Hey, baby, it's cold outside

"Regarding the latter, the expanding audience for the Fox News Channel stands out," says the Pew Research Center of its new poll, "News Audiences Increasingly Politicized: Online News Audience Larger, More Diverse":

Fox's vitality comes as a consequence of another significant change in the media landscape. Political polarization is increasingly reflected in the public's news viewing habits. Since 2000, the Fox News Channel's gains have been greatest among political conservatives and Republicans. More than half of regular Fox viewers describe themselves as politically conservative (52%), up from 40% four years ago. At the same time, CNN, Fox's principal rival, has a more Democrat-leaning audience than in the past.

CNN's once dominant credibility ratings have slumped in recent years, mostly among Republicans and independents. By comparison, the Fox News Channel's believability ratings have remained steady both overall and within partisan groups. Nonetheless, among those able to rate the networks, more continue to say they can believe all or most of what they hear on CNN than say that about Fox News Channel (32% vs. 25%).

Two things. The first was a blogger's point this morning that CNN was touting its 32% believability rating as a point of pride. Can you say "grasping at straws"?

Second, we happened to catch a Brookings Institution panel discussion about the poll led by Ron Nessen on C-Span in the wee hours this morning -- one of the best panel discussions we've heard in a long time. They seemed to think that bloggers were small in number but large in influence, among other things (music to our ears). Our favorite fact was the finding that folks who get "their news" mostly from TV or the internet go there mostly for THE WEATHER. Think of it. How reliable is the weatherman? Yet, compared with the rest of the "journalists" out there, the weatherman is Americans' most trusted voice.

Comments

[John Anderson]

Having only broadcast stations, I cannot compare CNN and FOX directly. But I do remember the gist of a comment by another blogger, to the effect that Fox shows as much of the liberal view as other outlets but balances that with conservative views instead of proclaiming the liberal view to be balanced and normative and ignoring conservatives other than the extremists.