Fox News now number one in actual news as well as ratings
Back when Fox News' lead in the ratings still seemed like an interesting story, I opined that Fox was still trailing CNN in terms of the "actual news" so many civic-minded Americans claim to want, that CNN was still doing more actual newsgathering, foreign correspondence, reporting of facts, etc., while Fox's murderers' row of star fulminators succeeded mostly in adding gas to the news environment. The reverse now appears to be the case. Today, in an unsuccessful effort to remain off the world wide web, I tried getting all my Lebanon news off the TV. CNN, with its two channels, is showing both a retrospective about terrible air crashes and Nancy Grace kvetching about a terrible crime. Fox's Heartland with John Kasich, meanwhile, has done half an hour on Lebanon, with an on-camera correspondent in Israel and an off-camera correspondent in Lebanon. Comic relief MSNBC is showing an MSNBC Investigates episode about some crime of yore. I make no claims that any of these reports made me any smarter or better informed, nor do I judge whether the terrible crimes of individuals are more or less worthy of attention than the terrible crimes of nations. But it is (or seems to me) a striking reversal.