This blog rarely discusses politics–it’s about culture after all and political topics can quickly blow up into heated conflicts. But I do want to observe one point about the recent attacks by high-level White House officials against the cable news channel. Having singled Fox News out as “not a news outlet,” or “a wing of the Republican party,” the White House has generated attention from other news outlets and when Fox was told it couldn’t participate in the pool coverage of a Treasury official, the other news channels refused to participate without Fox, putting free press principles above whatever feelings they may have about Fox News.
I doubt the White House would be so heavy handed if Fox’s ratings weren’t so big. Look at these viewer rankings and be amazed. Based on which grouping you look at, total viewers, individual shows, audience demographics, Fox News rates two to three times as large as the competition. Other news channels are small by comparison (but of course, most news audience size is small in comparison with entertainment audiences).
Would the Obama administration be so acrimonious if Fox News got CNN’s or others’ lower than half a million viewers? It would seem pettier than it already looks for the executive branch to be complaining about a news outlet that regularly questions its policies and actions. Of course, given that survey’s show that sizable portions of Fox’s audience is made up of independent and Democratic voters, perhaps President Obama should put on his Happy Warrior face and confidently and boldly engage that audience, trying to persuade them–after all, he’d be reaching a lot more people more quickly than at the other news channels.
