Pew Research has some illuminating data on the composition of audiences for the major cable news networks. A couple of quick highlights/conclusions can be extracted from the data:
1) Democrats make up a bigger percentage of Fox News’ audience than Republicans do of CNN’s audience. (The article does note that more people identify themselves as Democrats than Republicans).
2) Between 1998 and 2008, large numbers of Republicans migrated to Fox News from CNN and MSNBC. This may have more to do with the growth and increased availability of the Fox News channel , though, and less to do with the political leanings of the network.
3) The share of Democrats who watch CNN/MSNBC gradually increased between 1998 and 2008.
4) 63% of those who cited Fox News as their primary news source identified as Republicans or GOP-leaning. Similarly, 63% of those who cited CNN as their main news source identified as Democrats or Democrat-leaning.
Basically, the composition of the audiences of the major cable news networks seems to reflect the general bias/leaning of that network’s coverage. But more importantly, I hope that these data will put to rest the idea that Fox News’ audience consists of fringe elements of the American right.
This article fails to take into account demographics: Self identified Democrats outnumber self identified Republicans in the general population about 1.6 to 1, that is about 63% are Democrats. The article claims that 63% of those who cited Fox News as their primary news source identified as Republicans or GOP-leaning. Similarly, 63% of those who cited CNN as their main news source of those who cited CNN as their main news source identified as Democrats or Democrat-leaning.
The ratio of Democrats to Republican in the CNN audience is about what one would expect based on the general population, and one expects that CNN’s coverage would be less biased. The ratio for Fox is the reverse of the Democrat-Republican ratio in the general population.
Conclusion? Fox tends to attract a Republican audience because it is biased to the right whereas CNN audience is what one would expect from the composition of the population, and it appears to be the “fair and balanced” news outlet. Even with Lou Dobbs to the contrary.
First of all, according to the data used in this article, the ratio of self identified Democrats to republicans is 1.44 to 1. Secondly:
“Overall, 63% of those who cited Fox News as their main source of news either identified as Republican or leaned to the GOP, which was 27 points more than in the general public (36% in the July news attitudes survey). An identical share of CNN’s audience (63%) identified as Democrats or leaned Democratic, which was 14 points more than the general public (49% in that survey).”
So, Fox News attracts 27 points more than the general public and CNN attracts 14 points more than the general public (respective composition of republicans, democrats). So, both audiences are skewed with respect to the composition of the population.