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DEL.ICIO.USDocumenting the media migration to separate corners
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Slowly but surely, you and your television are making your way back to the 18th century and those glorious, early days of the Republic, when wigs sat upon Whigs and political campaigns were little more than scorched-earth libel competitions.
Anyone with cable TV — virtually everyone, in other words — has sensed this for some time. Now someone’s come up with the numbers that show just how real the movement is.
Barry Hollander is an associate professor of journalism professor at the University of Georgia. He’s good at crunching numbers.
Hollander recently took five national surveys, conducted from 1998 to 2006 by the Pew Center for the People and the Press, and mushed them together to create an eight-year look at America’s political viewing habits.
What he documented was a quiet stampede.
In 1998, 27 percent of Republicans and 25 percent of Democrats tuned in regularly to Atlanta-based CNN. Eight years later, the number of Democrats had risen to 29 percent.
But the number of Republicans who tuned in to CNN had shrunk to 19 percent. Gosh, where do you think they went?
Over the same period, Fox News’ share of Republican viewers jumped from 14 to 36 percent.
Hollander documented a media shift among Democrats to friendly sources, too, but the most dramatic change has occurred among Republicans. And, possibly, among more casual consumers of news.
“Republicans have dramatically dropped news sources that they perceive as being biased against their position. They’ve completely fled into Fox and have left CNN, broadcast news and all the others,” Hollander said.
Outrage over alleged liberalism could explain this, except for one inconvenient fact. Republicans, Hollander said, have even dropped C-SPAN, which — because of its verbatim approach — is widely considered neutral in content.
Something larger is happening, the University of Georgia professor asserts. “People have always hung out with people like themselves,” Hollander said. The water-cooler world that most people live in is a huge echo chamber of attitudes and ideas.
“It was always thought that the media was the savior in this,” Hollander said.
In days gone by, before the Internet and before Ted Turner, three broadcast networks captured the attention of 90 percent of Americans. Our favorite uncle, CBS’ Walter Cronkite, spoke to us as a single group, sometimes telling some of us what we didn’t want to know.
Big Media would intrude and interrupt — like the high school cafeteria lady who heaped on the Brussels sprouts, whether they were wanted or not.
But no more. Cable TV and the Internet have set a world of choices before us, which permit us to avoid the unfamiliar, uncomfortable or objectionable. Facebook and MySpace allow us to build ever-larger empires of like-minded friends. On-line newspapers encourage you to customize the news that appears on your computer.
And no one is in the mood for Brussels sprouts.
Hollander said many of those not into politics — who once were forced to include some debate in their diet — have dropped news outlets altogether, preferring a world of 24-hour make-believe and entertainment.
Those most interested in political news, nearly all partisans by definition, are slowly gathering behind red and blue networks.
“I have no doubt that Fox and CNN know what’s going on, and are playing to it,” Hollander said. They’re marketing data is better than his, and more up-to-date — but they’re not sharing.
The media migration that Hollander documented explains CNN’s current resurgence against Fox. The Atlanta-based network has invested heavily in its coverage of the never-ending, Democratic soap opera that pits Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama.
“If [Republican John] McCain were still battling [Mitt] Romney, you would see Fox going up,” Hollander said.
But Hollander offers little hope for the future. “We’re slowly inching our way back to a partisan press,” he said.
We’ve been there before. Newspapers in the late 1700s and early 1800s were largely party mouthpieces that supplied the talking points of the day. Even the much-worshipped George Washington was damned as a traitor — by an outlet controlled by the equally venerated Tom Jefferson.
The penny press destroyed the party press, by proving that there was profit in a newspaper that could talk to everyone at once.
But history has a circular sense of humor, and now it’s the broadly appealing media — newspapers, radio, news magazines and broadcast TV — whose bottom lines are hurting.
Niche is the profitable future.
Speaking of which: On Monday and Tuesday, two Georgia ex’s — Jimmy Carter and Newt Gingrich — will make back-to-back appearances on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
They’re the future. Enjoy.
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Comments
By Taxpayer
April 27, 2008 4:56 PM | Link to this
I hear you. In fact, there are even some bloggers that go so far as to create their own set of identities and then communicate with these outcroppings as though they were real. Amazing.
By TW
April 27, 2008 8:33 PM | Link to this
Isn’t it great watching the faces of the redneck republican morons as they watch the price on their gas fill-ups? Love it. Even better when it happens during the week day when they ought to be at work, but have perhaps been laid off. Love it. Finally the idiots who voted for Republican are getting to see who the real republicans are, and it ain’t you guys! Time to pay up for being stupid! Love it! Need a job? Join the service! Go fight the terrist! Love it! Love it!
By Copyleft
April 28, 2008 8:07 AM | Link to this
The Republican mindset is fearful of differing opinions and uninterested in facts. Thus, Faux News is the perfect medium for them; they’ll never hear anything that might make them THINK.
By Will Jones
April 28, 2008 11:34 AM | Link to this
“Rockefeller” Republican has become Vatican-banker Rockefeller-owned, and Rome’s Fifth Column is backing both Hillary and McCain.
Whigs, who created America, knew Rome is the Anti-Christ working, lying, and assassinating to fulfill its delusion that it “owns the world” and everyone on it.
Now, to survive, America must follow Our Prophets Thomas Jefferson and Dr. King, expropriate and extirpate the “pseudo-aristocracy” and try, convict and hang the Rockefeller/Bush/Cheney cabal that committed 9-11.
Radical utopian idealism built America. Barack Obama is the right step in the right direction to restore Our Nation’s Righteousness and Honor.
Death for Treason Annuit Coeptis
www.theamericanfundament.blogspot.com