5 ms·

Who is united against what political party? Claiming you're the underdog and fighting against the "mainstream media" is a manipulation tactic. Top 10 Cable New

Who is united against what political party? Claiming you're the underdog and fighting against the "mainstream media" is a manipulation tactic. Top 10 Cable News Shows in 2022 RANK NETWORK PROGRAM NAME P2+AA (000) #Tlc 1 FOXN THE FIVE 3419 246 2 FOXN TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT 3031 228 3 FOXN JESSE WATTERS PRIMETIME 2857 200 4 FOXN HANNITY 2811 214 5 FOXN SPECIAL REPORT BRET BAIER 2511 244 6 FOXN THE INGRAHAM ANGLE 2269 215 7 FOXN GUTFELD! 2040 222 8 FOXN OUTNUMBERED 1858 245 9 FOXN AMERICA’S NEWSROOM 1761 496 10 MSNBC ALEX WAGNER/ MADDOW https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/these-are-the-top-rated-cable-news-shows-of-2022/521247/ https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/these-are-the-top-rated-cabl...

thfuran 4y ago
That looks like a pretty politically lopsided lineup to me.
SapporoChris 4y ago
Why did you restrict yourself to cable news? Do you think your selection could have any biases?
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Cable news is that way. My son thinks MSNBC is worse than Fox but I’d say Fox was commercially successful from the very beginning and that liberals were ‘too smart for that shit’ until the Trump administration where MSNBC really had grist for that mill and got much better ratings. CNN has the bias of ‘if it bleeds it leads’ and loved to promote antagonism with Trump because it was great for ratings. I would say though that even non-partisan business news on cable is awful. We will probably still be hearing the non-sensical FAANG acronym for years thanks to the ignorance of Jim Cramer. At least his stock picks are it much worse than a dart, not as bad as Jimmy the Greek’s football picks.
Aloha 4y ago
What's weird about the narrative conservatives put out is.. that the mainstream media is pro democrat, and pro establishment - but if you listen to NPR, or any of the big three, or read NYT, WaPo, or any other large newspaper, the criticism of whatever administration happens to be in power is often blistering. The absolutely breathless coverage about classified documents found in Biden's home, about whatever immigration problem happens to be going on (which often implies on both ideological sides of it that the immigration problem is the presidents fault), the economy, etc - the coverage is all about the same, critical, often overly so. The only real difference is, there isnt some violation of norms or scandal every three weeks with Biden. One of the nice things I can say about Trump, is he had so many scandals, we stopped using the -gate suffix to them.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I have been trying hard to abstain from closely following news lately, but I would not classify any of the coverage of POTUS or their administration as blistering by NPR, NYT or WaPo. For better or worse, if you are looking for blistering, you go to the other extremes which include likes of Breibart, Fox and OAN and so on. Then at least you will get a healthy dose of very differing perspective and biases, which may help you break out of the news bubble. I shy away from telling people how to live, but I would consider looking at other sources if only for one reason: 'being able to detect bias and correct for it'.
  - Aloha 4y ago
    Oh no, I do read some conservative places, National Review, Washington Times, Fox (web, not TV). I'm moderately good about detecting bias, but I see more 'gotcha' questions from the media interviewing administration officials, there is no answer, nothing that can be done, but they're still expected to answer the questions. I can detect bias in both 'mainstream media', and and right wing sources.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      I apologize for that. I should not have assumed. I am only aware of the different bubbles, because I seem to belong to several social circles with very much opposed views and I don't know how common it is today ( I am not really joking ) since the weird trend I have been seeing is cutting off 'toxic family members', which effectively means people actively work to maintain their particular bubbles making already bad problem even worse. And since I tend to listen to everyone, everyone seems to think I am in full agreement. The only place I did not see it hit hard is work, but that seems to be the case only because there is still some expectation of 'leaving non-work related stuff outside', but even that seems to be changing. As I am re-reading your posts, I do not think we are disagreeing.
      - Aloha 4y ago
        Thank you! I also am not a big believer in cutting people off, or avoiding opinions that make you uncomfortable, it leads to a certain kind of intellectual stunting - the inability to try to understand the perspective of the other side - and like, in politics specifically, you must understand what the other side believes and why they believe it to effectively argue against it. To circle around (and be clearer), the media consistently promotes the idea of the imperial presidency - the idea (mostly on a subconscious level) that the president can solve all problems. In reality, 80% of the problems (which can be solved) facing America must be fixed legislatively - but because of dysfunction in the legislative branch. Which, I should explain that - the causes of this are manifold: * From special interest groups dominating the law writing process (which isn't always bad, but its not transparent) * Congress being non-majoritarian (i.e. not well reflecting the actual views of the voters) because we've failed to expand the number of congresscritters since the 20's, leading to widely unequal district sizes) * To issues with primary elections which result in the most extreme views being on the general election ticket, rather than the most moderate ones (which actually reflect the median voter). * Bicameralism and the Filibuster also makes it harder to pass laws, laws that might have a good agreement of 59% of both houses, but if it cant meet the threshold in the senate it fails. So instead the administration and the courts have stood in the legislatures place to do the business of the people.... with mixed results. The media however, doesn't talk about that, they instead gig administrations for issues that are just plain outside of the remit of the presidency and thats just for the solvable problems - some are not (lots of reporting on the pandemic was like this) but by asking "well what are you going to do about X?" and the poor secretary of whatever has no answer, because its not a solvable problem by government, it just makes our government look incompetent. This is from a larger piece (https://alohawolf.substack.com/p/an-evergreen-america https://alohawolf.substack.com/p/an-evergreen-america) a friend of mine and I wrote - "Government cannot be there to solve every problem, cure every illness, and redress every grievance. The progressive left often mistakes things the government can do for the things the government ought to do. The regressive right often demands the clock be turned back to a time where the government did very little--ignoring the changes wrought on American society by advances in science and technology since then." Put another way - The lefties I know broadly assume government to be more competent that it is and private industry either greedy or incompitent than reality shows, and the conservatives I know broadly assume private industry to be more competent than it is, and government to be more incompetent than reality shows. The reality I know is America has a nice spread of competency and its not regional, and government is no more, or less competent than private industry, it does move slower however, for a variety of very good reasons (regulated utilities are often the same way, for the same reasons. Our media does a poor job of reflecting that, and does a poor job explaining to Americans why things are broken - and I have little love for either party at this point, both seem (on a spectrum anyhow, republicans seem worse about this, they keep ending up as the dog who catches the fire trunk, then fail to implement their ideas, because of either - how profoundly unpopular they are, or because they dont have any implementable ideas int he first place - dems - at worst - mostly just seem to have trouble organizing a one car motorcade) more interested in political power than doing the peoples business. I want a media that holds the rich and powerful to account, keeps the people informed enough to make good choices, but also reminds the people of their duty to ensure the system works - and all of us, every citizen has a duty which we are doing a poor job at carrying out - which is staying invested in the system, and keeping enough tabs on what government is doing to make informed choices about who ought to run it, and why. Anyhow, thanks for reading this wall of text ;-)
remarkEon 4y ago
People cite this all the time as evidence that conservatives dominate the news in some way, but I don't think it means that. I look at these statistics and it tells me conservatives have one place they go to to watch the news, while liberals either don't watch cable news and/or they split their viewership amongst several outlets.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  Also, conservatives tend to be older, and older people tend to be the ones who watch cable news. Cable news ratings are meaningless in trying to reflect media bias.
- themitigating 4y ago
  That could be true but I wasn't claiming they dominate the news only that their "underdog" "we're standing up to the giant mainstream media" isn't justified.
- naasking 4y ago
  Actually more Democrats watch Tucker Carlson than MSNBC.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    Indeed, rage-watching is a factor here.

thfuran 4y ago

That looks like a pretty politically lopsided lineup to me.

SapporoChris 4y ago

Why did you restrict yourself to cable news? Do you think your selection could have any biases?

PaulHoule 4y ago
Cable news is that way. My son thinks MSNBC is worse than Fox but I’d say Fox was commercially successful from the very beginning and that liberals were ‘too smart for that shit’ until the Trump administration where MSNBC really had grist for that mill and got much better ratings. CNN has the bias of ‘if it bleeds it leads’ and loved to promote antagonism with Trump because it was great for ratings. I would say though that even non-partisan business news on cable is awful. We will probably still be hearing the non-sensical FAANG acronym for years thanks to the ignorance of Jim Cramer. At least his stock picks are it much worse than a dart, not as bad as Jimmy the Greek’s football picks.

Aloha 4y ago

What's weird about the narrative conservatives put out is.. that the mainstream media is pro democrat, and pro establishment - but if you listen to NPR, or any of the big three, or read NYT, WaPo, or any other large newspaper, the criticism of whatever administration happens to be in power is often blistering. The absolutely breathless coverage about classified documents found in Biden's home, about whatever immigration problem happens to be going on (which often implies on both ideological sides of it that the immigration problem is the presidents fault), the economy, etc - the coverage is all about the same, critical, often overly so. The only real difference is, there isnt some violation of norms or scandal every three weeks with Biden. One of the nice things I can say about Trump, is he had so many scandals, we stopped using the -gate suffix to them.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I have been trying hard to abstain from closely following news lately, but I would not classify any of the coverage of POTUS or their administration as blistering by NPR, NYT or WaPo. For better or worse, if you are looking for blistering, you go to the other extremes which include likes of Breibart, Fox and OAN and so on. Then at least you will get a healthy dose of very differing perspective and biases, which may help you break out of the news bubble. I shy away from telling people how to live, but I would consider looking at other sources if only for one reason: 'being able to detect bias and correct for it'.
- Aloha 4y ago
  Oh no, I do read some conservative places, National Review, Washington Times, Fox (web, not TV). I'm moderately good about detecting bias, but I see more 'gotcha' questions from the media interviewing administration officials, there is no answer, nothing that can be done, but they're still expected to answer the questions. I can detect bias in both 'mainstream media', and and right wing sources.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    I apologize for that. I should not have assumed. I am only aware of the different bubbles, because I seem to belong to several social circles with very much opposed views and I don't know how common it is today ( I am not really joking ) since the weird trend I have been seeing is cutting off 'toxic family members', which effectively means people actively work to maintain their particular bubbles making already bad problem even worse. And since I tend to listen to everyone, everyone seems to think I am in full agreement. The only place I did not see it hit hard is work, but that seems to be the case only because there is still some expectation of 'leaving non-work related stuff outside', but even that seems to be changing. As I am re-reading your posts, I do not think we are disagreeing.
    - Aloha 4y ago
      Thank you! I also am not a big believer in cutting people off, or avoiding opinions that make you uncomfortable, it leads to a certain kind of intellectual stunting - the inability to try to understand the perspective of the other side - and like, in politics specifically, you must understand what the other side believes and why they believe it to effectively argue against it. To circle around (and be clearer), the media consistently promotes the idea of the imperial presidency - the idea (mostly on a subconscious level) that the president can solve all problems. In reality, 80% of the problems (which can be solved) facing America must be fixed legislatively - but because of dysfunction in the legislative branch. Which, I should explain that - the causes of this are manifold: * From special interest groups dominating the law writing process (which isn't always bad, but its not transparent) * Congress being non-majoritarian (i.e. not well reflecting the actual views of the voters) because we've failed to expand the number of congresscritters since the 20's, leading to widely unequal district sizes) * To issues with primary elections which result in the most extreme views being on the general election ticket, rather than the most moderate ones (which actually reflect the median voter). * Bicameralism and the Filibuster also makes it harder to pass laws, laws that might have a good agreement of 59% of both houses, but if it cant meet the threshold in the senate it fails. So instead the administration and the courts have stood in the legislatures place to do the business of the people.... with mixed results. The media however, doesn't talk about that, they instead gig administrations for issues that are just plain outside of the remit of the presidency and thats just for the solvable problems - some are not (lots of reporting on the pandemic was like this) but by asking "well what are you going to do about X?" and the poor secretary of whatever has no answer, because its not a solvable problem by government, it just makes our government look incompetent. This is from a larger piece (https://alohawolf.substack.com/p/an-evergreen-america https://alohawolf.substack.com/p/an-evergreen-america) a friend of mine and I wrote - "Government cannot be there to solve every problem, cure every illness, and redress every grievance. The progressive left often mistakes things the government can do for the things the government ought to do. The regressive right often demands the clock be turned back to a time where the government did very little--ignoring the changes wrought on American society by advances in science and technology since then." Put another way - The lefties I know broadly assume government to be more competent that it is and private industry either greedy or incompitent than reality shows, and the conservatives I know broadly assume private industry to be more competent than it is, and government to be more incompetent than reality shows. The reality I know is America has a nice spread of competency and its not regional, and government is no more, or less competent than private industry, it does move slower however, for a variety of very good reasons (regulated utilities are often the same way, for the same reasons. Our media does a poor job of reflecting that, and does a poor job explaining to Americans why things are broken - and I have little love for either party at this point, both seem (on a spectrum anyhow, republicans seem worse about this, they keep ending up as the dog who catches the fire trunk, then fail to implement their ideas, because of either - how profoundly unpopular they are, or because they dont have any implementable ideas int he first place - dems - at worst - mostly just seem to have trouble organizing a one car motorcade) more interested in political power than doing the peoples business. I want a media that holds the rich and powerful to account, keeps the people informed enough to make good choices, but also reminds the people of their duty to ensure the system works - and all of us, every citizen has a duty which we are doing a poor job at carrying out - which is staying invested in the system, and keeping enough tabs on what government is doing to make informed choices about who ought to run it, and why. Anyhow, thanks for reading this wall of text ;-)

remarkEon 4y ago

People cite this all the time as evidence that conservatives dominate the news in some way, but I don't think it means that. I look at these statistics and it tells me conservatives have one place they go to to watch the news, while liberals either don't watch cable news and/or they split their viewership amongst several outlets.

jaywalk 4y ago
Also, conservatives tend to be older, and older people tend to be the ones who watch cable news. Cable news ratings are meaningless in trying to reflect media bias.
themitigating 4y ago
That could be true but I wasn't claiming they dominate the news only that their "underdog" "we're standing up to the giant mainstream media" isn't justified.
naasking 4y ago
Actually more Democrats watch Tucker Carlson than MSNBC.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  Indeed, rage-watching is a factor here.