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>> 73 3 Demands for Gratification Competing in the National News Economy You have to pound home a strong point of view. If you’re not . . . people won’t listen, or watch. —Bill O’Reilly, May 8, 2002 Currently the host of the number one cable news program in the United States, The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly is perhaps the poster child for having a strong point of view. He is a hero to many conservatives, but lambasted by many on the Left. O’Reilly’s career caricatures the recent history of the news industry—he started off as a broadcast journalist for local and national news outlets, and then became more tabloid-ish as the host of Inside Edition. In the mid-1990s he moved into more ideologically driven news with the emergence of the Fox News Channel. He has since had the highest ratings in cable news for more than a decade, and in addition had a brief but successful stint on talk radio. While trained as a journalist, O’Reilly is quick to admit that his popular cable show is not journalism in the traditional sense—instead he refers to most of his work as “analysis.” But whether we consider The O’Reilly Factor to be traditional news or something else, it is the 74 > 75 news programs, these networks have used their content most blatantly to chase after different portions of ideologically segmented audiences. Because of the nature of 24-hour news and the economics of cable, cable news providers are able to position themselves along an ideological continuum , having only to appeal to a segment of the broader audience. Not only do demands for ideologically gratifying news drive specific content on each channel, but the distribution of ideology in the public has driven the entire structure of the cable news market. Following this case study, the analysis returns to the nightly news data introduced in chapter 2 tracking issue coverage. However, instead of focusing on how the broadcast firms interact with demands for information over time, the analysis explores another opinion that firms may seek to gratify, partisanship. The analysis will show how broadcasters alter their substantive issue coverage over time to follow changing levels of partisanship in the mass public. With the two analyses, this chapter will not only demonstrate how news firms cater to audience demands for gratification, but it will also provide leverage on determining the reasons why news firms follow audience opinions in some instances. This chapter proceeds as follows: I begin by examining demands for gratification and why the audience prefers news that agrees with their predispositions. I then detail the development of the cable news market and argue that it has been driven by the ideological demands of audiences , rather than by the ideologies of the owners or journalists. Finally, I examine how the audience’s partisanship drives even the more traditional broadcast firms to alter their substantive issue coverage to gratify audiences. I conclude this chapter by discussing how journalistic independence is constrained by audiences’ demands for gratifying news, and how this in turn hurts news quality and audiences. Demands for Gratification In chapter 1, I argued that on one hand, traditional conceptions of journalism should drive journalists to ignore audience demands when choosing what stories to report. On the other hand, news firms have financial 76 > 77 claim it doesn’t matter anyway. This psychological resistance translates into preferences for news: people prefer news that supports their beliefs and avoid news that does not (Iyengar and Hahn 2009; Iyengar et al. 2008). Because general news content is inherently political, this chapter focuses on political belief systems, such as ideology and partisanship, and how those affect news content. These preferences create powerful incentives for news firms, and invariably lead them to alter their substantive news coverage in a way that deviates from what we would expect if traditional journalistic norms were followed (Endersby and Ognianova 1997). This takes place in one form or another, and in some degree, in all outlets, but it is most visibly the case in cable news. Since cable news providers do not compete on the price they charge consumers, they compete with each other by differentiating their programming; this gives audiences choices for best meeting their demands (e.g. Bae 1999). Generally, it is very difficult to show that news firms follow audience demands. Unlike veteran newsman Ted Koppell, whose concerns about news firms opened this book, news outlets rarely admit to...

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