Outside Cable News

Via AJC
Documenting the media migration to separate corners
By Jim Galloway

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?
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Via Denver Post
Cable news dumbs down presidential race
By Joanne Ostrow

You saw it when Barack Obama’s “bitter” comment was elevated to “Bitter-gate” status.

You saw it when Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “sniper fire” comment was dissected, clarified and parsed on the cable news channels, and revisited by Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous on ABC’s shameful debate.

Blame ABC’s questioners for running with the distractions, but blame the cable networks for driving the minutiae to center stage in the first place.

We see it every day, and there’s no end in sight: Cable TV news has ruined media political coverage.

The 24-hour cable channels have redefined election-year news, seeking a daily narrative that focuses on gaffes and goofs. Any possibly inflammatory charge becomes the talking point of the day. Hour after hour.

Because of the demand to fill endless time in an age when the broadcast networks have largely abandoned live coverage, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC are leading the way to more superficial political coverage. Those with track records in the business say cable reinforces the worst instincts of the political media.

And because the rest of the print and electronic beat reporters watch cable news, that influence is compounded.
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