Brit Hume v. reality on Fox's audience

Brit Hume, the Washington managing editor of Fox News, makes up a "fact" to fit a narrative he wants to promote:

All of a sudden, the once-frosty relationship between Fox News and the Democratic candidates seems to have grown warmer. Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama, who steadfastly refused to attend Fox-sponsored debates last year, are now giving plenty of interviews as they court Fox’s viewers, who are largely white, conservative and undecided.

“It’s probably true that we appeal to white working-class voters,” said Brit Hume, the network’s Washington managing editor and the host of “Special Report.” “The candidates are going where the voters are.”

In fact, however, Fox's audience is far more affluent than the working class:

The regular cable news viewer can be personified as a married, middle-aged man who has at least 14 years of education. He earns well, with a median income of $62,000, and tends to live in the suburbs. He has a high degree of hard-news consumption, and that links to his moderately high knowledge of current affairs. He is fairly adaptive to technology (more likely than other news consumers to own a PDA, iPod or Tivo). Compared to viewers of other media, the cable news viewer earns more (local and network news viewers have a median income of $45,000) and is also much more adaptive to technology. He is also younger than viewers of network news (who are nearly 53 years of age). The average cable viewer is 47.5, and there are only marginal differences by channel.

...Fox News viewers are the oldest at 48.7 years, followed by CNN (47.1) and MSNBC (46.5). Of the three, the CNN viewers have the lowest median income, $45,000 a year. In contrast, both MSNBC and Fox News viewers make $62,000.

A median income of $62,000 with an older audience (which means lots of retired people) means the people watching Fox News aren't that working class.

Comments

[David]

Interesting observation that FoxNews viewers average so wealthy. I have seen similar figures for Rush Limbaugh. His audience has higher-then-average income and education. I suspect the same is true is of CNN and MSNBC. Afeter all, we're talking about people who prefer news to sitcoms or rock music.

Defending Hume, Fox viewers high median income doesn't negate the possibility that they may also have lots of working class viewers. For all we know, Fox may have a higher per cent of working class viewers than other cable news stations.

Also, Fox News has more total viewers than other cable news stations, so it's likely that they has a higher absolute number of working class viewers.

[MDP]

"Fox News appeals to working-class voters" doesn't = "most Fox News viewers are working class." Please carefully consider David's comment if you can't identify the logical fallacy in your post.

Assuming that Fox News has more working-class viewers than (or as many as) the other networks, Hume didn't "make up" anything.

[Brendan Nyhan]

MDP, I'm not claiming that I've disproved Hume's statement in the logical sense you suggest. But when Hume claims "[t]he candidates are going where the [working class] voters are," he's making a suggestion that isn't supported by the evidence. As the quote above indicates, his claim doesn't even seem to stand up in a relative sense against the other cable news channels -- CNN's median income is considerably lower.