Very few people watch cable news but the people who do watch it are political professionals who set the political agenda for the country. As Matt Yglesias points out:
The three networks combined have an aggregate daytime audience of roughly zero. But even though the audience, looked at nationally, amounts to rounding error the networks are hugely popular among the tiny number of people who work in professional politics. Just like traders have CNBC and Bloomberg on in their offices, political operatives are constantly tuned in to what’s happening on cable news. The result is a really bizarre hothouse scenario in which people are basically watching . . . well . . . nothing, but they’re riveted to it. How things “play” on cable news is considered fairly important even though no persuadable voters are watching it. And cable news’ hyper-agitated style starts to infect everyone’s frame of mind, making it extremely difficult for everyone to forget that the networks have huge incentives to massively and systematically overstate the significance of everything that happens.
It is no wonder people are turned off by politics. Much of what goes on is trivial but you’ve got the likes of Wolf Blitzer and Bill O’Reilly shouting and carrying on like its the end of the world.
The fact is, most people don’t care and don’t watch. After all, you can watch crazy people shouting at each other for free on any street corner in a U.S. city.
But it is not good in a democracy if most of the public finds politics a meaningless display of phony outrage.
