Fox News influence overrated?
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ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,459
Location: Long Island, New York
10 Apr 2019, 10:48 am
Don’t believe the hype. Rupert Murdoch and friends can’t reelect Trump by themselves.
Quote:
The world-sprawling media empire Rupert Murdoch built on the soft foundation of two properties he inherited 66 years ago—the Adelaide News and a radio station in a New South Wales mining town—has begun to shrink like a tumor spritzed with chemo and toasted with radiation. Sighting his own end, the 88-year-old Murdoch has been tidying up his estate as if preparing it for probate. He just unloaded his movie studio, 21st Century Fox, in a $71.3 billion deal with Disney and sold his interest in satellite broadcaster Sky to Comcast. He also composed the final act in his version of King Lear, ending decades of speculation over which of his children would succeed him by crowning his son Lachlan as the new emperor of his remaining print and TV holdings, most conspicuous among them Fox News Channel, the most-watched news channel in America.
The media hasn’t fully digested the Murdoch wind down. Quite the contrary. In the past month, several of the nation’s top reporters expanded the media’s longstanding myth that Murdoch and Fox possess frightening clout. The New York Times Magazine devoted 20,000 words to Murdoch’s scary “empire of influence.” A New Yorker feature (12,000 words), “The Making of the Fox News White House,” elevated the network to the fourth branch of government. A 5,700-word ideological X-ray of Lachlan in the Intercept presents him as maybe the most reactionary of all the Murdochs.
But the clout of Fox News exists more in Democrats’ imagination than it does in reality, as media scholar Michael J. Socolow noted this week. From the beginning, Murdoch and Roger Ailes, his Fox News co-founder, made no secret of their ambition to elect a president of their choice, but year after year, they flunked the assignment. When he was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, John McCain was vocal about not being in Rupert Murdoch’s pocket, saying he was “not a talk radio or Fox News Republican.” Fox failed to elevate McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, into electability after hiring her and backing her with supportive airtime. Mitt Romney won the 2012 presidential nod without Fox’s support while Murdoch’s fav, Rick Santorum, went nowhere after winning the Iowa caucuses. In 2016, runner-up Ted Cruz and also-ran Marco Rubio were Murdoch’s picks, as the New York Times Magazine article acknowledges.
Last time around, both Murdoch and Ailes opposed the candidacy of Donald Trump, with Murdoch once calling the future president a “f*****g idiot.” Murdoch’s New York Post and Wall Street Journal editorial pages hammered the Trump candidacy in the summer of 2015 and Murdoch wrote a $200,000 check to John Kasich’s super PAC, as the Times Magazine notes. Only when the “clouty” Fox proved powerless to prevent Trump’s nomination did Murdoch do what he always does after he fails to pick a winner. He hitched his wagon to the leader.
Without a doubt, Fox has amplified the Trump message over the first two years of his presidency, especially on Sean Hannity’s and Jeanine Pirro’s shows — and of course, Fox & Friends. And it’s true that Trump appears on the network with the frequency of a paid contributor, sitting for 41 interviews as president by the end of 2018, more than all the other major TV networks combined. And it’s worth mentioning that the network has defended the president from the Mueller investigation and other congressional and legal probes. But for all this plugging, Fox’s clout proved little help to Trump in the midterm elections, as the Democrats took the House of Representatives.
Fox’s minimal influence is easily explained. While it’s the most popular cable news network, it still draws only a niche audience. Socolow provides the numbers: On an average night, about 2.4 million prime-time viewers tune in, which is about 0.7 percent of the total U.S. population. “With numbers like these,” Socolow writes, “it’s no surprise that Fox News often chases its viewers rather than leading them. In other words: It’s more likely that Fox News caters to the preexisting partisanship of its small but loyal audience than that Fox News actually changes anybody’s mind.”
Having the ear of the president, as Murdoch does, makes him seem clouty. We learn from the Times Magazine piece that Trump not only takes Murdoch’s phone calls, he looks forward to them! But Murdoch has long vocally disagreed with Trump on Mexican immigrants, the Muslim ban, and trade agreements. “When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” Murdoch tweeted in July 2015. Like all of Murdoch’s political entanglements, his support for Trump—and Trump’s support for him—remains conditional, expedient and self-interested. This is not what clout looks like.
Will Lachlan do anything to dull Fox’s partisan colors? Why would he? The channel generates about $2.7 billion a year for the company from its minuscule audience. Hollywood types and the intelligentsia who imagine that they can wish Fox away into a cornfield will have to up their shaming game if they expect to alter the network. Last fall in an Andrew Ross Sorkin Q&A session, Lachlan called himself “conservative economically and more liberal on social policy,” yet also said of the network, “I’m not embarrassed by what they do at all.” He promised no immediate change to the channel’s current lineup of hosts. Smart man. Any tampering with the formula would create a business opportunity for Sinclair Broadcast Group, One America News Network or other pro-Trump outlets.
“Are we retreating? Absolutely not!” a touchy Murdoch insisted in December 2017 when asked about his film company’s sale to Disney. “We are pivoting at a pivotal moment.”
As fibs go, it was a gentle one for somebody who would probably fall on his nose if actually asked to pivot. Paralleling the 88-year-old Murdoch’s waning ambition has been his accompanying physical decline. Chronically clumsy footwork has made him prey to series of falls worthy of a stage-diver. Most recently, he broke a vertebra in a January 2018 tumble on Lachlan’s yacht.
Murdoch once told a biographer that his past “consists of a series of interlocking wars.” Viewed in that context, the trade of his film assets for a minority stake in Disney is Murdoch’s way of signaling a desire for peace as he prepares for his eternal reward as well as a vote of no confidence in his four adult children. How else to read his preference for Disney stock in the family treasury over letting his heirs run the Fox movie studio?
When Murdoch slips and falls the very last time, his will dictates that the company will go equally to his adult children. As Murdoch family biographers have long informed us, the kids don’t get along, which means they’ll probably fall on one other with axes and longbows when Dad’s end finally comes. But no matter who ends up owning Fox, be it a family member or an outsider, its clout will still be tiny. What might change with Murdoch’s death is that the rest of the media will finally be able to see his highly profitable and now modestly influential empire for what it is.
The media hasn’t fully digested the Murdoch wind down. Quite the contrary. In the past month, several of the nation’s top reporters expanded the media’s longstanding myth that Murdoch and Fox possess frightening clout. The New York Times Magazine devoted 20,000 words to Murdoch’s scary “empire of influence.” A New Yorker feature (12,000 words), “The Making of the Fox News White House,” elevated the network to the fourth branch of government. A 5,700-word ideological X-ray of Lachlan in the Intercept presents him as maybe the most reactionary of all the Murdochs.
But the clout of Fox News exists more in Democrats’ imagination than it does in reality, as media scholar Michael J. Socolow noted this week. From the beginning, Murdoch and Roger Ailes, his Fox News co-founder, made no secret of their ambition to elect a president of their choice, but year after year, they flunked the assignment. When he was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, John McCain was vocal about not being in Rupert Murdoch’s pocket, saying he was “not a talk radio or Fox News Republican.” Fox failed to elevate McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, into electability after hiring her and backing her with supportive airtime. Mitt Romney won the 2012 presidential nod without Fox’s support while Murdoch’s fav, Rick Santorum, went nowhere after winning the Iowa caucuses. In 2016, runner-up Ted Cruz and also-ran Marco Rubio were Murdoch’s picks, as the New York Times Magazine article acknowledges.
Last time around, both Murdoch and Ailes opposed the candidacy of Donald Trump, with Murdoch once calling the future president a “f*****g idiot.” Murdoch’s New York Post and Wall Street Journal editorial pages hammered the Trump candidacy in the summer of 2015 and Murdoch wrote a $200,000 check to John Kasich’s super PAC, as the Times Magazine notes. Only when the “clouty” Fox proved powerless to prevent Trump’s nomination did Murdoch do what he always does after he fails to pick a winner. He hitched his wagon to the leader.
Without a doubt, Fox has amplified the Trump message over the first two years of his presidency, especially on Sean Hannity’s and Jeanine Pirro’s shows — and of course, Fox & Friends. And it’s true that Trump appears on the network with the frequency of a paid contributor, sitting for 41 interviews as president by the end of 2018, more than all the other major TV networks combined. And it’s worth mentioning that the network has defended the president from the Mueller investigation and other congressional and legal probes. But for all this plugging, Fox’s clout proved little help to Trump in the midterm elections, as the Democrats took the House of Representatives.
Fox’s minimal influence is easily explained. While it’s the most popular cable news network, it still draws only a niche audience. Socolow provides the numbers: On an average night, about 2.4 million prime-time viewers tune in, which is about 0.7 percent of the total U.S. population. “With numbers like these,” Socolow writes, “it’s no surprise that Fox News often chases its viewers rather than leading them. In other words: It’s more likely that Fox News caters to the preexisting partisanship of its small but loyal audience than that Fox News actually changes anybody’s mind.”
Having the ear of the president, as Murdoch does, makes him seem clouty. We learn from the Times Magazine piece that Trump not only takes Murdoch’s phone calls, he looks forward to them! But Murdoch has long vocally disagreed with Trump on Mexican immigrants, the Muslim ban, and trade agreements. “When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” Murdoch tweeted in July 2015. Like all of Murdoch’s political entanglements, his support for Trump—and Trump’s support for him—remains conditional, expedient and self-interested. This is not what clout looks like.
Will Lachlan do anything to dull Fox’s partisan colors? Why would he? The channel generates about $2.7 billion a year for the company from its minuscule audience. Hollywood types and the intelligentsia who imagine that they can wish Fox away into a cornfield will have to up their shaming game if they expect to alter the network. Last fall in an Andrew Ross Sorkin Q&A session, Lachlan called himself “conservative economically and more liberal on social policy,” yet also said of the network, “I’m not embarrassed by what they do at all.” He promised no immediate change to the channel’s current lineup of hosts. Smart man. Any tampering with the formula would create a business opportunity for Sinclair Broadcast Group, One America News Network or other pro-Trump outlets.
“Are we retreating? Absolutely not!” a touchy Murdoch insisted in December 2017 when asked about his film company’s sale to Disney. “We are pivoting at a pivotal moment.”
As fibs go, it was a gentle one for somebody who would probably fall on his nose if actually asked to pivot. Paralleling the 88-year-old Murdoch’s waning ambition has been his accompanying physical decline. Chronically clumsy footwork has made him prey to series of falls worthy of a stage-diver. Most recently, he broke a vertebra in a January 2018 tumble on Lachlan’s yacht.
Murdoch once told a biographer that his past “consists of a series of interlocking wars.” Viewed in that context, the trade of his film assets for a minority stake in Disney is Murdoch’s way of signaling a desire for peace as he prepares for his eternal reward as well as a vote of no confidence in his four adult children. How else to read his preference for Disney stock in the family treasury over letting his heirs run the Fox movie studio?
When Murdoch slips and falls the very last time, his will dictates that the company will go equally to his adult children. As Murdoch family biographers have long informed us, the kids don’t get along, which means they’ll probably fall on one other with axes and longbows when Dad’s end finally comes. But no matter who ends up owning Fox, be it a family member or an outsider, its clout will still be tiny. What might change with Murdoch’s death is that the rest of the media will finally be able to see his highly profitable and now modestly influential empire for what it is.
_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
It is Autism Acceptance Month
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
10 Apr 2019, 1:04 pm
I think Trump will win again and I don't base it off of Fox News. I base it off of polls, just like from polls I may be over estimating how many regressive lefts they are, as kraftiekortie keeps telling me. They seem abundant because of the social media platforms and regressive journalists, recent polls I found out about say otherwise, they claim that is why it seems Biden is getting more support than the other dems running.
The polls showed that about 60% of democrats do not really participate in social media and hold more moderate opinions, but it also shows that all the regressive leftists are pretty strong in numbers and keep themselves in regressive echo chambers like on platforms like Twitter, because dems and conservatives who challenge regressive left ideologies often get banned from twitter for challenging them, it causes them to become more and more radicalized, as their ideas do not get challenged. They said that democrats like sanders and the other loony toons are trying to appeal to regressives because they think there are more than these polls have shown. They claim that is why on social media platforms it appears democrats want the policies they push, but in reality they see Biden getting way more support than the others.
That's what I gathered anyway, from the report I watched, here is the article, just visit, it has a lot of visuals so I'm not gonna put the article in the post.
Here is another article he brought up...
The Democratic electorate is older, more moderate and less educated than you think
(CNN)Listening to Joe Biden, you might come away with the sense that he is out of touch with the Democratic Party's electorate, which many believe is younger, further left and better educated than it used to be. Indeed, the party's voters may be all of these things.
But, as HuffPost's Kevin Robillard wrote, the former vice president seems to be making a bet that there are still plenty of older, more moderate and less educated Democrats who can help him win the nomination.
That might not be a bad bet.
There's a case to be made that Democrats are younger than they were at the beginning of the decade. Those younger than the age of 40, for example, made up 6 more points of the Democratic vote in the 2018 midterm than they did in the 2010 midterm, according to a Catalist (a Democratic firm) estimate of the national voter file. The exit polls illustrate a similar trend.
But even if Democrats are younger than they once were, Millennials and Generation Z voters (roughly those younger than 40) are still very much the minority of Democrats. They made up just about 29% of all Democratic voters in the 2018 midterm, per Catalist. In fact even when you add in those 40 to 49 years old, you still only account for about 44% of Democratic voters in 2018. In other words, the AARP demographic (age 50 and older) were the majority (56%) of 2018 Democratic voters, per Catalist. And in case you were wondering, those ages 65 and older (27%) made up about double the percentage of Democrats who were younger than 30 (14%).
The exit polls can differ slightly on the exact level each age group makes up of the electorate, though all sources agree that a majority of Democratic voters are age 45 and older.
That's a big deal when age was the No. 1 predictor of vote choice in the 2016 primary and continues to be a primary driver of vote choice in early 2020 polling.
A candidate who is receiving the bulk of their support from older voters -- like, for example, a Biden -- is in a considerably better position than a candidate who does best with younger voters. It's how Hillary Clinton won last time, despite Bernie Sanders swamping her among younger voters.
Whether it be the exit polls, Gallup or the Pew Research Center, there's no doubt Democrats are more liberal than they once were. In the exit polls, for example, the percentage of Democratic voters who identify as liberal rose by double-digits between the Democratic midterm blowouts of 2006 and 2018.
Still, moderates and conservatives make up about 50% of all Democrats. In the 2018 midterms, the exit polls found that moderates and conservatives made up 54% of those who voted Democratic. Pew similarly put moderate and conservative Democrats as 54% of all self-identified Democrats and independents who lean Democratic voters in 2018. Gallup's 2018 figures had moderates as 47% of all adults who self-identified as Democrats.
And while liberals make up about 50% of Democrats, many of them are only "somewhat liberal." In a Quinnipiac University poll taken last month, people who identified as "very liberal" were only 19% of all Democrats and independents who leaned Democratic. Very liberals made up the same 19% of those who said they were voting Democratic in Suffolk University's final 2018 pre-election poll. The 2016 primary exit polls discovered that about 25% of Democratic primary voters called themselves very liberal.
Put another way: the moderate/conservative wing of the Democratic Party likely still makes up at least 2 times as much of the party's voters than the very liberal flank.
Again, this is probably good news for Biden, given that his support in the last Quinnipiac University poll among moderate and conservative Democrats (37%) was more than double his support from very liberal Democrats (14%).
It further suggests that Democrats who run far to the left may be misreading where the electorate is.
Democratic voters are more likely to have a college education than they used to. Catalist, Pew and Gallup all show a trend toward Democrats being more educated than they used to be.
Despite this growing education, however, Democratic voters are still more likely to lack a college degree. According to Catalist, about 59% of voters who cast a ballot for the Democrats in 2018 didn't have a college degree. Gallup and Pew have the percentage of self-identified without a college degree well into the 60s. The exit polls, which historically have painted a better educated electorate than other sources, found about 55% of 2018 Democratic voters lacking a college degree.
Even among white Democrats, there are still many voters who have no college degree. Among whites, Catalist calculates the percentage of 2018 Democratic voters without a college degree at about 54%, compared to 46% who had a college degree. Gallup and Pew have the percentage of self-identified Democrats without a college degree in the high 50s among whites. The exit poll had them as a slight minority at 48% of voters who went for the Democrats in 2018.
As the Washington Post's David Byler put it, "Democrats should stop chasing Trump's base. They have their own white working-class voters."
When you broaden it out to look at all Democratic voters, all the sources I could find have whites with a college degree as less than a third of all Democrats. Most have them at less than 30%.
Currently, there doesn't seem to be a large education divide in Democratic primary polling. A candidate who is able to tap into the large working class vote within the party, however, will have a big time advantage.
All together, a Democratic candidate of the old, moderate and working class stands a better shot of winning the primary than one of the young, left and college educated.
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