On his MSNBC show tonight, trying to explain away a poll showing Fox News to—once again—be the most trusted national news network, Hayes argued that it was unfair since Fox was the only conservative outlet, pitted against MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS.
Hayes analogized the poll to one in which Mike Huckabee was placed against Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, John Kerry and Al Gore. Huckabee would win, said Hayes, but only because people were split among the others. Hello? The others are all DEMOCRATS. Just like all the non-Fox outlets you mentioned lean left. Thanks, Chris, for making our case about liberal media bias!
Let's hail Hayes for his accidental candor!
Note also Hayes' condescension. He suggests that Fox has managed to dupe us conservative rubes into believing that the other networks are biased. Right. I mean, why wouldn't a conservative look to the network of Rachel Maddow, Al Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry and, umm, Chris Hayes, for straight-down-the-middle reporting?
CHRIS HAYES: This week we got a new poll from Quinnipiac University with the same conclusion: as reported by the Washington Post, Fox News is the most trusted national news channel, and it's not that close. Depending where you stand politically, that news either gets you excited or perhaps depressed beyond all measure.
But here's the thing, and isten very closely. There is a reason Fox News keeps being ranked as the most trusted news source in these polls, and it is connected to the reason Fox is as profitable and as highly-rated as it is, which in turn is tied to both the media landscape and the way liberals and conservatives consume media. And everybody gets this wrong, including people who write about media for a living.
I want to just give you this analogy. Imagine a presidential race that was just an open race where you could vote for anyone. And there are six candidates: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, John Kerry, Al Gore and Mike Huckabee. Mike Huckabee would win that race.
And maybe that would lead you to think, Mike Huckabee is the most popular politician in America. Which is not true. But in this mock race, there's only one candidate to represent all of the conservatives in this country and five candidates who would split the vote of everyone else. And that is exactly the way the media landscape looks in this country right now. You have one national TV news outlet that conservatives watch, Fox News, and a whole bunch of news outlets that everyone else watches. Look at that new poll. While Fox News took the title of most trusted, only 29% of voters chose the network. Another 57% of voters were split between MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS News. And here's the thing, according to data from the Pew Center, audiences for basically every outlet in both these so-called mainstream media and progressive media, from HuffPo to the New Yorker to Nightly News, USA Today, and the Economist and Slate: all of them. They all skew left of center.
That is not an accident. Because conservative media outlets, like Fox News, spend day after day discouraging their viewers from watching other outlets, telling them they are being lied to, telling them they're being sneered at and laughed at and spit upon by the mainstream media. With an assist from conservative websites and talk radio, Fox News has successfully managed to convince a huge portion of the country that no other network--hardly any other outlets--can be trusted. And the network tells story that over and over again, because as Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes know, it's very good for business.
