued to report</a> the exact opposite of what he knew to be false.</p>
<h2>A boorish Lemon</h2>
<p>In stark contrast to Carlson, Lemon positioned himself as CNN’s chief <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzZGuFJTs1I">liberal scolder</a> of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLctkkxEDTs">Trump era</a>. </p>
<p>Much like Carlson, Lemon manipulated evidence to create stories that confirmed liberal biases against conservative media personalities, such as falsely reporting that <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3664744-hurricane-expert-brushes-off-don-lemon-climate-change-question-i-want-to-talk-about-the-here-and-now/">Hurricane Ian</a>’s size was a result of climate change; that President Joe Biden “<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-don-lemon-partisan-biden-false-comments">misspoke</a>” rather than lied (which other <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/30/biden-falsely-claims-new-georgia-law-ends-voting-hours-early/">news outlets</a> claimed was the case) about Georgia’s voting procedures; that it is plausible that Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared into <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpVd7k1Uw6A">black hole</a>; and that <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/joe-rogan-don-lemon-cnn-ivermectin-sanjay-gupta-lying-1639240">CNN</a>’s <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/now/joe-rogan-considers-suing-cnn-190606533.html">reporting</a> on <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043740/#:%7E:text=Discovered%2520in%2520the%2520late%252D1970s,of%2520billions%2520of%2520people%2520throughout">ivermectin</a> and popular podcaster Joe Rogan was <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/joe-rogan-don-lemon-cnn-ivermectin-sanjay-gupta-lying-1639240">accurate</a>.</p>
<p>CNN’s support for Lemon began to wane after a CNN broadcast on Feb. 16, 2023, when he declared that Haley was “past her prime.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman stands on a stage holding a microphone surrounded by people sitting on chairs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523859/original/file-20230502-16-k2bgvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523859/original/file-20230502-16-k2bgvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523859/original/file-20230502-16-k2bgvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523859/original/file-20230502-16-k2bgvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523859/original/file-20230502-16-k2bgvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523859/original/file-20230502-16-k2bgvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523859/original/file-20230502-16-k2bgvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks at a town hall event in New Hampshire on April 26, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/republican-presidential-candidate-and-former-u-n-ambassador-news-photo/1485559320?adppopup=true">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Feeling the disdain from his two female co-hosts, whom he had a long history of <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11716895/CNNs-Don-Lemon-seen-talking-host-ignoring-air-tension-builds-show.html">berating on and off camera</a>, <a href="https://msmagazine.com/2023/02/17/don-lemon-sexist-cnn/">Lemon clarified</a>: “That’s not according to me. … If you Google ‘when is a woman in her prime,’ it’ll say ‘20s, 30s and 40s.’” </p>
<p>Lemon was removed from the air so he could attend <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABG4fZSfIQQ">sensitivity trainings</a> to address his sexist attitudes. </p>
<p>An April 2023 <a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/cnn-don-lemon-misogyny-history-nikki-haley-1235574286/">report from Variety</a> appeared to spell the end for Lemon on CNN. The report detailed other incidents of Lemon’s misogyny that included malicious texts, sexist mocking and vicious tirades aimed at <a href="https://tvline.com/2023/04/05/don-lemon-soledad-obrien-feud-cnn-controversy/">female co-workers</a>. </p>
<p>According to the report, <a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/cnn-don-lemon-misogyny-history-nikki-haley-1235574286/">Lemon was accused</a> of threatening several female co-workers because they were hired for positions he felt he deserved. </p>
<p>In another incident, Lemon claimed during a 2008 editorial call with roughly 30 staffers that <a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/cnn-don-lemon-misogyny-history-nikki-haley-1235574286/">Soledad O'Brien</a> should not host “Black in America” because she is not Black. O'Brien identifies as Afro-Cuban.</p>
<h2>Credibility gap</h2>
<p>In this age of hyperpartisanship, the revelations about Carlson and Lemon made it difficult for their networks to sell them as authentic ideological voices.</p>
<p>Furthermore, both of these individuals were a hassle for management. </p>
<p>At CNN, audience size for the show on which Lemon was co-host was shrinking for quite some time -– much like that for <a href="https://theconversation.com/cnn-was-just-the-latest-failed-attempt-of-the-cable-news-trailblazer-to-remain-relevant-182195">the network</a> in general. </p>
<p>At Fox News, Carlson’s texts revealed his disdain for the network’s <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/04/tucker-carlson-fired-after-calling-fox-news-exec-the-c-word.html">leadership</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/01/tucker-carlson-fox-nation-streaming-service">streaming platform</a>. Furthermore, since 2021, major companies such as Disney, Papa John’s, Poshmark and T-Mobile had refused to advertise on Carlson’s program.</p>
<p>Although a <a href="https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/04/28/american-approval-tucker-carlson-fired-fox-news">YouGov poll</a> found that viewers who cite Fox News as the cable news network they watch most often are more likely to disapprove – 50% – than approve – 29% – of Carlson being fired, Fox News Channel had good reason to believe it could replace Tucker and still find success with conservative audiences. </p>
<p>For one, an <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/most-arent-familiar-tucker-carlson-don-lemon-exits">Ipsos poll</a> found that non-Fox News Channel viewers are more likely to consider the channel as a news source now that Carlson has been fired. This means that the absence of Carlson may attract more audiences. </p>
<p>Furthermore, Fox News Channel has developed a formula for creating and replacing conservative personalities for decades, such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/04/06/135181398/glenn-beck-to-leave-daily-fox-news-show">Glenn Beck</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/business/media/bill-oreilly-fox-news-allegations.html">Bill O'Reilly</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/north-america-ap-top-news-entertainment-megyn-kelly-business-a84a7250b109411591ed6b976be800a0">Megyn Kelly</a>.</p>
<p>Rather than celebrate the removal of Lemon and Carlson, audiences should be questioning what truths have some of the current on-air personalities had to sacrifice in order to stay employed. </p>
<p>For cable news personalities, partisanship – not journalism – can be a job requirement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204492/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nolan Higdon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since the 1980s, cable news networks have focused on hyperpartisan news coverage to attract core audiences in an increasingly fragmented media market.Nolan Higdon, Lecturer of History and Media Studies, California State University, East BayLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2036492023-04-24T19:57:33Z2023-04-24T19:57:33ZTucker Carlson’s departure and Fox News’ expensive legal woes show the problem with faking ‘authenticity’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522669/original/file-20230424-1075-lksybg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C6390%2C4529&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fox News Host Tucker Carlson speaks during the 2022 Fox Nation Patriot Awards on Nov. 17, 2022, in Hollywood, Fla.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/tucker-carlson-speaks-during-2022-fox-nation-patriot-awards-news-photo/1442331995?adppopup=true">Jason Koerner/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For decades, Fox News thrived because the people behind it understood what their audience wanted and were more than willing to deliver: television news – or what Fox called news – from a populist perspective. </p>
<p>Fox is <a href="https://deadline.com/tag/ratings/">consistently the most-watched cable news channel</a>, far ahead of competitors like MSNBC and CNN. That’s in large part due to people like Tucker Carlson, whose show “Tucker Carlson Tonight” <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2023/02/14/with-35-million-viewers-tucker-carlson-has-the-weeks-highest-rated-cable-news-show/?sh=c4328587f529">has been one of the highest-rated in cable news</a>. But on April 24, Fox announced that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/24/business/media/tucker-carlson-fox-news.html">Carlson is leaving the network</a>, and while no explanation was provided, it’s safe to say it wasn’t a lack of viewers.</p>
<p>Carlson’s departure came on the heels of Fox News’ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/04/18/business/fox-news-dominion-trial-settlement">US$787.5 million settlement of the lawsuit lodged by Dominion Voting Systems</a> over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election. Dominion had <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/fox-news-media-tucker-carlson-part-ways-2023-04-24/#:%7E:text=Dominion%20had%20alleged%20that%20statements,in%20Biden's%20favor%20were%20false.">cited claims made on Carlson’s program</a> as well as on other shows as evidence of defamation, and Carlson <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/apr/04/fox-dominion-trial-tucker-carlson-sean-hannity-testify">was expected to testify</a> if the case had gone to trial. The settlement reveals Fox’s biggest strength and weakness: the network’s incredible understanding of what its audience wants and its unrelenting willingness to deliver exactly that. </p>
<h2>More real than elites</h2>
<p>I’m a journalism scholar who studies <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/imagined-audiences-9780197542606?cc=us&lang=en&">the relationship between the news industry and the public</a>, and I’ve long been interested in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19312431211060426">understanding Fox’s appeal</a>. As media scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Yk3Elf0AAAAJ&hl=en">Reece Peck</a> observes in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/fox-populism-branding-conservatism-working-class?format=HB&isbn=9781108496766">his book about the network</a>, Fox’s success is less about politics than it is about style. Fox’s star broadcasters like Carlson <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022/which-journalists-do-people-pay-most-attention-and-why-study-six-countries">found enormous success</a> by embracing an authenticity-as-a-form-of-populism approach.</p>
<p>They presented themselves as more “real” than the “out-of-touch elites” at other news organizations. Journalists have traditionally attempted to earn audience trust and loyalty by emphasizing their professionalism and objectivity, while people like Carlson earn it by emphasizing an us-against-them anti-elitism where <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/27/fox-news-tucker-carlson-elections/">expertise is more often a criticism than a compliment</a>. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/fox-populism-branding-conservatism-working-class?format=HB&isbn=9781108496766">Peck notes</a>, Fox broadcasters present themselves as “ordinary Americans … challenging the cultural elitism of the news industry.” So the allure of Fox is not just in its political slant, but in its just-like-you presentation that establishes anchors like Carlson as allies in the fight against the buttoned-up establishment figures they regularly disparage. </p>
<p>In short, NPR plays smooth jazz between segments, while <a href="https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/fox-news-partisan-progaganda-research.php">Fox plays country</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522671/original/file-20230424-18-r2qeby.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large crowd of people surrounding a small group of people on a public plaza." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522671/original/file-20230424-18-r2qeby.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522671/original/file-20230424-18-r2qeby.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522671/original/file-20230424-18-r2qeby.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522671/original/file-20230424-18-r2qeby.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522671/original/file-20230424-18-r2qeby.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522671/original/file-20230424-18-r2qeby.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522671/original/file-20230424-18-r2qeby.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Reporters surround Dominion Voting Systems lawyers during a news conference in Wilmington, Del., after the defamation lawsuit by Dominion against Fox News was settled April 18, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PicturesoftheWeek-NorthAmerica-PhotoGallery/b8917d7cb42c459396ef17fe971ddcc3/photo?Query=Fox%20News&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=4879&currentItemNo=8">AP Photo/Julio Cortez</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Authenticity’ became a trap</h2>
<p>This anti-establishment, working-class persona embraced by many of Fox’s broadcasters has always been a performance. </p>
<p>Back in 2000, Bill O'Reilly, whom the network would eventually <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/business/media/bill-oreilly-sexual-harassment.html">pay tens of millions of dollars a year</a>, called his show the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/12/13/the-life-of-oreilly/b9cd54fb-3edd-4e68-a489-2e990e3a7bca/">only show from a working-class point of view</a>.” </p>
<p>More recently, Sean Hannity, who is a friend of former President Donald Trump’s and makes about $30 million a year, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/28/hannity-slams-overpaid-media-elites-then-journalists-respond-noting-his-29m-salary-and-private-jet/">slammed “overpaid” media elites</a>. <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/fox-populism-branding-conservatism-working-class?format=HB&isbn=9781108496766">Peck observes</a> that this posturing is purposeful: It emphasizes “Fox’s moral purity, a purity that is established in terms of a distance from the corrupting force of political and media power centers.”</p>
<p>However, the Dominion lawsuit revealed that, after decades of using this distinctly populist – and often misleading – brand of performative authenticity to earn the loyalty of millions of people, Fox became trapped by it. </p>
<p>Internal communications between Fox broadcasters that were revealed in the months leading up to the trial’s scheduled start date showed the network’s marquee acts trying to reconcile their audience’s sense that the 2020 election had been rigged with their own skepticism about that lie. </p>
<p>Messages made public as part of the Dominion suit show Carlson, for example, said that he believed that Sidney Powell, Trump’s lawyer, was lying about election fraud claims. But, he added “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/business/fox-dominion-defamation-case.html">our viewers are good people and they believe it</a>.” Fox wasn’t telling its audience what to believe. Instead, it was following its audience’s lead and presenting a false narrative that aligned with what its viewers wanted to be true.</p>
<p>Once Fox’s broadcasters and the Fox audience became bonded by the network’s outsider status, those broadcasters felt compelled to follow the audience off a cliff of election misinformation and right into a defamation lawsuit. The alternative would run the risk of sullying its populist persona and, ironically, its credibility with its audience. </p>
<p>As New York Times TV critic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/19/arts/television/fox-news-settlement.html">James Poniewozik observed</a>, “The customer is always right. In fact, the customer is boss.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522679/original/file-20230424-26-11anhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a suit sits at a desk in front of a bright-blue backdrop." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522679/original/file-20230424-26-11anhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522679/original/file-20230424-26-11anhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522679/original/file-20230424-26-11anhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522679/original/file-20230424-26-11anhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522679/original/file-20230424-26-11anhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522679/original/file-20230424-26-11anhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522679/original/file-20230424-26-11anhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bill O'Reilly was one of the earliest Fox News hosts to present an ‘everyman’ persona to the viewing public.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TVOReillyAccuser/909647250fc34130acd81e7a9d51a191/photo">AP Photo/Richard Drew</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A trendsetter and a cautionary tale</h2>
<p>The Dominion lawsuit was more than a rare opportunity to see firsthand just how dishonestly Fox’s talent acted when the cameras were rolling. </p>
<p>It’s also a cautionary tale for those who see so-called authenticity as a marker of trustworthiness in journalism, and in the media more generally. </p>
<p>“As a society, we … love the idea of people ‘being themselves,’” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/apr/02/social-media-analyst-emily-hund-influencer-authenticity-interview">says scholar Emily Hund</a>, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center on Digital Culture and Society and the author of “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691231020/the-influencer-industry">The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media</a>.” </p>
<p>The question that many seem to implicitly ask themselves when deciding whether to trust <a href="https://items.ssrc.org/beyond-disinformation/trust-and-authenticity-as-tools-for-journalism-and-partisan-disinformation/">journalists</a> and others within the media world seems to be shifting from “Does this person know what they are talking about?” to “Is this person genuine?”</p>
<p>Media workers have noticed: <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/03/social-media-policies-are-failing-journalists/">Journalists</a>, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2023/03/03/stars-are-embracing-authenticity-taylor-swift-prince-harry/11152779002/">celebrities</a> and <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90768656/ugc-influencers-content-marketing">marketers</a> routinely share seemingly personal information about themselves on social media in an effort to present themselves as people first and foremost. These efforts are not always necessarily dishonest; however, they are always a performance.</p>
<p>For decades, Fox’s prolonged popularity has made it clear that authenticity is truly valuable when it comes to building credibility and audience loyalty. Now, the network’s settlement with Dominion has revealed just how manipulative and insincere that authenticity can be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203649/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacob L. Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tucker Carlson and his employer, Fox News, had an incredible understanding of what their audience wants: a kind of authenticity that is not genuine but instead manipulative.Jacob L. Nelson, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of UtahLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1941222022-11-16T02:42:31Z2022-11-16T02:42:31ZHow the news media – long in thrall to Trump – can cover his new run for president responsibly<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495546/original/file-20221116-13-kj7lkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C50%2C5582%2C3682&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the media prepare for Donald Trump's announcement that he is running for president in 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2024Trump/bb59c32fe35f490ab74da7ca90d05520/photo">AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Now that he’s in the 2024 presidential race, the media circus that is Donald Trump is returning for a new season.</p>
<p>Trump is still newsworthy. He’s been weakened by his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, his attempt to overthrow its result and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/14/coronavirus-midterm-elections-republicans/">underperformance of Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms</a>. Nevertheless, Trump is more than a party leader. “Make America Great Again,” known colloquially as “MAGA,” is a <a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/02/05/new-nationwide-survey-shows-maga-supporters-beliefs-about-the-pandemic-the-election-and-the-insurrection/">political movement</a>. Trump has a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-divided-america-including-the-15-who-are-maga-republicans-splits-on-qanon-racism-and-armed-patrols-at-polling-places-193378">legion of diehard followers</a>.</p>
<p>Then there’s Trump the storyline. Trump is to reporters as honey is to bears. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699018805212">Journalists prize conflict</a>, and Trump delivers it in abundance. It’s why he dominated news coverage <a href="https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-general-election/">nearly every week of his 2016 presidential run</a>; why he got <a href="https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-100-days/">three times as much news coverage during his first 100 days</a> as president as did his immediate predecessors; and why he has remained in the news since leaving the White House. </p>
<p>He’s also an easy “get.” In an era where politicians are increasingly scripted and walled off from the media, Trump is at their doorstep. As president, <a href="https://cpj.org/reports/2020/04/trump-media-attacks-credibility-leaks/">he answered more questions from reporters than any of his recent predecessors</a>.</p>
<p>There’s a third reason that Trump will get the news media’s attention: He’s good for ratings. During the 2016 presidential election alone, he boosted cable television viewership so much that its advertising revenue rose by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettedkins/2016/12/01/donald-trumps-election-delivers-massive-ratings-for-cable-news/?sh=69f06841119e">hundreds of millions of dollars</a>. Broadcasters benefited, too: CBS CEO Les Moonves famously declared that Trump’s presidential run “<a href="https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/10/cbs-ceo-les-moonves-clarifies-donald-trump-good-for-cbs-comment-229996">may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS</a>.” <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/551210-tv-news-ratings-online-readership-plunge-during-bidens-first-100-days/">During Joe Biden’s presidency</a>, TV and online news viewership is <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/12/news-media-readership-ratings-2022">down sharply from the Trump years</a>.</p>
<p>So the question is not whether Trump will get showered with news coverage, but how journalists should cover him. If they are to serve the public interest, journalists cannot apply the <a href="http://spj.org/ethicscode.asp">ordinary rules for covering</a> candidates. They are reporting on a politician who regularly defies democratic norms and lies with abandon. As a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.1996.9963131">longtime scholar of political journalism</a>, I offer some recommendations for giving due respect to Trump’s candidacy without amplifying his false claims or promoting his anti-democratic beliefs.</p>
<h2>Don’t play into his hand</h2>
<p>Trump is a master at changing the story when it’s not going in his direction or favor. To do that successfully, he relies on journalists to take the bait. Racing to air Trump’s latest outrage serves only to give him disproportionate coverage and to divert the public from what’s more deserving of its attention.</p>
<h2>Do call out his falsehoods, but don’t dwell on them</h2>
<p>When it’s impossible to ignore one of Trump’s false claims, label it as such in the story. At the same time, to report yet again that Trump is playing fast and loose with the facts is to say nothing novel or unexpected. The latest untruth might be tantalizing, but that alone doesn’t make it news. A 2015 <a href="https://towcenter.columbia.edu/news/lies-damn-lies-and-viral-content-how-news-websites-spread-and-debunk-online-rumors-unverified">Columbia University study</a> found news outlets “play a major role in propagating hoaxes, false claims, questionable rumors, and dubious viral content.” Journalists don’t typically make false claims of their own, but do air those of newsmakers. And once aired, the falsehoods get amplified on social media, where they take on a life of their own in part because <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/biases-make-people-vulnerable-to-misinformation-spread-by-social-media/">people tend to accept false claims that align with what they’d like to believe</a>. Few examples illustrate the point more clearly than <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/poll-61-republicans-still-believe-biden-didnt-win-fair-square-2020-rcna49630">the continuing belief of a sizable Republican majority that the 2020 election was stolen</a>.</p>
<h2>Don’t play up his social media provocations</h2>
<p>When Trump was president, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/trump-tweets-legacy-of-lies-misinformation-distrust.html">one third of his most popular tweets</a> contained a false claim. But many Americans wouldn’t have heard them directly from Trump. A study found that <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/trump-tweets-one-percent-mainstream-media-769207">only about 1% of his Twitter followers</a> saw a tweet directly from his Twitter feed. Most Americans heard of his tweets through news coverage.</p>
<h2>Don’t confuse access with newsworthiness</h2>
<p>The offer of a Trump interview might be enticing, but unless the reporter has a clear purpose and pursues it doggedly, it will work only to the advantage of Trump, who is <a href="https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6311112708112#sp=show-clips">a master at manipulating the agenda</a>. Instead of speaking with Trump to get insights on him, the University of Colorado’s Elizabeth Skewes suggests <a href="https://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/tag/ben-carson/">getting them from people</a> who have worked with him or studied him closely. </p>
<h2>Do notice when he trashes democracy</h2>
<p>Obeying laws, respecting institutions and following standard expectations – sometimes called “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/">democratic norms</a>” – are all critical to a healthy democracy. Journalists, as watchdogs of the powerful, are duty-bound to hold the powerful accountable, including Trump’s attacks on democracy and its institutions. But the danger that Trump poses to democracy does not grant reporters – who are purveyors of facts, not opinion – a license to judge his substantive policies. Journalists break their own norms by taking sides in partisan debates over policy issues like immigration and trade. Leave those judgments to the voters.</p>
<h2>Do avoid false equivalence</h2>
<p>A story about a Trump transgression does not inherently need a mention of <a href="https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212486266">something similar</a> involving a political opponent. Doing so can make Trump’s behavior look normal when it is not. He’s a serial transgressor of social and political expectations.</p>
<h2>Do provide context</h2>
<p>It’s not safe for journalists to assume news consumers know what’s happening either on the surface or behind the scenes of what they’re reporting. As far back as the 1940s, journalists were being criticized for <a href="https://archive.org/details/freeandresponsib029216mbp">offering their audiences too little context</a>. In recent years, journalists have sought to restore public trust in their work by being more transparent about news decisions. Context is a key piece of that, explaining why the story is newsworthy and why it’s being told in the way that it is.</p>
<h2>Don’t lump all Trump loyalists in the same basket</h2>
<p>The Trump followers who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, <a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2021/02/05/new-nationwide-survey-shows-maga-supporters-beliefs-about-the-pandemic-the-election-and-the-insurrection/">are not fully representative of his followers</a>. Overlooked in the turmoil that followed the 2020 election is the fact that Trump received the second-most presidential votes in history. <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/790/not-every-trump-voter-is-racist-or-misled-theres-a-rational-trump-voter-too">Simplistic portrayals</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/24/the-nasty-effect-and-why-donald-trump-supporters-mistrust-the-media/">of Trump’s supporters</a> deepens their mistrust of the media and its reporting. </p>
<p>None of this will be easy. A century ago, journalist Walter Lippmann wrote that the press, rather than bringing order to political chaos, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315127736">tends to “intensify” it</a>. Trump personifies chaos, and his news coverage has indeed been chaotic. As one analyst described it as far back as 2018, “<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/395230-freak-show-coverage-of-trump-creating-media-chaos/">The press rushes from one out-of-proportion headline to the next</a>, focusing on the weird, the sensational and the polarizing.” More disciplined reporting would benefit the American people as the Trump circus takes its 2024 show on the road.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194122/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas E. Patterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is a lot about Donald Trump that makes him attractive to the public, and alluring to the media. A scholar of political journalism has some suggestions about how to cover him.Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press, Harvard Kennedy SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1903212022-11-02T12:30:23Z2022-11-02T12:30:23ZWomen get fewer chances to speak on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to an AI-powered, large-scale analysis of interruptions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492672/original/file-20221031-22-64sskb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1125%2C629&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are gender differences in who gets to speak and who interrupts on cable news discussions.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2020/09/02/lead-political-panel-live.cnn">CNN</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em> </p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>My colleagues and I used artificial intelligence to analyze hundreds of thousands of dialogues on cable news programs in order to better understand the <a href="https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2022/724">nature of interruptions in political discussions</a>. We found that women get substantially fewer opportunities to speak in those settings than men, and perhaps as a result they tend to interrupt more often than men.</p>
<p>Analyzing interruptions at this scale provides meaningful insights into subtle conversational dynamics and how they vary across race, gender, occupation and political orientation. In addition to gender differences, we found that across CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, conversations between people who hold opposite political beliefs are riddled with far more intrusive and unfriendly interruptions than those between people who share a political affiliation.</p>
<p>I’m a computer scientist who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=mWyMp38AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">uses AI to study social science questions</a>. In collaboration with <a href="https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2022/724">student AI researchers from Carnegie Mellon University</a>, we developed AI methods that reliably distinguish <a href="https://www.psychmechanics.com/psychology-of-interrupting/">intrusive and unfriendly interruptions from those that are benign</a>. Intrusive interruptions aim to take over a conversation or stifle the speaker, and benign interruptions aim to support the speaker with helpful information or indications of agreement.</p>
<p>Through a year-long effort, we analyzed 625,409 dialogues containing interruptions found in 275,420 transcripts from the three cable news networks spanning January 2000 and July 2021. We found that female speakers on the networks got out an average of 72.8 words per chance to speak compared to 81.4 for male speakers. We also found that female speakers interrupted in 39.4% of dialogues compared to 35.9% for male speakers. However, the women had a better ratio of benign to intrusive interruptions than the men did: 85.5% to 75.4%.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lxiZZORxUPY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">This political discussion on CNN between people of different genders and political viewpoints features numerous intrusive interruptions.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Our AI techniques could be used to provide real-time interruption analysis of talk shows, interviews and political debates. Post-debate analyses revealed that during the third U.S. Presidential debate in 2020, Donald Trump <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/10/23/21529607/biden-trump-debate-won-interrupt-kristen-welker-presidential">interrupted twice as much</a> as Joe Biden. Real time analyses can be useful to call out serial interrupters, inform the audience during the debate and perhaps help in ensuring civil discourse.</p>
<p>We also studied the evolution of unfriendly interruptions over those two decades. This research reveals that the rate of unfriendly or intrusive interruptions has been gradually increasing, with the period during the Trump-Clinton 2016 campaign producing the sharpest spike in intrusive interruptions among commentators. </p>
<p>This result points to the deepening political divide in the U.S. previously documented in research on <a href="https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/18049">news consumption patterns</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2022/702">media portrayals</a> of major issues such as policing, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.18653/v1/N19-1304">social media discussions of events</a> and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v35i17.17748">language of partisan news audiences</a>.</p>
<h2>What other research is being done</h2>
<p>Other researchers have been studying interruptions in political speech in other contexts than cable news broadcasts, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/717083">legislative speeches</a>.</p>
<p>While interruptions have been extensively analyzed in <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gender-and-conversational-interaction-9780195081947?q=tannen&lang=en&cc=us#">social science literature</a> for decades, our study used AI techniques to study interruptions at an unprecedented scale.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>Interruptions could be categorized with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(94)90011-6">more nuance than just considering them intrusive or benign</a>. Our current methods are not robust enough to detect these nuances reliably. </p>
<p>Our analysis also suffers from selection bias because it only considers people who appeared in major news networks and thus probably wield considerable social influence. We do not know whether our results would generalize to broader groups, for example from male politicians to all men.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ashique KhudaBukhsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An analysis of hundreds of thousands of interactions on cable news programs shows that women interrupt more often than men – and it may be because they also have to fight for equal airtime.Ashique KhudaBukhsh, Assistant Professor of Computing and Information Sciences, Rochester Institute of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1875792022-08-10T12:18:45Z2022-08-10T12:18:45ZDon’t be too quick to blame social media for America’s polarization – cable news has a bigger effect, study finds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478366/original/file-20220809-16320-by0k6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C4000%2C2644&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joe Biden and Donald Trump supporters, like these two, are more likely to be polarized by TV news than online echo chambers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BidenInaugurationTwoWorlds/7e1e25cd3f574ef98153395f38d5672b/photo">AP Photo/Allen G. Breed</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The past two election cycles have seen an <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv8xnhtd">explosion of attention given</a> to “echo chambers,” or communities where a narrow set of views makes people less likely to challenge their own opinions. Much of this concern has focused on the rise of social media, which has <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/671987">radically transformed the information ecosystem</a>.</p>
<p>However, when scientists investigated social media echo chambers, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428656">they found surprisingly little evidence</a> of them on a large scale – or at least none on a scale large enough to warrant the growing concerns. And yet, selective exposure to news <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01497.x">does increase polarization</a>. This suggested that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2158244019832705">these studies</a> missed part of the picture of Americans’ news consumption patterns. Crucially, they did not factor in a major component of the average American’s experience of news: television.</p>
<p>To fill in this gap, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Zb68N-kAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">I</a> and a group of researchers from <a href="https://datascience.stanford.edu/people/daniel-muise">Stanford University</a>, the <a href="https://pikprofessors.upenn.edu/meet-the-professors/duncan-watts">University of Pennsylvania</a> and <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/davidmr/">Microsoft Research</a> tracked the TV news consumption habits of tens of thousands of American adults each month from 2016 through 2019. We discovered <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn0083">four aspects of news consumption</a> that, when taken together, paint an unsettling picture of the TV news ecosystem.</p>
<h2>TV trumps online</h2>
<p>We first measured just how politically siloed American news consumers really are across TV and the web. Averaging over the four years of our observations, we found that roughly 17% of Americans are politically polarized – 8.7% to the left and 8.4% to the right – based on their TV news consumption. That’s three to four times higher than the average percentage of Americans polarized by online news.</p>
<p>Moreover, the percentage of Americans polarized via TV ranged as high as 23% at its peak in November 2016, the month in which Donald Trump was elected president. A second spike occurred in the months leading into December 2018, following the “blue wave” midterm elections in which a <a href="https://politicalsciencenow.com/the-blue-wave-assessing-political-advertising-trends-and-democratic-advantages-in-2018/">record number of Democratic campaign ads</a> were aired on TV. The timing of these two spikes suggests a clear connection between content choices and events in the political arena.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yN_Mp9ZsVXA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The 2018 midterm elections saw campaign ads reach new levels of partisanship.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Staying in TV echo chambers</h2>
<p>Besides being more politically siloed on average, our research found that TV news consumers are much more likely than web consumers to maintain the same partisan news diets over time: after six months, left-leaning TV audiences are 10 times more likely to remain segregated than left-leaning online audiences, and right-leaning audiences are 4.5 times more likely than their online counterparts.</p>
<p>While these figures may seem intimidating, it is important to keep in mind that even among TV viewers, about 70% of right-leaning viewers and about 80% of left-leaning viewers do switch their news diets within six months. To the extent that long-lasting echo chambers do exist, then, they include only about 4% of the population.</p>
<h2>Narrow TV diets</h2>
<p>Partisan segregation among TV audiences goes even further than left- and right-leaning sources, we found. We identified seven broad buckets of TV news sources, then used these archetypes to determine what a typical unvaried TV news diet really looks like.</p>
<p>We found that, compared to online audiences, partisan TV news consumers tend not to stray too far from their narrow sets of preferred news sources. For example, most Americans who consume mostly MSNBC rarely consume news from any other source besides CNN. Similarly, most Americans who consume mostly Fox News Channel do not venture beyond that network at all. This finding contrasts with data from online news consumers, who still receive sizable amounts of news from outside their main archetype.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478369/original/file-20220809-14-pzgjbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="One man interviews another on the set of the television program" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478369/original/file-20220809-14-pzgjbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478369/original/file-20220809-14-pzgjbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478369/original/file-20220809-14-pzgjbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478369/original/file-20220809-14-pzgjbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478369/original/file-20220809-14-pzgjbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478369/original/file-20220809-14-pzgjbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478369/original/file-20220809-14-pzgjbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People who get their news from MSNBC rarely stray beyond MSNBC and CNN for their news consumption.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RichardLuiOnSetMSNBC.jpg">Mikeblog/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Distilling partisanship</h2>
<p>Finally, we found an imbalance between partisan TV news channels and the broader TV news environment. Our observations revealed that Americans are turning away from national TV news generally in substantial numbers – and crucially, this exodus is more from centrist news buckets than from left- or right-leaning ones. Within the remaining TV news audience, we found movement from broadcast news to cable news, trending toward MSNBC and Fox News.</p>
<p>Together, these trends reveal a counterintuitive finding: Although the overall TV news audience is shrinking, the partisan TV news audience is growing. This means that the audience as a whole is in the process of being “distilled” – remaining TV viewers are growing increasingly partisan, and the partisan proportion of TV news consumers is on the rise.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Exposure to opposing views is <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/news/2021/12/09/political-polarization-and-its-echo-chambers-surprising-new-cross-disciplinary">critical for functional democratic processes</a>. It allows for self-reflection and <a href="https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/10127">tempers hostility toward political outgroups</a>, whereas only interacting with similar views in political echo chambers makes people more entrenched in their own opinions. If echo chambers truly are as widespread as <a href="https://rcommunicationr.org/index.php/rcr/article/view/94">recent attention</a> has made them out to be, it can have major consequences for the health of democracy.</p>
<p>Our findings suggest that television – not the web – is the top driver of partisan audience segregation among Americans. It is important to note that the vast majority of Americans still consume relatively balanced news diets. </p>
<p>However, given that the partisan TV news audience alone <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aay3539">consumes more minutes of news than the entire online news audience</a>, it may be worth devoting more attention to this huge and increasingly politicized part of the information ecosystem.</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/social-media-and-society-125586" target="_blank"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479539/original/file-20220817-20-g5jxhm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=1" width="100%"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187579/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Homa Hosseinmardi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Studies of online echo chambers don’t paint the full picture of Americans’ political segregation. New research shows that the problem is more Fox News Channel and MSNBC than Facebook and Twitter.Homa Hosseinmardi, Associate Research Scientist in Computational Social Science, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1821952022-05-03T13:09:26Z2022-05-03T13:09:26ZCNN+ was just the latest failed attempt of the cable news trailblazer to remain relevant<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460579/original/file-20220429-18-t4jnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=439%2C36%2C4448%2C2887&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">CNN's hyped streaming service folded after three weeks.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-advertisement-for-cnn-is-displayed-in-manhattan-on-april-news-photo/1392815026?adppopup=true">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It seems that any hope that legacy media had of recovering audiences was crushed by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/business/cnn-plus-shutting-down.html">recent and rapid collapse</a> of CNN’s streaming service, CNN+. </p>
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<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/cnn-was-just-the-latest-failed-attempt-of-the-cable-news-trailblazer-to-remain-relevant-182195&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>For the <a href="https://scholarworks.umass.edu/democratic-communique/vol31/iss1/3/">past decade</a>, viewers and listeners have gradually been abandoning legacy broadcast media, which refers to news media institutions established before the digital era, such as <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/587401-news-networks-see-major-viewership-drop-in-2021/#:%7E:text=Network%20news%20channels%20fared%20somewhat,News%E2%80%9D%20dropping%20by%2014%20percent.">ABC</a>, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/587401-news-networks-see-major-viewership-drop-in-2021/#:%7E:text=Network%20news%20channels%20fared%20somewhat,News%E2%80%9D%20dropping%20by%2014%20percent.">CBS</a>, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/public-broadcasting/">NPR</a> and <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/12/27/business/cable-news-lost-plenty-viewers-2021/">NBC</a>.</p>
<p>Audiences have instead gravitated toward nascent media makers that got their start on platforms like YouTube, Substack, Spotify and TikTok. The popular programming on these platforms – which includes “<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-faith/id1531192509">Bad Faith</a>,” “<a href="https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/">Breaking Points</a>,” “<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-katie-halper-show/id1020563127">The Katie Halper Show</a>,” “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-joe-rogan-became-podcastings-goliath-176124">The Joe Rogan Experience</a>,” “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/thejimmydoreshow">The Jimmy Dore Show</a>,” “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG29FnXZm4F5U8xpqs1cs1Q">Empire Files</a>,” “<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/useful-idiots-with-matt-taibbi-and-katie-halper/id1476110521">Useful Idiots</a>” and “<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-realignment/id1474687988">The Realignment Podcast</a>” – are collectively, and sometimes individually, drawing audiences as big as <a href="https://scholarworks.umass.edu/democratic-communique/vol31/iss1/3/">CNN’s primetime viewership</a>.</p>
<p>Since the 2020 election, the slide in ratings for many of the large networks has been particularly acute. The legacy media’s coverage of the Trump presidency had successfully reversed a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Future-of-the-Presidency-Journalism-and-Democracy-After-Trump/Jr/p/book/9781032070735">decadelong decline</a> of their audience size. But following the inauguration of President Joe Biden, <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2021/06/29/cnn-loses-nearly-half-viewers-2020-2021/">ratings for cable news plummeted</a>, with Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNN losing 49%, 37% and 35% of their audience, respectively, between June 2020 and June 2021. CNN <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2022/02/21/cnns-ratings-collapse-prime-time-down-nearly-70-in-key-demo/?sh=8c080586dda0">lost nearly 70%</a> of viewers in the key demographic of 25- to 54-year-olds between January 2021 and May 2021. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tvinsider.com/1010392/rachel-maddow-renews-msnbc-deal-2021/">Cable news outlets’</a> response to declining cable viewership has been to supplement their core cable offerings with offshoot streaming services. MSNBC offered <a href="https://deadline.com/2021/07/peacock-expands-msnbc-content-1234793560/">additional content</a> from existing news personalities on Peacock, a streaming service launched by their parent company, NBC. In addition, MSNBC launched <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rachel-maddow-show/id294055449">a podcast version</a> of “The Rachel Maddow Show.” </p>
<p>But <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XE_UPwIAAAAJ&hl=en">as a media scholar</a>, I see these endeavors as exercises in futility, fueled in large part by a lack of self-awareness. In my view, legacy media’s shrinking audience size has more to do with their style of reporting and their misguided assumptions about what viewers want than the medium itself.</p>
<h2>CNN+ flames out</h2>
<p>After nearly a year of hype, CNN launched its digital streaming service, CNN+, on March 29, 2022. The cable news juggernaut planned to spend <a href="https://www.axios.com/cnn-plus-cuts-warner-brothers-discovery-1be0ac3a-6952-4af0-b8e2-03dd6ae0839c.html">US$1 billion</a> on the venture over four years. In addition to existing <a href="https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/cnn-unveils-its-full-programming-slate">CNN personalities</a> such as Kate Bolduan, Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tapper and Fareed Zakaria, CNN+ featured <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/media/2022/03/27/chris-wallace-fox-departure-new-york-times-stelter-rs-vpx.cnn">Chris Wallace</a>, whom they poached from Fox News Channel.</p>
<p>The CNN+ project did not address polling that shows <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andymeek/2021/02/20/fewer-americans-than-ever-before-trust-the-mainstream-media/?sh=58ff1c6b282a">less than half</a> of Americans trust <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andymeek/2021/02/20/fewer-americans-than-ever-before-trust-the-mainstream-media/?sh=58ff1c6b282a">U.S. legacy media</a>, including <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/577828-poll-voters-generally-trust-abc-cnn-most-fox-news-least-among">CNN</a>. In fact, a 2022 study found that Americans had more faith in the <a href="https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/04/05/trust-media-2022-where-americans-get-news-poll">Weather Channel and BBC</a> than the cable news networks.</p>
<p>Instead, on CNN+, the network offered audiences what amounted to a digitized version of many of the same personality-driven content that was on CNN, with new offerings such “<a href="https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2022/01/24/jake-tapper-cnn-plus/">Jake Tapper’s Book Club</a>” and “<a href="https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/cnn-announces-daily-programming-schedule-including-chris-wallace-at-6-pm-and-wolf-blitzer-at-730/503893/">Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace</a>,” hosted by the former Fox News anchor. </p>
<p>It is no wonder that a few weeks into its launch – and after spending <a href="https://www.axios.com/cnn-plus-cuts-warner-brothers-discovery-1be0ac3a-6952-4af0-b8e2-03dd6ae0839c.html">$300 million</a> on the streaming service – only <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/12/cnn-plus-low-viewership-numbers-warner-bros-discovery.html">10,000</a> of the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-13/cnn-is-said-to-surpass-100-000-subscribers-in-its-first-week">100,000</a> subscribers it had attracted were using the paid service daily. This made <a href="https://www.axios.com/cnn-plus-cuts-warner-brothers-discovery-1be0ac3a-6952-4af0-b8e2-03dd6ae0839c.html">CNN’s one-year goal of 2 million users</a>, and its four-year target of 18 million users, seem far-fetched.</p>
<p>Less than a month after the launch, the <a href="https://www.axios.com/cnn-plus-cuts-warner-brothers-discovery-1be0ac3a-6952-4af0-b8e2-03dd6ae0839c.html">production</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/warner-bros-discovery-lays-off-cnn-cfo-suspends-marketing-spend-axios-2022-04-19/">marketing</a> budgets for CNN+ were reduced and CNN’s chief financial officer was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/warner-bros-discovery-lays-off-cnn-cfo-suspends-marketing-spend-axios-2022-04-19/">laid off</a>. Then on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/business/cnn-plus-shutting-down.html">April 21, 2022</a>, it became official: CNN+ was suspending operations.</p>
<h2>The appeal of new media</h2>
<p>In announcing the shuttering of CNN+, the network said the service was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/21/media/cnn-shutting-down/index.html">“incompatible” with the plans of new management</a> after WarnerMedia, CNN’s former parent company, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/warnermedia-discovery-complete-merger-become-warner-bros-discovery-2022-04-08/">had merged with Discovery</a> in early April.</p>
<p>But as I see it, the crux of CNN’s problem is that the network failed to grasp that audiences are gravitating toward new media platforms precisely because they are not legacy media. </p>
<p>Some of <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Podcaster%27s+Dilemma%3A+Decolonizing+Podcasters+in+the+Era+of+Surveillance+Capitalism-p-9781119789888">the most popular alternative content</a> is programming that includes personalities that seem more authentic – and less scripted and robotic – than the hosts who appear on corporate news media programming. Unlike corporate media, these shows often avoid a <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/tv/yale-researcher-thwarts-attempted-brian-stelter-dunk-on-fox-news-by-calling-out-cnn-for-partisan-coverage-filtering/">partisan</a> <a href="https://scholarsarchive.jwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=student_scholarship">framing</a>, feature amateur production, present <a href="https://fair.org/home/medias-election-lesson-ambitious-dems-must-move-to-the-right/">good-faith</a> <a href="https://fair.org/home/blaming-workers-hiding-profits-in-primetime-inflation-coverage/">debates</a> and air long, in-depth segments about <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/evening-news-election-2016-10">important</a> <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/network-and-cable-news-largely-ignore-wave-anti-asian-violence">topics</a> <a href="https://fair.org/topic/cnn/">that</a> <a href="https://www.projectcensored.org/">corporate</a> <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-change-report_n_5064389">media</a> <a href="https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/324190-former-cable-news-reporter-slams-networks-for-ignoring-yemen-crisis/">outlets</a> <a href="https://deadline.com/2013/07/broadcast-networks-ignore-wikileaker-bradley-manning-verdict-552498/#!">rarely</a> <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/msnbc/study-tv-news-shows-largely-ignore-historic-trade-negotiations">cover</a>.</p>
<p>Some stories that are widely covered on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g4xWtlKUAU">newer media</a> outlets get barely a mention on legacy networks. Take Chevron’s <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/28741/steven-donziger-chevron-oil-amazon-contamination-injustice/">surveillance</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/18/nobel-laureates-condemn-judicial-harassment-of-environmental-lawyer">legal action</a> against the human rights and environmentalist lawyer Steven Donzinger, who, a decade earlier, had successfully won the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/business/energy-environment/steven-donziger-chevron.html">largest judgment</a> ever made against an oil company.</p>
<p>Often, when cable news covers corporate malfeasence – such as the collusion between Big Tech and the National Security Administration exposed by the Whistleblower <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/10/politics/edward-snowden-profile/index.html">Edward Snowden</a> – it’s often discussed in short, <a href="https://fair.org/home/jeffrey-toobin-expert-on-bizarre-analogies/">trivial</a>,<a href="https://fair.org/home/see-spying-works/">slanted</a> <a href="https://fair.org/home/media-cheer-assanges-arrest/">segments</a>. Conversely, new media personalities such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DRVDq8cicg&t=31s">Krystal Ball, Halper, Kyle Kulinski</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efs3QRr8LWw">Rogan</a> have dedicated multiple hours of interviews to whistleblowers such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elEInqRzLgk">Snowden</a>.</p>
<p>The success of new media platforms contradicts many of the assumptions that legacy media, including CNN, have operated under to justify their approach to covering the news. For decades, legacy media defenders have claimed that audiences have <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2018/01/21/trumps-impact-shorter-attention-spans-rs.cnn/video/playlists/atv-road-to-the-white-house-automated/">short attention spans</a> and are <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2012/08/23/opinion/frum-cable-news/index.html">too ignorant</a> for complex ideas. However, <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Podcaster%27s+Dilemma%3A+Decolonizing+Podcasters+in+the+Era+of+Surveillance+Capitalism-p-9781119789888">in new media spaces</a>, audiences seem eager to access programs that spend hours deconstructing a single topic. </p>
<p>I believe there has also been an <a href="https://citylights.com/muckraking/u-s-of-distraction/">over-reliance</a> on graphics, flashy set designs and big-name guests to attract and keep viewers. In reality, low-budget content from regular people have proved to be wildly popular. For example, Dore and his partner, Stefane Zamorano, host the wildly popular “Jimmy Dore Show” <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/ct-ott-jimmy-dore-thalia-hall-ttd-0712-20190711-4leuqq3mwzbt5ep76rurat6fvy-story.html">from their garage</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man speaks into megaphone before crowd of protesters." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460585/original/file-20220429-25-1nofmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460585/original/file-20220429-25-1nofmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460585/original/file-20220429-25-1nofmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460585/original/file-20220429-25-1nofmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460585/original/file-20220429-25-1nofmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460585/original/file-20220429-25-1nofmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460585/original/file-20220429-25-1nofmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jimmy Dore, speaking into a megaphone, hosts his popular political talk show from his garage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/comedian-and-host-of-the-jimmy-dore-show-jimmy-dore-speaks-news-photo/844361332?adppopup=true">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For decades, cable news outlets have become comfortable casting the majority of their stories as part of an eternal struggle <a href="https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/hate-inc/">between Republicans and Democrats</a>. The repeated use of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Lets-Agree-to-Disagree-A-Critical-Thinking-Guide-to-Communication-Conflict/Higdon-Huff/p/book/9781032168982">this frame</a> not only misleads, but also unnecessarily divides audiences. <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520347878/the-anatomy-of-fake-news">Fox News is viewed as conservative, CNN is liberal</a>, and viewers are expected to pick a side, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-media-encourages-and-sustains-political-warfare-100941">swinging along with wherever their favored network lands on an issue</a>. </p>
<p>But both networks are in the business of making money, and culture war issues such as immigration, abortion and same-sex marriage have proved useful for <a href="https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/52200941/JPLR.2009-authors_copy-paper-with-cover-page-v2.pdf?Expires=1651508713&Signature=eTFDMwX5IPVTtqlyW%7EjZn2O-RJwPL97XDWTXvbvYdVbq4wHTw03p5oQBUhSL-l7b6srwakZfFVpBsFrBBqMWmqFUNVa2B2K2rDAINtI8cxcrHXLuu4Rg%7EmUU-qUr6AnG0-1OJhHXHf9piGJxYYvBfKzsm0oLbKDb7kvq2tdGqmSkUyaC2GEGPMBf6bu-bF32ApLQCV62BT441M47%7E4vahyS3wFxtfHUjINOqH7Y9cVPm1m0SdGKgFDiO7lWSMFooPMzsI4VOQ-8LSCuthnWDUzuvkgFemdiTG4kzWmhSkYi5EKRLoN2wZ16lhqsyl6GaElv-KNivX3Sc5hw9n2FArw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA">attracting</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=BBYHEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA169&dq=%22news+media%22+%22culture+wars%22+cnn+immigration+abortion+same+sex&ots=LcyiMWImte&sig=NNb9hSdhvRZGkynM5wBvR3zfhaA#v=onepage&q&f=false">dividing</a> audiences.</p>
<p>New entrants don’t have this baggage, and seem more eager to rise above hackneyed partisanship.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=weekly&source=inline-weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>The credibility gap</h2>
<p>Most new media consumers are sophisticated enough to recognize that legacy media <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520347878/the-anatomy-of-fake-news">do spread falsehoods</a>. To be clear, there are a litany of falsehoods in <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520347878/the-anatomy-of-fake-news">new media and conservative corporate media</a>.</p>
<p>But for all of CNN’s posturing that they’re more trustworthy than networks like <a href="https://www.politifact.com/personalities/fox-news-channel/">Fox News</a>, its unforced errors keep piling up. In just the past five years, CNN incorrectly suggested the Hunter Biden laptop story was either <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/flashback-msnbc-cnn-cbs-told-viewers-hunter-biden-laptop-story-was-russian-disinformation/ar-AAVk1ZG">Russian or right-wing propaganda</a>, settled a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/07/media/cnn-settles-lawsuit-viral-video/index.html">multimillion dollar</a> lawsuit over its reporting of an incident involving student Nicholas Sandmann and has been accused of spreading false stories about the <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/report-vermont-power-grid-infiltrated-by-russian-hackers/">Russians’</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/30/us/grizzly-steppe-malware-burlington-electric/index.html">hacking</a> of a Vermont <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2017/01/03/exp-power-company-detects-russia-linked-malware.cnn">power plant</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/15/russia-afghanistan-bounties-psaki-481990">putting</a> a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics/russia-bounties-presidential-daily-briefing/index.html">bounty</a> on U.S. soldiers and <a href="https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million?s=r">controlling</a> President Donald Trump with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-just-cant-get-enough-trump-pee-tapes-story-joseph-curl">compromising information</a>.</p>
<p>Its credibility was further damaged in 2021 and 2022 when it was <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeff-zucker-cnn-resign-affair-cuomo-trump-1319698/">revealed</a> that the former head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, and former CNN personality Chris Cuomo were <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/02/the-zucker-cuomo-saga-just-got-even-messier">advising</a> Chris’ brother – then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo – on how to respond to accusations of sexual harassment and political corruption. During that time, when the governor appeared on CNN, he did not face difficult questions about these alleged scandals. Instead, the siblings engaged in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thv_gJ4EpHw">lighthearted teasing</a>.</p>
<p>When it comes to expanding its audience, CNN has attempted everything short of transforming its content. CNN+ is simply CNN’s latest failed attempt to regain a sizable audience. To me, the evidence is pretty clear: If CNN wants to remain viable, it’s the content, not the medium, that needs to change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182195/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nolan Higdon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since the 2020 election, the slide in ratings for many large networks has been particularly acute. What’s driving this exodus, and where are viewers going?Nolan Higdon, Lecturer of History and Media Studies, California State University, East BayLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1627722021-06-15T11:45:50Z2021-06-15T11:45:50ZGB News: production teething troubles – but success will depend on quality of the journalism<p>Launch night on the UK’s latest broadcast news network, GB News, was a rough night to be a sound operator. The much-trailed channel went on-air at 8pm on Sunday June 13 with a mission statement delivered by its company chairman and principal political presenter Andrew Neil.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, his sound was “out of sync”. The audio that viewers heard at home ran slightly behind the movement of his lips, which was disconcerting for viewers. A corrected version was later uploaded to Twitter.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1404160894771339271"}"></div></p>
<p>It was not the only technical issue to blight the launch night. Microphones failed to work, mistimed programmes were cut short by ad breaks, and presenters seemed unsure which camera to look at or when they were supposed to speak.</p>
<p>Delivered from a set that appeared poorly lit and without the slick production skills we have become accustomed to on television news, it prompted viewers to snipe on Twitter about “student television”.</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jun/13/gb-news-review-andrew-neils-alternative-bbc-utterly-deadly-stuff">newspaper reviewers mocked</a> the gap between its lofty ambitions and poor application.</p>
<p>On Twitter, veteran presenter Alastair Stewart took some of the critics to task.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1404355877407232001"}"></div></p>
<p>Television news is a team effort. The programmes viewers see at home are made by producers, directors, sound people and designers. It is an enormously complex logistical operation. Launching a new channel involves people physically building studios and infrastructure at the same time as training programme teams on new production technology. The expertise needed to keep a channel smoothly transmitting takes time to build up.</p>
<p>Channel launches are always fraught events, technology does not always keep up with the management’s ambitious editorial visions. When I was a producer at ITN, I worked on the launch of its rolling news channel. With a new computerised playout system it was ground-breaking, removing the need to use videotape in programme production.</p>
<p>But the newly developed digital video servers were unreliable. They would frequently crash, threatening to take the channel entirely off-air. When it happened, the director would ask the presenter to read a standby script and play a long back-up report while the IT team rebooted the server. On one memorable occasion a presenter who had knocked her paper copy of the script off the desk had to duck out of shot and, while still live on-air, scrabble around on the floor to retrieve it.</p>
<h2>Do not adjust your set</h2>
<p>GB News is not the first news service to face criticism for launch problems. Even well-funded operations such as Al Jazeera English have had issues. It was months late on-air because of behind-the-scenes technical faults. And to compound the problem the channel <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/nov/14/tvnews.television1">changed its name</a> from Al Jazeera International just before it was due to go live. Channel 4 News, Sky News and many more have had technical challenges to overcome before the procedures of broadcasting become ingrained.</p>
<p>For television professionals, “production value” – the technical aspects of programme creation – is important. Flawless presentation is associated with professionalism and quality. For the audience, these things seem to have changed over time. </p>
<p>Back in 2011, a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/107769901108800404?casa_token=Y5Is-6kMrs0AAAAA:X_Tojoj_MMcxs5UYR_yQbr9lFvBS4cWVfbI9DKHTSuO2K_EcQ728lD-nT0IJNEElYRSeSnOf_Qe0kZQ">study by</a> US media scholars R Glenn Cummins and Todd Chambers found viewers do recognise variation in production value and tend to judge stories high in production value as more credible than identical stories that are low in production value.</p>
<p>But audiences have grown used to seeing eye-witness video shot on phones and, during the pandemic, interviews filmed on Zoom or Skype. During the Iraq war when phone-quality video was starting to be used on television news for the first time, some TV news engineers were worried that the regulator would act against the use of such low production quality video. Changes in <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Audience-views-on-user-generated-content%3A-exploring-Wahl%E2%80%90Jorgensen-Williams/2e08e7f99fe5cf1f0c401035ce93a3a7439158fb">audience taste</a> and improvements in technology have made such concerns irrelevant.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Image of UK radio presenter James O'Brien taken from his Twitter feed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406440/original/file-20210615-23-1ephcdf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406440/original/file-20210615-23-1ephcdf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406440/original/file-20210615-23-1ephcdf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406440/original/file-20210615-23-1ephcdf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406440/original/file-20210615-23-1ephcdf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406440/original/file-20210615-23-1ephcdf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406440/original/file-20210615-23-1ephcdf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Video hasn’t killed this radio star: James O'Brien on LBC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But that is not to say that there is not value in a well-produced programme and a well-designed set. Look at the way in which LBC has pioneered visualised radio for social media producing high-quality clips of its marquee presenters, including James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari, for consumption on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Brightly lit studios, with prominent branding, make it appealing to watch as well as listen to. Talk Radio and Times Radio have quickly learned the same lessons. GB News also clearly hopes to maximise social media impact as it builds a loyal audience.</p>
<p>GB News has gone from an idea to a channel during the pandemic. Its view of polemical television is not one that appeals to everyone, but to condemn it for technical mistakes during the first days on-air is unfair and short-sighted. As the days turn to weeks and months it is likely to resolve the technical problems, and see its presenters and producers grow in confidence. </p>
<p>It faces many challenges in the months ahead as it tries to develop a different style of profitable TV news. Getting right the technical aspects of production seems one of the easier ones to overcome.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162772/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matt Walsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The UK’s latest news channel has been criticised for poor production values. But do viewers really care?Matt Walsh, Head of the School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1537042021-02-25T20:17:19Z2021-02-25T20:17:19ZMisinformation-spewing cable companies come under scrutiny<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386291/original/file-20210224-22-7ebqjb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4019%2C2685&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If its services help deliver misinformation to your home, what responsibility does Comcast have for that?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ComcastServices/b31f921a4cad47f08c9d1a029c945ea2/photo">AP Photo/Mike Stewart</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Looking at political violence in the U.S., a New Jersey state legislator sent a text message to an executive of cable television giant Comcast: “<a href="https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/16100821873563d3663112017/raw">You feed this garbage, lies and all</a>.” The cable channels Fox News and Newsmax were “complicit” in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, the lawmaker, Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, said. Like other cable companies, Comcast brings those channels into American homes. What, Moriarty asked, was Comcast going to do about them in the wake of the assault on democracy?</p>
<p>A few days later, Washington Post columnist Max Boot suggested Comcast might soon “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/18/trump-couldnt-have-incited-sedition-without-help-fox-news/">need to step in and kick Fox News off</a>,” as a consequence of its assistance to Trump’s incitement of insurrection. A similar suggestion by Democratic members of Congress <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/business/media/disinformation-cable-television.html">ignited considerable controversy</a> and became a subject of contention at a <a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/hearing-on-fanning-the-flames-disinformation-and-extremism-in-the-media">subsequent hearing</a> on “disinformation and extremism in the media.”</p>
<p><a href="https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/16100821873563d3663112017/raw">A CNN media reporter, Oliver Darcy, observed</a> that Facebook, Twitter and Google have faced significant pressure to curb disinformation on their platforms – especially since Jan. 6. But, Darcy said, “somehow [cable providers] have escaped scrutiny and entirely dodged this conversation,” even though they are also “lending their platforms to dishonest companies that profit off of disinformation and conspiracy theories.”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=W1Bpy_cAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">researcher</a> who studies both television news distribution and how profit motivates the spread of falsehoods, I’m curious about whether it’s feasible – or wise – for cable companies to play moderator to the channels they carry.</p>
<h2>A parallel between TV and online services</h2>
<p>Since Jan. 6, social media companies have cracked down hard on disinformation campaigns, including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/technology/twitter-donald-trump-jack-dorsey.html">cutting off President Donald Trump’s Twitter account</a>. Amazon, Google and Apple also <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/16/how-parler-deplatforming-shows-power-of-cloud-providers.html">sharply reduced the reach of the Parler social network</a> when that platform refused to remove posts apparently aimed at inciting violence – though Parler has since come back online.</p>
<p>But disinformation is not happening online only. Fox News has increasingly come under fire for on-air staff and guests who hawk right-wing conspiracy theories, including <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-news-faces-dollar27-billion-lawsuit-over-voting-machine-fraud-claims/ar-BB1doGXb">spinning lies</a> that voting machines somehow stole the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden.</p>
<p>Fox is <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/04/media/read-smartmatic-lawsuit-fox-news/index.html">facing a multibillion-dollar lawsuit</a> about those false claims. The company also recently <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/fox-paid-seven-figures-to-settle-lawsuit-over-bogus-seth-rich-conspiracy-story-003236858.html">paid at least US$10 million</a> to settle a lawsuit from the family of a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer over falsely alleging the killing was part of a left-wing plot.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386292/original/file-20210224-13-1gm38uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Fox building in New York City" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386292/original/file-20210224-13-1gm38uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386292/original/file-20210224-13-1gm38uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386292/original/file-20210224-13-1gm38uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386292/original/file-20210224-13-1gm38uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386292/original/file-20210224-13-1gm38uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386292/original/file-20210224-13-1gm38uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386292/original/file-20210224-13-1gm38uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fox News is just one channel that has brought cable providers under fire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-an-american-conservative-cable-television-news-news-photo/1207206922">Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What’s next for Fox News?</h2>
<p>Amid the <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-domestic-terrorism-alert-20210127-rzq62ds25vhw3jopfmkqkbxsf4-story.html">threat of continued political violence</a>, Fox News appears poised to further “<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2021/01/fox-news-decides-to-turn-up-the-outrage/">turn up the outrage dial</a>” on television. </p>
<p>In recent months, the channel has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/08/newsmax-one-america-news-gain-prominence-they-push-trumps-baseless-theories/">lost viewers to even farther-right alternatives</a>, like Newsmax and One America News Network, and is responding by <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/fox-news-launches-purge-rid-211350787.html">firing traditional journalists</a> and <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-01-11/fox-news-changes-daytime-schedule-martha-maccallum-afternoon">increasing the amount of partisan commentary it offers</a>.</p>
<p>Comcast, with <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/497279/comcast-number-video-subscribers-usa/">20 million subscribers</a>, represents <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/251691/comcasts-pay-tv-market-share/">roughly a quarter of the pay TV market in the U.S.</a>, so it might seem Comcast has considerable leverage over Fox News’s content.</p>
<p>But Comcast isn’t just a content distributor through its cable network. The company also owns a <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/your-complete-guide-everything-owned-comcast-2017-10-12">huge swath of American media companies</a>, including Fox News’ direct competitors, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2021/02/03/in-january-2021-fox-news-ratings-fell-behind-cnn-and-msnbc/">MSNBC and CNBC</a>. Even if Comcast felt an obligation to lean on Fox, any significant pressure it might seek to apply could easily be met not just with customer complaints, but with legal challenges claiming anti-competitive behavior, particularly if this included threats of kicking Fox off its platform.</p>
<h2>Who regulates cable TV content?</h2>
<p>In the past, the American public has <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/spreading-the-news-the-american-postal-system-from-franklin-to-morse/oclc/32589147">entrusted the responsibility</a> of determining what sorts of communications <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/americas-battle-media-democracy-triumph-corporate-libertarianism-and-future-media-reform?format=HB&isbn=9781107038332">do and don’t serve the public interest</a> to public entities, like the Federal Communications Commission, which was originally the <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/809/federal-radio-commission">Federal Radio Commission</a>.</p>
<p>When radio and television broadcasting began, for instance, they relied exclusively on airwaves owned by the public and regulated by the government. At the height of their powers, from the 1930s through the postwar era, federal regulators tended to side with commercial station owners – <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-fcc-continues-to-redefine-the-public-interest-as-business-interests-75120">as they do today</a>. </p>
<p>But periodically they demonstrated they could do much more than just fine broadcasters for airing obscenities. They did not shy away from stripping broadcast licenses from purveyors of <a href="https://www.historynet.com/john-r-brinkley-the-goat-gland-miracle-man.htm">harmful disinformation</a> and <a href="https://latimes.newspapers.com/clip/33187761/shulers-radio-silenced-by-federal/">inflammatory rumors</a>. The most famous example is probably sham doctor John R. Brinkley, who advertised on air for questionable cures and sham surgeries, which <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/18642/charlatan-by-pope-brock/">killed dozens of people in the early 20th century</a> before he lost his broadcast license.</p>
<p>Moreover, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_Broadcasting_in_the_United/nKFvnNl9vOEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=a%20tower%20in%20babel%20barnouw&pg=PA258&printsec=frontcover">federal court</a> and <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/117/red-lion-broadcasting-co-v-federal-communications-commission">Supreme Court</a> decisions established that when the commission reviewed TV and radio stations’ past editorial content as part of considering whether to renew their broadcast licenses, it wasn’t violating their free speech rights. Rather, officials were vetting users of public resources in an effort to protect the public interest.</p>
<p>Cable channels, of course, don’t need the public airwaves, and instead are distributed over privately owned networks. The owners of those systems, including Comcast, are the ones who decide which content providers can reach their subscribers. But their goals are not necessarily aligned with the public good so much as profit for shareholders.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386293/original/file-20210224-15-8947oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Comcast-NBC-Universal building in Hollywood, Calif." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386293/original/file-20210224-15-8947oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386293/original/file-20210224-15-8947oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386293/original/file-20210224-15-8947oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386293/original/file-20210224-15-8947oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386293/original/file-20210224-15-8947oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386293/original/file-20210224-15-8947oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386293/original/file-20210224-15-8947oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Comcast owns TV and film studios as well as its cable television distribution network.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/universal-studios-hollywood-is-a-film-studio-and-theme-park-news-photo/1145675414">Paul Harris/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Could anything change?</h2>
<p>Comcast’s power in the media landscape has <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111111060846/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/06/21/opponents-line-up-against-proposed-comcast-nbc-merger/">long been controversial</a>. The company owns elements in every step of the media pipeline, from content creation to marketing and distribution to consumers. </p>
<p>Critics contend that sort of consolidation is anti-competitive and deprives the public of the benefits of market competition, from <a href="https://prospect.org/power/remote-control-comcast-monopoly-crushes-diversity/">decreasing the diversity of content</a> to <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/tech-antitrust-problem-no-one-talking/">higher prices</a> and <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191028/08080343272/comcast-insists-innocent-little-daisy-consumer-privacy.shtml">weaker privacy protections</a>.</p>
<p>Media law scholar Tim Wu – who <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/02/23/scoop-anti-big-tech-crusader-poised-to-join-biden-admin-491855">may be joining the Biden administration</a> – has argued that media companies like Comcast should be regulated by a “<a href="http://knopfdoubleday.com/2010/11/02/the-master-switch-by-tim-wu/">separations principle</a>” that would bar companies that owned distribution systems from also owning content creators. Such a restriction would almost certainly require Comcast to choose between its media production subsidiaries and its cable network. </p>
<p>Whichever Comcast decided to keep or sell, the cable television system would be a standalone. It would no longer be a producer of content or a competitor with other channels – which might make it less fraught for the company to decide not to do business with content creators of any political stripe who spread inflammatory lies.</p>
<p>Another possibility could be for cable companies to engage in some form of <a href="https://theconversation.com/profit-not-free-speech-governs-media-companies-decisions-on-controversy-101292">industry self-regulation</a>. They might, for example, establish an independent board to examine problems like Fox’s disinformation spreading. The companies would have to agree to abide by the board’s decisions to sanction or suspend the distribution of channels trafficking in dangerous or inciting disinformation. </p>
<p>Such an approach borrows from established methods in other media industries. These industries follow a model of appealing to independent boards to make controversial decisions, such as <a href="https://www.filmratings.com/">film</a> or <a href="https://www.esrb.org/">video game</a> ratings, while blending in more recent <a href="https://www.oversightboard.com/">self-regulatory measures</a> by digital platforms.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/">No version</a> <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/30/the-real-facebook-oversight-board-launches-to-counter-facebooks-oversight-board/">of self-regulation</a> is perfect or above criticism. And it may seem worrisome to let cable companies, either individually or collectively, decide on what speech is acceptable for public consumption. Indeed, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMIPyqyORAY">there is plenty of concern</a> over whether Twitter or Facebook should be making similar decisions unilaterally.</p>
<p>But it’s worth noting that government oversight has been weak for years, with many critics arguing that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-fcc-continues-to-redefine-the-public-interest-as-business-interests-75120">FCC doesn’t do much</a> to ensure that even traditional broadcasters promote the public interest.</p>
<p>The cable industry may not use the airwaves, but it does use other scarce public resources, negotiating with local and regional governments to lay wires under streets and on telephone poles over sidewalks across the nation. </p>
<p>Some cable companies even belong to or <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/12/t-mobile-sprint-merger-is-a-warmup-to-more-wireless-cable-mergers.html">partner with cellular providers</a> to deliver video wirelessly to mobile devices – which is very much like traditional broadcasting in the sense that it uses public airwaves. </p>
<p>It’s not a huge stretch, then, to imagine local or even federal regulators treating cable TV more like broadcast channels, and even returning to past practices of requiring stations to serve the public interest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Braun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cable providers like Comcast carry Fox News and other channels that feed conspiracy theories and lies into Americans’ homes.Joshua Braun, Associate Professor of Journalism, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1544562021-02-16T13:30:04Z2021-02-16T13:30:04Z46,218 news transcripts show ideologically extreme politicians get more airtime<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384034/original/file-20210212-23-188m7kb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=485%2C0%2C5505%2C3970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks to the press after the House voted to remove her from committee assignments.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-speaks-during-a-press-conference-news-photo/1230985464?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Committee assignments are normally a blessing for new House members. But some of today’s newer members, like freshmen Republican representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn, seem to be more interested in punditry than policy.</p>
<p>When Greene was stripped of her committee assignments on Feb. 4 for a series of past statements that included <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55940542">threats directed against her Democratic colleagues</a>, she replied by tweeting that she woke up “<a href="https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1357675098887577601?s=20">literally laughing</a>” that “a bunch of morons” had given her “free time” to promote her views in the media.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Cawthorn, <a href="https://time.com/5931815/madison-cawthorn-post-trump/">in a recent email to colleagues</a>, noted that he built his staff “around comms [communications] rather than legislation.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.joshuadarr.com">We research</a> how changes in the media have shifted the incentives of elected officials and the considerations of voters, and what that means for American democracy.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqz039">In recent work</a>, we showed that extremely conservative and extremely liberal legislators receive far more airtime on cable and broadcast news than their moderate counterparts. </p>
<p>Robust local news outlets once held legislators to account by <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691126074/congress-the-press-and-political-accountability">covering whether they delivered for their districts</a>. But as local news has declined, voters are turning to national media outlets for their political news. There, ideological outliers now set the tone of the debate, distorting perceptions of the important issues and warping Americans’ views of their political options.</p>
<h2>Communications become currency</h2>
<p>Committees give representatives <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Congressmen_in_Committees.html?id=BTvPAAAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description">power and influence</a> on issues that matter to their district. A seat on a committee can help a representative <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Congress.html?id=j17QomTrD1EC">claim credit for legislation</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12323">raise money</a>.</p>
<p>Serving on powerful and relevant committees pays dividends for new legislators, who are under pressure to produce before they face reelection in less than two years. New members are called backbenchers for a reason, however. They step into a system where experience is currency, and they are flat broke. Spots on committees are doled out by party leadership based on seniority and loyalty.</p>
<p>Fifty years ago, newcomers were totally out of luck. The House was controlled by older, entrenched committee chairs who were <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/26/congress-broke-american-politics-218544/">even more powerful than elected leadership</a>.</p>
<p>But after the 1974 election swept in 93 new members, these backbenchers – dubbed “Watergate Babies,” since they were elected in the wake of President Nixon’s resignation – pushed for reforms that opened up committee membership and allowed <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/26/congress-broke-american-politics-218544/">television coverage</a> of committee hearings and the House floor. In the following years, politicians like Newt Gingrich took advantage of this opportunity to <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/26/congress-broke-american-politics-218544/">reach prime-time audiences and raise their profiles</a> through combative floor speeches.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A congressman on the House floor is shown through the lens of a camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384039/original/file-20210212-21-2lsg5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384039/original/file-20210212-21-2lsg5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384039/original/file-20210212-21-2lsg5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384039/original/file-20210212-21-2lsg5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384039/original/file-20210212-21-2lsg5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384039/original/file-20210212-21-2lsg5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384039/original/file-20210212-21-2lsg5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse is seen through a television camera viewfinder as he delivers an opening statement during a committee hearing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/house-judiciary-committee-member-rep-joe-neguse-is-seen-news-photo/1193420409?adppopup=true">Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Communications staffs <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/book/making-laws-and-making-news/">expanded</a> as earning coverage and shaping debate <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo3534630.html">through the media rather than in committee meetings</a> became the norm. </p>
<p>The tactics that make good television are very different from those for succeeding in the committee system. Breaking from the party line is punished when committees are the way to get ahead and party leaders control the assignments. </p>
<p>But this same divergence from the party line <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/when-politicians-attack/DD8E70CD87999788C8C9C894A3EB6872">is rewarded when media exposure becomes a valuable currency</a>: Sticking out from the crowd can elicit attention from media outlets seeking to highlight controversy in order to attract viewers.</p>
<p>Then there’s social media, which allows politicians to bypass reporters and editors. Rather than merely hoping reporters publish their quotes, representatives can tweet and post whatever they like, reaching <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/02/marjorie-taylor-greene-capitalizing-on-controversy/">large audiences of supporters and donors</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1323813315169165313"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-impostors-steve-benen?variant=32123357626402">Instead of shaping policy</a> that would help them locally, politicians focus on burnishing their national profiles, either through winning coverage on national cable and broadcast news or by boosting their social media followings. </p>
<h2>Extreme members reap the rewards</h2>
<p>Today’s new House members understand that media coverage will help them achieve their goals, and that expressing extreme ideas is one way to earn it.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqz039">Our research</a> shows that ideologically extreme members of Congress get to speak more often than moderates on both cable and broadcast networks. </p>
<p>Using a common ideological measure called <a href="https://voteview.com/">DW-NOMINATE</a>, we compared the ideologies of all House members with those featured on cable networks Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, and broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC. We studied 46,218 transcripts from 2005 to 2013 to find when representatives spoke on air.</p>
<p>We found that the House that’s shown on the news is much more ideologically extreme than the actual House. When we divided representatives into five equal groups by ideology, we found that the most extreme groups on each end of the political spectrum were most often given airtime.</p>
<p>This effect is strongest for conservatives on the far right end of the spectrum, though both ideological poles are heard from more often on national cable and broadcast television than moderates. Cable networks were more likely than broadcast to feature extreme legislators, but overall, pushing the boundaries meant more coverage across television networks.</p>
<h2>On television news, conflict and drama sell</h2>
<p>Since news companies primarily seek to attract viewers and boost ad revenue, the conflict and drama stoked by extreme legislators make them a natural fit for <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691123677/all-the-news-thats-fit-to-sell">this business model</a>.</p>
<p>While it may help the bottom lines of TV networks, it doesn’t help democracy.</p>
<p>Studies have shown that the public already sees politics as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/697253">more polarized than it is</a>, and that media coverage of political conflict and polarization can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2015.1038455">deepen those perceptions</a>. TV networks and <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/radical-ideas-social-media-algorithms/">social media algorithms</a>, by amplifying the extremes, are likely driving the American public further apart.</p>
<p>Broader trends in the media – namely, the demise of local news – are making this dynamic worse. Both local <a href="https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2018/new-pew-study-says-local-tv-news-viewing-dropping-fast-2/">television</a> and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/local-journalism-in-crisis-why-america-must-revive-its-local-newsrooms/">newspapers are declining fast</a>, but <a href="https://sanford.duke.edu/articles/newspapers-still-best-bet-local-news">local newspapers supply most of the stories</a> that local TV reports on. The entire local news ecosystem is suffering: Local <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-dropped-by-a-quarter-since-2008/">newsrooms have shed half their employees</a> since 2008.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand what’s going on in Washington.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-most">Sign up for The Conversation’s Politics Weekly</a>.]</p>
<p>Local news outlets are much more likely to report on the <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691126074/congress-the-press-and-political-accountability">benefits and services legislators bring back</a> to their districts. When local news is strong, government is <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/11/damaged-newspapers-damaged-civic-life-how-the-gutting-of-local-newsrooms-has-led-to-a-less-informed-public/">more responsive</a>, local elections are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08997764.2013.785553">more</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087419838058">competitive</a> and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/WP44.pdf">local government finances even improve</a>. On the other hand, where local news is weaker, there is <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.104.8.2456">more corruption</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy051">polarization</a>.</p>
<p>When legislators respond to local news incentives instead of national ones, their constituents benefit. As local news declines, they have less reason to do so.</p>
<p>Any solution would require national TV news to change. Networks could feature a range of views instead of flocking to the extremes, include <a href="https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/news-media/tv-news-extreme-partisans-congress/">more perspectives from local journalists</a> or spotlight <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/compromise-in-an-age-of-party-polarization-9780197510506?lang=en&cc=us">compromises as well as disagreements</a>, all of which would help reverse these dynamics.</p>
<p>For now, freshmen stepping into the House think that their path forward is paved with national media coverage. </p>
<p>In many ways, they’re not wrong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When far-right and far-left politicians get most of the media attention, it hurts democracy.Joshua P. Darr, Assistant Professor of Political Communication, Louisiana State University Jeremy Padgett, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of MobileJohanna Dunaway, Associate Professor of Communication, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1540472021-01-29T13:26:43Z2021-01-29T13:26:43ZDon’t blame Fox News for the attack on the Capitol<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381178/original/file-20210128-19-12fx2sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C22%2C4899%2C3254&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fox was just as likely to use the phrase 'president-elect' as MSNBC and CNN.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-photo-illustration-the-close-up-of-the-fox-news-news-photo/1230281725?adppopup=true"> Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the days following the attack on the Capitol, The New York Times, in its print edition, ran an op-ed titled “Yes, You Should Blame Fox For Whipping Up Radicals.” The Washington Post ran an article with the headline “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/18/trump-couldnt-have-incited-sedition-without-help-fox-news/">Trump Couldn’t Have Incited Sedition Without the Help of Fox News</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.10112">But our analysis tells a different story</a>.</p>
<p>We studied the official YouTube channels of six U.S. cable news networks. We looked at cable news powerhouses CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. But we also focused on three fringe networks – Newsmax, One America News Network and Blaze TV – that have a relatively homogeneous audience, <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02339.pdf">relatively extreme opinions</a> and limited reach. </p>
<p>Our unique dataset – which consisted of all the comments made by viewers of those six networks from Nov. 3, the date of the presidential election, through Jan. 5, the day before the Capitol riots – showed that the fringe news networks were key players in the riots. And ironically, their outsize impact can be traced to Fox News’ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/us/politics/trump-fox-news-arizona.html">controversial decision to call Arizona for Biden on election night</a>.</p>
<h2>Fox holds firm</h2>
<p>Around 10 p.m. on Nov. 3 the Trump campaign was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/us/politics/trump-fox-news-arizona.html">reportedly upbeat</a>, having significantly outperformed the polls in Florida to win the state. </p>
<p>However, at 11:20 p.m. – with only 78% of the votes in Arizona counted – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/us/politics/trump-fox-news-arizona.html">Fox News called</a> the Grand Canyon State for Biden. It would be days before any other network would do so, yet Fox News’ call significantly narrowed the odds of a Trump victory.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/us/politics/trump-fox-news-arizona.html">According to The New York Times</a>, “what ensued … was a night of angry calls to Republican governors” and “a middle-of-the-night presidential briefing” with claims that the election was fraudulent. Trump then spent the next few days <a href="https://www.thetrumparchive.com/?searchbox=%22newsmax%22">urging his base to abandon Fox in favor of Newsmax</a>. </p>
<p>In the days and weeks that followed, Fox’s coverage of the election continued to be much more accurate in its reporting of the results than any of the three fringe news stations. </p>
<p>Drawing from the transcripts of the relevant videos, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.10112">our research shows</a> that Fox was almost five times more likely to refer to Biden as “president-elect” than Newsmax from Nov. 3 to Jan. 5. In addition, drawing from the user comments during this entire time period, “stop the steal” was the 63rd most frequent three-word construct on Newsmax but only the 134th most frequent on Fox. In fact, Fox’s results on these measures were very similar to those of MSNBC and CNN. </p>
<p>This mode of reporting by Fox – along with Trump’s exhortations to his base to leave Fox for networks like Newsmax – seems to have had a swift and profound impact on the viewership of the fringe news networks. </p>
<p>Newsmax’s YouTube subscriber count increased over 300% in the two weeks following the election and stood at over 1.7 million subscribers by Jan. 5, compared with just over 200,000 at the end of August. </p>
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<h2>Conspiracies snowball in echo chambers</h2>
<p>We can also compare how viewers responded to Newsmax’s content relative to Fox News’ content in terms of the ever-present social media currency of viewer “likes” and “dislikes.” </p>
<p>Those watching any of the YouTube newscasts can vote dislike or like. If the ratio of dislikes to the total number of impressions for a given video is, say, 0.4 – meaning 40 dislikes and 60 likes for every 100 impressions – we can conclude that it’s reaching a range of viewers, some of whom enjoy and agree with what they’re watching, and others who disagree with what they’re seeing.</p>
<p>For the period from the election to Jan. 5, this ratio was about 0.2 for both Fox News and CNN. In contrast, for Newsmax this ratio was between 0.01 and 0.02. In other words, for every 100 opinions on Newsmax videos, on average, only one or two dislikes surfaced, whereas for Fox, the number of dislikes, on average, exceeded 20.</p>
<p>There is no other way to interpret this: Newsmax viewers had fallen into an almost perfectly sealed <a href="https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/digital-media-literacy/what-is-an-echo-chamber/1/">echo chamber</a>, in which commenters were reinforcing one another’s views with little to no pushback. One America News Network and Blaze TV showed very similar patterns in response to their content.</p>
<p>The hyperpartisan coverage on election integrity provided by Newsmax and others – combined with this echo chamber effect – makes them the more likely culprit for having riled up loyal Trump supporters. </p>
<p>Surely, these networks weren’t solely responsible for influencing those who stormed the Capitol. And we don’t deny that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699017728919">years of conspiracy theories promulgated by Fox</a> undoubtedly helped lay the groundwork for Trump’s base of support. </p>
<p>But in the days and weeks following the election, these fringe networks gave viewers a space to vent and disseminate misinformation that went largely unchallenged by others in their comments sections, as well as by the hosts of the news and opinion segments. </p>
<p>Fox found itself in uncharted waters: maligned by the far right for being relatively restrained and responsible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154047/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new analysis finds that Fox was relatively forthright about the legitimacy of the election results.Ashique KhudaBukhsh, Project Scientist at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon UniversityMark Kamlet, University Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon UniversityTom Mitchell, Founders University Professor of Machine Learning, Carnegie Mellon UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1478942020-10-28T12:23:51Z2020-10-28T12:23:51ZFox News viewers write about ‘BLM’ the same way CNN viewers write about ‘KKK’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365598/original/file-20201026-19-14s6zxn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C675%2C539&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Talking politics increasingly seems like an exercise in talking past one another.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/retro-vector-of-a-young-woman-and-virtual-royalty-free-illustration/1128365610?adppopup=true">GeorgePeters/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s no secret that U.S. politics <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/">has become highly polarized</a>. </p>
<p>Even so, there are probably few living Americans who ever witnessed anything that quite compares with <a href="https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-virus-outbreak-donald-trump-health-aeab14ec95426d4161f1cff966a26a1f">this fall’s first presidential debate</a>. </p>
<p>Was it really the case that the nation could do no better than a verbal food fight, with two candidates hurling fourth-grade insults and talking past each other?</p>
<p>To us, the discordant debate was just one more symptom of the nation’s fraying civic discourse, which, in a recent study, we were able to show extends to the words we use to talk about politics.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, we started constructing a data set that consists of all of the viewer comments on YouTube videos posted by four television networks – MSNBC, CNN, Fox News and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/oann-trump.html">One America News Network</a> – that <a href="https://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/section-1-media-sources-distinct-favorites-emerge-on-the-left-and-right/">target slices of the political spectrum</a>. Together, the data set contains over 85 million comments on over 200,000 videos from 6.5 million viewers since 2014. </p>
<p>We studied whether there are distinct variants of English written in the comments sections, akin to the distinction between <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/british-english-bre-1689039">British English</a> and <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/American%20English">American English</a>. </p>
<p>Using machine learning methods, we found these permutations do exist. Moreover, we can rank them in terms of the “left-ness” and the “right-ness.” To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical demonstration of quantifiable linguistic differences in news audiences.</p>
<p>Our second finding, however, was even more unexpected. </p>
<p>Our machine learning translation system found that words with vastly different meanings, like “KKK” and “BLM,” were used in the exact same contexts depending on the YouTube channel being analyzed.</p>
<h2>The company a word keeps</h2>
<p>When translating two different languages – say, Spanish and English – automated translation systems like Google Translate begin with a large training set of texts in both languages. The system then applies machine learning methods to become better at translating. </p>
<p>Over the years, <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.03859.pdf">this technology has become increasingly accurate</a>, thanks to two key insights. </p>
<p>The first dates back to the 1950s, when linguist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rupert_Firth">John Rupert Firth</a> came up with the aphorism “You shall know a word by the company it keeps.” </p>
<p>To modern machine translation systems, the “company” a word keeps is its “context,” or the words surrounding it. For example, the English word “grape” occurs in contexts such as “grape juice” and “grape vine,” while the equivalent word in Spanish, <em>uva</em>, occurs in the same contexts – <em>jugo de uva</em>, <em>vid de uva</em> – in Spanish sentences. </p>
<p>The second important discovery came rather recently. A <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.4168.pdf">2013 study</a> found a way to identify – and thereby link – a word’s context in one language to its context in another. Modern machine translation depends heavily on this process. </p>
<p>What we have done is to use this type of translation <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.02339.pdf">in an entirely new way</a>: to translate English to English.</p>
<h2>When ‘Trumptards’ become ‘snowflakes’</h2>
<p>That may sound bizarre. Why translate English to English? </p>
<p>Well, consider American English and British English. Many words are the same in both languages. Yet there can be subtle differences. For instance, “apartment” in American English may translate into “flat” in British English. </p>
<p>For the purposes of our study, we labeled the language used in each network’s comment section “MSNBC-English,” “CNN-English,” “Fox-English” and “OneAmerica-English.” After analyzing the comments, our translation algorithms uncovered two different patterns of “misaligned words” – terms that aren’t identical across the comment sections but are used in the same contexts.</p>
<p>One type was similar to “flat” and “apartment,” in the sense that both are describing ostensibly the same thing. However, the word pairs we uncovered have different intonations. For example, we found that what one community calls “Pelosi,” the other one calls “Pelousy”; and “Trump” in one news-language translates into “Drumpf” in another. </p>
<p>A second – and deeper – kind of misalignment occurred when the two words refer to two fundamentally different things. </p>
<p>For example, we found that in CNN-English, “KKK” – the abbreviation for the Ku Klux Klan – is translated by our algorithm to “BLM” – shorthand for Black Lives Matter – in Fox-English. The algorithm is basically finding that the comments made by one community about KKK are very much like the comments made by the other about BLM. While the belief systems of the KKK and BLM are about as different as can be, depending on the comment section, they seem to each represent something similarly ominous and threatening. </p>
<p>CNN-English and Fox-English are not the only two languages displaying these types of misalignments. The conservative end of the spectrum itself breaks into two languages. For example, “mask” in Fox-English translates to “muzzle” in OneAmerica-English, reflecting the differing attitudes across these subcommunities.</p>
<p>There seems to be a mirrorlike duality at play. “Conservatism” becomes “liberalism,” “red” is translated to “blue,” while “Cooper” is converted into “Hannity.” </p>
<p>There’s also no lack of what can only be called childish name-calling. </p>
<p>“Trumptards” in CNN-English translates to “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/28/snowflake-insult-disdain-young-people">snowflakes</a>” in Fox-English; “Trumpty” in CNN-English translates to “Obummer” in Fox-English; and “republicunts” in CNN-English translates to “democraps” in Fox-English. </p>
<h2>Uncharted territory</h2>
<p>Linguists have long emphasized how effective communication among people with different beliefs <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020867916902">requires common ground</a>. Our findings show that the way we talk about political issues is becoming more divergent; depending on who’s writing, a common word can be imbued with an entirely different meaning. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>We wonder: How far are we from the point of no return when these linguistic differences begin to erode the common ground needed for productive communication?</p>
<p>Have <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-twitter-echo-chamber-confirmation-bias/">echo chambers on social media</a> exacerbated political polarization to the point where these linguistic misalignments have become ingrained in political discourse?</p>
<p>When will “democracy” in one language variant stop translating into “democracy” in the other?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147894/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Using machine learning to study over 85 million YouTube comments, a research team has, for the first time, identified linguistic differences among cable news viewers.Mark Kamlet, University Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon UniversityAshique KhudaBukhsh, Project Scientist at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon UniversityTom Mitchell, Founders University Professor of Machine Learning, Carnegie Mellon UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1459832020-09-28T19:36:27Z2020-09-28T19:36:27ZFox News uses the word ‘hate’ much more than MSNBC or CNN<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359900/original/file-20200924-17-1km323d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C51%2C1440%2C773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tucker Carlson is a big fan of the phrase 'they hate.' Usually, he's talking about Democrats.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp71VWgqURQ">YouTube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>`Fox News is up to five times more likely to use the word “hate” in its programming than its main competitors, <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/1255/Hate_on_Fox_News_draft_report_9-28-20.pdf?1601308357">according to our new study of how cable news channels use language</a>. </p>
<p>Fox particularly uses the term when explaining opposition to Donald Trump. His opponents are said to “hate” Trump, his values and his followers. </p>
<p>Our research, which ran from Jan. 1 to May 8, 2020, initially explored news of Trump’s impeachment. Then came the coronavirus. As we sifted through hundreds of cable news transcripts over five months, we noticed consistent differences between the vocabulary used on Fox News and that of MSNBC.</p>
<p>While their news agendas were largely similar, the words they used to describe these newsworthy events diverged greatly. </p>
<h2>Fox and hate</h2>
<p>For our study, we analyzed 1,088 program transcripts from the two ideologically branded channels – right-wing Fox and left-wing MSNBC – between 6 p.m. and 10:59 p.m.</p>
<p>Because polarized media diets <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-partisan-pandemic-do-we-now-live-in-alternative-realities-140290">contribute to partisan conflict</a>, our quantitative analysis identified terms indicating antipathy or resentment, such as “dislike,” “despise,” “can’t stand” and “hate.” </p>
<p>We expected to find that both of the strongly ideological networks made use of such words, perhaps in different ways. Instead, we found that Fox used antipathy words five times more often than MSNBC. “Hate” really stood out: It appeared 647 times on Fox, compared to 118 on MSNBC. </p>
<p>Fox usually pairs certain words alongside “hate.” The most notable was “they” – as in, “they hate.” Fox used this phrase 101 times between January and May. MSNBC used it just five times. </p>
<p>To put these findings in historic context, we then used the <a href="https://blog.gdeltproject.org/gdelt-2-0-television-api-debuts/">GDELT Television database</a> to search for occurrences of the phrase “they hate” on both networks going back to 2009. We included CNN for an additional comparison. </p>
<p>We found Fox’s usage of “they hate” has increased over time, with a clear spike around the polarizing 2016 Trump-Clinton election. But Fox’s use of “hate” really took off when Trump’s presidency began. Beginning in January 2017, the mean usage of “they hate” on the network doubled. </p>
<p><iframe id="v0I03" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/v0I03/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>‘Us’ versus ‘them’</h2>
<p>So who is doing all this hating – and why – according to Fox News? </p>
<p>Mainly, it’s Democrats, liberals, political elites and the media. Though these groups do not actually have the same interests, ideology or job description, our analysis finds Fox lumps them together as the “they” in “they hate.”</p>
<p><iframe id="WYK4i" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WYK4i/6/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>As for the object of all this hatred, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and other Fox hosts most often name Trump. Anchors also identify their audience – “you,” “Christians” and “us” – as the target of animosity. Only 13 instances of “they hate” also cited a reason. Examples included “they can’t accept the fact that he won” or “because we voted for [Trump].”</p>
<p><iframe id="bGe9m" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/bGe9m/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Citing liberal hate as a fact that needs no explanation serves to dismiss criticism of specific policies or events. It paints criticism or moral outrage directed at Trump as inherently irrational. </p>
<p>For loyal Fox viewers, these <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/09/fox-news-trump-language-stelter-hoax/616309/">language patterns construct a coherent</a> but potentially dangerous narrative about the world. </p>
<p>Our data show intensely partisan hosts like Hannity and Carlson are <a href="https://api.gdeltproject.org/api/v2/tv/tv?format=html&startdatetime=20170101000000&last24=yes&query=%22they%20hate%22%20(station:CNN%20OR%20station:FOXNEWS%20OR%20station:MSNBC%20)%20&mode=showchart">more likely than other Fox anchors to use “they hate”</a> in this way. Nevertheless, the phrase permeates Fox’s evening programming, uttered by hosts, interviewees and Republican sources, all <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/24/right-wing-websites-are-demonizing-antifa-heres-how-they-portray-threat/">painting Trump critics not as legitimate opponents but hateful enemies working in bad faith</a>. </p>
<p>By repeatedly telling its viewers they are bound together as objects of the contempt of a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2018.1548412">powerful and hateful left-leaning “elite</a>,” Fox has constructed two <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2017.1336779">imagined communities</a>. On the one side: Trump along with good folks under siege. On the other: nefarious Democrats, liberals, the left and mainstream media.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v1i1.96">Research confirms</a> that repeated exposure to polarized media messages can lead news consumers to form firm opinions and can foster what’s called an <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/in-group-bias/">“in-group” identity</a>. The us-versus-them mentality, in turn, deepens feelings of antipathy toward the perceived “out-group.”</p>
<p>The Pew Research Center reports an increasing tendency, especially among Republicans, to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/10/10/partisan-antipathy-more-intense-more-personal/">view members of the other party as immoral and unpatriotic</a>. Pew also finds <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/08/five-facts-about-fox-news/">Republicans trust Fox News more than any other media outlet</a>.</p>
<p>Americans’ <a href="https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/u-s-media-polarization-and-the-2020-election-a-nation-divided/">divergent media sources</a> – and specifically Fox’s “hate”-filled rhetoric – aren’t solely to blame here. Cable news is part of a <a href="https://www.moreincommon.com/media/0fmblxb3/the-perception-gap.pdf">larger picture</a> of <a href="http://www.apsanet.org/portals/54/Files/Task%20Force%20Reports/Chapter2Mansbridge.pdf">heightened polarization</a>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379415001857">intense partisanship</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/09/11/coronavirus-relief-congress-economy/">paralysis in Congress</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359901/original/file-20200924-14-11jn5sn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Screenshot of Sean Hannity on Fox News with text reading 'Hate & Hysteria' across the Democratic donkey symbol" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359901/original/file-20200924-14-11jn5sn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359901/original/file-20200924-14-11jn5sn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359901/original/file-20200924-14-11jn5sn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359901/original/file-20200924-14-11jn5sn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359901/original/file-20200924-14-11jn5sn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359901/original/file-20200924-14-11jn5sn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359901/original/file-20200924-14-11jn5sn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sean Hannity portrays criticism of Donald Trump as hate-based.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C49DUbjCqO8">YouTube/Fox News</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Good business</h2>
<p>Leaning into intense partisanship has been good for Fox News, though. In summer 2020 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-ratings-most-watched-channel-summer-2020-primetime-2020-9?r=DE&IR=T">it was the country’s most watched network</a>. But using hate to explain the news is a dangerous business plan when shared crises <a href="http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp20023.pdf">demand Americans’ empathy, negotiation and compromise</a>. </p>
<p>Fox’s talk of hate undermines <a href="https://voxeu.org/article/civic-capital-and-social-distancing">democratic values like tolerance</a> and reduces <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-paradoxical-role-of-social-capital-in-the-coronavirus-pandemic">Americans’ trust of their fellow citizens</a>. </p>
<p>This fraying of social ties helps explain America’s failures in managing the pandemic – and bodes badly for its handling of what seems likely to be a chaotic, divisive presidential election. In pitting its viewers against the rest of the country, Fox News works against potential solutions to the the very crises it covers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145983/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The conservative cable news channel particularly favors the term when explaining opposition to Donald Trump. This framing of the news can lead Fox viewers to see the world as us versus them.Curd Knüpfer, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Freie Universität BerlinRobert Mathew Entman, J.B. and M.C. Shapiro Professor Emeritus of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.