Will cable TV news roughhousing extract a price?

NEW YORK - Amplifying the nation’s political division has been good business for Fox News Channel and MSNBC during this season of anger - but it may come at a price.

President Barack Obama has complained about a coarsening of political dialogue and cable news cycles where “the loudest, shrillest voices get the most attention.” After a summer of raucous health care forums that received wide coverage, South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson felt free to shout that Obama was a liar during an address to Congress.

The president pointedly snubbed Fox during last week’s Sunday morning TV tour, leading the network’s Chris Wallace to say the administration is “the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in journalism.”

As this was going on, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reported that public attitudes toward journalists were at their worst level in nearly a quarter-century of surveys.

Political talk was overheated last year as the presidential campaign reached its climax. Anyone who believed that voices would still has been proven wrong.

Both networks seem bolder in letting partisanship seep into news coverage, and tailoring appeal to one perspective or another has proven rewarding: Fox’s prime-time viewership is up 8 percent over last year and, with Beck’s emergence the primary factor, up 13 percent all day. MSNBC is down 7 percent in prime-time since the election year. CNN, which promotes a non-biased approach, is down 26 percent, the Nielsen Co. said.

Fox, which also keeps viewers watching longer than its rivals, is home base for Obama opponents. Since the beginning of the year, Glenn Beck has exploded in popularity, Sean Hannity lost his former political foil Alan Colmes and Bill O’Reilly strengthened his prime-time dominance. The network recognizes there’s a profitable business in being a place to vent for out-of-power political movements, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Fox cut off coverage of an Obama health care rally, saying it would return if there were “any contentious questions, anybody yelling.” The liberal watchdogs Media Matters said that during one week, Fox aired 22 comments from health care forums that opposed or questioned Obama’s plans, and none that supported the president.

When Fox bought a newspaper ad questioning whether its rivals missed the story of a Sept. 12 anti-Obama rally in Washington, Rick Sanchez of CNN suggested Fox was doing more than covering it.

“We didn’t promote the event,” he said. “That’s not what real organizations are suppose

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