“Crazy” Glenn Beck, the Overton Window, and Fox News

JERUSALEM — Here in Israel, I tend to work Amer­i­can working-hours since most of my clients for my online-marketing com­pany are in the United States.

While I am on my com­puter through­out the evening and night, I watch either base­ball, Fox News, or movies if Israeli cable is show­ing some­thing that I have been want­ing to see.

Even though I am a for­mer jour­nal­ist, I pre­fer Fox News over CNN for the sim­ple rea­son that biased report­ing on pol­i­tics in Amer­ica, world pol­i­tics, and news (through con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics) is bet­ter than neu­tral report­ing on fluff. If I want a sim­ple update on what is going on in the United States today, Fox News — unfor­tu­nately — per­forms bet­ter than CNN. I just ignore the blowhard pun­dits and obvi­ous bias. (If you want help under­stand­ing pol­i­tics and know­ing the truth behind Fox News, check out the doc­u­men­tary “Out­foxed.”)

Over the past week, wacky-radio-host-turned-populist-demagogue Glenn Beck has been pro­mot­ing his new fic­tion book, “The Over­ton Win­dow.” I can­not fault him for that — if I were to have a tele­vi­sion show, I would pro­mote Con­sid­er­a­tions as well. But by writ­ing the book and pub­li­ciz­ing his view of world pol­i­tics behind the tome, Beck has inad­ver­tently shown the world the cur­rent strat­egy of Fox News. (Every busi­ness plan changes over time.)

The real Over­ton Win­dow is a sound the­ory from the Mack­inac Cen­ter for Pub­lic Pol­icy that looks at how the pub­lic per­ceives the cur­rent range of view­points on a given issue at a par­tic­u­lar moment in time. Imag­ine the fol­low­ing chart with the extreme left at the top and the extreme right at the bottom.

• Unthink­able
• Rad­i­cal
• Accept­able
• Sen­si­ble
• Pop­u­lar
• Pol­icy
• Pop­u­lar
• Sen­si­ble
• Accept­able
• Rad­i­cal
• Unthink­able

For exam­ple, here is the cur­rent Over­ton Win­dow on abortion:

LEFT

• Unthink­able — insti­tut­ing a one-child pol­icy and man­dat­ing abor­tions thereafter
• Rad­i­cal — allow­ing women of all ages (with­out parental or spousal knowl­edge or con­sent) to have abor­tions at any time in the preg­nancy, for any rea­son, or no rea­son at all
• Accept­able — pre­vent­ing all anti-abortion pro­test­ers, doc­tors, and coun­selors from intim­i­dat­ing or oth­er­wise dis­cour­ag­ing women from hav­ing an abortion
• Sen­si­ble — say­ing that all women only need coun­sel­ing while decid­ing whether to to have an abortion
• Pop­u­lar — bat­tling any real or per­ceived infringe­ment on the right to pri­vacy result­ing from Roe. vs. Wade

Cur­rent Pol­icy — Roe vs. Wade

RIGHT

• Pop­u­lar — allow­ing anti-abortion pro­test­ers to dis­cour­age and humil­i­ate women enter­ing abor­tion clin­ics as well as the doc­tors who per­form abortions
• Sen­si­ble — man­dat­ing age lim­its, neces­si­tat­ing parental or spousal con­sent, and restrict­ing abor­tion to cases of rape or incest
• Accept­able — allow­ing indi­vid­ual states to ban abortion
• Rad­i­cal — out­law­ing abor­tion nationwide
• Unthink­able — try­ing abor­tion doc­tors for first-degree mur­der with the same punishments

The Over­ton Win­dow is the range of beliefs that is deemed “mod­er­ate” or “accept­able” by the gen­eral pub­lic on a given issue. In most cases, as in this abor­tion exam­ple, it goes from some­where between “sen­si­ble” and “accept­able” on the left to the same area on the right.

Now, as Beck has cor­rectly noted on his pro­gram, the goal of pun­dits, strate­gists, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers on the left and right is to “move” the win­dow so that their less-mainstream opin­ions become viewed as “mod­er­ate” and “accept­able” over time in the hopes that they even­tu­ally become policy.

How does this occur? By empha­siz­ing the extremes. If much of the debate focuses on the views of the extreme right (or left), then the opin­ions of the mod­er­ate right (or left) start to seem rea­son­able. It is actu­ally an inge­nious strat­egy. Lit­tle harm comes from the right wing (or left wing) empha­siz­ing its most-extreme view­points because those on the oppo­site half of the spec­trum would never sup­port such ideas any­way. Rather, the action increases the per­ceived valid­ity and rea­son­able­ness of the mod­er­ate right-wing (or left-wing).

I sensed this hap­pen­ing to myself this past week. After watch­ing both Beck and long­time host Bill O’Reilly over the past few weeks, I found myself think­ing that the lat­ter was very log­i­cal and rea­son­able. A few years ago, O’Reilly was viewed as an extreme dem­a­gogue as well — but now he seems mod­er­ate in the con­text of Beck’s com­ments.

And this is part of the new strat­egy of Fox News (and, likely, O’Reilly him­self) since Glenn Beck’s view­er­ship has declined thirty per­cent this year and adver­tis­ers are run­ning away from him as well. While this is an obvi­ous neg­a­tive for the net­work, they are tak­ing advan­tage of it.

By empha­siz­ing Beck’s extreme com­ments, Fox News thereby makes O’Reilly (among oth­ers) seem rea­son­able — thereby keep­ing his view­er­ship steady or even increas­ing it. In recent weeks, I have seen O’Reilly increas­ingly crit­i­cize and ques­tion right-wing nut­ters like Sarah Palin and Michele Bach­mann. Beck would never do that.

The net­work faces a dilemma — its base, of course, is mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tives — but the pro­gram­ming also attracts lib­er­tar­i­ans and extrem­ists. In a busi­ness con­text, how can Fox News gain as many view­ers as pos­si­ble while alien­at­ing as few pos­si­ble? By get­ting mod­er­ates to move to pun­dits like O’Reilly and con­vinc­ing extrem­ists to remain with Beck, every­one will remain happy. And the net­work can influ­ence pub­lic pol­icy by mak­ing the mod­er­ate con­ser­v­a­tives seem more rea­son­able and thereby “move” the Over­ton Win­dow towards the right on var­i­ous issues.

I say and write many things about Fox News, Rupert Mur­doch, and Roger Ailes — but I will never claim that they are stupid.