“If you try to tell an aggressive right-winger that although they might be loud, their views are in the minority, one of the first things they usually bring up are the ratings for FOX News,”
He grants that Fox may have slightly better ratings that some other network, but gives some good context to the numbers.
The first is diffusion. If you have a right-slanted, paranoid, government and liberals are evil view of the world, pretty much the only place on tv you can find people saying things you like is on FOX. If your view is anything else (like most Americans) you can go many other places like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS or PBS. So really, if you wanted to find out what percentage of people prefer FOX’s slant, don’t compare FOX and MSNBC, compare FOX to everything else.
He also goes into the demographics of FOX viewers.
One quibble, MSNBC’s two left of center talking heads don’t provide anything near the kind of echo chamber that Fox News does. The simple fact is, from an infotainment perspective, that liberals enjoy critical thinking and actual debate, while conservatives enjoy being petted.