In the annals of schadenfreude, this has to rank high. It comes from a USA Today poll of Trump voters:
There are disquieting findings in the poll for Fox News, which has prospered as the dominant news source for conservatives. In a USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll in October 2016, 58% of Trump voters said Fox was their most trusted source of news. In the new poll, that drops to 34%.
Trust has risen in two relatively new outlets that have made their reputations by championing Trump. Newsmax is the most trusted among 17% of Trump voters, followed by 9% for One American News Network, or OANN.
Fox News spent all of November and December doing everything it could to convince its viewers that the election had been stolen. They promoted every dumb conspiracy theory, every hopeless lawsuit, and every utterance from the mouth of Rudy Giuliani. They made themselves the target of libel suits from voting machine companies. Tucker and Sean and Laura and the rest of the gang spent every evening explaining how Democrats were fraudulently stealing votes in every state Trump lost.
And what's their reward for all this? They've lost the trust of the true believers because the events of January 6 went a little too far even for Fox to swallow. But it turns out that the audience conditioned by Fox News to always believe the worst of Democrats wants to keep hearing that even if Fox News itself is suggesting otherwise. So now 26% of Trump voters have dumped the Murdoch empire for the sin of being ever so slightly attached to the real world.
It kinda makes you weepy, doesn't it?
It's why they fired many of their "news" side people, including the folks who called Arizona for Biden. They're doubling-down on "opinion" coverage, which means basically right-wing blowhards doing culture war stuff on TV like OAN and Newsmax.
I for one am very sad.
But it's not terribly surprising. I've heard that many people are saying that they're cannibals, and eating their own is what cannibals do.
In this year's War on Christmas, Donner isn't just a reindeer.
Ha!
When I have my shower this morning, I'll give the showerhead permission to shed a single drop on Faux' behalf.
It doesn't matter at all because Fox gets its money from cable fees, not advertising. Unless it means that cable companies feel they can renegotiate the contracts, Fox will be just fine.
That's kinda what I thought. Unless, as you say, their share ends up being so small they are dropped from "basic cable."
the reason why fox can command cable fees is because people watch it. take away enough eyeballs and the fees decline. and if that happens, hannity et al will have to start working for a living instead of lying.
FOXnews can join FS1 in being special order cable offering.
Exactly. Media Matters explains it in a convenient page that you can pass on until it goes full viral. All this talk about advertiser boycotts is a joke. If you want to hit FoxNews hard, go after their cable fees. Keep after your cable company to drop them, ask your congresscritter to pass a law required ala carte cable subscriptions--only pay for what you watch--and cut the cable if you haven't already. Streaming is so much cheaper and better.
https://unfoxmycablebox.com/
They'll need to refurbish the Cathedral if they want to keep the faithful.
Everything Trump Touches Dies. Why would FOX “News” be any different?
Midas or reverse Midas touch?
You really can't eat a golden apple. Ok, you can eat a golden delicious apple, not so much a red delicious apple (oxymoron?), but that's not a golden apple.
The numbers are saying crank wingnuttism has lost 8% of trust overall, even though the trust it retains has gotten more wingnutted.
So, victory?
How are you figuring that?
The current numbers for most trusted news source, according to K.D.'s OP are: 34% Fox, 17% Newsmax, and 9% OANN. That adds up to 60%.
In October it was 58% Fox. So are you saying that back in October, 8% would have reported Newsmax or OANN? Maybe that's right, but do you have a link for those figures? Both of those have been broadcasting since before 2015, but I think they were very minor and obscure until recently.
"In October it was 58% Fox. So are you saying that back in October, 8% would have reported Newsmax or OANN?"
Sorry, that should have been 10% for Newsmax and OANN combined in October.
!
You're right.
Math is hard.
https://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/188/523/1b2.gif
Until my 80+ yr old parents all day fox viewing subsides I am not optimistic. They feel like these on air dolts are their friends..it's truly mind boggling.
You can't expect to get 100% of any market. It is actually somewhat surprising that more media companies have not tried to horn in on Fox by now, given that cable/streaming suppliers try to include everything in their packages.
Many people have forgotten that was MSNBC’s original business model. It didn’t work because it was to focused on mainstream talkers like Morning Joseph. This move by OAN and Newsmaxum is the first ever to put a dent in Fox’s share of the wing nut market.
What a bunch of snowflakes.
😉
God willing, OANN and Newsmax will get exactly what they deserve, by way of successful Dominion lawsuits.
As much as I love to watch Fox squirm, this worries me. Are they suddenly going to start telling the truth? Just roll over and die? Nuh uh. They'll try to compete in the liarama, see if they can go farther than OANN/Newsmax.
This is the correct answer.
I suspect we will eventually regard roughly the 60s-80s as a period in the US with an anomalously high agreement about the contours of reality due to the high penetration of a limited choice of broadcast TV options.
Speaking of election-stealing, the Supreme Court has declined to hear the GOP’s case against Pennsylvania. One dissent - ‘Thomas wrote. “These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”’
IANAL, but if your argument is that the Constitution gives control of elections to state legislatures, therefore some ‘nonlegislative officials’ exceeded their authority, wouldn’t it follow that only the state legislature would have standing to sue? Isn’t it then entirely up to the legislature to decide what decisions and details they may delegate?
I think Clarence was more chuffed that Ginny has the receipts to prove electoral malfeasance.
On this topic I just did a bit of really disheartenting google research. Sigh. Yikes.
It occurred to me that the key development of our times is the willingness of Fox, and then Trump, and then all the other right wing outlets to add de-humanizing of "liberals" and Dems to their standard daily fare. Or maybe this is not new, but in any event Trump was as good as convincing people to hate others as any anybody.
We are all lucky he wasn't a better politician.
So now, let's assume Trump is sidelined, sort of. What would be great would be if the hatred quotient of the right wingers dropped off a bit or a lot. But will it?
I thought, hmm, there is a prior example, how did Germany do with turning on a dime from "Jews belong in concentration camps or dead" to post war normalcy?
Well, from ten minutes of research it looks like Germany did about as well as the US did post slavery. Which is not very well. The Nazi's essentially succeeded in clearing out all the Jews, and then even those who survived understandably decided not to go back. The jewish population of Germany, even today, is not what it was in 1933 if I read the stats correctly.
How many of these Fox watchers are going to be able to decide that Dems are not all that bad? Perhaps very few. Oh well
All indications are that Fox will continue to chase the nuttiest part of its audience ever deeper into Crazytown. I really, really hope that this costs them the rest of their audience--or that they finally abandon the chase and begin the long trek back toward sanity. But, looking back over the last 10 years and especially the last 5, it's not much of a hope.
F-foxy
Fox on the run ...
it is a little hard to revel in my fox news schadenfreude when i also have to consider that a large % of the GOP base are now so insane they think OAN and Newsmax are the most trusted news sources. maybe kevin things this is just small potatoes, like only 10% or whatever it was of americans believing in Q Anon, and who cares. but i for one find it immensely scary.
Oh, not the FireFox browser....
Fox's problems may have little to do with their program content, and a lot to do with Trump's decision a year or two ago that the network was insufficiently loyal. He told that to his base frequently and with increasing anger all through the election campaign and the aftermath. If he decided tomorrow to start telling everyone that Fox had learned its lesson and was now the greatest cable news network in history, you'd see that figure bounce right back up again.