Fox Viewers Paid to Watch CNN: A Field Experiment on Media Influence

In the fall of 2020, political scientists David Broockman (University of California, Berkeley) and Joshua Kalla (Yale University) conducted a field experiment titled “The manifold effects of partisan media on viewers’ beliefs and attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers.” Regular Fox News viewers were paid $15 per hour to watch roughly seven hours of CNN each week for one month. After the exposure period, participants completed surveys measuring political beliefs, factual knowledge, and issue attitudes.

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Analysts of contemporary U.S. politics argue that media echo chambers deepen polarization by limiting exposure to opposing viewpoints. The study tested whether removing viewers from their preferred outlet could shift entrenched opinions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.

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• David Broockman – Political scientist, University of California, Berkeley.

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• Joshua Kalla – Political scientist, Yale University.

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Both scholars specialize in public opinion and media effects, combining expertise from two leading research universities.

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Survey results showed modest but statistically notable changes among the Fox-to-CNN participants:

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• COVID-19 perception: 5 percentage points higher likelihood of believing long-COVID exists.

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• International comparison: 6 points higher likelihood of judging other countries as more effective at controlling the virus.

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• Voting method: 7 points higher support for mail-in voting.

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• Social-justice protests: 10 points lower likelihood of thinking Biden supporters were happy when police were shot; 13 points lower likelihood of believing a Biden administration would see more police shootings by Black Lives Matter activists.

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• Trust in Fox coverage: Reduced agreement that “if Donald Trump did something bad, Fox News would discuss it.”

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The experiment demonstrates that a sustained, oppositional media diet can produce short-term adjustments in factual beliefs and partisan attitudes, suggesting that echo chambers are not immutable. However, the magnitude of change—generally in the single-digit to low-teens range—indicates modest influence rather than wholesale conversion.

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Broockman and Kalla emphasized that the results reveal “manifold effects” of altering media slant, affecting factual knowledge, issue importance, and overall political views. They noted that while participants showed openness to alternative perspectives during the intervention, many reverted to prior positions within two months, highlighting the transient nature of the effect. Both authors framed the findings as a “glimmer of hope” that exposure to broader information can temper extreme partisanship, even among strong partisan media consumers.

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• “CNN provided extensive coverage of COVID-19, which included information about the severity of the COVID-19 crisis and poor aspects of Trump’s performance handling COVID-19. Fox News covered COVID-19 much less,” — Study authors

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• “Despite regular Fox viewers being largely strong partisans, we found manifold effects of changing the slant of their media diets on their factual beliefs, attitudes, perceptions of issues’ importance, and overall political views,” — Study authors

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• “Partisan media aren’t just putting a thumb on the scale for their side,” — David Broockman

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• “those who receive a sustained diet of information that helps them see the bigger picture actually are open-minded enough to understand that their side isn’t doing a perfect job, either.” — David Broockman

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A follow-up assessment two months after the intervention reported that participants largely returned to their pre-experiment opinions, indicating limited durability of the observed shifts. The study does not address long-term behavioral outcomes such as voting behavior, nor does it explore potential differences across demographic subgroups.

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The authors suggest further research on prolonged or repeated exposure to cross-partisan media and on mechanisms that might sustain attitude changes beyond short-term interventions. Such work could clarify whether media diversification can play a lasting role in reducing political polarization.

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