Fox News Channel is considered to be more ideological than other TV news networks, according to the latest Pew Research Center weekly News Interest Index.
According to its survey of 1,000 adults 18-plus, 47% think of Fox News as "mostly conservative," compared to 14% who say it is mostly liberal, and 24% who say it is not particularly one or the other.
CNN topped the "mostly liberal" list with 37%, compared to 27% of respondents saying it was neither, and 11% who feld it was mostly conservative.
MSNBC was close behind, viewed by 36% of respondents as liberal vs. 27% who said it was neither and 11% who believe it to be mostly conservative, though given the 3.5% margin of error, only Fox's numbers exceed the margin in terms of ranking.
Among the broadcast networks, NBC was viewed as the most liberal with a 36% score vs. 36% neither and 11% mostly conservative, followed by ABC (32% liberal, 36% neither, 14% conservative, and CBS ( 31% liberal, 37% neither, 14% conservative).
Respondents were split on whether or not it was a good thing for the hosts of cable news shows to have strong political opinions (41% pro, 41% con), with that split holding up pretty much across regular viewers of all but Fox News.Relative to that network, 51% said it was a good thing and 36% said it was a bad thing, though the margin of error could close most of that gap with other nets (CNN, for example was 46% pro, 42% con).
Results for the weekly Pew surveys are based on landline telephone interviews among a nationwide sample of approximately 1,000 adults, 18 years of age or older, conducted under the direction of ORC (Opinion Research Corporation). "For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points," according to Pew.
