[lbo-talk] Rolling Stone: How Roger Ailes created Fox News starting in 1968

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue May 31 10:24:21 PDT 2011


On May 31, 2011, at 1:00 PM, SA wrote:


> Besides, I don't see how "older white men" constitute a demographic with little social influence. It sounds like the demographic of most corporate CEOs. (The share of Fox viewers with a college degree is above the national average.) There's also good reason to think a disproportionate number of Fox viewers are small business owners.

So that's why the incontinence space is a key ad target?

These are not CEOs. The college grad share may be above the national average, but that's true of all TV news. Fox viewers are almost all very right wing who watch to have their prejudices confirmed. I doubt that Fox "converts" people in any significant numbers. (That RS piece says that some study claimed that it shifted 200,000 votes to Bush in 2000, but that was 0.2% of the votes. Yeah, it was a close election, but Fox generates a lot more heavy breathing than you might expect of 0.2%.) Liberals love to obsess about how awful it is, but if I were in the mood, I could work up a polemic about how NPR is worse, since it dulls and confuses a lot of people who could, in a better world, know better.

Doug



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