... to what extent you have to be either deliberately or genuinely thick in order to write Official Media Criticism. Take this headline, please:
If Fox Is Partisan, It Is Not Alone
My balls. Fox is the only entire news network with a partisan agenda. Every other network plays by different rules. This is not a very difficult point to grasp, unless you have Official Media Criticism to dribble out for the New York Times.
This is a very stupid article. See if you can spot the logical flaw in how John Harwood draws the conclusion that "partisan fragmentation throughout America’s news media and their audiences has grown significantly" based upon Statistical Evidence (and note also how Harwood, toolishly, is passing on the spin of these data thrown, in the manner of a spitball, by a Republican strategist):
In audience surveys from August 2000 to March 2001, Fox News viewers tilted Republican by 44.6 percent to 36.1 percent. More narrowly — 41.4 percent to 39.4 percent — so did the audience for MSNBC. The audiences of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central leaned Democratic.
Four years later, amid the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, the audience data had shifted. Fox News viewers had become 51 percent Republican and just 30.8 percent Democratic, while MSNBC viewers leaned Democratic by 41.7 percent to 40.4 percent. Viewers of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central grew slightly more Democratic.
By 2008-9, the network audiences tilted decisively, like Fox’s. CNN viewers were more Democratic by 50.4 percent to 28.7 percent; MSNBC viewers were 53.6 percent to 27.3 percent Democratic; Headline News’ 47.3 percent to 31.4 percent Democratic; CNBC’s 46.9 percent to 32.5 percent Democratic; and Comedy Central’s 47.1 to 28.8 percent Democratic.
Comedy Central, one will note, is not in fact a news network. and so one may wonder just what the fuck it's doing here in a statistical breakdown of the partisan leanings of "America's news media and their audiences."
The answer of course is that including it makes a tendentious conclusion smell better; but still, its inclusion serves admirably to demonstrate that tendentiousness.
Because it does not take two, or more, to "polarize." It takes one. Fox gleefully went full metal GOP, and by and large other networks remained "objective" and "nonpartisan," according to the very strange interpretation of such concepts on the part of the media elites.
This was -- and largely remains -- the American media landscape when it comes to teevee news: one entirely partisan news/opinion/poo-flinging network, and then everything else is Village property, with the exception of three cable opinion shows (Olbermann, Maddow, and whatshisface), and then... uh, The Daily Show... a fake news program on a comedy network. And then Colbert. And that's it. (Moreover, it is worth remembering that MSNBC did not decide to go "partisan left" -- Olbermann did -- and Jon Stewart became a "liberal" opinion monger largely by default, in the sense that all he's ever really done is point out that the American right constantly makes up silly lies and is allowed to get away with it, which is "partisanship" in the sense that "recognizing the obvious" is "socialism." And also, remember, Olbermann is "balanced" by Scarborough, and Comedy Central tried hard at first to "balance" Stewart with that horrendous abortion of a Colin Quinn program, which was entertaining in the sense that your horrible sputtering drunken asshole uncle is entertaining when he gives you a hug right after he calls you a fag.)
If the viewership numbers have shifted, this is pretty much entirely because of Fox. Fox viewers are convinced that every other media outlet is involved in a dark socialist conspiracy to destroy America (and that is not even exaggeration for comic effect), the Main Stream Media pretends the socialist conspiracy theory is One Side of the Story, and anyone who wants actual news, Lord help them, is fucked.
Hence this, from Harwood, is bullshit:
partisan fragmentation throughout America’s news media and their audiences has grown significantly. Future Republican presidents will have to decide, as Team Obama has, how to buck or accommodate that trend.
No, they won't. They will not face a liberal equivalent of Fox. What they will do is not a mystery. They will pretend every other network besides Fox is "partisan," they will denounce The Media, and the Media will flog themselves over their imaginary offenses against imaginary "heartland voters," and the only news opinion shows worth watching will be on comedy stations.