Fox News Beats Cable and Broadcast Rivals As News Source Voters ‘Most Often Turn To’ – NYT/Sienna Poll

AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura

The latest New York Times/Siena poll found that Fox News was the single news source voters said they “turn to most often,” beating out CNN, MSNBC, and a host of other news sources in the December survey.

Fox News is often reported on by competitor networks and news outlets, usually as part of a controversy. But when it comes to which source for news American voters “most often” turn to, the New York Times/Siena poll shows the network out front and ahead of those rival outlets — and the paper itself.

Registered voters in the December 2023 poll were asked to select from a list the “single news source” that they “turn to most often,” and the conservative News Corp flagship garnered 13% of the selections.

By comparison, rival cable network CNN pulled 10%, and liberal MSNBC a mere 3% of the respondent preferences.

Public Radio, NPR, and PBS were grouped together in the result and grabbed 4%, while national print or online news such as The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal pulled 8%.

Interestingly, the responses selection a “National television networks” such as “CBS, NBC or ABC” came in together at 13%, the same as single source Fox News.

Perhaps even more interestingly, the greatest share of responses in aggregate were those selecting a social media app or outlet as the source they most often turn to, though the published result did not break that down by the app or the website.

But even if not able to best the generalized social media answer (which would incidentally no doubt cover tweets from the broadcast and cable networks, or their posts on other apps), Fox News coming in dramatically ahead of the other televised news outlets is a fairly dramatic result, given the level of pushback and scrutiny faced by the network.

See the full December 2023 survey results here.