It's starkly interesting that the OP wants us to dissect a Pew study to which it offers no link, allowing only a cherrypicked graphic and plugging in its own narrative, so first off,
the actual study is here. You're welcome.
As a side note it's revealing that the one graphic the OP did post was sourced not from Pew but from
Breitbart, which indicates how deeply he dug, facetiousness intended.
Usually when a link is withheld it's a sign that such a link might reveal too much that might undermine the poster's agenda. Indeed, reading the narrative shows it's a study that reveals a story about the money side of TV news and the global (d)evolvution of cable "news" networks:
>>
Traditionally known for its attention to breaking news, daytime cable’s cuts in live event coverage and its growing reliance on interviews suggest it may be moving more toward the talk-oriented evening shows. This transition may cut the costs of having a crew and correspondent provide live event coverage. <<
This describes a general contemporary trend among all sources, and more interestingly describes the historical approach Fox News took when it came online in 1996; at that time it was CNN, the pioneer in the all-news cable format, that defined it. But news is an expensive venture, maintaining bureaus in different parts of the world, flying talent and camera crews around, post production and editing all that, etc. Roger Ailes brought a new and cheaper approach: instead of dealing with all that, have talking heads in a studio talk
about the news rather than take the trouble to report it -- giving birth to the O'Reillys and Hannitys et al that dominated the "prime" time slots and still does.
While that approach didn't help Fox as a news source, it did (and still does) help it as a
business (read: profits and ratings), and the CNN model was now relatively, disadvantaged (from, again, a business standpoint, not a journalism one), as CNN was still doing straight news while Fox's news theater was sucking their viewers away. At this point it was decision time: did CNN and the fledgling MSNBC want to go after news, or profit? (the two are mutually antagonistic). As we know by now, they chose the latter, and the Pew study tells us that trend is showing no sign of abatement:
>>
The format of daytime cable news has been transformed from 2007 to 2012. While MSNBC did see some uptick in live coverage during the day, the big decreases in that format at CNN and Fox leave daytime cable, once distinguished by its breaking news and non-ideological coverage, at least in structure, more like its opinion-driven evening counterpart.
The decrease in coverage of live breaking events has been accompanied by a big increase in interviews, which are now as prevalent in the day as in prime time. This shift means that a good deal of on-scene reporting has been replaced with interviews, which, although they may be live, are far less expensive to produce and do not require a correspondent or crew. <<
The study goes on to note Fox's daytime shift in the same direction:
-- in other words, the Fox model is getting even more Fox-model.
Not included in the scope of this study was the subtler ways an otherwise factual news story can be swayed into opinion, such as Fox running a fair and balanced segment on a presidential campaign while a screen crawl reads "WILL OBAMA DESTROY AMERICA?"; such as story selection tailored to meet certain audience-Pavlovian criteria ("new black panthers", ACORN, Van Jones, Jeremiah Wright, etc); such as
doctored graphics to make subliminal points; such as actual changing of facts by
graphically changing the party affiliation of a politician in scandal or running
misleading,
staged or
partisanly-edited video and even supplemented with
outright fabrication-- none of which can be quantified in such a study since they're behind the scenes, not officially part of the program, and can be dismissed if caught as a "mistake".
Not to mention, yet again, that the entire time the admittedly opinionated commentators are running, Fox is displaying the ID graphic "Fox
News" in the corner of the screen. That can't be quantified in a study either.
The Pew narrative strongly suggests that cable TV, facing (as newspapers do) increasing competition from what it terms "digital sources outside of television that provide that kind of information on demand" sees this Ailes approach as inevitable, if the goal is ratings (profit) rather than news reporting:
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The failure of CNN to solve its nagging prime-time issues has led some observers to assert that in the current cable climate, a channel that chooses not to be overtly liberal or conservative is doomed in the ratings battle. <<
And there lies the
actual thrust of the Pew study; the increasing commercial basis of what used to be news. We might call it a philosophy of "Ailes for what goods ya".
Funny how much forest there is to see when you stop glaring at a single tree. Especially one that a used news salesman like Breitbart just led you to at the outer fringe of the parking lot.
