The messenger overwhelming the message: The impact of ideological cues on information acquisition, counterarguing, and perceptions of media bias

Public opinion surveys have demonstrated that many Americans perceive ideological bias in television news. For many individuals, the two networks that epitomize this bias are Fox News Channel and CNN, the networks that many believe represent the conservative and liberal viewpoints, respectively. These perceptions persist despite the best efforts of those in the academic community, who have failed to uncover systematic evidence of the existence of ideological bias in the television news media. In this study, I argue that attaching the "CNN" and "Fox News Channel" labels to news stories essentially functions as an ideological signal, cueing viewers to the ideological tone of the coverage they are about to watch. In addition, I argue that these perceptions of ideological bias can have significant consequences for the ability of viewers to properly process the information presented on the news broadcast. An experimental design was utilized to investigate these questions, and the results provide support for my expectations: the "Fox News Channel" and "CNN" labels do appear to function as a signal regarding the ideological nature of the coverage, and this signal does significantly influence the ability of viewers to acquire and retain the information presented on the broadcast.