Americans See Fox News as 'Most Ideological Network'

A Pew poll finds that the public sees Fox News as 'mostly conservative'

This Friday, a Pew poll found that more Americans think of Fox News as strongly ideological than other cable networks. Some pundits reacted with a curious sense of disbelief, but most said they were relieved that the public could decipher ideology in news coverage. According to the poll, "nearly half of Americans (47%) say they think of Fox News as 'mostly conservative,' 14% say it is 'mostly liberal,' and 24% say it is 'neither in particular.'" Many say White House war against Fox News was a failure, but it appears that much of the country agrees that the network is more biased than most.

• Fox Looms Larger in Public Imagination  Allahpundit, a conservative blogger at Hot Air asks: "Could [it] be that we conservatives are simply viewing things through right-tinted glasses"?...One possibility: These results may indicate how large Fox News looms in the public’s media imagination. Glenn Beck’s been on the cover of Time, Obama’s top henchmen have been on Sunday morning chat shows whining about Hannity et al., and Nielsen often shows FNC drawing more viewers in primetime than the other three cable nets combined." Allahpundit concludes by citing "an NPR(!) online poll of almost 400,000 people, 56 percent side with Fox News over the White House."

• Americans Know How to Call a Spade a Spade  At The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan is satisfied.

Clearly the public understands that the network MSM is skewed to the left. But there's a difference of magnitude between that assessment and that of Fox. Quite simply, most Americans see Fox for what it is: an appendage of a political operation, not a journalistic one. Its absurd distortions, its relentless attacks on Obama from the very start, its hideously shrill hosts, and its tawdry, inflammatory chat all put it in a class by itself.

• Fox News, Conservative? You Don't Say!  Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo isn't sure it was necessary to conduct a poll on the topic. "In a shocking poll result, a new Pew Survey finds that Fox News is viewed as being the most ideologically oriented of the big three cable news channels. Fox is viewed as being conservative by 47% of Americans, as liberal by 14% (Who are these people???)"