It might sound counterintuitive, but the latest Gallup poll found the public’s confidence in television news has grown as the media has become more ideologically “polarized”:
The views of Americans aged 18 to 29 exhibited the most mixed year-to-year change, with this group showing a 10-point increase in confidence in television news but a 10-point decrease in confidence in newspapers. While members of this group remain among the most confident in each, their views are now on par with those of Democrats and liberals. Republicans also showed inconsistent movement in their opinions, registering a nine-point increase in their confidence in television news and essentially no change in their views of newspapers. Interestingly, considering the highly polarized nature of cable news, all ideological groups increased their trust in television news to about the same degree.
In other words, the Rupert Murdoch model is working – and there’s a good reason why. Before the Fox News Channel, conservative trust in TV news was almost nonexistent because of the pervasive (and undisclosed) liberal bias of the network news stations. FNC not only countered this by hiring journalists who gave the other side of the story, it also laid its cards on the table by hiring openly conservative commentators and pundits for its primetime lineup.
Unlike the network news stations, FNC has never tried to hide its ideological programming. The same goes for the left-leaning MSNBC. Disclosing biases arms viewers with more information, helping them decide which programs they want to watch and how much credence they want to give to each news show.
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