'Selling anger': How cable news profits from outrage
It’s no secret that cable news networks have partisan reputations: Fox News on the right, MSNBC on the left and CNN somewhere in between. But new research shows the divide extends beyond which party a network appears to support. Over the past decade, these networks have increasingly focused on criticizing the opposing political party, a tactic researchers say is less about informing viewers and more about “selling anger.”
“These networks are more interested in talking about the opposing political party rather than their own candidates. This was not the case 15, 20 years ago,” said Diego Garcia, the Burridge Endowed Chair in Finance in the Leeds School of Business and co-author of the working paper.
Diego Garcia
Garcia and his co-authors—Ryan Lewis, associate professor of finance at Leeds, and Maximilian Rohrer, associate professor of finance at the Norwegian School of Economics—analyzed closed-caption data from six major cable news networks between 2012 and 2024, including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and Fox Business using a form of AI called natural language processing. They tracked which public figures were mentioned, matched those names to Wikipedia data to classify traits like political affiliation, race and gender, and assessed whether the coverage was positive or negative based on the 150 words surrounding each mention.
The findings show that politics dominates cable news, accounting for about 60% of all named individuals mentioned—rising to over 75% during election years. But more revealing is who gets talked about: MSNBC spends more time discussing Republicans than Democrats, while Fox News focuses more heavily on Democrats. In 2024, Fox covered Democrats 60% of the time, with MSNBC showing the reverse.
The trend holds for business channels too. Fox Business mirrors Fox News, with more frequent and more negative coverage of Democrats compared to Republicans, according to the researchers. CNBC and Bloomberg show more balanced and less political coverage overall.
While the study didn’t explore what’s driving the shifts in coverage, Garcia has a theory: “Social media has made it very easy for these media firms to experiment with what sells. And anger is very powerful,” he said. “It seems to work to increase engagement.”
Garcia speculates that cable networks began to test different kinds of content when social media became widespread in the mid-2010s, and discovered that outrage boosts viewership.
“I think Fox was the first one to figure this out, and they started pushing this negative rhetoric in their news,” he said. “They’re actually now the No. 1 cable news channel in the U.S. by far.”
Indeed, Fox News now commands over 60% of the cable news audience—a dramatic jump from a more evenly split landscape a decade ago.
Beyond politics: race, gender, and LGBTQ coverage
The researchers also examined coverage of other identity groups. Women made up just 17% of all people mentioned on cable news—far below their share of the population. Fox News mentioned women more than other networks but focused largely on female politicians (mostly Democrats). CNN gave slightly more attention to women who were not politicians, while MSNBC was more positive in tone toward female political figures.
Black Americans were mentioned in roughly 11% of daily coverage, closely mirroring their share of the U.S. population. But sentiment varied widely: MSNBC was the most positive, especially toward Black people who were not politicians. Fox News, on the other hand, showed significantly more negative sentiment, particularly during moments of racial tension, such as the George Floyd protests.
“LeBron James, Fox News really doesn’t like him at all,” Garcia noted. “If you look at a sentiment score on LeBron, it’s actually very negative on Fox.”
Coverage of LGBTQ individuals was sparse at under 2% overall. CNN and MSNBC offered more frequent and more positive mentions. Fox News provided the least coverage and displayed a consistently negative tone, particularly around issues like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.
Supreme Court justices were rarely mentioned—making up just 0.5% of all people named—but their coverage spiked during key rulings. Fox News significantly reduced coverage of the Court after it agreed to hear the case that eventually overturned Roe v. Wade. CNN and MSNBC, in contrast, increased coverage during that period.
“Fox News is very quiet about the Supreme Court, even though it was big news,” Garcia said.
Tuning out bias
Garcia, who describes himself as socially left-leaning and economically conservative, said the findings changed how he consumes media.
“I force myself to try to listen to different sources because of these very strong biases,” he said.
He believes political coverage should shift away from stoking outrage and emphasize fair coverage of real issues.
“We should be discussing immigration. We should be discussing climate change,” he said. “Not conspiracy theories and trash talk.”
His advice for viewers: Don’t rely solely on your favorite cable station for your news. “If you just go to the source that caters to your confirmation bias, there’s going to be very negative news about the opposing party,” Garcia said. “That’s the business model right now.”