Watching FOX News, you get the impression that huge numbers of Americans regard Obama as a Stalinist.

Switch on MSNBC, and you would assume that most people want Dick Cheney sent to Guantanamo.

You would be mistaken.

FOX News averages just 2.6 million viewers on a typical weeknight, or less than 1 percent of Americans.

MSNBC does even worse, with 831,000 per night.

The three major network newscasts, which offer less overt bias, pull in a combined total of more than 20 million viewers each evening.

The average American citizen, contrary to myth, is neither very angry nor very far to the left or the right.

In a cluttered media environment, the most extreme voices tend to attract so much attention that it's easy to forget something important: Most people aren't listening.

~~ Steve Chapman, in the Chicago Tribune