Let's look at it with a skeptical eye, shall we? Here's
the working paper I am quoting from.
The central new results in this paper are that the Fox News effect in presidential elections grew from 2000 to 2008 because of a combination of increasing viewership and increasingly conservative slant on Fox News; and that the cable news channels can explain an increase in political polarization of similar size to that observed in the US population over this period.
The citation for the
rise in polarization goes to this paper. The author makes a very interesting and nuanced case about polarization. Over the last half-century, the proportion of Americans self-identifying as solid Republican or Democrat has decined, while those calling themselves unaligned or leaning towards one party or the other has increased.
However, he also points out the effective disappearance of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. If you poll Americans on a ten-item scale of political values, you'll find that these days, more Democrats come out consistently liberal and more Republicans come out consistently conservative.
This, to me, is no particular surprise. Both parties' bases have become particularly good at purging apostates from the party line. Hence also the growth among the unaligned or leaning groups. And this is certainly true:
Perhaps the most disturbing fact is that politics has become increasingly personal. We don’t see those on the other side as well-meaning people who happen to hold different opinions or to weight conflicting goals differently. We see them as unintelligent and selfish, with views so perverse that they can be explained only by unimaginable cluelessness, or a dark ulterior motive. Either way, they pose a grave threat to our nation.
This is certainly true, and if you look at the graph on page 14, it is not hard to see where the partisan divide has widened, but it is pretty hard to make the case that Fox News had anything to do with it. Here's the description:
Using data from the American National Election Study, the red line shows the average favorability of Republicans towards Democrats minus the average favorabilty of Republicans towards Republicans on a scale from 0-100. The blue line shows an analogous time series for Democrats.
Not surprisingly, Republicans tend to give favorable ratings to the GOP and more unfavorable ratings to the Democrats, and vice-versa. If you look, in the 1960s, the difference between Republican ratings for their own party versus the Democrats was almost 40%. Democrats were actually much less inclined to be partisan back then; their difference was only about 25%.
However, in the early 1970s things changed a bit. Republicans became much less partisan, while Democrats stayed about where they were. At the end of the 1970s both parties became slightly more partisan, leaving party members roughtly even at 30% more likely to view their own party favorably than the opposition. The 1980s were a relatively stable period for partisanship, and while the 1990s had more ups and downs in the graphs, they still ended the century about even.
But yes, from 2000-2008, there was a remarkable rise in partisanship as evil Fox News began polluting hearts and minds. Errr, except for one inconvenient truth: the rise in partisanship was almost entirely on the side of the Democrats.
After 2008, both sides increased their partisanship overall, although in perhaps what was a warning sign for Hillary Clinton, the Democrats went down in partisanship in the last two surveys, while Republicans went up.
I am sure today that if that survey were taken today, Democratic partisanship would be at record levels.
Note especially that bit about from 2000-2008, Republicans staying remarkably even in their preference for their own party. Because that sort of runs diametrically counter to what the authors of the paper cited in the OP state is one of their "central news results":
The central new results in this paper are that the Fox News effect in presidential elections grew from 2000 to 2008 because of a combination of increasing viewership and increasingly conservative slant on Fox News; and that the cable news channels can explain an increase in political polarization of similar size to that observed in the US population over this period.
I mean, maybe they are just being clever there, with the mention of the increasing slant on Fox, and then noting that the
cable news channels (a group which includes Fox but also CNN and MSNBC) can explain the increase in political polarization. Because I am having a very hard time understanding how Fox News in those years from 2000-2008 made Democrats more partisan at the same time Republicans were staying pretty steady in their partisanship.
Oh, and also note this:
The answers to these questions are key inputs for designing optimal public policy - such as merger policy - for the media sector, which has attracted blame for the rise in polarization in the US (Gentzkow, 2016)....Such concerns led the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to condition approval of the merger of Comcast Corporation and NBC Universal in 2010 on the requirement that Comcast take steps to promote independent news services.
So in essence their argument is that Fox News causes more voters to become Republican, and that perhaps at some future point when Murdoch's empire swallows up another company, the Feds could hold them hostage unless they agree to change the slant at Fox.
Can't imagine how that could be abused. I mean, Fox doesn't actually have a printing press, so they aren't covered under the First Amendment, right?
