A Big Lesson About the Fox News Audience

Jonathan Last: “I would not blame Fox watchers for feeling used and disrespected by Fox. It’s clear that no one views Fox’s audience with greater contempt than the people who work at Fox. They believe that the people who watch their channel are foolish, irrational, and infantile. They believe that these people cannot grasp reality and that if they were confronted with reality, they would react with anger and petulance.”

“The people who run Fox believe that the people who watch Fox are dim, emotional, and unpatriotic bigots who must be coddled like particularly malevolent children.”

“And here’s the thing: Fox is right.”

“We know that they’re right because Fox’s audience hasn’t abandoned it even as the texts and emails from discovery piled up. Even as the network was forced to cough up one of the largest settlements in media history.”