What's Your "view" on this The Ratings Mirage Why Fox has higher ratings--when CNN has more viewers By Steve Rendall Reporting on the ratings rivalry between the Fox News Channel (FNC) and CNN is often misleading--and almost always over-hyped. "Fox Tops CNN as Choice for Cable News," declared one typical headline (Chicago Tribune , 3/24/03). "Fox News Channel Continues to Crush CNN ," reported Knight Ridder (Dallas Morning News , 2/3/04) in a column comparing the rivalry to a party primary: "Fox News Channel is winning the Nielsen caucuses." Last summer (8/17/03), the New York Times Magazine declared, looking back at the period of the Iraq invasion, "Fox was--and still is--trouncing CNN in the ratings." After exposure to countless similar stories published since January 2002, when Fox was reported to have surpassed CNN in the Nielsen ratings, one might naturally conclude that Fox has more viewers than CNN . But it's not true. On any given day, more people typically tune to CNN than to Fox . So what are the media reports talking about? Full Story
Since political outlooks do seem to influence which of the channels some people watch I figured this topic had a place in the politics forum.
Who follows ratings anyway? Yes, it's all manipulated numbers. All I know is that I won't tune in to either and expect to hear the truth, let alone anything of REAL importance.
I see the ratings as a pissing match and could give a fuck who is ranked first. For objective purposes I don't think one should rely on one news source. For the average person wanting to stay up to date on current events, I don't think it matters what mainstream news source you watch.
Yeah our US history teacher gave us two articles from different magazines about the same topic, and had us discuss how they were different. Its suprising sometimes how they can say the same thing but tilt it to reflect their own views. Something thats hard to pick up on unless you do compare what you read to another source.
About the only thing I've noticed is that CNN and MSNBC have recently copied Fox's theme music of banging empty garbage cans with a stick. Maybe it'll improve their ratings. .
