Loading summary
Narrator/Ad Voice
This is an iHeart podcast.
Josh Clark
Guaranteed Human.
Narrator/Ad Voice
I turned off news altogether.
Josh Clark
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
Chuck Bryant
It's the rage bait.
Narrator/Ad Voice
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
Josh Clark
We got clear facts.
Dave
Maybe we could calm down a little.
Glenn Washington
NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News. Reporting for America, I'm Glenn Washington, host
Chuck Bryant
of the Snap Judgment storytelling podcast from kqed. Every week, Snap deals a new card. Like the San Francisco girl selling weed brownies after school who uncovers a secret. Or the Oakland man who invented the wave and never got his credit. Or even the actual Lake Merritt monster. What? Pick a card, any card. Snap Judgment with kqed. New episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podc.
Josh Clark
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying.
Chuck Bryant
No judgments.
Josh Clark
But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
Narrator/Ad Voice
of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate, first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Dave
Hey, and welcome to the last ad before the episode. I'm sorry, it's just that the first three shows of our Canadian summer tour are right around the corner and we want to make sure everyone knows about them. We'll be in Montreal and Ottawa for the first time ever on June 25th and 26th. That's next Thursday and Friday. And we're coming back to our beloved Toronto on Saturday, June 27. You can go to stuffyou should know.com for tickets and info, and if you are able to make it, we'd love to see you. Now, here's the episode for real.
Narrator/Ad Voice
Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.
Dave
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And it's just two of us today. That's all right. Jerry is a very busy person with lots on her plate. We understand that fully. That's right. It's still stuff you should know.
Josh Clark
That's right. It is still stuff you should know. And today we are talking about cable news possibly ruining our country.
Dave
I don't know that there's Much possibly about us.
Interjecting Listener/Guest
Yeah.
Josh Clark
You know, I never really thought about it. I mean, I think about our country being ruined a lot.
Dave
Yeah.
Josh Clark
But I. You know, I never really thought a lot about, like, what was the initial cause of stuff. But it's hard to not make an argument that cable news has been, like, 24 hour, 247 cable news coverage is what we're talking about.
Dave
Yeah.
Josh Clark
That didn't make a real dent in things.
Dave
Yeah, for sure. And, like, there's study after study that just shows all the negative effects it has, like, on, like, a collective scale, on an individual scale. Like, it's just not good stuff. I looked all over. You can't really find any positive, like, studies on it. They're like, yeah, it's really good for this. I mean, I guess it does make you feel alive to some degree, but I think that's also kind of like trying to find the good in menthol cigarettes by saying they, like, make your throat feel icy when you're smoking them.
Josh Clark
Yeah. And, you know, I think if we're gonna talk about this, a good place to start is sort of a brief little look at the old days before cable news was, you know, when you and I were growing up, there were big. The big three. Cbs, NBC, and ABC News or, you know, the networks. And they had news shows that came on at, you know, in the evening, and then it was like 6 or 6:30 and then 11. And that's where people got their national news. And it was reported on in a way where they just sort of said, here's what's going on in the world. Here are the facts of what's happening. And we all had a shared reality of what was going on, and you could kind of make up your own mind about it.
Dave
Yeah. Shared reality is a great way to put it. And there has been lots of study about the importance of that, too. Right. So, like, even if the people who are watching the news didn't agree with other people who are watching the news about, you know, what the solution was to this problem, they were still thinking and looking at the same problem. Right, Right. That shared reality was a set of facts that everyone agreed, like, this is what's going on. This is the problems our country's facing. And then you have, like, an argument in the marketplace of ideas about, you know, what's the best solution and the best way to move forward. Right.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
And when you have that kind of thing people have, it was called a sort of social, cultural and political glue.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
That just kind of brought people together and very importantly, gave people a sense of a shared national identity. Like, like people were all Americans. Right. Everybody living in the United States. We're all Americans, even though we don't always agree with, we don't hate each other for being different necessarily. We are all, at the end of the day, Americans.
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. And at the center of that glue. Well, or maybe it was the glue, I guess, was that shared reality of, hey, we're all agreeing on at least the basic facts of what's going on. We did an entire episode on the Fairness Doctrine. It was released appropriately on July 4, 2019. So if you want to go listen in depth about the Fairness Doctrine, you can. But just sort of a quick overview for this purpose though, is the FCC here in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission was created in the early 1930s, and their mandate was to, quote, encourage the larger and more effective use of radio in the public interest. And, you know, radio was their jam early on, obviously before television. And the Fairness Doctrine was conceived in the radio days in the 1930s and 40s, because there were a bunch of one sided political editorials on the radio at the time. So they said, hey, after World War II passed, let's get together and at least decide on a set of rules that all radio and eventually TV stations need to adhere to.
Dave
Yeah. And a lot of it had to do with the duty that broadcasters had to serve the public good. That was the point of getting a broadcast license. Right, Getting. Yeah, you made money selling ads and stuff like that. But ultimately what the government wanted you to do was to basically serve the public. And the way that you did that was you devoted airtime to objective, nonpartisan coverage of all issues. Right. You had to be fair. You had to give other people who had a different point of view a chance to get their coverage as well. If somebody in particular was criticized, like by the, the station itself, by the newscast, so it's an editorial, that person should have ample opportunity to respond. And then this also was part of our presidential debates episode.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
Part of the Fairness Doctrine was if you were a political candidate, you got equal time to every other political candidate. Like all political candidates had to get exactly the same amount of airtime, but over the course of the race.
Josh Clark
Yeah. So that was the Fairness Doctrine. It worked really well for a long time. And then as we detailed in the episode in 1980, Ronald Reagan came around and said, let me quote Josh Clark of the future, nuts to that. And so he said, yeah, let's open it up to competition. If you're A broadcaster, you should be able to compete in the marketplace for viewers and just let the chips fall where they may. And so in 1987, the FCC stopped enforcing the Fairness Doctrine. And almost immediately, radio was the first place where we saw the big change. Talk radio, especially on the AM dial, exploded, I think over a 35 year period between 1960 and 1995. They went from two talk radio stations in the United States, as in one, followed by two, to more than 1,100. And most of those, I think about 70% of those radio stations were conservative. It just exploded in conservative talk radio with people like the king of that whole movement, Rush Limbaugh.
Dave
Yeah. So they stopped enforcing in 1987. He went on the air for the first time in 1988. And in about six years he had a three hour show every day that was broadcast live across the nation in 650 stations. And there are 20 million people who tuned into it. Ditto heads he called them. And this was like he was the first person to introduce the United States to the concept of just bashing the other party. Yeah, he was the guy that, that just laid the groundwork for this. And as a result, he kind of, because he was so popular and because it was so entertaining, if you shared his political views, he basically brought the GOP to heel like he was, he was the head of the GOP de facto. So much so that when the GOP took over in 1994, took over Congress, they, I saw, made him an honorary member of that Congress because he was considered so responsible for getting all of those Republicans elected.
Josh Clark
Wow, I didn't know that was a thing.
Dave
I didn't either. I think they actually made it up for him.
Josh Clark
Oh, all right. Honorary Congressmember, pretty much. So, yeah, that was a, you know, TV took notice. And later, as we'll see, you know, we'll get to Fox News in a little bit after we talk about the first one, cnn. But later Fox News would say, like, hey, here's a model of, you know, kind of political commentary as entertainment that we can emulate. And like, people love this guy. He's got 20 million listeners every day. And like, imagine the kind of cash we can make if we brought that model to television. But first with cnn, you know, we just lost one of my childhood heroes growing up, Ted Turner, very recently, he passed away like less than two weeks ago as we record this in real time. But Ted was the founder of CNN, the very first 24 hour cable news channel. And that came around in 1980 after he had made a bunch of money inheriting and then running his father's billboard advertising business. And he was like, you know what? I think we could use a 24 hour news cable channel. And his literal quote was to bring together in brotherhood, in kindness and friendship and in peace the people of this nation and this world. That was his vision.
Dave
Ted Turner was the real deal as far as founding cnn. And this was brand new. Like, like you said, people tuned in at 6:30 and 11pm and that's where you got your news. Now you could tune to CNN and watch news 24 hours a day. No one had ever done anything like that, ever. And it took a little while to catch on because people were like, it's not a lot to watch, or I'm watching the same stuff over and over again. These people seem to be trying really hard. And then the Challenger space shuttle exploded in 1986. And that is when CNN showed why it was around.
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. And can I just have a quick aside about Ted Turner?
Dave
Oh, sure.
Josh Clark
Because if he grew up in Atlanta in the 1970s and 80s, he was, you know, a good chance he might have been your hero. Like he was mine. Because not only did he launch cnn, but more importantly to a kid like me, he was the owner at one point of both the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks. And he launched the SuperStation WTBS, which was a. You know, that's where I learned about what comedy was by watching stuff like the Carol Burnett show and old black and white stuff like Gilligan's island and Andy Griffith and Green Acres. And he was just this larger than life guy. He won an America's cup, his philanthropy. He gave a billion dollars in 1997, which was unheard of at the time, for somebody to give that amount of money to the UN to support humanitarian aid and global health and the empowerment of women in developing countries. He saved the American bison. He's just an amazing dude. And I was at a Willie Nelson concert at an outdoor venue at Chastain park in Atlanta in the 90s, and Ted came in a little late and it was like you would have thought the ghost of Elvis had walked in. Like there was a murmur, like an audible murmur in the crowd. And people like pointing to the point where Willie Nelson was like, what's going on? When he was singing and he finished the song and he just went, oh, Ted's here. And it was great. It was just like he basically was Atlanta. He owned that town in the 70s and 80s. So very sad when he passed. So I Just wanted to give a little quick tribute.
Dave
Yeah, and that's fitting too because like his, that journalistic vision of like bringing everyone together through, you know, global coverage of all the issues facing us like that. Like, he was a true believer in that. It wasn't like a cynical thing where he's like, I'm really just trying to get a license to print money. I even saw Fox News article or profile on him that they ran recently after he died and they were even speaking about him like respectfully as far as his journalistic integrity goes. So he really did. When he founded cnn, it really was like for, for good reason.
Josh Clark
Yeah. So it was, you know, 24, 7 news. No one had ever seen anything like that. That was the first like reporting of news in progress when something broke. It was the first time that they had the news ticker at the bottom of a screen. People liked cnn. It wasn't like it was some huge mad success right off the bat. But then when things started happening in real time in the 80s, like the space shuttle Challenger disaster, obviously, the Berlin Wall falling when little baby Jessica was rescued in 1987, and then like hugely impactful when the Gulf War started, CNN was there for all of that stuff, like second by second reporting. And no one had ever seen stuff like that before.
Dave
No, like, and they were highly criticized for some of their reporting. They were allowed to stay in Iraq and they in some ways became a propaganda arm for Saddam Hussein accidentally. But they still like showed what you were supposed to do covering a war. And also CNN was largely responsible for making the Gulf War the first live televised war in history because they covered it that much.
Josh Clark
Yeah, I remember sitting around watching it with my roommates in college, like just coming home from after class and like putting the war on.
Dave
Yep.
Josh Clark
It was really weird.
Dave
And it was always on because CNN was always on covering it.
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. And you know, we should also point out that there would be a,
Glenn Washington
a
Josh Clark
change at CNN after Turner and we'll get to that. But if you're, if you're on the right side politically and you hate cnn, that was not Ted Turner's vision to start a left leaning media outlet. That was not what he was trying to do at all. So I hope those words kind of come through here.
Dave
Sure, sure. So there was kind of out of the gate an issue that CNN faced which was if you're covering news like, yeah, news happens pretty frequently, but 24 hours of coverage can be overdoing it. So rather than just saying the same reporting over and over and over, Again, they brought in people, analysts to talk about, to kind of unpack what that news meant, maybe make predictions about how news was going to break, like, which way is Congress going to vote? You know, is the President going to veto this? And that became like an established part of 24 hour news. And from that moment that those people started to come in, talking heads, pundits, that laid the groundwork for opinion. Opinion based journalism.
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. It was, you know, after the Gulf war in the mid-90s is when things really started to change and started to lead to our current kind of sad state of affairs with the news cycle. And one of those things I kind of hinted at was when ted Turner left CNN. Time Warner bought out CNN in 1996. And they were the ones responsible for saying, like, hey, I think if we get a little more divisive here and we lean left of center, we can get more ad revenue. And I mean, that's kind of the sad thing about all this stuff. We're gonna talk about moving forward. It was all money driven, you know.
Dave
Right. Yes.
Josh Clark
It was all for, and still is for advertising dollars. And at the time, you had two really great political foils in Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich on the screen, who. Two very much on the opposite sides of the spectrum. Guys who. Clinton was a good villain for Republicans and then later liberals as we would learn more stuff about him.
Dave
Right.
Josh Clark
And Gingrich was on the other side, man. Just. He really is the guy, like entrenched in politics that ushered in that real good versus evil thing.
Dave
Yeah. As in the Democrats are evil, we're good. It's up to us to save America. Before that, the existential threats to the United States were external, namely the ussr. After Gingrich, like Rose and took power of the gop, the threat was domestic. It was the Democrats that were the threat to America as far as the GOP was concerned. That was new. Yeah, that was new. And that was the beginning of the end of bipartisanship. Whereas now today, if you defect and vote against your own party, you're a traitor to your party. You know, not that you're doing what your constituents think you should do, or voting by your conscience, you're a traitor. That's new. And that's basically where it began.
Josh Clark
Yeah, I mean, I remember being a kid and I wasn't involved in politics when I was younger, like very into that kind of thing. But I remember hearing the adults during election season, not my parents. Cause they never talked about any of that stuff, but just other people like you know, I'm gonna see which one of these men speaks to me the most, and I'm gonna make up my mind on who I think is gonna be the best leader. And it's just like. I mean, I know they're technically are probably independents today, but it's hard to imagine just that being a thing today at all. You know,
Dave
I'm sure for people who didn't grow up in times where that was possible, it's very hard to imagine.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
Another thing that happened in the 90s, like we talked about, Rush Limbaugh was enormous. Fox News was another huge thing that happened when it was founded in 1996. And we'll talk about that afterward. And then I have a pet theory. Chuck, what did you think about this?
Josh Clark
I had a feeling this was you.
Dave
Yeah. What do you think?
Chuck Bryant
Sure. I agree.
Dave
My theory is that the Real world premiered in 1992. And you might say, what does that have to do with anything? Well, it exposed people to reality television, which is not real, but this idea that you can just be horrible to other people, and that's like an acceptable way to be. The groundwork for that was laid around then.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
So you put all those things together. The mid-90s were a really bad beginning. The seed, the evil dark seed that rotted the core and heart of America out. That started in the mid-90s.
Josh Clark
That's right. It sounds like a great time for a break because you mentioned something happening in 1996, and we'll talk about that right after this.
Chuck Bryant
Foreign.
Narrator/Ad Voice
Let's talk about modern home shopping. It's sort of become a fun side hobby. Right. Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens you've never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in. All from the comfort of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like you want to own but are stuck in this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin f flips the script. With listings that update within minutes and tours you can book right from the Redfin app, you can see your dream home the moment it appears. Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it, that's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2200 agents with local expertise, and Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win. Not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com I turned off news altogether.
Josh Clark
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
Chuck Bryant
It's the rage bait.
Narrator/Ad Voice
It feels like it's trying to divide me.
Josh Clark
People, we got clear facts.
Dave
Maybe we can calm down a little.
Glenn Washington
NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America, Anglin Washington,
Chuck Bryant
host of Snap Judgment, the award winning storytelling podcast from kqed. Every week, Snap deals a new card. Like the girl whose sister was a monkey, the man who lived in the woods for 30 years, or the woman who snuck her lover out of prison in a dog crate. Pick a card, any card. Snap Judgment from kqed. New episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcast.
Josh Clark
All right, so before we broke, you mentioned Fox News debuting in 1996. Just very quickly about Roger Ailes, who helped launch Fox News. He was a Republican political consultant for many, many years. He helped to get Reagan, Nixon, all the way back to Nixon, George H.W. bush elected. He understood that TV was a very powerful thing as far as shaping public opinion. By this point, he had met rush Limbaugh in 1991 and for a little while produced a TV version of Limbaugh's show in the early 90s. But it was in 1996 when an Aussie named Rupert Murdoch, who had previously given us the Simpsons with The Vox Broadcasting Company, which he launched in 1986, the Fox Company, he said, you know what? We need our own news station. Let's get Fox News on the airwaves. And Roger Ailes, you're going to be the guy to do it.
Dave
Yeah. He designed Fox News as we understand it today, basically right out of the gate. And one thing to understand about him being a political operative who worked on the Nixon campaign, that 68 Nixon campaign was where a guy named Kevin Phillips came up with what's called the Southern Strategy today, which was essentially the idea that politics is about who hates who, and then playing on those prejudices to get people to vote essentially about other people. It's where the culture war started. And Roger Ailes basically took that, the politics of who hates who, and put it on TV as a 24 hour cable news network.
Josh Clark
Yeah. And charged for it.
Dave
Yeah. That's another thing too, that we'll see. Like they, they have made tons and tons of cash, but they're in a really big turning point right now because of how they their business model.
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. So in the beginning, they had a claim, you know, Ailes and Murdoch, that it was going to be. Fox News is going to be an apolitical chann. Quote. We expect to do fine, balanced journalism. But behind the scenes, they were like, hey, we think that most mainstream news outlets have a liberal bias, so we're gonna come along and correct that with Fox News. And that fair and balanced motto that Fox News launched under Ailes was a. It was a literal troll to liberal critics. It was, you know, he knew it wasn't fair and balanced, and so that was his way of poking the bear. They, I think in 2017, when Ailes was fired in the very famous, or infamous, rather, sexual harassment scandal, that's when they got rid of the fair and balance tag for good.
Dave
Yeah. And Roger ailes and Bill O'Reilly.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
Among others. So Ailes was out, but he had been, you know, he had governed this thing for 20 years. And like, like, his. His vision is still. Still there today. Like, the way that he shaped it is still. Fox is essentially still the same thing as it was from 1996. It was. He perfected it right out of the box, essentially. And it really started to kind of gain traction pretty quickly after it came along, because Bill Clinton handed them a beautiful gift in, like, a robin's egg blue Tiffany's box with a beautiful bow on it, and that is called the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Interjecting Listener/Guest
Yeah.
Josh Clark
In that box was a cigar and a blue dress. Yeah, yeah, that was, you know. Yeah. There's no other way to look at it than a gift because they were able to run wild with that and they saw ratings jump by 400%. And we're like, wow, we can literally print money now. This is amazing. You know, not too far on the heels of that was the contested 2000 election, of which we had a complete episode.
Dave
Right.
Josh Clark
Of Bush v. Gore. And then not too long after that, 9, 11 and then the subsequent war in Iraq. So Fox News really got off to a strong start thanks to these sort of big media events.
Dave
Yes, for sure. And one other thing about the same stuff, too. The 2000 election, 9 11, the war in Iraq. Fox News was reporting this from the Republican viewpoint. All of these things, like, they were supporting George Bush. They weren't questioning whether we should invade Iraq. Like, this was the angle that it was coming from. And all the way back then, say, around 2000, like, they were the only ones just overtly producing slanted news. The other cable news and broadcast news were still trying to essentially carry out the Fairness Doctrine to the best of their ability.
Josh Clark
Yeah. So we should point that out. But Fox News really jumped ahead and was beating CNN in the ratings for the first time by 2002. I think they command about 70% of the cable news audience today.
Dave
Right.
Josh Clark
So they're kicking everyone's butt on that front.
Dave
Right.
Josh Clark
We need to talk about msnbc, which we'll get to the name change to Ms. Now later we'll refer to them as MSNBC in this section because it's about when they launched, which was a few months before fox news in 1996. I never knew that Ms. Was Microsoft.
Dave
I think I knew that.
Josh Clark
Yeah. It was launched as a partnership with Microsoft. So MSNBC was Microsoft, NBC. And they were trying to get like, you know, this was the beginning of the tech movement. They were trying to get young tech savvy audience members. They had like shows kind of tailored to that. There was one called the site S I T E with Soledad o'. Brien. It did not work out. And then after that they were like, all right, you know what we need to do this saturation coverage model that CNN launched that Fox News is crushing it. But they started out doing conservative news.
Dave
Yeah. They were trying to basically take Fox on where it was on its own territory.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
Very surprisingly, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson both started at msnbc.
Josh Clark
It's funny to think about now.
Dave
Right. And I think Tucker Carlson was the one who later convinced MSNBC executives to hire Rachel Maddow.
Interjecting Listener/Guest
Yeah.
Dave
The same year that Tucker Carlson was hired. So like MSNBC was this kind of petri dish for all sorts of TV on air newsy personalities that would become huge later on. And again, like you were saying it was because they were basically trying to take on Fox. And that's one thing to understand about MSNBC is the moment it pivoted from trying to be like the tech, the tech news channel to, you know, opinion news. It was essentially just completely agnostic. It was up for whoever was going to pay the most, which is why they tried to take on Fox, because it was clear Fox was making the most money. And then they found, well, actually if we present ourselves as the antidote to Fox, like the liberal Fox, then, you know, we can probably make even more money. And they did. And that's what happened.
Josh Clark
Yeah. And that's. They really hit it big. In 2006 when Keith Olbermann hit the airwaves, he had a show called Countdown. It was a primetime show. And on Countdown one week he did a rant that he called a special commentary where he was criticizing the Bush administration's handling, or mishandling rather of Hurricane Katrina and MSNBC even at that time were like, nah, man, that's a little much like, you need to tone that down. But then the ratings were going through the roof. People loved it. And so they're like, oh, okay, well, I guess that's the new way forward. And go, Keith Olbermann, go.
Dave
Yep, they unleashed the beast, and he just set the groundwork for everybody else. And that's exactly what they were doing during prime time. They had talking heads who hosted their own show that were just like, overtly dismissing other contrary opinions and talking about how dumb that was and, you know, really just trying to destabilize the opposing party's ideas. Right?
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
So they're, they're. I mean, their primetime ratings just went through the roof, apparently. I think it went up 60% from 2007 to 2008 when they started attacking the right. And also when Obama was like a candidate and then, you know, president, and it was this huge thing that apparently also boosted their ratings. And I saw that MSNBC traditionally has actually done better when they're promoting a Democrat who has, who's in charge of the White House or in charge of Congress than they are bashing the right. Fox tends to do the opposite. They do better when there's a Democrat in. In power and they, they bash them. They do better when they're out of power.
Josh Clark
Yeah, well, I mean, that's something we should talk about quickly, I guess. There was a paper in 2025 from a UC Boulder finance professor named Diego Garcia who analyzed, like, who what? Like what these networks are talking about, who they're talking about, and like, how are they talking about them. And they found, like, kind of supporting what you just said, that MSNBC spent the majority of their time, about 60% of their time talking about Republicans, Fox News about the same in reverse, talking about Democrats, and obviously both speaking very negatively about the others. And this also trickles down to CNBC and Bloomberg and then Fox Business on the right. And that outrage, like attacking the opposite side, that outraged viewership they found, really sold. That goes by a lot of names like rage, profiteering, or obviously just selling anger or anger tainment. I'm not a big fan of that one.
Dave
What about the anger industrial complex?
Josh Clark
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Dave
Sure.
Josh Clark
Yeah. But they found out it sells listeners, which in turn sells ads and makes money. So they really all sort of. Or those two, at the very least, double down on that. CNN is still. And this isn't just us opinionizing, if they're literal media watchdogs, that, you know, study and write these channels. And CNN of the big three cable news networks is ranked slightly left of center compared to more left on NBC and obviously way more right for Fox News.
Dave
Right. And then also bear in mind CNN typically has the lowest ratings of MSNBC and cnn. Right. Yeah, yeah. Because angertainment, sorry, sells like really well. And the reason why is because you get a physical like pop from being angry. Like it releases neurotransmitters that make you feel good and powerful and, and alive again. And then you start to come down and you want it again. So you go back, you stay tuned, you stay glued for more. And like you said, that's. This divide in America has just come from people who are targeting the brains of people just pressing that button over and over again to keep them on the same channel for money. That's it. That's it. That's all there is to it.
Josh Clark
Yeah. I was trying my best to find out any kind of study on or just statistics on how many hours a day loyal viewers of each of these channels like, has it on. And I could only just go from what I anecdotally see, which is I know people on the right that in their house, like have Fox News just on as. That's the background music. It's on all day long. When you're passing through the room, you can just pick up a tidbit here and there. Not necessarily just sitting literally and watching it, eyes glued forward the entire time, but it's just on. And I don't know anybody on the left that I know that has the TV literally constantly on their favorite cable news network.
Dave
It's interesting. I do. It's typically CNN that'll have, that'll be on all day rather than, oh, see,
Josh Clark
I don't know anyone that does that. That's good to know that that happens
Dave
because it definitely does.
Josh Clark
It seems just to me, it seems unhealthy and really out there to only have that on all day long.
Dave
It is.
Josh Clark
No matter what side you're on.
Dave
Deeply, deeply unhealthy. It's bad for the person, it's bad for society to have that on all day long.
Josh Clark
Yeah. In any channel or any television for sure.
Dave
Totally. Totally. So there was a study also that we found it was from 2025 and they looked at. It was in Nature magazine or Nature of the Journal. They looked at prime time shows from 2012 to 2022 on Fox, MSNBC and CNN to find out which were the most polarized. They found that over those 10 years, Fox had the largest number of highly polarizing shows. Sean Hannity, the O'Reilly Factor, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham. But CNN's Cuomo Prime Time and MSNBC's Deadline White House were the most polarizing shows across all three networks.
Josh Clark
Oh, interesting.
Dave
There's something else to unpack there too, Chuck. These are primetime shows. Yeah, that is a, that's new as well. That means that people like this is where these, these cable networks make like the, the bulk of their advertising revenue is prime time. That means that people left entertainment, they left cop shows, court shows, medical dramas, and moved over to news, cable news. That's what they watch in primetime. Now.
Josh Clark
That's just boring.
Dave
But it's not though. It's like, well, for me, like your buttons are just pressed over and over and over again, you know?
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. You know, one thing we do need to point out though, because these are primetime shows that like, it's changing the political landscape and how our country like thinks about our fellow citizens. So it's an important thing to address. Some of the stuff you see on Fox News is not based in truth. And that is not just my opinion. As somebody who's clearly on the left side of things, you need only look at something like the $800 million, like close to a billion dollar settlement to avoid a very public, highly anticipated trial where they were gonna have to trot up Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and put these people on the stand to talk about the literal lies they told about Dominion voting systems. So that trial was coming up and they're like, no, no, no, that would be really bad if we had to go up on the stand and admit under oath that we lied about all this stuff. So let's just settle for $800 million and never even fully admit wrongdoing.
Dave
Yeah. And I mean, it's not just that one, like the COVID up, the idea that there was a cover up over Benghazi conspiracy theories about the death of Seth Rich, the birther conspiracy theory, all these things reported on lie that Donald Trump had the 2020 election stolen from him. Like these things were reported, right? Not, not like, hey, this is what some people are saying. Like these were reported as fact. Right. And so this is the, this is that part of like the, the twisting or the separating of the shared reality that has like scholars concerned, just everyday people who know about this concerned. And like it's typically viewed from what I've seen as a false equivocation to say, well MSNBC does that too. Nobody does it like Fox does. They Just don't. That's just fact. But that's not to say it doesn't happen on other networks like msnbc. One really standout example is the Russiagate episode with Rachel Maddow, who was covering the, the Mueller investigation is basically like, here it comes. Any moment now they're going to show that Trump is this puppet that's being directed by the Kremlin and was really like so much so she got sued for $67 million for libel and she beat that. But you know, it was still, it had legs like she was really, really promoting this conspiracy theory. And yes, it was tied to Robert Mueller's actual investigation and that actually was happening. But the leaps and bounds and like intimations she was making just went well beyond any kind of journalistic standard. And then there's one other thing, Chuck too, that all three do and that is essentially filtering what makes it on there. Right? So like say CNN decides that they're not going to put some negative coverage of Barack Obama on and instead they're going to either just not cover that or they're going to COVID positive coverage of him. Right? That's filtering. You're filtering news to help promote like a favored candidate. And when you're doing opinion journalism, you have a favorite candidate, you have a candidate that you hate. And your point is to teach your viewers to, to love that candidate or hate that candidate. That's just, that arises from it naturally.
Josh Clark
Yeah. There was a study in 2023 where they paid Fox News viewers, like conservative people, they paid them to watch CNN for a month, for 30 days to see like what effect that had on their political views. And what they found was they were seeing news that Fox News didn't even cover. That's part of that filtering. They were like, oh, well, we didn't know this was happening because Fox News just literally wouldn't cover it. They filter out that stuff to fit a narrative. And I think after the month they had a slightly lower opinion of Donald Trump, these conservatives did, and a slightly higher opinion. And this was at the time in 2023 when mail in balloting was a big deal. A slightly higher opinion of mail in ballots. But then they also said in the follow up was like a short lived thing. Once they went back to Fox News, that stuff went away. But this is something I see a lot when I see a story or I'm like, well, here's a big factual thing that happened, that's a big black eye and I will go see. And a lot of times and this is online foxnews.com just literally just doesn't cover it.
Dave
Right.
Josh Clark
Like at all. It's just not there. Like it didn't happen. And if you're only getting your news from one source and you don't know that something is literally happening because it's not being covered, that's bad for democracy
Dave
for sure, you know? Yes. Yeah. Because you're. You just. Yeah. You can't hold somebody accountable if you're not actually reporting on the bad stuff too, you know?
Josh Clark
Should we take a break?
Dave
Yeah, let's take a break.
Josh Clark
All right. We'll be right back.
Narrator/Ad Voice
Let's talk about modern home shopping. It's sort of become a fun side hobby. Right. Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens you've never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in. All from the comfort of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like you want to own but are stuck in this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script. With listings that update within minutes and tours you can book right from the Redfin app, you can see your dream home the moment it appears. Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it, that's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2200 agents with local expertise. And Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win. Not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com I turned off news altogether.
Josh Clark
I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.
Chuck Bryant
It's the rage bait.
Narrator/Ad Voice
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
Josh Clark
We got clear facts.
Dave
Maybe we could calm down a little.
Glenn Washington
NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News. Reporting for America, I'm Glenn Washington, host
Chuck Bryant
of Snap Judgment, the award winning storytelling podcast from kqed. And every week, Snap deals a new card. Like jumping on Rihanna's private plane or the accidental bank robber or even the man who was swallowed by a hippo.
Interjecting Listener/Guest
What?
Chuck Bryant
Pick a card, any card. Snap Judgment from kqed. New episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcast.
Dave
So, Chuck, we talked about opinion media. I've been calling it opinion journalism and I think that's actually a contradiction in terms.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
So opinion media, like we said, it's just basically like putting somebody who's willing to say stuff about, you know, they're fairly knowledgeable about a particular topic and they're going to say something, and maybe it's even a controversial opinion. Like, that's opinion media. And it is so much cheaper than actual journalism, which is one reason why it's just such a huge, prominent part of primetime on cable news.
Josh Clark
Yeah. Cheaper meaning inexpensive. Not like a cheap shot just to clear that up. Like, real journalism takes a lot of time, which gets expensive. You have to conduct interviews and you have to research real data, and you have to fact check, and you have to cultivate your sources. If you just throw someone on who is like, hey, I'm mad about this thing, I'll go on TV and talk about it like, I'm a famous quote, unquote journalist, like, that's super cheap. All you have to do is kind of frame the bare bones of a story and then rant about it. And that negativity really sells. There was an analysis in 2011 where a researcher examined the primetime lineups of the two really big opposing sides, Fox News and MSNBC. And they were obviously ideologically opposed, but they were. Fox News was, as far as the tone and language they use, was 92% negative, 8% neutral, and 0% positive. On the other side, MSNBC was 90% negative, 5% neutral, and 5% positive. And it's that cultivation of anger that in fear that very sadly, that's what drives the loyalty in the viewership these days.
Dave
Exactly. Because again, anger is an addictive thing. And they know how to press those buttons. One of the ways they do press the buttons, too. This is groundbreaking as far as journalism goes. Dave helped us with this, and the way that he put it was they make you the viewer, the protagonist.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
So that means that this news that's happening, it's happening to you. The Democrats are doing this to you. They're trying to take money out of your pocket, or vice versa. You know, the GOP is trying to drive this country into fascism and authoritarianism.
Chuck Bryant
Like.
Dave
Like it's you that this is happening to. Your family's going to get, you know, taken by. In the middle of the night, by the jack boots or something like that, right? Yeah. So, like, that's new. And that cuts through, like, directly to the person. So if you're pressing someone's buttons to try to make them angry, talking to them directly and saying you are the victim, that will get things going pretty easily. That primes the old pump pretty well.
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that's One of the saddest things about all this is the fact that that negative content is what sells. And that's just the reality of kind of where we are. But that has fueled a partisan gap that is like we've not seen at any other time in our history. And there's always been partisan divides, but not like we have now. There was a Pew Research study on that partisan divide in 1994, and this was before Fox News and MSNBC launched, because I think they launched in 96 like we said, but fewer at the time. Fewer than 20% of either Republicans or Democrats view the opposing party as very unfavorable. By 2017, that number was 45%. So more than doubled. Also from that same study. In 1994, only 60% of Republicans identified themselves as, quote, more consistently conservative than the average Democrat. By 2017, that number had reached 95%. And on the Democrat side, 97% identified as more consistently liberal than the average Republican, up from 70% in 1994. So, you know, they're both, according to their mandates, they're both doing what they want to do very well.
Dave
Yeah. I also saw to update it a little bit. In 2022, 72% of GOP respondents said that Democrats were immoral. And 63% said that of Democrats said that Republicans were immoral. Yeah, that is a character like attack.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
Not like you have stupid ideas or you're gonna, you know, wait for the country. Yeah, you are a bad, bad person. Your morals are compromised. Maybe you don't even have any morals. That is a totally different level of attack. And we're talking about this American calling that American that because they believe something different politically. And all of this again is being fostered, supported and stoked by the 24 hour cable news that different sides watch all the time.
Josh Clark
Yeah, it's not, I mean, I kind of thought before we looked into this stuff and the actual data that like online, you know, Cause things are so siloed online as far as the echo chamber goes, if you get your news from the Internet or social media especially. But there was a study from University of Pennsylvania that found that cable TV news is way more divisive. Only 4% of Americans get their online news, so, you know, social media or whatever online from predominantly left or right leaning sources, compared to 17% of Americans that said they got 50% or more of their TV news from a very hard right or very hard left network.
Dave
Yeah. And half half watched Fox News, the other half watched MSNBC or cnn.
Josh Clark
Yep, right down the middle.
Dave
Yeah. I mean, one of the other things too is like Foxes gets criticized and criticized and yes, they were innovators, pioneers, they completely changed journalism and they do stuff that CNN and MSNBC don't do. But it just makes you wonder like how different would things be today if CNN and MSNBC had just stuck to good journalism and just let Fox do their own thing. The fact that they entrenched and dug in on the other side because they wanted advertising dollars too. And there's a whole untapped market out there of liberals and left leaning people that are, aren't being spoken to. If they had just kept their journalistic integrity, like what kind? Like, I don't think we would be in this mess today.
Josh Clark
Yeah, I mean, you don't watch this stuff, do you? I haven't turned on a cable news network in, I don't know, since the early 2000s maybe.
Dave
I've definitely watched it much more recent than that. But I mean, I think once I realized, and I think this is typically the case for people, like the point is to upset, you know, and make you mad. That's what they're trying to do. That's the whole thing. It's tough not to resent that and just be like, I'm not subjecting myself to this.
Josh Clark
Yeah. I think for me was when you could really source your news very specifically online is when, that's when I fully like made that switch.
Dave
Right. So cable news is actually doing pretty good right now. Even though cable as a whole is losing viewership. More and more people are cutting cords. I think like more people are getting their news and information online, even though it's still smaller relative to the number of people who get their news from cable news. It's like the proportions, the trends are shifting and one of the reasons why is because cable news viewers are literally dying off. Right?
Chuck Bryant
Yeah.
Dave
For the most part, the MEDIAN Ages of CNN, Fox and MSNBC viewers are 67, 68 and 71. Right.
Josh Clark
Yeah.
Dave
Those people aren't going to live forever. And as they start to pass away, there's not new people who are younger coming in behind them. That's not where younger people are going. First of all, they don't even have cable anymore. And secondly, if they do, they're not going to watch cable news necessarily. They're probably going to be online getting their news.
Josh Clark
Yeah, for sure. And you know, viewership is declining. Fox News is seeing, has seen the most dramatic decline. They're down 21% in total primetime viewership compared to the same weeks year over year. February to. Well, February to February 25 to 26. And then in 2025, that is when MSNBC late, I guess late last year is when they parted ways with their NBC News parent company. And that's when they relaunched as what is now Ms. Now, their viewership. Actually, it looks like that might have worked. They increased by 15% year over year for the same time frame. And CNN is the one that's really jumped up. They had saw a 46% year over year increase over that same period.
Dave
Yeah. And I think one reason why Fox is declining relative to Ms. Now in CNN is because there's NewsMax News Nation, One American News Network.
Josh Clark
Right. Three even further. Right. Outlets.
Dave
Yeah, right. They were like, you thought Fox was hard, right? Watch this. Fox suddenly seems centrist compared to those guys. So they're dragging a lot of people away from Fox News. I think that's a big problem for Fox.
Josh Clark
Yeah, they lost some of their stars, too. You know, when Tucker Carlson left and obviously before that, what was his face? Bill O'Reilly was. Yeah, those are big losses for that network, for sure.
Dave
And I think losing Roger Ailes, too probably was a big deal for it, too.
Josh Clark
Yeah, good point.
Dave
But also, their whole, their whole business model we were talking about earlier is in jeopardy because, like, they make money through advertisers. True. But their advertisers are from viewers. Right. And so if fewer people are buying cable, they have fewer viewers. They also make money from subscriptions. Right. So when you pay for your cable and you're like, I have to pay my cable bill to the cable company, you're actually not. You're paying the cable company a fraction of that. The rest is being divided up among all the cable channels who charge a fee to be included in this bundle. That's the wholesale business model. That's what cable news does. All cable channels do that. With cable dying, they're not going to be able to do that anymore. Now they're going to have to be like, actually, we want to charge you directly like Netflix or Hulu does to get Fox, we're going to be streaming online. Right. Or to get cnn. They're in the same jeopardy, too. And that means people who are going to be like, wait, I got Fox News for free before you didn't really, because it was part of cable you were paying for, but to you, it was free. And now Fox is asking you to pay, you know, 12 bucks a month or something like that to get it. Some people will do that, some people won't. So they're really kind of worried about that. And not just Fox again. MSNBC and CNN are facing the same crisis just apparently to a slightly lesser degree right now.
Josh Clark
Right. But the writing's on the wall for everybody and they're all trying to pivot a little bit to the more online model, even in little ways like CNN prioritizing vertical video podcast. You know, MSNBC has a lot of very popular podcasts. Rachel Maddow is at the center of their world, podcast wise. But those have found like big time audiences. So they're, you know, they know what's coming and they know that I think three quarters of the baby boomer generation are gonna be gone by the year 2037. And that's a big chunk of all these audiences for sure.
Dave
One last thing. Something occurred to me while I was researching this, Chuck, that there was a. There is a silver lining. There's a good thing to this huge partisan divide of one side versus the other that cable news has helped bring about. And that is that it is carved out a middle of people who are like, wow, Democrats and Republicans are terrible and they suck as both parties, which to me is open like a room for a viable third party to start to develop, maybe multiple third parties start to develop and actually get rid of like the two party system might have shot itself in the foot by going so full on tribal. That's my hope. That's. I'm hoping that at least that good comes out of this.
Josh Clark
Yeah, me too. Because none of it's any good for our country.
Dave
You know, it genuinely isn't. It genuinely isn't. And to our conservative Republican right on the right listeners, like, this is not an attack on you or your beliefs. And us throwing Rachel Maddow into the mix was not just bait for the right to you left leaning listeners, like, she really did overdo Russiagate. We tried to do this as fair and balanced as we possibly could. So please don't have taken it any other way.
Josh Clark
Yeah, we say flush all three down the toilet.
Dave
Exactly, Chuck. Exactly.
Josh Clark
Oh, man, what a. This is a fun episode. I enjoyed this one.
Dave
Well, I'm glad you did, Chuck. I think you just accidentally walked right into listener mail then.
Josh Clark
All right, I'm going to call this a follow up about the Hindenburg episode. Hey, guys, just finished listening to the Hindenburg. Great stuff. One thing that really got me laughing was the Ben Dover comments. Magically. I have an adult friend whose name is Ben Dover. As you can imagine, he's a great guy. As I think anyone with names like that could be teased or made fun of turn out to be amazing people usually so shout out to all the bend overs out there in the world, including my friend, nice longtime listener and I work as a wildlife biologist and the first time I was introduced to your show was during a long drive to get a California condor sick with lead poisoning from Northern California back to the San Diego Zoo to keep habituating the bird. We drove many hours with the bird in a crate in the back of the SUV in absolute silence. And to pass time, my co worker and I shared one side of corded earbuds and alternated between our favorite podcasts. This is long before smartphones are an everyday occurrence and people could listen to whatever whenever. I'm now a mom and still find ourselves on long drives because we live in a pretty remote place. My family also listens to listens and loves a podcast because it's informational, interesting and kid friendly and we hope to make it to a live show the next time you're close by. Thanks for all you do and keeping us company over so many years and so many miles. That is from Katie.
Dave
Thanks a lot Katie. That was. Is it Katie or KT Katie? Okay, thank you Katie. That was a very cute little sketch that you made for us there. I can just imagine you and your co worker each with the earbud.
Josh Clark
I love that.
Dave
If you want to be like Katie and get in touch with us with a cute little anecdote, we love those. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com
Narrator/Ad Voice
Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Josh Clark
Paramount is now the home of all your BET favorites.
Dave
What?
Josh Clark
Yes, with all new episodes of Tyler Perry's Divorce.
Dave
Sisters you've always liked a little drama,
Josh Clark
plus a whole new world of movies like Gladiator 2.
Chuck Bryant
Now I will control an Empire Original
Josh Clark
series like the Shy.
Chuck Bryant
Just make sure we protect each other
Josh Clark
in live sports like ufc.
Chuck Bryant
Welcome to the history books.
Josh Clark
New home, same family. Your BET favorites are now on Paramount Plus. Subscribe now.
Dave
I'm U.S. transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. We all get distracted when we drive, but how we handle these distractions can be a matter of life or death. Please put your phones on silent and take a mental note to focus on driving. Paid for by nhtsa.
Interjecting Listener/Guest
This episode is brought to you by Bobcat. They started the compact equipment industry through grit, determination and a whole lot of think we can't do that. Watch us. They set standards, broke records, empowered people to build bigger and higher, to dig deeper, to make the impossible possible. We've all been there with doubters, telling us what we can't do. Who cares what they think? We don't need their permission. We're forgiveness. We just get things done. So go ahead and doubt me. Judge me. Challenge me. But when the time comes, watch me. Bobcat.
Josh Clark
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Date: June 16, 2026
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
In this thought-provoking episode, Josh and Chuck dissect the history, evolution, and impact of 24-hour cable news on American political and cultural life. Tracing the line from a shared national reality in the days of network news to today’s fractured, outrage-driven media landscape, the hosts tackle the question: Did 24-hour cable news ruin America? Their discussion spans the end of the Fairness Doctrine, the rise of talk radio, and the birth of CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC, analyzing how these networks became powerful engines of polarization and anger. The episode highlights key events and studies that reveal how cable news shaped, and arguably damaged, the nation’s trust, unity, and political discourse.
The conversation is casual yet well-researched, containing a mix of personal anecdotes, data-driven discussion, and wry humor. Josh and Chuck maintain an accessible tone, regularly pausing to explain concepts, poke fun at themselves, and make the topic engaging for listeners across the political spectrum.
Through deep historical context, lively banter, and thoughtful analysis, the hosts suggest that although cable news did not singlehandedly “kill” America, it played an outsized role in damaging civic trust and shared reality. The pursuit of ratings and profit fueled the rise of angry, divisive media, making American politics and culture more polarized than ever. The episode closes with a cautious hope – that these divides may one day lead to a reimagined political future, if Americans reject the cycle of outrage.
For More: