“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” — Howard Beale

Beale is a fictional character. He was an anchorman in the movie “Network”. In the movie. Beale asks all of the viewers to open their windows and shout out the above refrain at the same time. Referencing a fictional character and a fruitless gesture seems oddly apropos in the moment. Naturally, you are just going to have to take my word for it.

 

What you are looking at above is the media bias chart we teach our students. See, most people naturally just assume that media sources should only be measured by where they are on a left-right scale. The more important axis is percentage of factual content provided on these programs. The lower you are on the chart, the fewer facts that get dispensed on your network.

I’m sure you noticed that the left and right axis is pretty balanced on both sides. There are more right wing sources than left wing sources when you absolutely count them out, but it’s close enough not to make a difference. It is the factual axis that is most revealing. You’ll notice all but two left to center stay above the line that denotes selective or incomplete story information. Quite a few right leaning sources fall below that. In other words, it’s not symmetrical. Both sides do not do the same thing.

We set this in the backdrop of the latest right wing hysteria piece about DirecTV dropping Newsmax from it’s channel list. The right wing noise machine has called this censorship. Sure. If anyone leaning right accidentally stumbles onto this space I want you to listen very carefully. Censorship happens when the government stifles your ability to speak. It is not happening if your boss fires you for saying something offensive. It is not happening if a social media site blocks your commentary or decides to ban you from their site. For the love of God, it is not happening when a cable company decides not to carry your channel.

If you look carefully you can find Newsmax on the site above. It exists on the far right hand wing on the chart and is one of the least accurate. It comes somewhere between OANN and Fox News. That is terrific company. Since most commentators can’t be bothered to explain this nuanced point, I will make an attempt in case you are conservative and stumbled into this space.

All media outlets are biased in some sense. There are two kinds of bias. The first kind of bias reflects the editorial judgment of the outlet. What stories do they pump up? What stories do they bury? On this level, everyone in the mainstream media deserves all of the criticism that gets hurled their way. We amp up conflict. We amp up controversy. We amp up whatever sensationalism we can for eyeballs, clicks, and advertising dollars.

The second level of bias is the kind of bias most people think of. Are you actually telling the truth? You can see the chart above as easily as I can. There simply is no equivalency here. The notion that both sides do it is not only wrong, but it is inherently dangerous. I suppose that when someone exaggerates the importance of an issue then we can consider it a form of lying. That of course depends on how cynical you want to be.

However, take a look at your chart. MSNBC and CNN are reliable sources. They exercise a ton editorial discretion in what they choose to focus on, but they generally report facts. OANN, Newsmax, and Fox News do not. I don’t subscribe to DirecTV. They can allow any channel they want and they can cut any channel they want. It’s called capitalism. Maybe conservatives can give it a try.

Before the days of Nate Silver and 538 there was Reader’s Digest. Readers Digest had accurately predicted every presidential election and then came the 1936 election. They proudly announced that Al Landon would be the next president of the United States. In fact, it wasn’t going to be particularly close. They did a simple poll of all of their readers that had a home phone. Oops.

CNN didn’t make as big a blunder as Reader’s Digest, but they are facing the same kind of cruel reality. See, they are beginning to rebrand themselves as a more conservative outfit. Obviously, they can’t outfox Fox News and they certainly don’t want to go crazy like OAN or Newsmax, so they will struggle to find their place in the landscape.

See, most networks focus their attention on the 18-49 demographic group. They are usually the group with the most disposable income, children in school, and make up a majority of the population. Fox learned a long time ago that they weren’t the key demographic to focus on. They focused on the 50+ crowd. Two things are happening that impact the traditional way that television networks look at news coverage. First, the under 50 crowd doesn’t watch nearly as much news. We consume television differently. It’s hard to say whether that will change for us as we approach our fifties. Maybe we will be different from our parents.

The second factor is one area where we will never go back. We cut the cord over ten years ago and is it turned out we were slightly ahead of the curve. As it turns, the under 50 crowd makes up a huge majority of those cutting the cord. Cutting the cord may or may not impact network shows. Essentially, streaming services like Hulu, Paramount Plus, and Peacock offer those shows after the fact.

So, CNN is learning the hard way that there are fewer and fewer people in that key 18-49 group there to watch their network. That leaves the over 50 crowd and the over 50 crowd skews conservative. So, of course they will try to do the same. It’s probably the same reason that talk radio has always been conservative as well. It’s simple demographics.

It makes perfect sense when you think about it. Watch the commercials on network television the next time you actually have access to it. During the day, it is focused at people that likely aren’t working. Why aren’t they working? Personal injury? Need more training? Let’s show a Jim Adler commercial or a ITT Technical Tech commercial. If it’s something like Fox then maybe it’s alternative investing options like gold or reverse mortgages. Maybe it’s one of those apparatus’ that puts on your socks for you. Advertisers have figured it out. It was only a matter of time for CNN.

This is both scary and hopeful at the same time. On the hopeful end, nothing will ever be as bad or scary as it seems. The mainstream media will seemingly have us believing that the world is more dangerous and more right wing than what we think. If the only real options are right wing news then that will be who gets to shape the narrative. The American public is actually more progressive than those sources want you to believe.

The bad news is that people do not remain stagnant. They will change based on the information they receive. If they only receive information skewed to the right then they will also shift to the right. MSNBC has cast their lot. Fox, Newsmax, and OANN have cast their lot. CNN will need to be creative to find their niche in the market. Fox unfortunately has a head start.

Must see.  Former Obama speechwriter David Litt owns the arrogant morning Newsmax anchor today.  It’s hilarious.

First, here’s the good news – since the election, CNN is beating Fox News in average viewers.  Now the bad news – Fox and CNN both are losing to Newsmax.  Why?  Fox isn’t “Trumpy” enough for the red hats, but still unwatchable for normal people.  Newsmax and an even worse OAN have taken over the alt-right folks who are abandoning Fox in droves as more of their anchors have acknowledged that Trump has no chance of stealing the election from Biden.  If you’ve never watched Newsmax and OAN, don’t bother.  By way of description, if Fox News is manure, Newsmax and OAN are nuclear waste.  They have created a Superfund site of toxic and deadly conspiracy theories, gross exaggerations, and freeform lying.  And Trumpists lap it up. Since the election CNN has averaged 1.73 million viewers, more than double a year ago. Fox News Channel averaged 1.56 million and MSNBC 1.53 million viewers.  More important, Newsmax, a safe haven for delusional Trumpists to hide from gravity and arithmetic, Newsmax beat Fox for the first time ever.  Newsmax commentators, even today, continue to peddle the lies that Trump is going to prevail over Biden.

Newsmax and OAN (as well as some remaining Fox programming) engage in prodigious lying, creating toxic propaganda that has now made it impossible for normal people to engage their viewers in any kind of productive debate.  In recent days, I’ve attempted discourse with several people, and it’s like arguing with an audio recording that’s running backwards.  These folks have bought in to the Dominion fairytale, the suitcases full of ballots narrative, and even the new “Office of the President-Elect” story ignoring the decades of the use of that term.  Even talking to these folks is exhausting because you simply can’t make any progress.

Even though Trump will soon be hiding at Mar a Lago and fighting criminal and civil charges in New York, the damage he inflicted and made recovery of our democracy even more remote.  I personally don’t see a route to recovery.