I haven't checked Fox News' ratings in awhile, but it always seemed to me that the CNN, MSNBC and the network news split up the non-conservative news. The NYT and WaPO also have a lot of reach.
They do.
And yes, you can say that the other networks all split up the non-conservative news but I don't think that's quite right.
The issue is you can't point to ratings and say "they do the best news".
It's just the wrong metric.
The ratings show that a lot of people want what Fox is delivering. That's it.
Pointing to CNN beating MSNBC or whatever (I have no idea which does better in the ratings) also doesn't tell you anything about the quality of their news.
It tells you about what people watch.
It sometimes can tell you a bit about who people trust, but even that's probably indirect and again, that actually says nothing about the quality of their news.
When I hear 3 million people tuned in to watch Tucker Carlson, I think that's good but that's a little over 1% of American adults. (Although it seems judging by this forum, that 10 million Canadians are watching him. Lol.). That 3 million is good business, but it's hardly a national wave tuning into his show. I'm guessing of that 3 million many are in the audience every night. So what's his overall reach 4 million?
I'm sorry Rachel Maddow hurts my ears and more importantly my brain. She makes Don Lemon seem like lemon chiffon.
There are a lot of people who hate Rachel Maddow's approach, which developed in radio and still has a lot of radio news tics as far as I can tell.
Again - that says absolutely nothing about the quality of the reporting in any way. (It may say something about the quality of the commentary, since those shows are as much about commentary as they are about transmitting the news.)
www.theatlantic.com
