Kevin Magee

The Creeping Fox News Contagion: MSNBC’s New Executive In Charge Of Morning Joe

Posted by on January 5, 2016 at 6:06 pm. 12 Comments :

Taking another leap toward the dark side, MSNBC announced today that they have hired Kevin Magee to serve as executive in charge of Morning Joe, the three hour block of programming hosted by former Republican representative Joe Scarborough. Magee is a former executive vice-president at Fox News.

Morning Joe Scarborough

The immediate ramifications of this staff change will not be particularly earth shattering. The program is already a bastion of right-wing propaganda with predominantly conservative punditry. However it does represent a congealing of the Fox Effect on the mainstream media. It is an advance of the virus emanating from Fox to infect other networks with their deliberately deceitful approach to journalism.

Morning Joe already has a weakened immune system. Last year they added Amy Holmes to their roster of contributors. Holmes is also the anchor of Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze Internet Video program. Scarborough himself is hopelessly biased and nearly oblivious to the right-wing dominance of the press. In November he went on an extended rant demanding his guests to name a single Republican on a nightly news program (they couldn’t, but I could). And Morning Joe is the MSNBC home of Donald Trump, who has become a regular fixture on the show – and nowhere else on the network.

One thing that this should put an end to is the talk that MSNBC is the liberal answer to Fox News. That has never been true, mainly because, while MSNBC was generally more progressive, it remained fact-based as opposed to the blatant lying that is the hallmark of Fox. More to the point, Fox News would never give a three hour block of airtime (soon to be expanding to four hours) to a liberal ex-congressman, but Scarborough not only has that, but is also featured on NBC’s Meet the Press. Just imagine if Fox & Friends was hosted by Anthony Weiner or if Sean Hannity were replaced by Rachel Maddow.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Since NBC/Universal was bought by Comcast, MSNBC has undergone some troubling changes. Comcast’s owners, the conservative Roberts family, insisted that there would be no substantive changes, but Ed Schultz, Joy Reid, and Alex Wagner lost their shows shortly after the acquisition. And now they are beginning to stuff the deck with right-wing pundits and producers. This cannot possibly lead to anything positive for the network. If they were smart they would recall that when Keith Olbermann was on in primetime, his show regularly challenged, and occasionally beat, Fox’s O’Reilly Factor. And Olbermann just happens to be available now.

Fox Nation: Historic Debacle At CNN

Posted by on June 1, 2012 at 1:07 pm. 3 Comments :

It has been well documented that Fox News is a disreputable enterprise that shuns any semblance of journalistic ethics. The most recent example, producing and airing an anti-Obama campaign-style video, perfectly demonstrates how far afield they are from a being legitimate news organization. Amongst the traits of Fox News that separate them from the pack is their tendency to attack their peers in the news business. That is almost unheard of from other cable networks, newspapers, or other outlets.

Fox Nation

Today Fox News continued in that vein by leaping on the Nielsen ratings reports for May 2012. To be sure, CNN’s ratings were dismal. But so were the ratings for Fox which declined double digits and notched a primetime low that they haven’t seen since 2008. Nevertheless, Fox reported only on CNN’s numbers and ignored their own sickly showing. And nowhere in their story did they note that the decline was primarily due to the inflated ratings in May 2011, when the killing of Osama Bin Laden, hurricanes in the Midwest, and Casey Anthony were dominating the airwaves.

That said, Fox is inadvertently correct about a debacle at CNN, but not the way they mean. CNN is suffering a decline in viewership that is historic mainly because they pioneered the concept of the 24 hour cable news network but are now languishing in last place. But if they are perplexed by the sorry turn of fate they have experienced in recent years it is only because of their own willful blindness to the circumstances that led to it.

When Fox News began to approach and overtake CNN in the ratings, CNN management made the foolish mistake of concluding that Fox’s success was related to their blatant conservative bias and abandonment of journalistic principles. While that was (and is) the model for Fox’s programming, that played only a small part in their success story. The real reason that Fox excelled was that they had switched the deck. They were not in any practical sense a news network. Their programming was (and is) closer to an entertainment channel than anything else. They feature shallow, sensationalistic stories that rely heavily on melodrama, controversy, emotion and sex – the main characteristics of soap operas and reality shows. And they decorate their broadcasts with flashy graphics and sound effects that would be more appropriate for game shows. That’s what draws their viewers in, and that is always more compelling than actual news content.

However, CNN panicked and decided that the way to compete with Fox was to emulate their right-wing partisanship and theatrics. Ironically, even Fox’s business network recognized that emulating Fox News was a losing strategy. Fox Business Network VP Kevin Magee sent a memo to his staff saying that…

“…the more we make FBN look like FNC the more of a disservice we do to ourselves. I understand the temptation to imitate our sibling network in hopes of imitating its success, but we cannot. If we give the audience a choice between FNC and the almost-FNC, they will choose FNC every time.”

CNN Tea PartyUnfortunately, no one at CNN could grasp that simple truth. Instead they installed Ken Jautz, a rabidly right-wing promoter, as it’s chief. Jautz was the man who gave Glenn Beck his first job in television. Then CNN went on a hiring binge that consisted of the most unsavory figures from Wingnutlandia including: Amy Holmes (of Glenn Beck’s GBTV), Will Cain (of Beck’s The Blaze), Erick Erickson (of the uber-conservative blog RedState), Dana Loesch (of Breitbart News and the Tea Party), and E.D. Hill, a former Fox anchor and Bill O’Reilly guest host, who is most famous for saying that a friendly fist bump between the President and the First Lady was really a “terrorist fist jab.”

CNN demonstrated its new found rightist perspective by producing programming that was straight out of the conservative PR playbook. They were the only cable news network to broadcast live Michele Bachmann’s Tea Party response to Obama’s State of the Union address. They co-sponsored a GOP primary debate with the corrupt Tea Party Express. They also co-sponsored a debate with the ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

For a network that claims to be the only truly neutral source for news, CNN has conspicuously failed to permit a representative from MoveOn.org to respond to a presidential address, nor to co-host a debate with the Center for American Progress. They have navigated toward a full-on Foxification of the network without any pretense to objectivity or balance.

And what have they got for it? A steep collapse to last place in the ratings, an embarrassing forfeiture of credibility, a severe loss of viewer loyalty and respect, and the pleasure of becoming a target of Fox’s ridicule.

As a division of TimeWarner, CNN has the resources to brand itself as a powerhouse news provider. They have more domestic and international news bureaus than any television news enterprise. They have access to the talent and technology that could set them apart from their competitors. Yet they fail to take advantage of these assets. And worse, they squander them in the vain hope of being FoxLite.

That’s what I call an historic debacle. And it’s why CNN just posted their worst ratings in twenty years. It’s also why they are now seen as an object of sympathy as Fox News batters them in the ratings and in the press. The first step in rehabilitating themselves would be to recognize their problem and clean house. Then they would need to fight back. If they would aggressively hammer at Fox as a lightweight purveyor of lies in a flashy, soap opera package, they might just begin to recover some measure of pride and start their long trek back to legitimacy.

Fox Business Network Cancels Entire Primetime Lineup

Posted by on February 10, 2012 at 2:53 am. 3 Comments :

Fox Business NetworkThe day after News Corp released their latest quarterly earnings report, they made another announcement that somehow was left out of the earnings conference call.

The struggling Fox Business Network (FBN) has, in one fell swoop, canceled their entire primetime lineup. Wiped from the schedule are “Freedom Watch” with Andrew Napolitano, “Power & Money” with David Asman, and “Follow the Money” with Eric Bolling. All three programs had little business running on a business network in the first place. They were brazenly political vehicles for sharply partisan, right-wing gasbags.

Andrew Napolitano is a notorious 9/11 truther who believes that the attack on the World Trade Center towers was an inside job. He also lamented the killing of Osama Bin Laden whom he characterized as a victim of assassination, “killed on the illegal whim of the President.”

David Asman has said that we should all be celebrating the 1%. He is an advocate of shutting down the government and believes that its size must be cut “before it kills us all.” He called Obama “Hugo Chavez on the Potomac.” And he believes that Social Security is “one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated.”

Eric Bolling is perhaps the most deserving of the Glenn Beck Memorial Wingnut Award for Delusional Hyperbole. He has accused President Obama of engaging in class warfare that was “forged in Marxist Germany.” He embraces every conspiracy theory that comes along including that Sesame Street was demonizing the Tea Party. He even accused the American hikers who were held in an Iranian prison of being spies and said that Iran should have kept them.

The demise of these programs signals the dismal shape that FBN is in. The decision to swing the axe was not prompted by the development of new programs to take their place. FBN will fill the holes with repeats of programs that air earlier in the day. It is clearly a desperation move by a network that needs to cut the dead weight and run leaner and cheaper.

FBN’s primetime lineup never drew more than about 25,000 viewers in the coveted 25-54 year old demographic. Their ratings have been pathetic from the start, when they proposed to launch a new business channel that would appeal to “Main Street.” That was a direct contradiction of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch who said that “a Fox channel would be ‘more business-friendly than CNBC.'” Of course, a business network is not supposed to be “friendly” toward the businesses it is covering.

In an ironic twist, FBN’s Vice-President, Kevin Magee, recently distributed a memo to his staff admonishing them for being too much like their sister network, Fox News.

Magee: “I’ve been asked to remind you all again that they are separate channels and the more we make FBN look like FNC the more of a disservice we do to ourselves. I understand the temptation to imitate our sibling network in hopes of imitating its success, but we cannot. If we give the audience a choice between FNC and the almost-FNC, they will choose FNC every time.”

That’s excellent advice. CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC should pay attention. However, it apparently came too late to save the most Foxish programs on the network. Now Magee has lopped off the worst offenders in the hopes of rescuing the floundering enterprise. Though the losers will still be around as Magee notes that “We look forward to Judge Napolitano, David and Eric continuing to make significant contributions to both FOX Business and FOX News.” Yeah right.

The only purpose Fox Business ever had was to extend the rightist propaganda already blaring from Fox News. They loaded up the network with conservative extremist pundits and vacant ratings whores like Don Imus. That approach has proven to be another failure for Murdoch, whose MySpace investment quickly went down the tubes; whose New York Post has lost millions for as long as he has owned it; for his international newspaper syndicate that is still reeling from the discovery of rampant criminal activity, phone hacking, and the the shuttering of his biggest paper in the UK, the News of the World.

Another item of information that was disclosed with the News Corp earnings release is that their cable television assets represent 60% of their revenue. That’s a pretty heavy reliance on one business segment of a conglomerate that includes international publishing and film operations. Now that FBN is slipping away, all that Murdoch needs is to have his Fox News falter. That is the last remaining support for his crumbling empire. And for the benefit of honest journalism, the nation, and the world, it can’t come too soon.

Memo From Fox Business To Staff – Don’t Copy Fox News

Posted by on October 18, 2011 at 2:19 am. 4 Comments :

Reuters is reporting that the Vice-President of the Fox Business Network, Kevin Magee, has distributed a memo to his staff admonishing them for being too much like their sister network, Fox News.

Magee: “I’ve been asked to remind you all again that they are separate channels and the more we make FBN look like FNC the more of a disservice we do to ourselves. I understand the temptation to imitate our sibling network in hopes of imitating its success, but we cannot. If we give the audience a choice between FNC and the almost-FNC, they will choose FNC every time.”

Excellent advice. CNN, which has been trying hard to emulate Fox News, should take this advice to heart.

The Reuters article implies that it was Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, who asked Magee to issue this reminder. FBN has been floundering in the ratings despite optimistic predictions by Rupert Murdoch and others that it would be trouncing CNBC by now. Not only have they not reached that goal, CNBC is pulling in about three times as many viewers.

The curious part of this memo is that it comes in the form of a reminder, as if the network were attempting to focus on business news all along and simply got distracted. That can hardly be asserted when the network’s programming consists of fare that was obviously never intended to be anything but political. They start their day with three hours of Don Imus. That segues in to the overt partisanship of Stuart Varney. In the afternoon they feature right-wing blowhard Neil Cavuto, Libertarian wacko and 9/11 Truther Andrew Napolitano, and immigrant basher Lou Dobbs. The primetime lineup is capped by Glenn Beck wannabe, Eric Bolling. Reminding these conservative evangelists to be less political is like asking a skunk not to stink.

Illustrating their new-found commitment to business journalism, FBN carried the Reuters story about Magee’s memo briefly, but later scrubbed it without explanation leaving a broken link (here is the cached version). Apparently an article reporting that Fox News ought not to be the model for a network ostensibly about business and finance was too much for FBN. And they probably weren’t thrilled about reporting the dismal ratings data either.

What an adorable irony that FBN, after being scolded by their own management for being to Fox Newsy, behaved identically to Fox by censoring the article. Now, do you really think that their lineup of uber-rightist anchors and pundits is going to stick strictly to business in the future? Don’t bet on it.

Fox Business Network Is On The Case

Posted by on February 26, 2009 at 3:10 pm. 2 Comments :

Last year the Fox Business Network filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Treasury Department documents related to the Toxic Assets Relief Program. After filing the request, FBN launched an advertising campaign promoting their tireless efforts on behalf of the American people.

I have no problem with the FOIA requests, in fact I support them. They are an important part of a transparent democracy, and news enterprises have always used them to provide a complete picture of what our government is doing on our behalf. They do it in the interests of journalism, not some disingenuous grandstanding as protectors of the people. It is unseemly for a network to puff itself up simply for doing its job. Bloomberg also has FOIA requests pending, but they aren’t banging the drum about it.

Now the puffery is ascending to new highs of absurdity. Fox News executive vice president Kevin Magee is patting himself and his network on the back for being champions of the people. He is engaging in a sustained campaign of self-flattery that he paradoxically says “is not a wild publicity stunt.”

Magee: “One of the ways that we want to differentiate ourselves is to tell our audience that we are trying to protect their interests. We think that’s a wide-open field. CNBC seems to always be the friend of the CEO and that’s fine, nothing wrong with that. It has served them well.”

This statement is a direct contradiction of what his boss said when FBN debuted:

Rupert Murdoch: “…a Fox channel would be ‘more business-friendly than CNBC.’ That channel ‘leap[s] on every scandal, or what they think is a scandal.'”

So it is FBN that has always sought to be “the friend of the CEO.” Now, in the midst of a Wall Street driven economic collapse, they want to pretend that they are the network of the people. What a crock! The truth is, they are engaging in pure self-promotion. FBN has tried to cultivate the image of being a business channel for Main Street, not Wall Street. But from the beginning, that pretense has been as phony as their “Fair and Balanced” sloganeering for Fox News.

On top of all of this, FBN wants to claim as their victory something that is not really a victory and with which they had little to do anyway. Documents referenced in the FOIA request have already begun flowing. Over 1,200 have been released, 300 of which were previously undisclosed. FBN’s attempt to take credit for this is plausible only if you completely forget that President Obama, on his first full day in office, issued an executive order requiring agencies in his administration to cooperate with FOIA requests. This explicitly reversed a Bush executive order that mandated withholding information if at all possible.

Emerging from the secrecy-obsessed world of George W. Bush may feel strange, but FBN should recognize that they haven’t moved any mountains. They are just in a new era of openness that makes news gathering a little easier. It is more than a little pathetic that somebody else loosened the top of the jelly jar and FBN thinks they’ve grown new muscles.

Fox Business Network Sues U. S. Treasury

Posted by on December 19, 2008 at 11:09 am. 2 Comments :

The U. S. Department of the Treasury is taking on friendly fire. The Fox Business Network has just announced that they are suing them to force the disclosure of information about the Wall Street bailout and how the funds are being used. FBN filed a Freedom of Information Act request last month, but the Treasury’s failure to respond has prompted this more aggressive action. In a press release, FOX News Executive Vice President, Kevin Magee, said…

“The Treasury has repeatedly ignored our requests for information on how the government is allocating money to these troubled institutions. In a critical time like this amidst mounting corruptions and an economic crisis, we as a news organization feel it’s more important than ever to hold the government accountable.”

While I have to applaud the spunk of FBN for turning on its master, there a couple of funny things in Magee’s statement:

  1. …we as a news organization…
  2. …hold the government accountable…

The first item, of course, has never been proven, and is disputed by most reputable journalism analysts. The second item raises the question as to why Fox has never before sought accountability from the Bush administration. Perhaps Magee’s revelation that accountability is now “more important than ever” was triggered by the imminent inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if they follow through and extract anything useful from government bean counters. Well, “counters” may be too generous a description for the unsupervised and reckless bean scattering that the Feds have engaged in. But it’s nice to know that Fox is on the job with muckraking broadcasts like this.

Fox Business Is Still Bad Business

Posted by on July 27, 2008 at 10:54 pm. 5 Comments :

Fox BusinessThe first official ratings for the Fox Business Network reveal that the new enterprise is somewhat less than promising:

“For the first three weeks of July, according to Nielsen figures obtained yesterday that have not been publicly released, Fox Business Network is averaging just 8,000 viewers during daytime hours, and 20,000 in prime time.

CNBC, by contrast, is drawing an average of 284,000 viewers during the day and 191,000 in prime time.

Fox News Executive VP Kevin Magee immediately unleashed a torrent of excuses:

“It’s a slow-growing business, but it is a growing business. I don’t think anybody here expected us to be on top by the first summer, and we’re not.” Anyone who believes otherwise is “probably delusional.”

However, ten months ago CEO Roger Ailes boasted that:

“I’m not interested in anything short of a revolution.”

I guess he must have meant one of those slow-growing revolutions.

Fox Business Network Limps Out Of The Gate

Posted by on January 5, 2008 at 6:11 pm. NO Comments :

The new Fox Business Network may not be living up to the hype.

Although Nielsen ratings are not being officially released, numbers have leaked that don’t auger well for Murdoch’s new baby:

“After less than three months on the air, Fox Business Network is averaging a mere 6,000 viewers in daytime and 15,000 in primetime”

Putting that in perspective, FBN’s main competition is CNBC which averages 284,000 viewers in total day and 238,000 in primetime. And CNBC passes 90 million homes, about three times as many as FBN. Of course, it is still too early to gloat, but the network’s honchos led us to believe that they had much higher expectations. Roger Ailes told us that he would not settle for “anything short of a revolution.” And Murdoch gave this comment a few days after the launch:

“It’s two and a half to three days old and looks just terrific. Everybody, even in the industry, (recognizes) how different it is to CNBC, which is half-dead,”

It appears that the FBN revolution is having a little trouble taking on their half-dead competition. Time will deliver a fuller picture, but clearly FBN has work to do. However, rather than getting down to business, FBN’s executive vice president, Kevin Magee, is just sniping at CNBC, whom he accuses of having leaked these numbers:

“They spent dearly to get [FBN ratings], which is pretty crazy […] I think it shows how uber-concerned they are about us.”

Actually, it’s pretty much routine to get competitive ratings from Nielsen. And when you consider that Murdoch is well known for deficit financing his ventures indefinitely, it is a fairly hollow complaint that CNBC is investing in itself. This sort of griping just makes one wonder who is uber-concerned about whom?