As Beck Heads for the Fox Front Door

As I (and the rest of the planet) wrote about Wednesday, Glenn Beck will soon leave his Fox News show. There are some really good takes on this.  I'm partial to The Atlantic's version, which gives several reasons why it may have happened -- from Beck is too crazy even for Fox to his drop in ratings to fleeing advertisers to, well, Beck's gotta be Beck, and he'll do it better somewhere else. 

The latter, the personal branding argument, is a powerful one, but I'm going to come at this from its potential effect on the audience.  TV and radio talk shows tend to have a mixed audience.  There is the choir, the faithful getting preached at and who seek out the Becks of the world, on the left and on the right, to hear their opinions and predispositions echoed so they will feel good about themselves and their worldviews.  Then there are the curious, the political news junkies curious as to what "the other side" is up to, or to get ammo to make fun of them.  And finally there are the merely curious, the kind of people who not only slow down to oggle a traffic accident but who will actually get out of the car for a better view (yeah, that's me).

The political effects of such programming are not inconsequential.  Reaffirming beliefs, providing talking points to the faithful, those are significant effects and often watching or listening to this stuff pushes these folks even more to the extreme, and it tends to make them even less likely to entertain argument from the other side.  If indeed Beck went too far, we might take this as a good sign that even Fox has limits on its conservative brand.  But I suspect it's more a financial than journalistic decision, assuming Fox actually makes decisions based on journalistic ideals.

So what's the effect on real people?  I'd like to say the very worst hugger of invented historical conspiracy theories is gone, but his brand is powerful enough that he'll find a soapbox somewhere and an audience will follow.  What we're really seeing is an even further fragmentation of the media, in particular the conservative media, in which Fox might find itself marginalized into representing more of a mainline conservative viewpoint while a not-quite-but-kinda-like-Tea-Party-Conspiracy-Theory model will emerge elsewhere as a mild, but significant, challenge.

In other words, what's happening to the Republican Party is also happening to its primary information organ -- Fox News.

Glenn Beck To Leave Fox

Yes, we've been expecting this one for some time now, but apparently Glenn Beck's afternoon show will disappear "later this year," according to this NYTimes article.

Mr. Beck is a hugely popular figure on Fox News, averaging 2.2 million viewers each weekday, though his ratings have fallen somewhat in the last year. He is beloved by his fans for speaking out against what he sees as threats from progressives. His opponents — and there are many — condemn him for his conspiratorial views and apocalyptic predictions.

And that's exactly what makes him so much fun -- and great fodder for blogs.  I need the material, and Sarah Palin and/or Michelle Bachmann can only take you so far.  Yes, Beck may have his own show or channel or universe from which to operate, but it won't be the same as being on Fox.

Beck, Stewart, Colbert, et al

A different take by Jon Bershad, from a week or so ago, on the continuing saga of TV talkmeisters Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert.  Beck kinda has a point, only kinda and only barely, about jokes being a "drug" in a news context.  Anyway, think of this as a quick fyi as I run out to give an exam.

Learning History -- the Glenn Beck Way

If you spend any time watching Glenn Beck's show on Fox, you know this -- he's not a historian, but he plays one on TV.  Kinda.

Americans tend to disappoint when it comes to most kinds of knowledge (history, geography, math, politics, etc.) but we're pretty damn good when it comes to identifying the judges on American Idol, so it's good to know our priorities are right.

Beck is a fascinating guy.  He's even had a New York Times magazine cover article about him, so you know he ranks.  He's not all that educated, but he's got the TV show and the glasses down on his nose and the whole professorial thing going for him -- if he doesn't break into tears.  So the question for me is, when it comes to what people know, are folks actually learning history from Glenn Beck?  Some have criticized Beck's take on history or some of the historians he's promoted on his Fox program.  That's an important topic, whether he relies too heavily on what some call a "master revisionist." 

But a lot of what Beck talks about, outside the wacky conspiracy theories, is straightforward history that many of us haven't talked about or thought about since high school civics class.  Founding Fathers stuff.  Set aside he's occasionally off the reservation in how he (or guests) interpret those bygone days and let's wonder -- since we don't have data -- whether any actual learning about history may be taking place among viewers of his Fox News program.

I'm guessing ... yes.  Good learning, such as names and dates and stuff like that, and bad learning as well as people buy into the crazier of the interpretations offered on the show. 

So what we have here is a Win-Lose situation.  Winning, in that people are exposed to history, and lose, in that people are exposed to some of the weirder versions of history.  All in all, I think the end result is a good one.  But as I said, we have no actual data on this.  No one, as far as I know, has surveyed only Beck viewers to see how much they know about history before and after the programs.  And of course it gets all mixed up in the Tea Party's creative interpretation of history and the founding of the nation and what's constitutional.  Given Beck is a patron saint of the movement, it'd be hard to disentangle what people knew before or after viewing his program.

When it Comes to Politics, Cable News Rules

A new poll is out that defines how America gets its political news (cable) and who they like best (Fox News) and which TV personalities have the most influence (Bill O'Reilly, then Glenn Beck, then Rush Limbaugh).  But not all is good news for the Rushmeister:

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was the third-most-positively ranked, with 36 percent saying he has a positive impact on the discourse, but his negatives far outweighed his positives, with 52 percent saying he has a negative impact. 

"To some extent, Limbaugh has become almost a caricature in a way, so I don’t know how much influence he has beyond entertainment value,” Arteron said. “Whereas, in some way, the other people on Fox are seen as more legitimate news operations.”

Okay, so cable TV rules, but 72 percent of folks say they read newspapers or their web sites for political news, which is higher than broadcast television news.

Knowing Glenn Beck (and others)

Those who occupy the chattering class, the political and media junkies of the world, have no problem generating an opinion about talkmeisters like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and my personal favorite -- Glenn Beck (a Time magazine 100 most influential person, with bio written by Sarah Palin).

But what about real people?  Below, some survey results that focus not on whether have favorable or unfavorable views of talking heads, but rather on the responses that essentially say "I have no clue who this schmuck is."

• Glenn Beck: 47 percent didn't know who he was in April 2010.  Forty-two percent didn't know back in 2009, so is he slipping?  Nah.  Not Beck.
• Rush Limbaugh: Back in 1993, a quarter of Americans didn't know the king of talk radio. Now only about 10 percent haven't heard of him.
• Pat Robertson: Okay, he's kinda a TV talk guy (watch his morning show, The 700 Club) and he's run for president (like everyone on Fox News) and his "never heard of him" numbers are modest, about one-fifth of folks never hearing of the guy.
• Oprah Winfrey: You know this, only 1 percent say they've never heard of her.  Not sure exactly who these people are, but I suspect they spend a lot of time in padded cells.

And that's all I can easily get, though I will point out that another favorite of mine -- Bill O'Reilly -- was back in 2008 both the most and least favorite "journalist" listed by a U.S. sample of Americans who also do not know what a journalist actually is. Sean Hannity was the third most favorite, and sixth least favorite.

ANES and Evaluations of Government

The ANES is seeking possible questions for its 2010-2012 Evaluations of Government and Society Study (details here).  These will be Internet-based surveys of a random sample of U.S. adults that focus on -- obviously -- how people evaluate government.  What better time, given the Tea Party environment, the growing Republican power, the overall disenchantment with government that we seem to be seeing?

According to the call for questions:

Specifically, we have in mind here attitudes about the performance of the Obama administration on the major issues of the day, evaluations of Congress and the Supreme Court, identification with and attitudes about the major political parties, and levels of interest in and engagement with national politics. This is primarily because these perceptions are unmistakably correlated with both presidential vote choice and levels of political participation. We intend to measure each of these topics at multiple points throughout the two-year period preceding the 2012 elections. However in addition to these subjects, we envision that each of these surveys would explore a particular aspect of these political perceptions.

We're talking five rolling cross-sectional waves with lots of potential to theoretically get at what's going on out there beyond the mere snapshot surveys presently available.

Of course, being the mass comm guy I am, I wonder what media questions should be included.  ANES tends to undervalue the media.  Sure, there are the basic exposure and attention items to broad-based media (TV news, newspapers, etc.), but rarely does it burrow down to the now vital network or program level.  If Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are truly fueling an anti-government sentiment, then we need to get at exposure and response to those specific hosts, those programs, and even more broadly -- watching Fox News.
 
I asked what media items might be included and the answer was ... none, yet, so propose some.  So that's what I hope to do, but it's a little more difficult to generate a theoretical perspective versus a normative one, and ANES loves theory in its proposals.  So I'm gonna give this some thought because it would be nearly criminal to attempt a major undertaking to understand anti-government evaluations without taking these media folks, and their audience, into consideration. 

Suggestions welcome.

Most Admired Men and Women

Hillary Clinton edges out Sarah Palin as the most admired women in America, according to a Gallup poll.  Can I get a big duh?  Barack Obama easily won most admired man -- again, no real surprise -- but what's scary and fascinating is Glenn Beck being tied at third.  Glenn Beck?  I guess tearing up on air works better for guys whose name is not Tim Tebow.  Beck had a helluva year, also finishing second place finish in biggest political lie of 2009.

Best Lies of 2009

Politifact is an excellent nonpartisan site for debunking political myths, much like what Snopes does for urban myths.  And so it's fun to read the site's Lie of the Year (and runnerups).

Top lie?  The idea of "death panels" in the health care debate, bullshit started on Sarah Palin's Facebook page.  That's a first too, I suppose, Facebook making the big time.

Second best lie of the year?  Check out the runners up.  They are:

• Glenn Beck on some nonsense about Obama's science adviser.  Hang in there, Beck.  Second place ain't half bad.
• A nutcase who claimed Obama's birth certificate showed he was born in Kenya.  Which, I suppose, is kinda close to Hawii, if by close you mean on the same planet.
• Obama himself gets third on a claim about preventative health care saves money.

And so it goes.  What people know, sometimes, is completely made up by these folks on the left, and on the right.  

Colbert: Conservative, or Not?

Stephen Colbert "defends" Glenn Beck.  Kinda, sorta.

In the bit linked above, reader Nick Browning points out that Colbert appears somewhat more transparent.   Colbert is "effectively disguised" as a conservative, some charge.  Studies suggest Colbert nudges people to the right as he -- a liberal -- plays a conservative TV blowhard (last two words, a redundancy, I admit).  Or maybe Colbert is a conservative playing a liberal who plays a conservative.  Yes, you can go crazy this way.

No, the "defense" of Beck above makes it clear where Colbert stands -- for those who were confused.

In Praise of ... Glenn Beck?

I come to praise Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, and all the other talkmeiseters out there in TV and radio land.

As much as it pains me to say, mainstream journalists need to pay closer attention to these guys. 

Yeah, they're a bit nutty, a bit fruity, and if I could come up with some other food-based description I'd use it too.  We all know that.  But they, and the minor league talkers, have come up with what eventually came to be major stories.

• Van Jones, the environmental adviser, resigned.  Journalists acted a bit surprised by this, but if they'd been listening to talk radio they would have seen this coming a long time ago and would have covered the story sooner.
• ACORN, that wacky group of whatever the hell they are, got caught doing and saying stupid things. Hannity in particular has been all over these guys.  There's embarrassing video out there and the feds have responded by slowly but clearly cutting ties to the group (Census Bureau, the latest I suppose).
• Czars.  Can we ever have enough czars?  Apparently not the president, and the talkers have been pissing and moaning about this for a while now.  And guess what?  CNN this morning, a story about how many czars there are in the Administration and congressional concerns about who they answer to, how they are vetted.  Listen to the crazy talk people, CNN, and you would have had this story sooner.
  

Some guys debated online the other day whether there should be a hate beat, and someone answered that nearly every beat these days seems to be a hate beat.  Assign someone to listen to the semi-crazed talk radio/tv folks and you'll get a lot of that -- plain hate, dressed up as saving America.  But there's good news stuff in all that bloviating.  Ya just gotta wade through hours of shit to find the gems and help people understand what's going on in the political world.

Who Hates More?

Radio/TV intellectual heavyweight Glenn Beck says liberals hate more and are to blame for recent shootings. NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman, who only has a paltry Nobel in economics, says conservatives hate more and are to blame.

All together: You hate more than I do!

I was going to spend some time looking at the psychology of hate, but today has been spent dealing with domesticity (lawn mowing, picking up a kid who has been away for a week, etc.), so I have no semi-thoughtful nuggets to share other than it's obvious who wins this debate -- no one. Even if some rightwingnutjobs may be creating an Obamahate environment that indirectly might possibly be associated with the abortion clinic and Holocaust museum shootings (and that's a pretty compelling hypothesis no matter your ideological/partisan position), it doesn't really solve anything.

Remember the 90s? Oklahoma City? Clinton blaming talk radio? Do we see a parallel here, a Democratic prez who disgusts the wingnuts, and a pair of even bigger wingnuts take a few hundred lives in the process? Yeah, kinda. Enough to make you wonder.

What most people know is that the loonies on the left and the wackos on the right are best left alone, like a snarling dog with a frothy mouth and angry eyes. But some of the wingnuts are on TV and radio, on "respected" networks, so the rest of us will be left to clean up the mess. I don't really know much about the psychology of hate, it's not my research area, so I can't say much about that, but I do know something about media effects and anyone who suggests the Becks of the world are not somehow, indirectly, encouraging this ... they don't know much about media effects.

But this yelling about who hates more? Accomplishes nothing.

Of Limbaugh and Hannity and Obama

The Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh-Etc. group have been pounding Obama for a few weeks now. If they're not crying (Beck) they're calling Obama socialist (Hannity) or they're simply suggesting it may be the end of the world (Beck again, cleverly made fun of by Colbert here and then here, watch them in order. Hilarious).

That's fine and good. Let 'em talk, it's all part of the joy of American democracy that anyone with an asshole and an opinion can use both, though hopefully in public only the latter. But you'd think these guys would be having some kind of effect. Nope. Not yet. At least not in mainstream America.

The traditional president favorability ratings show a slight uptick in Obama's numbers. Latest, 69 percent Favorable, up from 68 (but within the margin of error, for the methodologically minded among you). Obama's high is 77 percent, back at inauguration. That's a ceiling effect and the prez rarely climbs back to that point except in dire, extraordinary times like a 9/11.

Given the economy, given two wars, given the nutjob in North Korea and the vehemence of the political right, you'd think these numbers would edge down more. I would've predicted low 60s, maybe even 50s.

Even Obama's "unfavorable" numbers have inched down, opposite of what you might expect given the ideological and partisan pounding he's taking. Post tea party numbers should drive Obama's favorability down, if there's any traction in a largely symbolic and somewhat under performing pr event. Maybe the traction will take a week or two to be seen, so we'll check again. But what people know right now seems to be a generally favorable impression of Obama, even in these ugly economic times. Remarkable.