tagged w/ cable news
-
-
This Friday, October 7th is a black day in broadcast journalism. It is the day that some will observe the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda beast known as the Fox News Channel. In 1996, Murdoch put television veteran Roger Ailes in charge of the new network and the rest is right-wing history.
http://veracitystew.com/2011/10/05/why-foxs-roger-ailes-hired-sarah-palin-she-was-hot/This Friday, October 7th is a black day in broadcast journalism. It is the day that... more
-
-
-
As I watched the coverage of the east coast earth quake this afternoon it dawned on me just how ridiculous the concept of covering a natural disaster can be. Once you get past the basic description of the event everything that comes after is complete stage craft. Lots of what if's and what might have happened and how social media can somehow protect us from even further harm. Charts and experts and eye witness accounts and or hearsay from someone who may know someone who's cat was a little bit more irritable than normal. In the end though nobody really knows anything. But I suppose the panic of not knowing versus the panic caused by a little bit of knowledge and a lot of speculation is about the same. The funny thing is I slept through the whole thing so until I turned the news on I really didn't have anything to panic about at all.As I watched the coverage of the east coast earth quake this afternoon it dawned on me... more
-
-
-
CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel lost viewers last year, the first time all three have seen dropoffs in a dozen years, according to a new study.
According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report, cable news viewership for CNN, MSNBC and Fox News fell substantially in 2010 -- 13.7 percent in aggregate for a sharper decline than any other sector. Broadcast news, which has experienced declining viewership for years, was down another 3.4 percent in 2010.
And the cable news networks' declines were sharpest in primetime, where median viewership plummeted 16 percent to an average of 3.2 million, while daytime tune-in was down 12 percent.
And for the first time in the dozen years since PEJ has been monitoring the cable news networks, every channel was down. CNN -- with its well-publicized primetime woes -- was down the most in 2010, dropping 37% to 564,000 viewers. But Fox News, the No. 1 cable news network, declined 11 percent. And MSNBC -- which finished 2010 ahead of CNN in primetime in news' target demographic of 25-54-year-olds and total viewers -- was down 5 percent.CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel lost viewers last year, the first time all three have... more
-
-
Writer Aaron Sorkin says he's going to give the world of cable news the "West Wing" treatment.Writer Aaron Sorkin says he's going to give the world of cable news the... more
-
-
Needham & Company analyst Laura Martin conducted a survey of television viewers in the U.S. and asked them which channels they ”must have available online for you to turn off your TV subscription.”
Not surprisingly, the four major broadcast networks and ESPN topped the list, but what might surprise some people is the only cable news channel to crack the top 20: CNN.
Indeed, CNN placed 12th with 8% of the vote, tied with networks like MTV, PBS and The CW. No other news network made the list.
Why would that be?
Two important things to keep in mind: first, the Needham list is not representative of TV ratings as a whole. Networks like Comedy Central and Food Network cracked the top 10 on the list, but are not top 10 networks according to Nielsen ratings.
Second, most TV viewers do not watch cable news on a daily basis. For those irregular viewers, CNN may be the one they want to keep on their channel lineup just in case...Needham & Company analyst Laura Martin conducted a survey of television viewers in... more
-
-
MSNBC suspended "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann Friday after the news that he donated to three Democratic candidates.
Politico reported Friday that Olbermann gave the maximum individual donation of $2,400 to three candidates in Tuesday's election: Arizona Reps. Gabrielle Giffords and Raul Grijalva and Senate hopeful Jack Conway, who lost in Kentucky to Republican Rand Paul. (Grijalva appeared on Olbermann's "Countdown" on Oct. 28, the same day the host donated to his campaign; Conway was last a guest in May).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101105/bs_yblog_upshot/msnbc-suspends-olbermann-over-political-contributionsMSNBC suspended "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann Friday after the news that... more
-
-
As the 2010 election winds down, a majority of Americans say the media, both partisan and nonpartisan, encourages political division more than it does cooperation.
Just 30 percent of respondents believe the mainstream media is interested in political cooperation, according to a new ABC News/ Yahoo! News poll; 63 percent say reporters help stoke division.
Journalists have long been criticized for chasing after scandals and controversy. But the poll is noteworthy for showing just how much the public considers the media a factor in creating the current divisiveness in American politics.
Partisan talkers didn't fare much better than mainstream reporters. Conservative radio hosts also clocked in at 30 percent in terms of cooperation, with 61 percent saying they help foster division. Cable news programs came in at 29 percent for cooperation, 59 percent for division.
The national media and talk show hosts shouldn't feel too bad, though. Americans are just as likely to say their political leaders are fomenting political division.
Forty-four percent said Democrats in Congress sought cooperation. Just 31 percent said the same about Republicans.
One surprising finding was that President Obama--whom voters tend to see as a polarizing figure on either side of the ideological divide--got a majority of respondents agreeing that he was interested in political cooperation, at 59 percent. Sarah Palin and the tea party movement polled at 34 percent and 31 percent on the same question, respectively.
The ABC News/Yahoo News! poll was based on a random sample of 1,025 adults and was conducted Oct. 6 to Oct. 12.As the 2010 election winds down, a majority of Americans say the media, both partisan... more
-
-
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/memo-hints-at-name-change-for-msnbc-com/
NBC Universal and Microsoft, the parents of MSNBC.com (officially MSNBC.MSN.com) are holding high-level talks about a name change, something that could be a risky endeavor for the third most popular news Web site in the United States.
The two parents have determined that the brand of MSNBC.com, a strictly objective news Web site, is widely confused with MSNBC, the cable channel that has taken a strongly liberal bent in recent years, according to internal memorandums obtained by The New York Times this week.
According to memos, if the name change is enacted, MSNBC.com would be used only for the MSNBC TV channel, while what is currently MSNBC.com would switch to NBCNews.com (which already redirects to MSNBC.com anyway) or something similar.
MSNBC.com’s network of Web sites are visited by almost 50 million Internet users each month, according to ComScore, making it bigger than all but two competitors, Yahoo and CNN.http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/memo-hints-at-name-change-for-msnbc-co... more
-
-
Jon Stewart returned to "The O'Reilly Factor" Wednesday for a lively discussion with Bill O'Reilly.
Part 1 video aboveJon Stewart returned to "The O'Reilly Factor" Wednesday for a lively... more
-
-
A couple weeks ago(http://reason.com/blog/2010/07/31/reason-writers-on-the-tube-rad#commentcontainer) on John Stossel's show, I debated sex crimes with Wendy Murphy, the TV pundit and former assistant district attorney for Middlesex County, Massachusetts (where, like Scott Harshbarger and Martha Coakley, Murphy fought(http://mysite.verizon.net/vzex11z4/amichron.html) the release of Cheryl Amirault in the bogus Fells Acres sex crimes case). During the debate, Murphy threw out a statistic that only 2 percent of sex offenders are actually on sex offender registries. I'm still not sure where she got that figure. I'm also not sure what it's supposed to measure, or what conclusions we're supposed to draw from it. I still haven't been able to find any study that produces that statistic.
Last night I saw another clip from Murphy in a segment from The Daily Show(http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-august-3-2010/born-in-the-u-s-a-). This time she was discussing birthright citizenship and the "anchor baby" issue. The Daily Show's clip was so completely outrageous, I looked up the interview that the clip was pulled from to make sure Murphy wasn't taken out of context. She wasn't, but more on that in a bit.
When I found the full interview (watch it here(http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/politics/local_politics/debate-over-children-of-illegal-immigrants-20100728)), I saw that Murphy again threw out a statistic that sounded preposterous on its face. At the two minute mark in the immigration debate Murphy says:
In prisons, half—half—the prisoners in California are illegal aliens.
She even pauses for effect. I can find no study, report, or government data to support that assertion. In January(http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/01/corrections-sta.html), the Sacramento Bee cited California state government data that put the number at 13 percent. This incoherent Fox News scare story(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/29/border-states-dealing-illegal-immigrant-crime-data-suggests/) (note that the final few graphs negate the entire premise of the article) puts the number at 12.4 percent (that figure is as of 2004, which the article says is the most recent year figures were available).
The only support I can find for Murphy's claim is this passage from a 2005 Investors Business Daily editorial:
Some estimates show illegals now make up half of California's prison population, creating a massive criminal subculture that strains state budgets and creates a nightmare for local police forces.
It isn't clear what "some estimates" means. The claim is unsourced. My guess is that the figure comes from the same number crunchers who gave us Lou Dobbs' Mexicans-and-leprosy(http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/of_lepers_and_lou_dobbs.php) figures. This particular IBD passage was excerpted by Newsmax in 2006(http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/27/114208.shtml), and has since been cut-and-pasted by immigration opponents on message boards all over the Internet. (Murphy's underlying premise is wrong, too. The evidence increasingly shows that border cities(http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2007474,00.html) and states(http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2007474,00.html) have lower crime rates than the rest of the country.)
So where did Murphy get her "half" figure? I'd hate to think an adjunct professor at the New England School of Law would carelessly pull a bogus statistic from Internet message boards, then repeat the figure to a television audience. But then, we're talking about the same woman who once said that disgraced North Carolina prosecutor Mike Nifong "deserves to be promoted and celebrated."
Murphy's continuing saturation of the cable news airwaves is nauseating. Her punditry career should have ended with the Duke lacrosse case, when she appeared all over cable news to defend Nifong and to damn the falsely accused lacrosse players, first prematurely, then even as it became clear to the rest of the world that they were innocent. (As late as last year Murphy was still griping(http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2009/03/wendy-murphy-esq.html) about the lacrosse case). K.C. Johnson wrote of Murphy at the time(http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2006/12/wendy-murphy-file.html), "In addition to the outrageous quotes highlighted above, on at least 18 occasions over the past nine months, Murphy has made demonstrably untrue statements. She also has engaged in a pattern of wholly unfounded speculation and has routinely denigrated due process." Johnson ably shows his work in that post.
Murphy never apologized for repeatedly slandering the Duke players (she once claimed, with no evidence, that they had "ripped open" the accuser's vagina). Yet her punditry career took off. She was rewarded with a book contract and dozens more TV appearances. William Anderson noted earlier this year that Murphy was recently invited onto the Today show to vouch for Catoosa County, Georgia's shameful sex abuse persecution of Tonya Craft. (Craft was acquitted on all counts.)
In a 2007 interview(http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4379) with the American Journalism Review, here's how Murphy justified going on TV to publicly convict potentially innocent people in spite of the evidence against them:
"Lots of folks who voiced the prosecution position in the beginning [of the Duke case] gave up because they faced a lot of criticism, and that's never my style." She notes that she's invited on cable shows to argue for a particular side. "You have to appreciate my role as a pundit is to draw inferences and make arguments on behalf of the side which I'm assigned," she says. "So of course it's going to sound like I'm arguing in favor of 'guilty.' That's the opposite of what the defense pundit is doing, which is arguing that they're innocent."
It's all theater, you see. She's just playing a part. It's fine if she slanders some people, ruins some reputations, spouts flat falsehoods, and generally dumbs down the public discourse. Because it's just entertainment. It's what pundits do.
The sad thing is, Murphy is mostly right. Cable news is about lining people up on either side and letting them go at it. There's no room for subtlety. There's certainly no time for fact-checking a guest's claims, even after the segment airs. Murphy is pretty, provocative, and confrontational. She's great TV. That she's inaccurate, slanderous, and hysterical is beside the point.
Let's get back to that segment on immigration. Here's what Murphy had to say about birthright citizenship:
I know we're talking about babies, and it's hard to be tough on babies, but let's remember, we're talking about illegal aliens coming to this country for the purpose of birthing a child, not because they love the kid, but because they want the child to provide them with the benefits of U.S. citizenship. In other words, that's not the kind of child who's going to be raised well and be a productive citizen. The child is barely loved. It's more like a thing and a commodity than a human being.
At some point you have to wonder, is it even possible to be too shameless for cable news?A couple weeks... more
-
-
Who has the most watched news network in all the land? Fox News!
And who has the oldest audience in all of cable? Fox News!
In a survey released by analyst Steve Sternberg, Fox News has the oldest audience among fully distributed cable networks. The network's average viewer last season was 65 years old, according to Nielsen. Heck, it's viewers are even older than viewers of Hallmark Channel, Military Channel and Golf Channel.
Perhaps the reason viewers tend to leave Fox News on all day racking up hours of big Nielsen numbers is they can't actually change the channel?
CNN wasn't far behind, though -- its average audience was 63. MSNBC was a perky 59. CNBC is the young turk at 52.
The youngest fully distributed cable channel? Oxygen. Followed by Bravo and, weirdly, VH1 Classic, then Travel and TLC -- all averaging about 42 years old.
Fox News audience is also just 1.38% Black.
http://current.com/news-and-politics/92569724_fox-news-audience-just-1-38-black.htmWho has the most watched news network in all the land? Fox News!
And who has the... more
-
-
Fox News may be the undisputed ratings champion in cable news, but not among black viewers.
The New York Times' Brian Stelter tweeted that, according to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News has averaged just 29,000 black viewers in primetime so far this television season (9/09-7/10). That represents just 1.38% of its 2.102 million total viewer audience.
CNN and MSNBC, meanwhile, both have far more black viewers, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of their overall audiences.
MSNBC has averaged 145,000 black viewers, representing 19.3% of its 751,000 total viewer audience.
CNN has averaged 134,000 black viewers, representing 20.7% of its 648,000 total viewer audience.
Fox News also has the oldest audience on cable
http://current.com/groups/fox-news/92600859_fox-news-has-oldest-cable-audience-on-cable.htmFox News may be the undisputed ratings champion in cable news, but not among black... more
-
-
-
Host Conor Knighton looks at how Spike TV's "Crash Test" puts a bikini and baby oil to use in the name of science. This hilarious skewering of the week's most hilarious and horrific moments from television also includes Tyra Banks foaming at the mouth, the Kentucky Derby, the return of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," and the new old people reality show, "Sunset Daze."
infoMania is a half-hour satirical news show that airs on Current TV. The show puts a comedic spin on the 24-hour chaos and information overload brought about by the constant bombardment of the media. Hosted by Conor Knighton and co-starring Brett Erlich, Erin Gibson, Ben Hoffman, Bryan Safi and Sergio Cilli, the show airs on Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific Times and can be found online at http://current.com/infomania/ or on Current TV. And make sure to check out our facebook profile for special features at http://facebook.com/infomania.Host Conor Knighton looks at how Spike TV's "Crash Test" puts a bikini... more
-
-
Host Conor Knighton examines the evidence that Glenn Beck has totally gone crazy in his hilarious skewering of TV's biggest moments from the week. Also includes newscasters' trouble with Iceland's Volcano, Martha Stewart learning to text, and Jerry Springer's new game show.
infoMania is a half-hour satirical news show that airs on Current TV. The show puts a comedic spin on the 24-hour chaos and information overload brought about by the constant bombardment of the media. Hosted by Conor Knighton and co-starring Brett Erlich, Sarah Haskins, Ben Hoffman, Bryan Safi and Sergio Cilli, the show airs on Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific Times and can be found online at http://current.com/infomania/ or on Current TV. And make sure to check out our facebook profile for special features at http://facebook.com/infomania.Host Conor Knighton examines the evidence that Glenn Beck has totally gone crazy in... more
-
-
How Glenn Beck Makes $32 Million A Year
[GLENN-BECK-large]
Gillian Reagan
Apr. 8, 2010
Love him, hate him, or love to hate him, but Fox News’ Glenn Beck is a rich man.
He made $32 million in 2009, Forbes reports.
But reporter Lacey Rose tells us his Fox News contract is the least lucrative of his many projects from books to radio shows to merchandise.
He’s a regular empire, and knows it.
“I could give a flying crap about the political process,” he told Forbes. “We’re an entertainment company.”
Here’s the math:Glenn Beck’s $32 Million A Year…”Could Give a Flying Crap About Politics”…Truth About Beck VIDEO…http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/6160/How Glenn Beck Makes $32 Million A Year
[GLENN-BECK-large]
Gillian Reagan
Apr.... more
-
-
Host Conor Knighton takes a look at the 20/20 special on 'The Bachelor' in his roundup of the week in media. Also includes the Coffee Party, 'Who Framed Jesus,' 'Celebrity Apprentice,' Kirstie Alley, Supernanny, and Dinoshark.
infoMania is a half-hour satirical news show that airs on Current TV. The show puts a comedic spin on the 24-hour chaos and information overload brought about by the constant bombardment of the media. Hosted by Conor Knighton and co-starring Brett Erlich, Sarah Haskins, Ben Hoffman, Bryan Safi and Sergio Cilli, the show airs on Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific Times and can be found online at http://current.com/infomania/ or on Current TV. And make sure to check out our facebook profile for special features at http://infomaniafacebook.com.Host Conor Knighton takes a look at the 20/20 special on 'The Bachelor' in... more
-
