As various Democratic groups ponder whether to link up with Fox News for 2008 presidential candidate debates, Democrats should consider the bottom line of a study of the effect of media bias on voting -- Fox News helped make George Bush president by persuading Democrats and independents to vote Republican. As the researchers wrote, the "main effect of Fox News was to induce non-voters in Democratic districts to turn out and vote Republican."
The study, titled "The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting," said the vote shift in Florida due to Fox News -- 10,757 votes -- was substantially larger than Bush's 537 vote official margin of victory.
"Overall, while the entry of Fox News had a relatively small impact on the 2000 election, it may still have contributed to the Bush victory in the unusually close election. Moreover, this impact may become larger over time as the Fox News audience and diffusion grows," said the study, by Steano Della Vigna of the University of California at Berkeley and Ethan Kaplan, of Stockholm University.
Nationwide, Fox News probably added 200,000 votes to the Bush-Cheney ticket, the study found. The authors concluded that though the total number was small, "it is still likely to have been decisive in the close 2000 presidential elections."
To come to their conclusion, Vigna and Kaplan compared voting patterns in communities that had Fox News in the year 2000 and those that did not.
"We find a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns which broadcast Fox News," the study said.
"Fox News also affected the Republican vote share in the Senate and voter turnout. Our estimates imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 28 percent of its viewers to vote Republican, depending on the audience measure."
(The study said the effect was between 3 and 8 percent of its non-Republican viewers if an inclusive measure of the audience was used, but as high was 11 to 28 percent if a more restrictive audience measure is used.)
"Exposure to more conservative coverage, therefore, had a sizeable and possibly large, persuasion effect," Vigna and Kaplan wrote.
The authors of the study found that the effect came, not in Republican districts, but in Democratic-leaning ones. "We find that Fox News significantly increased voter turnout, paricularly in the more Democratic districts. The impact of Fox News on voting appears to be due, at least in part, to the mobilization of voters, and particularly conservative voters in Democratic-leaning districts," Vigna and Kaplan wrote.
They also found that the impact on Fox News viewers was that of a general ideological shift, rather than support for individual candidates, since Fox News actually covered very few candidates in federal elections, other than Sen. Hillary Clinton.
The study covered 9,256 towns in 28 states, amounting to 65.9 percent of the population and 68.6 percent of total votes cast in those states in the 2000 presidential election.
The authors also found that the effect persisted past the year 2000, resulting in a .2 percentage point vote share increase between 2000 and 2004, although that was not statistically significant.
So, if members of the Congressional Black Caucus Institute want to induce their voters to vote Republican, they should do all they can do boost Fox News' credibility.
The Nevada Democratic Party came to its senses. This study clearly shows that a debate on Fox News would be counter-productive for the issues of concern to the Congressional Black Caucus Institute.
Is it any wonder Fox News is trying so hard to host a Democratic debate?
I have to say that I am saddened that people will not engage Fox News in debate, but think CNN and other stations are all glitter and gold. I personally like Fox News, because you see what individuals really think about minorities and issues. There is no sugarcoating. I think networks like CNN are worse. The paternalist attitude of CNN make me sick to my stomach. They hold the hands of black people and make them sit in the corner while they go and battle the mean Fox News man. Because Mister knows best for us after all. We as a people are our own worse enemy. We hate to acknowledge that there is a problem within our community. Everytime someone brings up wedlock births, or Hip Hop music stereotypical viewpoints of black women and men, we are like that's racist! It is not racist it is the true, acknowledge it, embrace it, and more importantly FIND A SOLUTION to it. To disregard it, makes you lose creditability.
I recently was in a personal debate about affirmative action. The guy said to me, well 4/5 black women have children out of wedlock. A statistic which I was sure is inaccurate, but instead of arguing about wedlock births, I said to him. Well I guess you meet the 1/5 that does not, and turned the debate back to affirmative action. In the end, he lost creditability with our friends who had mixed feeling about the subject matter, and I gained points. At no time did I say that's pretty racist Bob, (even though those were the thoughts going through my head).
One of the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement taught us anything, it is that you do not win the battle of ideas, without acknowledging your flaws or engaging the other side. Making ourselves exclusively available to only one point of view, allows black men like Bennett to get on TV and give justification to Fox's New viewpoint. Fox keeps you honest if you disagree with them, more black leaders should go on Fox News and debate them. In the end it will only help us, not hurt us.