Walter Shapiro: “The current Fox News numbers are impressive until you realize that 30 million Republicans voted in the 2016 presidential primaries. As a result, it is safe to assume that about 27 million of these GOP stalwarts are not watching Fox News on a typical evening. Reporters sometimes forget that most primary voters have better things to do with their lives than watch Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity.”
“In contrast, most political journalists are addicted to cable news, as many of them dream of a network pundit contract. So media coverage almost always exaggerates the importance of cable TV news. And it downplays other more pedestrian sources of political information, such as local TV news and the nightly reports on the broadcast networks.”
