The cable news networks viewers have interesting demographics

Daily Kos Commissioned and reported the results of a nationwide poll of who watches the three major cable news networks, MSNBC, CNN and FOX. The results tell us a lot about modern America. Here is their analysis:

Cable news networks have a level of influence that far exceeds their audience, since their actual audience is actually quite small. Most people simple don't watch cable news networks, but the ones that do are generally influentials.

Republicans watch Fox News and nothing else, Democrats split between MSNBC and CNN, and Independents watch nothing. MSNBC, in particular, depends on Democrats for the vast majority of its audience. One would think they'd realize this and get rid of Joe Scarborough to boost its morning ratings.

The South, unlike the rest of the country, appears to have their TV dials stuck on "FOX NEWS". Except for the youth, that is. 82 percent of 18-29-year-old respondents never watched FNC.

We then asked, "When it comes to accuracy and trustworthiness as a source of news would you say that [Media Org] is extremely reliable, reliable, unreliable, or extremely unreliable?"

Combining "extremely reliable" and "reliable", and "unreliable" and "extremely unreliable", Fox News clocked in at 35-41. Republicans (and the South) obviously think they're the word of god, while Democrats think it's shit.

CNN came in at 44-34. For Republicans, it was 20-61. They actually believe all that crap about the "Communist News Network". CNN garnered good numbers from Democrats (56-20) and Independents (48-30). Again, the South (28-53) was at odds with the rest of the country, which generally gave the network high marks for accuracy and trustworthiness.

As for MSNBC, Democrats gave it the highest marks (37-7), followed by Independents (24-16). Republicans, of course, think the network is crap -- 6-31. MSNBC was easily the least-recognized network of the bunch, with 60 percent of respondents unable to give an opinion. That "not sure" number was only 22 percent for CNN, and 24 percent for FNC.

The fact that the audiences are small but consist of influentials suggests that watching cable news is something done by the more well-to-do upper class groups of people. The fact that the audiences are small confirms that the mass news media on cable TV has broken down into niche markets. So this is a report on an upper class (probably upper middle) consisting of influentials and it's also a report on which media outlets cater to the different categories in that class.

The fact that the South is FOX territory tends to confirm my own belief that the conflict between what are politically labelled conservatives and liberals is actually a culture clash between rural traditionalists and urban modernists. These two cultures are socialized differently and in fact even think differently.

It's clear from the political clashes between them that the two groups consider very different issues to be of greatest priority for America, and the way each group treats government is an outgrowth of those different ways of thinking and different priorities. I find it no surprise, for example, that the rural traditionalists are also exclusionists - thus the immigration issue, and the modernists support diversity.

Traditionalists are not fact based. They think in terms of what the traditional authorities tell them is true. They will not be swayed by facts, no matter how obvious. I'd suspect that FOX News has made themselves into one of those authorities, along with Church leaders and high level political authorities like the President. This latter is probably why putting a liberal Democrat 0r worse, an African American, into the position of President is considered the equivalent to lese majeste or worse. That's why electing Clinton over George H. W. Bush, a member of an old-line upper class family, was so emotionally upsetting to so many conservatives. Clinton's enemies had to redeem the Presidency from his presence.

No, I can't prove this, but it fits. It explains a pattern of facts that I have not seen otherwise adequately explained.

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Addendum 9/30/2009
I stated above that traditionalists are not fact based, but that I cannot prove it. A group of researchers, however, describe what they call Motivated Reasoning which is exactly what I was talking about.

Traditionalists have an emotional need to be "right" and so they reject facts that show they are not. Motivated Reasoning describes how they go about rejecting those facts they find uncomfortable. But where do they get the mistaken ideas they consider "right?" FOX News and the other Murdoch propaganda outlets as well as such right-wing propaganda organizations as Regent University, Liberty University, the Discovery Institute, the Heritage Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the CATO Institute and others.

This is the ad CNN refuses to run. How much does the DEO of CNN get paid?

CNN has refused to run an advertisement that criticized Cigna Insurance Company and it's CEO for their decisions and money to kill health care reform.



As Greg Sargent points out, CNN would have no hesitation to run an ad praising Cigna insurance.

The battle over health care reform is another example of what Robert Michels called The Iron Law of Oligarchy. Modern organizations give the ultimate decision of how the resources of an organization will be spent to the top managers. Those top managers then work to maximize their power and retain their position at the top, and spend the resources of the organization to keep their position.

The result is a system of government or management called Oligarchy. That means the rule of the many by the few. In this case the few at the top fear they will lose their catbird seat if universal health care passes, so they are fighting it at every turn.

How much does the CEO of CNN get paid? What's he protecting?

CNN's John King is a subservient bootlicker, and doesn't want it recognized

Glenn Greenwald reported earlier [*] on the extreme adulation demonstrated by CNN's John King in an interview was broadcast on "Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer. The transcript of the interview was presented in its entirety with out any part of it being left out.

King is pissed at how Glenn interpreted his fawning report on St. McCain, and sent Glenn an email, which Glenn has published, also in its entirety.

If you want to see what is wrong with TV political "journalism," go read Glenn's article.

There should be a psychiatric name for John King's behavior, but I don't know what that form of denial and insanity really is called by the professionals who work with psychiatric patients.

[*]Sit through the advertisement for the day-pass. The ad is short, 15 seconds or less, and it's worth it.

CNN failed when it ran the recent Republican debate

The Los Angeles Times makes the case that the way CNN ran last Wednesday's debate proves that CNN stands for Corrupt News Network. CNN chose the questions that were asked and controlled the time spent on the "debate." What did they do?

THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest.

So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a "debate," what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it. [Snip]

why did CNN make immigration the keystone of this debate? What standard dictated the decision to give that much time to an issue so remote from the majority of voters' concerns? The answer is that CNN's most popular news-oriented personality, Lou Dobbs, has made opposition to illegal immigration and free trade the centerpiece of his neonativist/neopopulist platform. In fact, Dobbs led into Wednesday's debate with a good solid dose of immigrant bashing. His network is in a desperate ratings battle with Fox News and, in a critical prime-time slot, with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. So, what's good for Dobbs is good for CNN.

In other words, CNN intentionally directed the Republicans' debate to advance its own interests. Make immigration a bigger issue and you've made a bigger audience for Dobbs.

That's corruption, and it's why the Republican candidates had to spend more than half an hour "debating" an issue on which their differences are essentially marginal -- and, more important, why GOP voters had to sit and wait, mostly in vain, for the issues that really concern them to be discussed.

The Democrats have abandoned FOX since it is bought and paid for by the Republican Party conservatives and couldn't report an honest unbiased story if their life depended on it. CNN doesn't even have the excuse that they were bought by a political party. They're just so desperate to increase viewership in their increasingly irrelevant so-called news organization that they, too have abandoned all journalistic integrity.

One other point I found especially obnoxious and biased, and so did this reviewer. It was the disgusting and Unamerican question about Biblical Inerrancy:

...the wickedness of using some crackpot's query about the candidates' stand on Biblical inerrancy to do something that's anathema in our system -- to probe people's individual religious consciences. American journalists quite legitimately ask candidates about policy issues -- say, abortion -- that might be influenced by their religious or philosophical convictions. We do not and should not ask them about those convictions themselves. It's nobody's business whether a candidate believes in the virgin birth, whether God gave an oral Torah to Moses at Sinai, whether the Buddha escaped the round of birth and rebirth or whether an angel appeared to Joseph Smith.

The latter point is relevant because CNN's noxious laundering of this question through the goofy YouTube mechanism quite clearly was designed to embarrass Mitt Romney -- who happens to be a Mormon -- and, secondarily, to help Mike Huckabee -- who, as a Baptist minister, had a ready answer, and who happens to be television's campaign flavor of the month.

Beside considerations like these, CNN's incompetent failure to weed out Democratically connected questioners pales.

So CNN was venal, incompetent, biased and corrupt in the way they ran the Republican debate. The authors final conclusion is mine also:

CNN has failed in its responsibilities to the political process and it's time for the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties to take the network out of our electoral affairs.

Read the article. It's worth it.

CNN, on the other hand, has proven itself worthless.

How did I MISS this? (Oh, yeah. Can't afford cable.)

Sometimes I get my news from north of the border.

No, No, not Oklahoma, north of the BIG border, the one with Canada. Catnip tells us that CNN was reporting Friday that "...we've just received a bulletin from the FBI that, and I quote, "suspected members of extremist groups have signed up as school bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said Friday, in a cautionary bulletin to police"."

It must not have worked. The American news outlets still reported on the Valerie Plame testimony to Congress, and overlooked the danger to our schoolchildren (which the FBI did say was very low.)

Oh, and I love what Catnip's daughter calls the yellow school busses. "Cheesewagons." Could they be the state transportation for Wisconsin?