Fox: The Most Trusted Name in News

OK, before the representatives of CNN and Media Matters shoot me e-mails, and Keith Olbermann names me The Worst Person in the World: Yes, I wrote the headline, but I didn’t take the poll on which it is based. Public Policy Polling surveyed Americans on which TV news operations they trust most and found that Fox News is the only outfit trusted by more people than distrust it.

The complete poll results are here, and as you’d expect, politics come into play. In broad terms, conservatives and Republicans are more intense and united in their opinions of TV news than moderates and liberals. They trust Fox, and mistrust everyone else, more uniformly than the other groups mistrust Fox and trust everyone else. Likewise, in reverse, for news organizations other than Fox, which conservatives mistrust intensely and across the board. Conviction, passionate intensity, &c.

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Didja Hear the News About Diane Sawyer? No? Then It Worked

Back in December, I noted ABC’s announcement that it was launching Diane Sawyer as its new evening-news anchor in one of the quietest news weeks of the year. (Ordinarily quiet, that is, in those years when no one tries to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day.) I suggested at the time that the network [...]

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Diane Sawyer to Take Over World News, Very Quietly

ABC has announced that Dec. 18 will be Charles Gibson’s last day anchoring World News; he’ll be replaced, as announced in September, by Diane Sawyer shortly afterward. (ABC hasn’t made an official announcement of her start date yet, but it looks to be the following week.) Sawyer’s ascension isn’t news. What’s interesting is the timing, [...]

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Cable-News News: King Moves Up, Hannity Owns Up

That was quick: Less than 24 hours after Lou Dobbs abruptly left the air, CNN has announced he’ll be replaced by magic-wall-wrangler John King, hosting a daily political program. King’s show begins early next year. Thereby ensuring that the network’s 7 p.m. hour will not have to deal with future Dobbs-like controversies, or, most likely, [...]

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Who Says TV News Is Biased? TV News Viewers Do!

The Pew Research Center has issued a study about the public perception of TV news which finds shockingly—shockingly!—that TV audiences see Fox News as the most ideological network. But beyond that, the study is a trove of curious data points showing that people find ideology in a lot of places—and they don’t necessarily mind it. [...]

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"Balloon Boy," Family Had TV Connection

As I write this, we don’t know if the story of the Mylar balloon that went sailing over Colorado, attracting wall-to-wall TV news coverage, was tragic or not. We don’t know if it was real or a hoax, if six-year-old Falcon Heene was ever in the balloon. But it is undoubtedly a strange story. And, [...]

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Fox News Awards Nobel for Pumpkin Throwing

After getting to my desk and seeing word that Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I turned on cable news to see the reaction. In particular, Fox News, the #1 cable news network and recent White House bete noire, whose reaction and coverage you might think would be interesting. It was, mainly [...]

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Beck to Couric: Obama Better Than McCain, Hillary Better Than Both

Katie Couric is launching a new online interview series, called @katiecouric,  this week, and her first subject is a pretty big get, at least if you believe what you read in TIME magazine: Glenn Beck. (Fun fact: Back and Couric have the same publicist. Because he just despises the MSM’s bias, not their professional assistants.) [...]

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Sawyer to Replace Gibson; Let Oppressed-White-Male Rhetoric Begin

Oh-so-briefly interrupting staycation to note that Charles Gibson is retiring as host of ABC’s evening newscast, to be replaced by Diane Sawyer, meaning that white-male TV anchors are now officially oppressed. Cue Glenn Beck editorial in 5, 4, 3… Seriously, the interesting implication of the move for network evening news is how Sawyer’s performance will [...]

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Fox News on Kennedy: Short Shrift, or Right Coverage for Wrong Reasons?

When news of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s death broke this morning, cable news kicked into full coverage mode. CNN brought on Paul Begala and others to remember the Senator’s political career. MSNBC’s Morning Joe had public and personal reminiscences of the politician and his legacy. And Fox & Friends had… a Law & Order: SVU fan [...]

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Breaking MJ's Death: Web, TV Divide Labor

You know you’ve beaten people on a story when your direct competition does stories on your having beaten them. The Los Angeles Times has a piece today headlined “TV misses out as gossip website TMZ reports Michael Jackson’s death first”—which is all true, but by posting news of Jackson’s death at 5:20 p.m. E.T., the [...]

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Glenn Beck: Show Me On the Doll Where the Socialist ACORN Conspiracy Touched You

Last night, on The O’Reilly Factor, fellow Fox News host Glenn Beck made an appearance to advocate a federal investigation, for purported voting fraud and corruption, of the group ACORN. Using Barbie dolls (video via Gawker):  This, actually, is why I find it easier to watch Beck than Fox’s raft of other political hosts. Sure, [...]

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Network News Races to the Bottom

…of the ratings, that is. Last week, The CBS Evening News broke a new barrier, hitting an all-time low of fewer than 5 million viewers; ABC, chasing them at just over 6 mil, also hit its all-time ratings low.  The networks will argue, of course, that at a combined audience of under 20 million, that [...]

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ABC Moves to White House for Health-Care-a-Thon

I spent a good part of the first half of the week working on a column for the print TIME, which, because some country can’t figure out how to properly hold/rig an election, ended up being held for lack-of-space reasons. Oh, death of print—why can’t you come sooner!  Part of the column dealt with ABC [...]

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Does a 10 p.m. Nightline Make Sense?

A few weeks ago, the New York Times’ Bill Carter and Brian Stelter wrote a piece looking at the possible implications of NBC’s scheduling Jay Leno at 10 p.m. in the fall. One of the lines in the story that generated some buzz was this: NBC’s move has also caused planning battles inside ABC, whose [...]

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Just Call Him Barack O'Brien

The clip wasn’t available earlier, but also on last night’s Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, NBC managed to leverage its Inside the White House Special into a presidential plug for Conan:  When this clip first started rolling, I figured there must be some kind of sleight-of-hand going on. Right? The producers must have spliced some [...]

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How to Pay for Journalism? Morning Joe Brews a Lucrative Solution

I cursed my parents when I first heard about the product-placement deal MSNBC’s Morning Joe had secured with Starbucks. The news-talk show, on which Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski regularly trade barbs over their choice of caffeinated beverage, is being paid upward of eight figures, according to the New York Times, to officially incorporate the [...]

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There Are Ten People On CNBC Right Now

I only wish I could do a screen capture, but the talking heads on Power Lunch are laid out in little rectangles, side by side, ten of them, like cards in a solitaire game or that old Faberge Organics shampoo commercial: I’ll tell two friends that GE has cut its dividend, and they’ll tell two [...]

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Ratings: A Stimulus for Fox News

During the election, with CNN and MSNBC surging on politics-news coverage (following a slump by Fox News over the preceding couple years), TV observers like Tuned In wondered how Fox News would do in a new Presidential era. The answer, for February anyway, is: pretty well. For the month (as defined by Nielsen) Fox was [...]

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You Damn Kids Get Off My Podium!

In the 2008 election, history books will record, age and experience defeated youth and change. I am speaking, of course, about the choice of moderators for the Presidential debates—Tom Brokaw, Jim Lehrer and Bob Schieffer—who are collectively nearly as old as America (and incidentally as white as Mount Rushmore). As Rachel Sklar notes, this means [...]