> 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.
I think trying to calculate the number of votes Fox shifted is beside the point. The more pertinent question is why votes in 2000 were shifted along a Bush-Gore spectrum rather than, say, an Arlen Specter-Ted Kennedy spectrum - i.e. an alternate universe in which the right-wing apparatus Fox is a part of doesn't exist. (Those two names are just illustrative examples, obviously.)
The same type of consideration applies to NPR. NPR is horrible, but I don't think it makes sense asking which is "worse," Fox or NPR. They exist in a structural relationship with each other. NPR's supine centrism is of a much more right-wing shade in a world where Fox exists than in an alternate universe where Fox doesn't exist.
SA