A three-year-old post I know, but just to zero in on this mythology:
I think Americans are tired of the glaring bias and slant in the news and media and just want a more honest look at the news and current events, which is why Fox News dominated in the survey and poll.
Believe me, Americans (or citizens of anywhere else) are neither drawn to, nor seeking, anything resembling "honesty" in their television viewing. The medium is not honest and doesn't work that way at all. The simple fact that crap like fake wrestling even exists, let alone has a big audience, is all you need to see that.
Viewers are drawn to the shiny objects of emotional hooks of action, drama, fear and loathing, crisis, fire, flood, devastation, people trapped on an island, widespread panic, rioting, looting, bombing, shooting, arguing and just generally not having a good day. That's why we complain so much that the news is all bad -- because that's what we want; that's what
sells. And that's been well known since TV went on the air and even before ("if it bleeds it leads, a standard of TV news, came from the newspaper business; that's why television was already called a "vast wasteland" over 50 years ago. So broadcast ratings have nothing to do with "honesty", far from it. They represent
attention, and as anyone who's been on a message board knows, attention can be garnered without a whit of honesty.
As far as Fox Noise, when you make every story into a cryptic conspiracy theory, when you present angry old white guys pounding on tables with short-skirted bimbos by their side, when you dress up your entire studio in garish crayola colors with scene change graphics that go
whhoosh and a constant stream of chyrons running a continuous stream of new insidious fearmongering suggestions across the screen, you're not going for "honesty"; you're going for the same dumbed-down emotional gut already described above. Before Fox, Rupert Murdoch built his fortune on scandalmongering tabloid papers. He knows the psychology as well as anyone does.