Democratic activist Mark Mellman goes after Fox News:
Fox is not a typical news organization. There are first-rate journalists at Fox, committed to accuracy, objectivity and fairness. However, as a network, Fox’s prime commitment is to the triumph of conservative politics, not to a well-informed public. From hiring hosts to selecting stories to framing questions for discussion, Fox demonstrates its dedication to advancing the ideological interests of the right. ...
Conservatives retort that other media project a liberal bias, while Fox presents a needed counterweight. The liberal bias of network news is debatable; that Fox regularly reports false and inaccurate stories designed to drum up support for their candidates and causes is beyond serious dispute.
Two thoughts. First, the liberal bias of the MSM really isn't all that debatable. Riccardo Puglisi, for example, studied the NYT over a long period of time and concludes:
Controlling for the incumbent President's activity across issues, I find that during the presidential campaign the New York Times gives more emphasis to topics that are owned by the Democratic party (civil rights, health care, labor and social welfare), when the incumbent President is a Republican. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the New York Times has a Democratic partisanship, with some "watchdog" aspects, in that -during the presidential campaign- it gives more emphasis to issues over which the (Republican) incumbent is weak. ...
Lott and Hassett found that:
American newspapers tend to give more positive news coverage to the same economic news when Democrats are in the Presidency than for Republicans. ...
A UCLA study found that:
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.
Second, and more interestingly, is the liberal bias of the MSM and the conservative bias of Fox a product of ideology or rational economic decision making? My guess is that it's the latter. Economist Michael Jensen theorizes that:
... the mass media is best understood as producers of entertainment, not information, and that the theories and facts that people absorb from the media are a by-product of their consumption of the entertainment value of the news. In addition, peoples' intolerance of ambiguity causes them to demand answers to questions; including those that are unanswerable. As a result the media is generally in the business of providing simple answers to complex problems whose answers are unknown, and it must do so in an entertaining way. Complex answers, even if correct are not acceptable to consumers of the media, and therefore are seldom provided.
Jensen's hypothesis is supported by the work of Gentzkow and Shapiro, who find that "analysis confirms an economically significant demand for news slanted toward one's own political ideology. Firms respond strongly to consumer preferences, which account for roughly 20 percent of the variation in measured slant in our sample." (I'd argue that the success of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report offer further anecdotal support.)
Perhaps then we should all just give up complaining about the media's lack of objectivity. After all, we don't expect objectivity from The Sopranos, so why should we expect it from CBS News?
In other words, Fox recognized that there was a market segment seeking entertainment slanted towards the center-right that was not being satisfied by the MSM. Put another way, there was a business case to be made for a conservative-leaning news outlet entirely independent of ideological considerations. (Remember when Rupert Murdoch cozied up to the Clintons?)
So what really seems to be bugging Mellman is that markets work.
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