Is Fox News Liberal or Conservative?

10 Key Takeaways (Quick Answers)

1. Is Fox News liberal or conservative? Conservative. Media-rating organizations consistently place Fox News on the right of the political spectrum: Ad Fontes categorizes the Fox News website as “Skews Right” while AllSides rates the outlet toward the right.

2. Is Cnn liberal or conservative? Left-leaning. In a May 2025 AllSides blind bias survey, Cnn was rated Lean Left (-2.37), with respondents across the political spectrum confirming this classification.

3. Are there Democrats on Fox News? Yes. Jessica Tarlov is an American political strategist for the Democratic Party who serves as a rotating co-host of The Five on Fox News. Juan Williams serves as a senior political analyst appearing across Fox News programming.

4. Who controls Fox News? In September 2025, Lachlan Murdoch secured control of Fox News, the New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal in a $3.3 billion deal as part of a renegotiated trust.

5. Has Fox News been proven to influence elections? A peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Public Economics found that Fox News shifted the ideology and partisan identity of Americans rightward, with an increase of 0.05 rating points in viewership boosting Republican vote shares by at least 0.5 percentage points.

6. How does Fox News compare to Cnn in bias ratings? In the same 2025 AllSides blind survey, Fox News was rated Right (4.35) while Cnn was rated Lean Left (-2.37). Fox News received a stronger ideological rating in its respective direction.

7. What percentage of Fox News viewers are Republican? According to Pew Research Center data, 67% of Fox News viewers identify as Republican or lean toward the Republican Party, compared to 21% who identify as Democrat or lean Democratic.

8. What is the median age of Fox News viewers? According to Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey, Fox News has a median audience age of 55, while Cnn has a median audience age of 50.

9. Does Fox News admit to being conservative? Not exactly. Fox News distinguishes between its news reporting (which it claims is neutral) and its opinion programming (which features openly conservative hosts). John Malone, a major Warner Bros. Discovery shareholder, noted that Fox News hosts like “Sean Hannity openly admits he’s very biased” and that opinion hosts “don’t try to be overwhelmingly factual — they try to be controversial and funny.”

10. Is Cnn more right or left wing? Left-leaning. Cnn is classified as Left-Center bias by Media Bias/Fact Check, and Biasly’s A.I. bias score rates Cnn as “Very Left” while its analyst score rates Cnn as “Somewhat Left.”

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Fox News Is Conservative — and Multiple Independent Organizations Agree

Let’s start with the hard data from organizations whose entire purpose is measuring media bias. These aren’t partisan advocacy groups — they use blind surveys, content analysis, and academic methodologies:

🔬 Bias Rating Organization	Fox News Rating	Cnn Rating	Methodology
AllSides (2025 blind survey)	Right (4.35)	Lean Left (-2.37)	876 people across the political spectrum rated content blindly, without knowing the source
Media Bias/Fact Check	Right-biased, Questionable, Low factual rating for opinion content	Left-Center bias	Editorial analysis, fact-check tracking, source evaluation
Ad Fontes Media	Skews Right (website)	Skews Left	Media analysts rate individual articles and shows
Biasly (A.I. analysis)	Right / Conservative	Very Left (A.I. score), Somewhat Left (analyst score)	A.I. language analysis combined with human review

What’s critically important about the AllSides survey: Respondents in all bias categories — Left, Lean Left, Center, Lean Right, and Right — rated Fox News as “Right” on average. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans all rated it Right. This is remarkably consistent. Even conservative-identifying respondents agreed Fox leans right.

For Cnn, the results were slightly less uniform: respondents who rated their own bias as Left, Lean Left, Center, or Right rated Cnn Lean Left, while respondents who rated their own bias Lean Right rated it Left.

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The Academic Studies That Measured Fox News’ Political Impact Are Striking

This isn’t just media critics complaining. Peer-reviewed, published academic research from major universities has specifically measured Fox News’ effect on American politics:

📚 Study	Institution	Key Finding
DellaVigna & Kaplan (2007)	UC Berkeley / NBER	Towns receiving Fox News between 1996 and 2000 experienced a 0.4-0.7 percentage-point increase in Republican presidential vote share
2024 Journal of Public Economics study	Multiple universities	Fox News shifted ideology and partisan identity of Americans rightward, helping Republican candidates across government levels from 2000-2020
Pnas “Measuring Dynamic Media Bias” study	University of Pennsylvania / Columbia	Programs on Fox News are on average more conservative than programs on Cnn and Msnbc, with Fox News having a weighted ideology score of 49.8 compared to Cnn’s -9.7 and Msnbc’s -14.1
2025 Scientific Reports analysis	Academic researchers	Fox News showed the greatest distinctiveness in topic choice compared with broadcast networks across the studied period

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School analyzed thousands of hours of Cnn, Fox, and Msnbc programming and found that the gap between channels is most pronounced during primetime programming. The study found that while news shows across all time blocks have polarized since 2017, this pattern is most pronounced among primetime shows, with Fox News steadily becoming more conservative and Msnbc and Cnn sharply becoming more liberal during the Trump presidency.

The nuance most articles miss: Afternoon shows — when most hard news airs — are far more correlated between channels than primetime shows. In other words, the daytime “hard news” segments across Fox, Cnn, and Msnbc look more similar to each other than any of their respective primetime opinion shows. The polarization is driven overwhelmingly by evening programming.

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Yes, There Are Democrats on Fox News — Here’s Who They Are and What Role They Play

Fox News does employ Democratic and left-leaning contributors, though they’re significantly outnumbered by conservative voices. Their role is typically to provide opposing viewpoints on panel discussion shows:

🗣️ Democrat/Left-Leaning Voice	Role at Fox News	Background
Jessica Tarlov	Rotating co-host of The Five; provides political analysis across Fox News and Fox Business	Democratic political strategist with a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics
Juan Williams	Senior political analyst appearing on Special Report with Bret Baier and Fox News Sunday	Former Npr senior correspondent, joined Fox in 1997
Harold Ford Jr.	Rotating co-host of The Five	Former Democratic congressman from Tennessee
Marie Harf	Contributor providing political and national security analysis; formerly State Department spokesperson under John Kerry and Obama campaign staffer	Former Cia analyst
Donna Brazile	Contributor (hired 2019)	Former chair of the Democratic National Committee
Richard Fowler	Regular panelist and contributor	Democratic strategist

Academic content analysis found that while both Cnn and Fox brought in a similar number of guest speakers, Cnn featured guests from both political parties, while Fox News predominantly highlighted Republicans. The Democratic contributors at Fox typically serve as debate foils on panel shows rather than hosting their own programs or shaping editorial direction.

The Jessica Tarlov phenomenon: Tarlov told The New York Times in October 2024 that her goals at Fox News include representing the majority of American people while showing viewers that different perspectives exist. She’s become one of Fox’s most visible personalities as a co-host of The Five — which made television history as the first non-primetime program to rank as the number one program in viewers.

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Fox News vs. Cnn Credibility: What the Data Actually Shows

Rather than telling you which network is “more credible” (which depends heavily on your own political perspective), here’s what objective measurements reveal:

📊 Credibility Metric	Fox News	Cnn
Trust among Republicans (Pew 2025)	56% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents trust Fox News	Low trust among Republicans
Trust among Democrats	Low trust among Democrats	Higher trust among Democrats
Overall American trust (Reuters Institute)	35% trust, 46% do not trust	Mixed — declining in recent years
Factual rating (Media Bias/Fact Check)	Low factual rating for opinion content; beat reporters are generally fact-based	Mixed factual rating — higher on news reporting, lower on opinion
Major legal settlements	$787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems (2023); ongoing Smartmatic lawsuit	Smaller settlements in individual cases
Weekly primetime viewers (2025 Nielsen)	2,652,000 average	573,000 average (down 16% from 2024)

The uncomfortable truth for both sides: Trust in both Fox News and Cnn tracks almost perfectly with the viewer’s pre-existing political identity. Roughly 38% of Americans said they regularly get news from Fox in a 2025 survey, illustrating significant reach even amid polarized trust. Meanwhile, as we say goodbye to 2025, Cnn has become an interesting case because on average it might tend to left-center, but it has also been featuring segments catering more and more to center-right and right-wing audiences — a shift that has frustrated some of its traditional liberal viewers.

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The Fox News Viewer Demographic Profile: Who’s Actually Watching?

Pew Research Center’s March 2025 survey of 9,482 U.S. adults found that Fox News has a median audience age of 55, making it one of the older-skewing major news sources. Here’s the complete demographic snapshot:

👥 Demographic Category	Fox News Audience
Median age	55 years old
Political identity	67% Republican/lean Republican, 21% Democrat/lean Democrat
Ideological self-identification	39% conservative, 24% moderate, 15% liberal
Racial breakdown	Roughly equal reach across White (44%), Black (47%), and Hispanic (41%) adults; lower among Asian Americans (29%)
Gender	Slightly more male than female
Primary news source for Trump voters	Fox News was the main source for 40% of Trump voters during the 2016 election

The statistic that surprises most people: Fox News draws roughly equal levels of audience across White, Black, and Hispanic adults. The common assumption that Fox News is watched exclusively by white viewers is not supported by the data. The real skew is political, not racial — it’s the 67% Republican identification that defines the audience, not ethnicity.

However, Fox News and other cable networks continued to witness a slide in the coveted 25-54 age demographic as the 20-year cord-cutting trend showed no sign of stopping. Fox’s dominance is strongest among viewers 50 and older — the same demographic that still watches television news in large numbers.

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Which U.S. News Channels Are Left Wing, Right Wing, and Center?

Here’s the complete cable and broadcast news landscape mapped by independent bias ratings, so you can see where every major outlet falls:

📺 Network	Bias Rating (AllSides / Media Bias Fact Check)	Classification
Msnbc / Ms Now	Left	Left-wing opinion and news
Cnn	Lean Left	Center-left news with liberal editorial tendencies
Abc News	Lean Left	Center-left broadcast news
Nbc News	Lean Left	Center-left broadcast news
Cbs News	Center to Lean Left	Closer to center among broadcast networks
Pbs NewsHour	Center to Lean Left	Public broadcasting, considered among least biased
Npr	Lean Left	Public radio, editorial leans left
Bbc News	Center	International perspective, considered among most balanced
Reuters / Ap	Center	Wire services, minimal editorial framing
NewsNation	Center	Positioned as centrist alternative to cable news
Fox News	Right	Conservative news and opinion
Newsmax	Right to Far Right	Conservative, further right than Fox News
One America News (Oan)	Far Right	Strongly conservative

The critical insight: Every single major cable news network has a measurable political lean. The Pnas study found remarkable similarity between Cnn and Msnbc in their leftward lean, while Fox News occupied a distinctly right-leaning position. The idea that any major cable news network is truly “neutral” is not supported by peer-reviewed research. The differences are in degree and direction, not in the existence of bias itself.

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The News vs. Opinion Distinction: Fox’s Most Important (and Most Debated) Defense

Fox News has consistently argued that its daytime news programming is separate from its primetime opinion shows. This is the network’s central defense against bias accusations — and there is some evidence supporting it:

🕐 Time Slot	Programming Type	Bias Level (Research)
Daytime (afternoon)	Hard news — Special Report with Bret Baier, America’s Newsroom	Afternoon shows are far more correlated between channels than other time slots — closer to center
Primetime (8-11pm)	Opinion — Jesse Watters Primetime, Hannity, Gutfeld!, Ingraham Angle	Primetime shows on Fox News lean far more conservative, and this polarization has increased since 2017
Morning	Talk show format — Fox & Friends	Leans conservative, morning shows on Fox leaned more conservative than primetime during the Trump presidency

While straight news reporting from beat reporters is generally fact-based and accurate, it is typically overshadowed by opinion programming, according to Media Bias/Fact Check’s assessment. Ratings and studies emphasize an important distinction between Fox’s straight news reporting and its opinion programming: some evaluators rate the website’s news reporting as “Generally Reliable” even while noting a rightward skew.

The counter-argument: Critics contend that even Fox’s “straight news” segments are influenced by editorial decisions about which stories to cover, which guests to invite, and how questions are framed. Scientific Reports research has analyzed topic selection across major cable networks, finding Fox News showed the greatest distinctiveness in topic choice compared with broadcast networks. Choosing what to cover — even if the coverage itself is factual — shapes the audience’s worldview.

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The Dominion and Smartmatic Lawsuits Revealed What Happened Behind the Scenes

Two major defamation lawsuits provided an unprecedented look inside Fox News’ editorial decision-making:

Fox News paid $787.5 million to settle the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit in 2023 — one of the largest media settlements in American history. The lawsuit alleged Fox knowingly aired false claims about Dominion’s voting machines after the 2020 election.

In documents filed as part of the Smartmatic v. Fox News defamation lawsuit (still ongoing in 2025), internal survey responses from Fox News employees revealed concerns about the network’s political alignment. Several employees stated they believed the network was “intentionally helping Donald Trump and the Republican Party,” described its programming as “sexist, racist, and right-wing,” and expressed moral discomfort with their work environment.

The new trust arrangement securing Lachlan Murdoch’s control was described as ensuring the channel’s conservative slant until its expiration in 2050.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Fox News biased? According to the available evidence, yes — in a conservative direction. The practical takeaway is that Fox News is reliably classified as right-skewing by multiple independent raters and has been linked empirically to political influence, yet the network includes a mix of reporting and opinion, and assessments vary by method and time period.

Is Cnn biased? According to the same independent organizations, yes — in a liberal direction. Cnn was rated Lean Left in AllSides’ May 2025 blind survey. The degree of Cnn’s liberal lean is debated; some analysts rate it moderately left while others classify it as strongly left.

Which is more biased, Fox News or Cnn? The Pnas study measured Fox News at a weighted ideology score of 49.8 (conservative), Cnn at -9.7 (liberal), and Msnbc at -14.1 (liberal). By this methodology, Fox News has a larger magnitude of ideological lean than Cnn, though Msnbc leans further left than Cnn.

What is Fox News’ accuracy rate? There is no single “accuracy percentage” for any news network. According to Media Bias/Fact Check, Fox’s beat reporters and daytime news segments are generally fact-based, but opinion programming has promoted conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and numerous failed fact checks, earning a Low factual rating overall.

Why do some people trust Fox News while others don’t? Public attitudes reflect partisan sorting: Pew found Fox News is the most trusted source among Republicans — 56% of Republicans said they trust Fox News, while Democrats are more likely to distrust it. This pattern mirrors how Democrats trust Cnn while Republicans distrust it. Media trust in America has become almost entirely tribal.

Was Fox News created to be conservative? The channel was created by Australian-born American media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 1996 to appeal to a conservative audience, hiring former Republican media consultant Roger Ailes as its founding Ceo.

Is there any truly unbiased news source? No major cable news network has been rated as perfectly “Center” by all independent bias organizations. The sources most consistently rated as closest to center include the Associated Press, Reuters, Bbc News, and NewsNation — though even these have detractors on both sides. Reading multiple sources across the spectrum is the most reliable way to get a balanced picture.

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This guide presents factual findings from peer-reviewed academic studies, independent media bias organizations, and major research institutions. Readers should consult multiple news sources and evaluate evidence independently. The political classifications described here reflect the assessments of the cited organizations and researchers, not editorial opinions of the author.