Fox News Isn’t Helping Republicans

Jonathan Bernstein: “It’s not just that they have no financial or professional interest in the party winning elections. It’s that their incentives run the other way. In a familiar pattern, since Joe Biden became president, Fox News ratings are up and MSNBC ratings are down. Negative partisanship is crucial for media consumption; nothing gets partisans paying attention to political news more than strongly disliking the president and other elected officials.”

“And while I doubt that Sean Hannity (at Fox) or Rachel Maddow (at MSNBC) actively want their parties to lose, the fact that professional incentives call for just that cannot help but make a difference to what those networks do overall.”