Is Fox News mainstream media? New poll provides interesting answer
Fox News might be the network where the biggest group of Americans say they get their news, but those same people are much more likely than most other Americans to say that their favorite news source isn’t part of the “mainstream media,” according to a poll that was released last week.
It might sound contradictory that viewers of the most-watched network are more likely to say it’s not mainstream media, but that’s the case, according to the poll, published Friday by the Pew Research Center.
Between Sept. 16 and Sept. 22, Pew asked nearly 10,000 adults where they most often got their political news. Of the 8,000 unique responses, 13 percent said Fox, followed by CNN at 10 percent. Fox’s share had remained stable compared with a similar poll conducted in 2021, while CNN’s had dropped by four percentage points.
They were followed by local TV at six percent, ABC at five percent, then NBC, NPR, MSNBC and CBS at three percent. The New York Times was the only newspaper getting more than one percent, with three percent of respondents saying it was their go-to for political news.
As a sign of the balkanizing media landscape, 32 percent of respondents named a main political news source that wasn’t among the top 10.
Another question in the survey gave a hint of the kind of programming viewers see on Fox.
When asked whether their favored news source is part of the mainstream media, just 61 percent of those who prefer Fox said it was. That compares to 96 percent for the New York Times, 88 percent for NBC and MSNBC, 85 percent for ABC, 84 percent for CNN and 82 percent for CBS.
NPR listeners were more likely to see themselves as a breed apart, with 69 percent who prefer it saying it was part of the mainstream media.
Another result might indicate that some people might define “mainstream media” as something other than news organizations that adhere to a common set of standards. Of the group saying that local TV was their go-to, just 57 percent said their sources were part of the MSM.
The survey also confirmed that the Fox audience skews older than its counterparts.
“Older adults are much more likely than younger adults to name Fox News: 22 percent of those ages 65 and older say this is their main source for this news, compared with just five percent of adults under 30,” it said.
The survey also asked what medium people used to get their news. Thirty five percent said TV, 21 percent percent said from news websites and 20 percent said from social media.
Perhaps predictably, respondents 65 and older were a lot more likely to get their news from TV, 63 percent, than those aged 18 to 29, 10 percent. Nearly half of the latter group said they primarily get their news from social media.
Marty Schladen has been a reporter for decades, working in Indiana, Texas and other places before returning to his native Ohio to work at The Columbus Dispatch in 2017. He's won state and national journalism awards for investigations into utility regulation, public corruption, the environment, prescription drug spending and other matters.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
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