According to the TV News Archive, the Green New Deal has been mentioned 3,403 times on cable news this year. Here’s a breakdown of the major cable news outlets:
That’s 1,384 for Fox and Fox Business vs. 582 for MSNBC and CNN. The Fox empire has talked about the GND more than twice as much as the other two outlets combined. This is why 71 percent of Republicans say they’ve heard a lot about the GND while only 37 percent of Democrats say the same. David Roberts tells us what this means:
We know what Republicans have been told about the GND — “It bans cows!” — so it’s no surprise to find that differential level of exposure reflected in the support numbers: 80 percent of Republicans strongly oppose the GND, while just 46 percent of Dems strongly support it….For Fox viewers, the GND is a disaster (“ridiculous!” “stupid!” “destroy!” “costly!”) that gets rid of some things and bans other things….There is no parallel left-wing media machine to swing around in support of the person or policy.
In fairness, it’s a lot easier to mobilize public opinion against something than for it, especially when it’s frankly unclear what being “for” the Green New Deal even means. This is one of the downsides of making the GND a set of aspirational goals with all the meat left to be filled in later. Supporters aren’t sure exactly what they’re being asked to support, which naturally causes them to hold back a little. The haters, by contrast, only need to hear one or two things they hate, and that’s enough.
Of course, it also helps if you don’t care about telling the truth and are more concerned with raking in a few dollars now than you are with planetary suicide in a few decades. But we already knew that.
